Report: Blacks faring worse than whites

  African-Americans trail whites the most in economics and social justice, according to the National Urban League.The index measures how African-Americans fare relative to whitesIt is published by the National Urban LeagueThis year's index stands at 71.5%, down from 72.1% last yearA number of social factors are behind the decline

(CNN) -- African-Americans are faring slightly worse relative to their white counterparts than they did last year, according to an index released Thursday by the National Urban League.

The group's 2011 Equality Index stands at 71.5%, compared to a revised index last year of 72.1%, the league said as it released its annual report, called The State of Black America.

An equality index of less than 100% suggests blacks are doing worse relative to whites, while an index greater than 100% suggests blacks are doing better.

The league attributed the 2011 drop to a decline in the economics index, driven by housing and wealth factors, and to a decline in the health index, driven by children's health.

Economics and social justice continue to be the areas in which blacks trail whites the most, with ratings of 56.9% and 58% respectively. Those are followed by health at 75% and education at 78.9%.

Since the Equality Index was introduced in 2005, researchers have found growing equality between blacks and whites in the unemployment rate, the percentage of uninsured, the incarceration rate, and prisoners as a percentage of arrests, the league said.

The index has also charted growing inequality over that period in rates of poverty, home ownership, school enrollment (both "preprimary" and college), and the level of educational attainment (both high school diplomas and bachelor's degrees).

The index of median household income has remained unchanged, the league said.

In 2010, the index measured Hispanics in America for the first time. This year's index finds them faring slightly better than last year compared to their white counterparts, at 76.8% compared to a revised 2010 index of 76.6%, the league said.

It attributed the rise to improvements in health and social justice indices, but said those were offset by declines in economics and education.

In the past year, the league said it has observed growing gaps in the relative status of blacks and whites in the areas of loan access, wealth and children's health.

For Hispanics, there have been growing gaps in the areas of loan access and college enrollment, it said.

The 2011 State of Black America report includes essays from a variety of authors including League President Marc Morial and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile.

No Belfry, Just a House With 20,000 or So Bats

 

TIFTON, Ga. — The civic leaders of this south Georgia town want it to be known for more than just bats.

It still calls itself the reading capital of the world, after beating other cities in competition over whose residents could read the most books. And it is halfway between Atlanta and Disney World, making it a perfect stop for families who need a break from the 430-mile drive.

But at the moment, the most interesting thing about Tifton is an abandoned Victorian house filled with thousands of bats.

Tift County declared the once-elegant house in the town’s historic district off limits on Monday after a bat specialist said that maybe 20,000 bats had moved in, apparently for good. That number is in dispute. After all, who can really count that many bats? But still, the fact that thousands of bats are living it up next door has neighbors and civic leaders concerned.

“With that many bats, any house in Tifton is at risk for the bats coming,” said Becky Campbell who lives across the street. “The bats could go anywhere.”

And then, of course, there is the matter of reputation. Tifton, like many towns in the South, has its share of bats. “But we’re not the bat capital of the world,” W. Joe Lewis, the vice mayor, is quick to point out.

Still, bats sometimes get into houses and animal control officers or wildlife specialists remove them. And the house in question has had more than its share over the years. Sometime toward the end of last year, after the residents left and the house moved into foreclosure, the bats really settled in.

“You can’t imagine how thick they must be in there. They’re in the walls and ceilings,” said Regenia Wells, the county animal control director.

Now, teenagers call it the bat house. People talk about the smell, which is an unholy mix of animal urine and decaying wood.

“In the summer, ooh, does that place reek,” said Linda Turner, 69, a retired nurse and neighbor. “You ain’t smelled nothing until you come back here on a hot day.”

But what to do? Bats are protected by federal and state law, so you can’t just out and out kill them. They can be moved, but that method has its challenges when you’re talking thousands. The trick, said a local wildlife specialist, Rusty Johnson, is to seal every little crack and install tubes called excluders. The bats fly out, but they can’t fly back in. The theory is that after a couple of frustrating days, the bats will figure things out and move on. But for a few months come May, when they reproduce, you can’t use the devices at all because they might separate the moms from the babies.

Meanwhile, the bat house of Tifton is likely to remain something of an attraction for area residents like Patricia Luke, 49, who stopped by right after her shift ended at the Golden Corral restaurant.

“I just had to see it,” she said. “I was wondering how 20,000 bats could be in there. But it’s a big house. You could fit ’em.”

Robbie Brown reported from Tifton, and Kim Severson from Atlanta.

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Priests put on leave in abuse inquiry

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
The two priests, who were not identified, are retiredDozens of current and former priests have been placed on leaveWednesday's action is part of an ongoing investigationThree civil suits have also been filed against priests and the archdiocese

(CNN) -- Two more priests have been placed on administrative leave by the Philadelphia Archdiocese as part of an ongoing investigation into the sexual abuse of children by clergy.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia, announced that the two unnamed priests, who are currently retired, have been placed on administrative leave, effective immediately, pending a more thorough independent investigation.

That investigation is being conducted by Gina Maisto Smith, a former child abuse prosecutor in Philadelphia, and a team of experts.

"These steps are interim measures and are not in any way final determinations or judgments," Rigali said in a written statement.

Earlier this month, 21 other priests were also placed on administrative leave following a review of sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Church in Philadelphia.

The archdiocese says that Wednesday's actions are a part of an ongoing investigation with the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.

According to the archdiocese, one of the priests retired in 2005 due to health reasons and is no longer involved in the ministry. The other priest retired in 2006, and has assisted at parishes in another diocese.

Earlier this month, Rigali said that he wished "to express again my sorrow for the sexual abuse of minors committed by any members of the church, especially clergy."

"I am truly sorry for the harm done to the victims of sexual abuse, as well as to the members of our community who suffer as a result of this great evil and crime," he said.

In February, three Philadelphia priests and a parochial school teacher were charged with raping and assaulting boys in their care, while a former official with the Philadelphia Archdiocese was accused of allowing the priests to have access to children, the city's district attorney's office said.

CNN Senior Vatican Analyst John Allen said the charges against the former church official appeared to be unprecedented and could have national implications.

"This is apparently the first time that a Catholic leader has been charged criminally for the cover-up as opposed to the abuse itself," he said.

"It sends a shot across the bow for bishops and other diocesan officials in other parts of the country, who have to wonder now if they've got criminal exposure, too."

Edward Avery, 68, and Charles Engelhardt, 64, were charged with allegedly assaulting a 10-year-old boy at St. Jerome Parish from 1998 to 1999.

Bernard Shero, 48, a teacher in the school, is charged with allegedly assaulting the same boy there in 2000, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said at a press conference in February.

James Brennan, another priest, is accused of assaulting a different boy, a 14-year-old, in 1996.

Monsignor William Lynn, who served as the secretary for clergy for the then-Philadelphia Archbishop Anthony Bevilacqua, was charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child in connection with the alleged assaults, Williams said.

From 1992 until 2004, Lynn was responsible for investigating reports that priests had sexually abused children, the district attorney's office said.

The grand jury found that Lynn, 60, endangered children, including the alleged victims of those charged last week, by knowingly allowing the priests to continue in the ministry in roles in which they had access to kids.

Avery, Engelhardt and Shero were charged with rape, indecent sexual assault and other criminal counts following the results of a grand jury investigation of clergy sexual abuse, Williams said. The names of the alleged victims, who are now in their 20s, have not been publicly released.

The grand jury believed that more than 30 priests remained in ministry in Pennsylvania despite solid, credible allegations of abuse, according to Williams.

Williams on Tuesday said Rigali's actions "are as commendable as they are unprecedented."

"Going forward, in cases involving allegations of abuse by clergy, my office and the Philadelphia police will investigate, and where appropriate we will charge and prosecute. I intend to use the resources of this office to the greatest extent possible to protect the children of Philadelphia," Williams said in a statement.

Three civil suits against the priests and the archdiocese have been filed.

CNN's Sarah Hoye and Rich Phillips contributed to this report.

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Political Memo: An Arizona Senate Race Waits to See if Giffords Emerges to Run

 

These supporters say they do not want to get too far ahead of themselves, and make clear that Ms. Giffords, who was shot in the head, is still relearning basic tasks and might emerge from the hospital with neither the same political abilities nor aspirations that she had before. And publicly, her closest aides say the only thing they care about is her health.

“Our focus is on her recovery and what comes after that comes after that,” said Pia Carusone, Ms. Giffords’s chief of staff.

Despite such protestations, several of Ms. Giffords’s longtime aides are whispering behind the scenes that she just might recover in time to run for the seat that Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican, is vacating next year.

While it might be wishful thinking, Ms. Giffords’s noncampaign is already having a major effect on Arizona politics; other prospective Democratic candidates say they feel compelled not to jump in unless she bows out, allowing Republicans to get a head start organizing their campaigns.

“I’m in but only if she’s not,” said one prospective Democratic candidate, who spoke of his deliberations but insisted that he not be named given the fluid nature of the race. “A Democrat running against her would be doomed.”

Ever so quietly, Ms. Giffords’s political allies are laying the groundwork just in case. Friends and allies held a fund-raiser for her on March 15 in Washington — trying to supplement her Congressional campaign war chest, which totaled about $285,000 at year’s end and could be tapped for a Senate bid. Her former campaign manager, Rodd McLeod, has been brought on staff, to fill in for an aide who is also recovering from the Jan. 8 shooting that left 6 people dead and 13 injured.

While these efforts might be normal for a member of Congress in a competitive district like hers, other Democrats see them as signs that those around her want to keep her political options open.

Ms. Giffords herself is not available to raise her own profile, so her Congressional staff does it for her, responding to constituents, issuing news releases and appearing at public events in her stead. Ms. Carusone said she expected Ms. Giffords to appear in Houston next month when her husband, Capt. Mark E. Kelly, lifted off for a two-week space shuttle mission.

A Democrat in her third term, Ms. Giffords had expressed interest in running for the Senate before a gunman opened fire at one of her signature “Congress on Your Corner” events here. Ms. Carusone said she informed her boss after Mr. Kyl announced his retirement and told her that her name had come up as a potential replacement. The response, Ms. Carusone said, was a smile.

With a question mark beside her name in the Senate race, other Democratic hopefuls are working behind the scenes as carefully as they can, lining up support in case Ms. Giffords decides to stay out while taking care not to appear disrespectful to the candidate that the Democratic establishment here believes would have the best chance of winning.

“We are all rooting for Gabby to recover and run,” said Don Bivens, a former party chairman who himself is interested in the Senate seat. “She would be a great senator for Arizona. But we also need a Plan B.”

Ms. Giffords’s intentions also have an impact on the Democrats who are considering her House seat. They are engaged in an especially delicate process, quietly calling key Democratic donors to gauge support while trying to remain invisible.

“Whether she’ll be ready to run or interested in running nobody can say,” said Andrei Cherny, chairman of the state Democratic Party who is trying to coordinate all the behind-the-scenes machinations. “But there is a sense that she should make that decision and that she should have options once she’s ready to make it.”

Fred DuVal, a member of the state Board of Regents, is one who is considering a Senate run if Ms. Giffords, a friend of his, opts out. He visited her in Houston last week but refused to discuss whether he left more or less convinced that she would enter the race. “If anybody can recover from this, Gabby Giffords can,” Mr. DuVal said.

There is no looming deadline for the Senate race, which is more than a year and a half away, but running as a Democrat is no easy task in Arizona, so time is an asset. Mr. Kyl announced his decision to retire on Feb. 10, and Representative Jeff Flake, a Republican, jumped into the race four days later. As Mr. Flake piles up endorsements, raises money and awaits Republican primary challengers, including the expected entrance of Representative Trent Franks, Democrats are in a holding pattern.

Among the Democratic names being floated are Representative Ed Pastor, who is in his 11th term representing the Phoenix area, as well as a handful of lesser-known hopefuls.

Ford Burkhart contributed reporting.

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Workers Give Glimpse of Japan’s Nuclear Crisis

That was the scene at J-Village, 12 miles south of the plant, on the night of March 15. Hundreds of firefighters, Self-Defense Forces and workers from Tokyo Electric Power convened at the sports training center, arguing long and loudly about how best to restore cooling systems and prevent nuclear fuel from overheating. Complicating matters, a lack of phone service meant that they had little input from upper management.

“There were so many ideas, the meeting turned into a panic,” said one longtime Tokyo Electric veteran present that day. He made the comments in an interview with The New York Times, one of several interviews that provided a rare glimpse of the crisis as the company’s workers experienced it. “There were serious arguments between the various sections about whether to go, how to use electrical lines, which facilities to use and so on.”

The quarreling echoed the alarm bells ringing throughout Tokyo Electric, which has been grappling with an unprecedented set of challenges since March 11, when the severe earthquake and massive tsunami upended northeastern Japan. It is also an insight, through interviews, e-mails and blog posts, into the problems faced by the thousands of often anxious but eager Tokyo Electric Power employees working to re-establish order.

Many of them — especially the small number charged with approaching damaged reactors and exposing themselves to unusually high doses of radiation — are viewed as heroes, preventing the world’s second-worst nuclear calamity from becoming even more dire.

But unlike their bosses, who appear daily in blue work coats to apologize to the public and explain why the company has not yet succeeded in taming the reactors, the front-line workers have remained almost entirely anonymous.

In the interviews and in some e-mail and published blog items, several line workers expressed frustration at the slow pace of the recovery efforts, sometimes conflicting orders from their bosses and unavoidable hurdles like damaged roads. In many cases, the line workers want the public to know that they feel remorse for the nuclear crisis, but also that they are trying their best to fix it.

“My town is gone,” wrote a worker named Emiko Ueno, in an email obtained by The Times. “My parents are still missing. I still cannot get in the area because of the evacuation order. I still have to work in such a mental state. This is my limit.”

At the top, a manager who circulated her note urged his workers to “please think about what you can do for Fukushima after reading this e-mail.”

Tokyo Electric keeps a tight lid on its workers under normal circumstances, and workers say they risk censure for speaking out. Some, however, have become lightning rods. Soon after the crisis began, Michiko Otsuki, who worked at the Daiichi plant after the earthquake, wrote on a social media site called Mixi that Tokyo Electric workers were trying hard and risking their lives to repair the plant.

She apologized for the confusion and the insecurity that people felt as a result of the nuclear accident. But Ms. Otsuki soon removed the post from her site because, she said, people had misinterpreted what she meant to say. It was too early, she added, to ask people to stop being critical of Tokyo Electric.

In the early days after the earthquake and tsunami, many Tokyo Electric workers had little time to speak out. An explosion had blown the roof off one of the reactor buildings in Fukushima, heightening fears of large-scale radiation exposure. To stabilize the reactors and restart cooling systems, the company rushed to reconnect the power plant to the electric grid.

Two states report radiation in milk

The Environmental Protection Agency is increasing monitoring nationwideIt is monitoring milk, precipitation, drinking water, and other outletsMilk sample from Washington state, California shows "miniscule" amounts of radiationTests confirm the milk is safe to drink, officials say

Washington (CNN) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is increasing its nationwide monitoring of radiation as two states reported very low levels of radiation in milk.

The agency said Wednesday it is boosting its monitoring of radiation in milk, precipitation, drinking water, and other outlets. It already tracks radiation in those potential exposure routes through an existing network of stations across the country.

Results from screening samples of milk taken in the past week in Spokane, Washington, and in San Luis Obispo County, California, detected radioactive iodine at a level 5,000 times lower than the limit set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, officials said.

The I-131 isotope has a very short half-life of about eight days, the EPA said, so the level detected in milk and milk products is expected to drop relatively quickly.

FDA senior scientist Patricia Hansen also said the findings are "miniscule" compared to what people experience every day.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said tests confirmed the milk is safe to drink.

"This morning I spoke with the chief advisers for both the EPA and the FDA and they confirmed that these levels are miniscule and are far below levels of public health concern, including for infants and children," Gregoire said in a statement.

"According to them, a pint of milk at these levels would expose an individual to less radiation than would a five-hour airplane flight."

Similarly, the California Department of Public Health reassured residents that the levels do not pose a threat.

"When radioactive material is spread through the atmosphere, it drops to the ground and gets in the environment. When cows consume grass, hay, feed, and water, radioactivity will be processed and become part of the milk we drink. However, the amounts are so small they pose no threat to public health," the department said.

At least 15 states have reported radioisotopes from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in air or water or both. No states have recommended that residents take potassium iodide, a salt that protects the thyroid gland from radioactive iodine.

Iodine-131 has been found in eastern states from Florida to Massachusetts as well as in western states like Oregon, Colorado, and California, according to sensors and officials in those states.

None of the levels poses a risk to public health, they said.

The Japanese plant has been leaking radiation since it was damaged in the earthquake and resulting tsunami earlier this month.

CNN's Sara Weisfeldt contributed to this report

Signs of Strain as Taliban Gird for More Fighting

 

The killings, coming just as the insurgents are mobilizing for the new fighting season in Afghanistan, have unnerved many in the Taliban and have spread a climate of paranoia and distrust within the insurgent movement, the Afghans said.

Three powerful Taliban commanders were killed in February in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, well known to be the command center of the Taliban leadership, according to an Afghan businessman and a mujahedeen commander from the region with links to the Taliban. A fourth commander, a former Taliban minister, was wounded in the border town of Chaman in March, in a widely reported shooting.

There have also been several arrests in Pakistan of senior Taliban commanders, including those from Zabul and Kabul Provinces, and the shadow governor of Herat, Afghan officials said. Mullah Agha Muhammad, a brother of Mullah Baradar, the former second in command of the Taliban who was arrested by Pakistan security forces over a year ago to stop him negotiating with the Afghan government, was also detained briefly to send out the same warning, said the chief of the Afghan border police in Kandahar, Col. Abdul Razziq.

While the arrests have been conducted by Pakistan security forces, no one seems to know for sure who is behind the killings. Members of the Taliban attribute them to American spies, running Pakistani and Afghan agents, in an extension of the American campaigns that have used night raids to track down and kill scores of midlevel Taliban commanders in Afghanistan and drone strikes to kill militants with links to Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Others, including Pakistani and Afghan Parliament members from the region, say that the Pakistani intelligence agencies have long used threats, arrests and killings to control the Taliban and that they could be doing so again to maintain their influence over the insurgents.

Afghan officials in Kabul denied any involvement in attacks on the Taliban inside Pakistan, as did American and NATO military officials. “We’ve heard of infighting that reportedly has led to internal violence at several points in recent months,” one senior American military official said of the Taliban, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of discussing events in Pakistan. Military forces were not involved, he added.

Whatever the case, Taliban commanders and fighters, who used to be a common sight in parts of Quetta, have now gone underground and are not moving around openly as before. Two members of the Taliban, including a senior official, declined to talk about the issue of killings on the telephone, saying it was too dangerous. Many will not answer their phones at all.

The Taliban have been under stress since American forces doubled their presence in southern Afghanistan last year and greatly increased the number of special forces raids targeting Taliban commanders. Yet they still control a number of remote districts and in those areas the insurgents can still muster forces to storm government positions, as demonstrated by their capture of a district in Afghanistan’s eastern Nuristan Province this week.

While there is still some debate over the insurgents’ overall strength, Pakistanis with deep knowledge of the Afghan Taliban say that they have suffered heavy losses in the last year and that they are struggling in some areas to continue the fight.

“The Afghan Taliban have, I think, run into problems,” said Rustam Shah Mohmand, a former Pakistani interior minister who served as ambassador in Afghanistan after 2001 and as a peace negotiator with the Taliban.

“So many of them have been killed in the last one to one and a half years as a consequence of targeted assassinations,” he said in an interview. “That has depleted the strength, capacity and ability of the Taliban.” Commanders were without communications and resources and were struggling to find recruits to replace those killed, he said.

One Taliban commander from Kunar Province said losses had been so high that he was considering going over to the side of the Afghan government in order to get assistance for his beleaguered community. “This does not mean the Taliban will stop fighting, but maybe it will be at a reduced level,” Mr. Mohmand said.

Carlotta Gall reported from Kabul, and Islamabad, Pakistan. Employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Kabul, and from southern Afghanistan.

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Retreat for Rebels; Libyan Foreign Minister Quits

The government advance appeared to return control of eastern Libya’s most important oil regions to Colonel Qaddafi’s forces, giving the isolated government, at least for the day, the east’s most valuable economic prize. The rout also put into sharp relief the rebels’ absence of discipline and tactical sense, confronting the United States with a conundrum: how to persuade Colonel Qaddafi to step down while supporting a rebel force that has been unable to hold on to military gains.

But the defection of Moussa Koussa, the foreign minister, showed that at least one longtime confidant seemed to be calculating that Colonel Qaddafi could not last. The news of Mr. Koussa’s defection sent shockwaves through Tripoli on Wednesday night after it was announced by the British government. Mr. Koussa had been a pillar of his government since the early days of the revolution, and previously led the fearsome intelligence unit.

Although American officials suspected him of responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Mr. Koussa also played a major role in turning over nuclear equipment and designs to the United States and in negotiating Libya back into the good graces of Western governments.

Presumably, he is now in a position to talk about the structure of Mr. Qaddafi’s remaining forces and loyalists. What is unclear is whether his defection will lead to others. “We think he could be the beginning of a stream of Libyans who think sticking with Qaddafi is a losing game,” one senior American official said. “But we don’t know.”

Having abandoned Bin Jawwad and the oil port of Ras Lanuf on Tuesday, the rebels fled helter-skelter before government shelling from another oil town, Brega, and stopped for the night at the strategic city of Ajdabiya. As the rebels retreated in disarray, a senior rebel officer, Col. Ahmaed Omar Bani, pleaded for more weapons. He conceded that rebel fighters had “dissolved like snow in the sand” but framed the retreat as a “tactical withdrawal.”

Vowing that “Ajdabiya will not fall,” he claimed that rebels were still fighting on the east and west sides of Brega, suggesting that pockets of resistance persisted even if the main force had fled.

He acknowledged that the rebels had no answer to the artillery pushing them back unless foreign governments provided parity in arms. “The truth is the truth,” he said. “Even if it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”

The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, released a statement responding to a report of a presidential finding authorizing covert support for the rebels. It said: “No decision has been made about providing arms to the opposition or to any group in Libya. We’re not ruling it out or ruling it in.”

Whether more weapons or longer-range weapons would make a difference is an open question, however. Leadership and an appreciation for tactics were noticeably missing in the rebels’ battle lines.

Faced with fire, the rebels seemed not to know how to use the relatively simple weapons they had in any coordinated fashion, and had almost no capacity to communicate with one another midfight. Throughout the spontaneous retreats on Wednesday, not a single two-way tactical radio was visible.

The rout put civilians to flight as well. By Wednesday evening, Ajdabiya’s hospital patients were evacuated and a long stream of vehicles packed with forlorn residents filled the road north to Benghazi, the rebel capital.

Abdul Karim Baras, a young man with a crackling bullhorn, tried to buoy their spirits. “God will rescue Libya from this moment!” he shouted repeatedly as he stood on the highway median.

A few of the displaced — many of whom made the same trek a week ago, before the allied airstrikes that reversed the loyalists’ first push — smiled or gave desultory victory signs as they passed through rebels’ disoriented ranks.

There were few signs of renewed airstrikes. But an American military spokesman said coalition warplanes resumed bombing pro-Qaddafi units on Wednesday, without specifying where. “The operation is continuing and will continue throughout the transition” to NATO command, Capt. Clint Gebke said.

C. J. Chivers reported from Brega and Ajdabiya, Libya, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Tripoli. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington; Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya; and Edward Wong from Beijing.

Small plane crashes into N.C. homes

。 A small plane crashed into a house in a High Point, North Carolina. neighborhood. The people in the house weren't hurt.The plane had been diverted from Winston-Salem to GreensboroResidents of the home hit in nearby High Point escaped without injuries

(CNN) -- A twin-engine propeller plane crashed into a house in North Carolina on Wednesday, killing two people on board, authorities said.

The small plane crashed into a High Point neighborhood -- clipping one home before crashing into a second and sparking a fire, said Capt. Denita Lynch of the city's fire department. The people in the house were inside at the time of the crash, but were able to escape unscathed.

The fire was extinguished.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane was a Hawker Beechcraft BE58 en route to nearby Winston-Salem, but was diverted to nearby Greensboro's Piedmont Triad International Airport because of severe weather.

Antitrust Cry From Microsoft

 

Microsoft plans to file a formal antitrust complaint on Thursday in Brussels against Google, its first against another company. Microsoft hopes that the action may prod officials in Europe to take action and that the evidence gathered may also lead officials in the United States to do the same.

In Europe, Microsoft is joining a chorus of complaints, but until now they have come mainly from small Internet companies saying that Google’s search engine unfairly promotes its own products, like Google Product Search, a price comparison site, over rival offerings.

The Internet and smartphones are the markets where energy, investment and soaring stock prices reside. Microsoft, still immensely wealthy, is pouring billions into these fast-growing fields, especially Internet search. Yet the champion of the PC era trails well behind Google.

“The company that was the 800-pound gorilla is now resorting to antitrust, where it is always the case that the also-rans sue the winners,” said Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management who has studied Microsoft.

The Microsoft complaint, Professor Cusumano notes, is also a reminder of the comparative speed with which fortunes can shift in fast-moving technology markets. “It doesn’t happen instantly, but it does happen faster than in most industries,” Professor Cusumano said. “It took Google about a decade to really turn the tables on Microsoft.”

For years, the swaggering giant of personal computer software battled competitors and antitrust regulators in America and abroad, parrying their claims that it had bullied rivals and abused its market muscle. In the United States, it suffered rulings against it and in 2001 reached a settlement that prohibited Microsoft from certain strong-arm tactics. In Europe, Microsoft absorbed setbacks and record fines from regulators and judges.

Still, irony has no place in antitrust doctrine. Microsoft’s complaint must be weighed on the merits, as part of a wide-ranging antitrust investigation of Google, begun last year and led by Europe’s competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia.

The litany of particulars in Microsoft’s complaint, the company’s lawyers say, includes claims of anticompetitive practices by Google in search, online advertising and smartphone software. But a central theme, Microsoft says, is that Google unfairly hinders the ability of search competitors — and Microsoft’s Bing is almost the only one left — from examining and indexing information that Google controls, like its big video service YouTube.

Such restraints, Microsoft contends, undermine competition — and thus pose a threat to consumer choice and better prices for online advertisers.

When told of the Microsoft claims, Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman, denied that the company had done anything wrong and said its practices did not deny Microsoft access to Google technology and content.

Though it is making an antitrust claim, Microsoft is also claiming a bit of hypocrisy on Google’s part. In an interview, Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, cited Google’s stated mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

“That is a laudable goal,” Mr. Smith said. “But it appears Google’s practice is to prevent others from doing the same thing. That is unlawful and it raises serious antitrust issues.”

Google’s strategy, he adds, seems to be to “wall off content so that it cannot be crawled and searched by competing companies.”

In smartphones — sources of increasing volumes of search traffic — Microsoft says Google is withholding technical information needed to let phones using Windows Phone 7 software have a rich, full-featured application for YouTube. That technical information, Microsoft says, is available not only in Google’s Android software but also Apple iPhones, as part of a deal dating back to when Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, was on the Apple board. (He resigned in 2009, after the Federal Trade Commission raised questions about the arrangement.)

Mr. Kovacevich said that about two years ago, the company decided to make an improved version of YouTube available for all mobile devices instead of tailoring it to each company on smartphone applications, as it did earlier with Apple.

Microsoft also contends that Google has set up what amount to technical roadblocks so that Microsoft’s Bing search service cannot examine and index up to half of the videos on YouTube.

Another Microsoft claim focuses on Google’s ad contracts. Its contracts prohibit advertisers and online agencies from using third-party software that could instantly compare results and move advertisers’ data from one ad platform to another — from Google’s Adwords to Microsoft’s Adcenter, for example.

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Remains may be NY killer's 5th victim

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
Remains may be killer's 5th victimNEW: Police are investigating human remains found on a New York beachThe remains were found near where four corpses found last yearPolice are still searching for a potential serial killerThe search for Shannan Gilbert led to the discovery of the four bodies

New York (CNN) -- Police say they have discovered more human remains on a Long Island, New York, beach near where the corpses of four women were discovered last year.

The remains of a fifth body were located west of Cedar Beach, Long Island, approximately one mile from where the other corpses were discovered in December, according to Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer.

"There may be clues available now with this body that will help the homicide investigation and will help it move forward," Dormer said.

An investigation will be conducted to identify the remains.

Meanwhile, police say, the hunt for a potential serial killer continues, as does the search for Shannan Gilbert, 24, whose disappearance resulted in the finding of the other bodies within a quarter mile of each other.

The four bodies have since been identified as Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, of Norwich, Connecticut; Melissa Barthelemy, 24, of Erie County, New York; Amber Lynn Costello, 27, of North Babylon, New York; and Megan Waterman, 22, of Scarborough, Maine.

All four women found dead advertised for prostitution services on the website Craigslist, police said. The bodies were found in various stages of decomposition, and at least one could have been there for as long as two years, Dormer said.

CNN's Leigh Remizowski contributed to this report

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Funeral today for Geraldine Ferraro

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
Albright recalls feisty friend FerraroPrivate service will be held for family and friendsFerraro died Saturday after a 12-year battle with blood cancer

(CNN) -- Funeral services for former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro will be held Thursday morning in New York City.

The 9:30 a.m. service at the Church of Saint Vincent Ferrer will be for family and friends and will closed to the press, a family statement said.

A resident of New York City, Ferraro died in Massachusetts General Hospital Saturday.

Ferraro's cause of death was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer she had battled for 12 years, according to the statement released by her family from Boston.

In 1984, the congresswoman from New York became the first female vice presidential candidate from a major U.S. political party when she was picked as the running mate for Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale.

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Fukushima shines light on U.S. problem

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
Could Japan nuclear disaster occur in US?Events in Japan have raised questions about spent-fuel storage in the United StatesThe U.S. has 104 nuclear reactors, which rely on pools of water and dry casks for storageAn estimate by the NRC said some 63,000 tons of spent fuel was stored in the U.S.The NRC and industry critics disagree on whether spent fuel pools are safe

Washington (CNN) -- The Fukushima Daiichi disaster is focusing attention on a problem that has bedeviled Washington policymakers since the dawn of the nuclear age -- what to do with used nuclear fuel.

Currently, spent fuel -- depleted to the extent it can no longer effectively sustain a chain reaction -- is stored in large pools of water, allowing the fuel to slowly cool and preventing the release of radiation.

But events in Japan, where two of the six spent fuel pools at the Fukushima Daiichi facility were compromised, have raised questions about practices at the nation's 104 nuclear reactors, which rely on a combination of pools and dry casks to store used fuel.

"I truly believe we must re-think how we manage spent fuel," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, said at a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing Wednesday.

In California, Feinstein said, fuel removed from reactors in 1984 is still held in spent-fuel pools, well beyond the minimum five to seven years required by federal regulators. "It's hard to understand why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not mandated a more rapid transfer of spent fuel to dry casks," Feinstein said.

Currently, there is no maximum time fuel can remain in spent fuel pools, the NRC said Wednesday. As a result, critics say, nuclear plants have made fuel pools the de facto method of storing fuel, crowding pools with dangerous levels of fuel, industry critics say.

As of January 2010, an estimated 63,000 metric tons of spent fuel was in storage at U.S. power plants or storage facilities, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"For the history of our nuclear power program, I would say, the storage of spent fuel... has been an afterthought," Ernest Moniz, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testified. "I believe we should really start thinking hard about consolidated storage, presumably in federal reservations, to solve a host of problems."

The NRC and industry critics differed on whether spent fuel pools are safe.

"Spent fuel pools are considered 'safety significant' systems, so they meet a lot of the same standards that the reactor itself would have to meet," said Greg Jaczko, chairman of the NRC. "For example, the spent fuel pools themselves are required to withstand the natural phenomena like earthquakes and tsunamis that could impact the reactor itself."

David Lochbaum, a nuclear physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, disagreed.

"At many sites there is nearly 10 times as much irradiated fuel in spent fuel pools as in the reactor core," he said. "The spent fuel pools are not housed in robust concrete containment structures designed to protect the public from the radioactivity they contain. Instead the pools are often housed in buildings with sheet metal siding like that in a Sears storage shed," Lochbaum said.

"I have nothing against the quality of Sears storage sheds but they are not suitable to nuclear waste storage," he said.

A nuclear industry representative said the "lack of a national strategy" on waste storage is exacerbating the problem, since it does not know whether to place spent fuel in permanent, on-site containers, or containers suitable for transport.

"We want to limit the number of times we have to handle used fuel. We want to be able to take it out of the pool once, put it in a cask... Not all casks are designed for transportation for example," said William Levis, a power company president speaking for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Jaczko said spent fuel pools don't endanger the public. "We don't have a maximum time (fuel can stay in the pools)," he said. "But we do analyze the fuel. (Fuel) goes through a very rigorous analysis to ensure that (it can be added to the pool) safely and securely."

A high-ranking energy department official, meanwhile, said a commission studying the issue of spent fuel will issue an interim report by July 29. The commission was formed after the Obama administration killed a plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

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Letter: Letter to Our Readers: Times Begins Digital Subscriptions

 

As I have said previously, the introduction of digital subscriptions is an investment in our future. It will allow us to develop new sources of revenue to strengthen our ability to continue our journalistic mission as well as undertake digital innovations that will enable us to provide you with high-quality journalism on whatever device you choose.

As you may know, on March 17, we introduced digital subscriptions in Canada. The Canadian launching allowed us to test our systems and fine-tune the user interface and customer experience. On Monday, we launched globally.

If you are a home delivery subscriber of The Times, you will continue to have full and free access to our news, information, opinion and other features on your computer, smartphone and tablet. International Herald Tribune subscribers will also receive free access to NYTimes.com.

If you are not a home delivery subscriber, you will have free access to 20 articles (including slide shows, videos and other features) each month. If you exceed that limit, you will be asked to become a digital subscriber. On our smartphone and tablet apps, the Top News section will remain free of charge. For access to the other sections within the apps, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber.?

Here is how it will work:

? The Times is offering three digital subscription packages, including an all-access option, so you can choose a plan that is right for you based on the devices you own (computer, smartphone, tablet). ?For more information or to purchase one of these plans, go to www.nytimes.com/access.

? Again, all New York Times home delivery subscribers will continue to have free access to NYTimes.com and to all content on our apps.? If you are a home delivery subscriber, go to http://homedelivery.nytimes.com to sign up for free access.

? Readers who come to Times articles through links from search engines, blogs and social media will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit.? This allows new and casual readers to continue to discover our content on the open Web. On all major search engines, users will have a daily limit on free links to Times articles.?

? The home page at NYTimes.com and all section fronts will remain free to browse for all users at all times.?

For more information, go to www.nytimes.com/digitalfaq.

As you have seen during this recent period of extraordinary global news, The Times is uniquely positioned to keep you informed. The launching of our digital subscription model will help ensure that we can continue to provide you with the high-quality journalism and substantive analysis that you have come to expect from The Times.

Thank you for reading The New York Times, in all its forms.

Sincerely,

ARTHUR SULZBERGER Jr.

Publisher, The New York Times

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Odd Alliance: Business Lobby and Tea Party

 

But a Tea Party group in the United States, the Institute for Liberty, has vigorously defended the freedom of a giant Indonesian paper company to sell its wares to Americans without paying tariffs. The institute set up Web sites, published reports and organized a petition drive attacking American businesses, unions and environmentalists critical of the company, Asia Pulp & Paper.

Last fall, the institute’s president, Andrew Langer, had himself videotaped on Long Wharf in Boston holding a copy of the Declaration of Independence as he compared Washington’s proposed tariff on paper from Indonesia and China to Britain’s colonial trade policies in 1776.

Tariff-free Asian paper may seem an unlikely cause for a nonprofit Tea Party group. But it is in keeping with a succession of pro-business campaigns — promoting commercial space flight, palm oil imports and genetically modified alfalfa — that have occupied the Institute for Liberty’s recent agenda.

The Tea Party movement is as deeply skeptical of big business as it is of big government. Yet an examination of the Institute for Liberty shows how Washington’s influence industry has adapted itself to the Tea Party era. In a quietly arranged marriage of seemingly disparate interests, the institute and kindred groups are increasingly the bearers of corporate messages wrapped in populist Tea Party themes.

In a few instances, their corporate partners are known — as with the billionaire Koch brothers’ support of Americans for Prosperity, one of the most visible advocacy groups. More often, though, their nonprofit tax status means they do not have to reveal who pays the bills.

Mr. Langer would not say who financed his Indonesian paper initiative. But his sudden interest in the issue coincided with a public relations push by Asia Pulp & Paper. And the institute’s work is remarkably similar to that produced by one of the company’s consultants, a former Australian diplomat named Alan Oxley who works closely with a Washington public affairs firm known for creating corporate campaigns presented as grass-roots efforts.

For the institute, the embrace of a foreign conglomerate’s agenda is a venture into new territory — and distinguishes it among Tea Party advocacy groups. The issue, Mr. Langer asserted, is important to working Americans who might have to pay more for everything from children’s books to fried-chicken buckets made of coated paper from Asia. He said the institute had not accepted money directly from Asia Pulp & Paper, though it was possible the company had paid others who then contributed to the institute.

“I suppose it could be,” he said, but added, “I don’t know about anybody else who may have gotten money from Asia Pulp & Paper who’s given money to us.”

Those on the receiving end of the institute’s attacks — strange bedfellows like Greenpeace, Staples and Asia Pulp & Paper’s American competitors — are unified in their skepticism of its motives.

“If you can spend as much money as you want and remain anonymous, then it doesn’t matter if you’re an overseas company or the Koch brothers, you pay the same network of anti-regulatory front groups,” said Scott Paul, director of Greenpeace’s forest campaign.

Seeing Tea Party Potential

Like many other nonprofit organizations on the Tea Party bandwagon, the Institute of Liberty predates the movement. It was created in 2005 by Jason Wright, an author of best-selling inspirational novels who had worked for Frontiers of Freedom, a conservative policy group.

In his three years at the institute, Mr. Wright said in an interview, he was often approached by public relations consultants pitching projects for clients. Typical, he said, were overtures from two consultants who wanted him to advocate for opposing positions on the regulation of “payday” loans, widely criticized for usurious terms that hurt low-income borrowers.

“A P.R. firm in D.C. offered me a ton of money to take the wrong side of that issue,” he said. “I did end up taking some corporate donations from the side of the issue I believed in — that the industry had completely lost control and had to be reined in.”

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Toxic levels in seawater hit record

 NEW: A village official is irked with Japan's government after high radiation readingLevels of iodine-131 in the sea off the nuclear plant are 4,385 times the normal limitCesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years, is measured at 527 times above the standardAuthorities do not know what's caused this radiation spike or exactly how to stop it

Tokyo (CNN) -- The levels of radiation in ocean waters off Japan's embattled Fukushima Daiichi plant continue to skyrocket, the nation's nuclear safety agency said Thursday, with no clear sense of what's causing the spike or how to stop it.

The amount of radioactive iodine-131 isotope in the samples, taken Wednesday some 330 meters (361 yards) into the Pacific Ocean, has surged to 4,385 times above the regulatory limit. This tops the previous day's reading of 3,355 times above the standard -- and an exponential spike over the 104-times increase measured just last Friday.

Officials have downplayed the potential perils posed by this isotope, since it loses half of its radiation every eight days.

Yet amounts of the cesium-137 isotope -- which, by comparison, has a 30-year "half life" -- have also soared, with a Wednesday afternoon sample showing levels 527 times the standard.

"That's the one I am worried about," said Michael Friedlander, a U.S.-based nuclear engineer, explaining cesium might linger much longer in the ecosystem. "Plankton absorbs the cesium, the fish eat the plankton, the bigger fish eat smaller fish -- so every step you go up the food chain, the concentration of cesium gets higher."

On Thursday, Hidehiko Nishiyama, a Japanese nuclear safety official, reiterated that seawater radiation doesn't yet pose a health risk to humans eating seafood.

Fishing is not allowed within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of the plant, and he claimed that waterborne radiation should dilute over time.

Still, authorities don't know where the highly radioactive water is coming from.

Nishiyama said it may be flowing continuously into the sea. Another explanation is that water, which authorities have pumped and sprayed in by the tons in recent weeks to stave off a meltdown, became contaminated by overheating nuclear fuel in the process and ended up in the ocean without having any room to settle in the nuclear plant.

"They have a problem where the more they try to cool it down, the greater the radiation hazard as that water leaks out from the plant," said Jim Walsh, an international security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Persistent rain and wind forced the plant's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, to postpone Thursday a new fix to contain the spread of radiation: a water and synthetic resin mix to envelop radioactive particles. The plan is to spend at least three weeks spraying the solution on the grounds and sides of reactors at the Daiichi facility.

The nuclear plant has been in a state of perpetual crisis since being rocked by the March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, and there's no clear end in sight.

This has all left the plant's owner reeling, with the ordeal taking a significant toll on both its reputation and bottom line.

On Wednesday -- the same day the company announced that its president, Masataka Shimizu, had been hospitalized due to "fatigue and stress" -- Tokyo Electric's chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata said it had no choice but to decommission four of the plant's six reactors.

He acknowledged reports Japan's government is mulling nationalizing the company after the disaster, saying, "We want to make every effort to stay a private company."

Beyond the recovery and clean-up expenses, Toyko Electric will likely be asked to pay those who suffered because of the nuclear crisis.

A report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates the utility firm will face 1 trillion Japanese yen ($12.13 billion) in compensation claims if the recovery effort lasts two months, rising to 10 trillion yen if it goes on for two years, said Takayuki Inoue, a spokesman with the financial giant.

That might include farmers, their livelihoods shattered after the detection of high radiation in several vegetables prompting the government to ban sales. Contaminated tap water also has prompted officials to tell residents in some locales to only offer bottled water to infants. Businesses have been hit hard, too, by rolling blackouts tied to the strained power grid.

But those most affected have been the thousands, living within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of the stricken plant, who have been ordered to evacuate.

The International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday urged Japanese authorities to "carefully assess the situation" -- and consider expanding the evacuation zone further -- after high radiation levels were found in Iitate, a town of 7,000 residents 40 kilometers northwest of the nuclear facility.

The U.N. agency did not say how much radiation it had detected, though the environmental group Greenpeace said Sunday it found levels more than 50 times above normal.

Koboyashi Takashi, Iitate's manager for general affairs, said radiation levels in soil and water were decreasing. Residents had temporarily evacuated, but later returned to take care of livestock, he said.

Another village official, who declined to be named, was irked Thursday after the earlier radiation readings surpassed the IAEA's evacuation criteria but not those of the Japanese government. He said local officials have urged tests on soil from 70 locations around the village.

"We (have to) believe what the government tells us," said the Iitate village official in apparent frustration. "There is no other way."

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters Thursday the "IAEA results will be taken into consideration," but said "there is no plan" to expand the evacuation zone to 30 kilometers or beyond.

"There is no immediate health hazard," Edano said. "If the exposure continues for a long period of time, (a negative) impact can occur. We will continue to survey the situation."

Source: CIA operating in Libya, consulting with rebels

 Weather prevents new coalition airstrikesCIA operating in Libya, in contact with opposition, source saysLibyan foreign minister quits, U.K. saysOpposition says it is carrying out "tactical withdrawal"

Benghazi, Libya (CNN) -- CIA operatives are providing intelligence from Libya, where opposition forces are on the run and the defiant government suffered the embarrassing defection of its foreign minister Wednesday.

The NATO-led coalition, which is enforcing a no-fly zone and protecting civilians from the intense fighting, got no help from the weather in its ongoing efforts to protect the fragile opposition movement.

"The weather conditions did not allow close combat support by aircraft in the last couple of days," said Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Moammar Gadhafi's government, for its part, kept up the war of words.

State-run Libyan TV late Wednesday quoted a military source as saying a "civilian location was shelled tonight in the city of Tripoli by the colonizing crusader aggression."

Amid debate on whether the allies will arm the retreating and undertrained rebels, a U.S. intelligence source told CNN the CIA is in the country to increase the "military and political understanding" of the situation.

"Yes, we are gathering intel firsthand and we are in contact with some opposition entities," said the source.

The White House refused to comment on a Reuters report that President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel troops.

"I will reiterate what the president said yesterday -- no decision has been made about providing arms to the opposition or to any group in Libya," said White House press secretary Jay Carney in a statement. "We're not ruling it out or ruling it in. We're assessing and reviewing options for all types of assistance that we could provide to the Libyan people, and have consulted directly with the opposition and our international partners about these matters."

According to the Reuters report, Obama signed the covert aid order, or "finding," within the past few weeks. Such findings are required for the CIA to conduct secret operations, the report said.

A U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly could not confirm the finding, but noted when there are crises like this, "you look at all instruments of national power."

In early March, a U.S. official told CNN "the intelligence community is aggressively pursuing information on the ground" in Libya.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told the House of Commons that he has not ruled out arming the Libyan opposition, but added that Britain has not made the decision to do so.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provided classified briefings to House and Senate members who asked whether the United States intended to arm the rebels, participants told CNN.

Clinton and Gates made clear that no decision had been made, and Congress members from both parties said they believed it would be a bad idea, according to participants.

Regarding the committing of U.S. forces to the U.N.-backed operation, the White House has said Obama acted within his authority under the War Powers Act. It notes that the president and other officials consulted congressional leaders several times in the run-up to the March 19 deployment of U.S. forces to the U.N.-authorized Libya mission.

Clinton told members of Congress the administration acted within the requirements of the War Powers Act and needed no authorization for further decisions on the mission, lawmakers said.

The opposition got a boost Wednesday with news that Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa willingly traveled to London and told the government there that he has resigned, the United Kingdom Foreign Office said.

CNN's Ben Wedeman, who has been reporting from Libya for several weeks, said that Koussa's departure is a significant blow, but not a critical loss to the regime.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said Koussa was one of the most senior figures in Gadhafi's government "and his role was to represent the regime internationally -- something that he is no longer willing to do."

The department provided no other details on the surprise move.

CNN's Nic Robertson, who previously met with Koussa, said the former head of intelligence once was a stalwart defender of the government.

The Senate's Rogers called Moussa's defection "huge news."

Libya's opposition said its fighters are executing a "tactical withdrawal" from a swath of territory they once controlled, a move that comes as Gadhafi's forces relentlessly pound them.

Col. Ahmed Bani, speaking at a news conference in the opposition capital of Benghazi on Wednesday, said his forces are being outgunned by the superior military power of loyalists, spared the wrath of coalition airstrikes.

They have been pushed eastward over the last two days after CNN reported on Sunday that rebels took Brega, Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad and reached a town just east of Sirte.

Rebel forces have now lost Bin Jawad and the key oil town of Ras Lanuf and are backed up to the Brega area, Bani said. Ajdabiya, which is east of Brega, will be prepared as a "defense point" if the withdrawal continues farther east, he said.

CNN's Wedeman said the rebels continue to have no effective command and control.

Bani called on the international community to supply opposition fighters with better and more powerful weapons to hold off the Gadhafi forces. He said the opposition was open to foreign troops training rebel fighters. Bani asked for tanks, heavy artillery and communications and logistics equipment.

The rebels have been demanding an end to Gadhafi's almost 42-year rule in Libya, but they have been facing "sustained attacks in the face of the coalition bombing" in Misrata, Ras Lanuf, and Bin Jawad, Robertson reported.

In an address to the House of Commons in London on Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that "regime forces have intensified their attacks, driving back opposition forces from ground they had taken in recent days." He cited the violence in the western town of Misrata.

"Misrata also came under heavy attack yesterday, with further loss of civilian life, including children, from mortars, sniper fire and attacks on all sides from regime tanks and personnel carriers," Hague said.

In the outskirts of Ajdabiya -- which was recently taken over by opposition forces -- Gadhafi's regime planted several dozen land mines, Human Rights Watch said in a statement Wednesday.

"Given the pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the area, the mines were clearly laid while government forces were in Ajdabiya," the group said.

Human Rights Watch also said 370 people are missing in the eastern part of the country, with some suspected to be in government custody. That list includes rebel fighters and civilians, including doctors, the group said.

CNN's Reza Sayah, Dana Bash, Pam Benson and Nic Robertson contributed to this report

Yankees Bracing for Cold in Opener and in April

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

It sounded like a complaint — well, it was, actually — but then Swisher, who is probably the Yankees’ leading enthusiast about life in general, grinned. “But hey, no better place than the Bronx, man.”

March is not going out quite as lamblike as the adage would have it, which makes the prospect of opening day in New York just a tad less idyllic than one might hope. When the Yankees face the Tigers on Thursday afternoon, the occasion is likely to be chilly, with temperatures in the 40s, and possibly very wet, with rain in the forecast.

As both teams ran through perfunctory workouts Wednesday, the Yankees made the unsurprising announcement that Brett Gardner would lead off and Derek Jeter would bat second against the Tigers right-hander Justin Verlander, though Jeter will lead off against lefties. Luis Ayala, the former Met, will take the final bullpen slot to start the season, replacing Pedro Feliciano, another former Met, who is on the disabled list. And it was still uncertain whether Curtis Granderson, recuperating from an injury to an oblique muscle, would start in center field.

Also, A. J. Burnett has a nasty head cold. “Don’t get too close to me, man,” he warned at one point.

Without a lot to discuss, talk naturally, or perhaps with a little prompting, turned toward the weather, long underwear, insulated batting gloves and sitting near the heaters on the bench. Asked how he prepared for playing in the cold, Jeter laughed.

“More clothes, man,” he said.

The idea of playing in a chilly rain did not excite Mark Teixeira. The good thing, he said, was that both teams have to play in it.

“But anyone who’s ever played golf when it’s raining and windy, you take it inside and play cards in the clubhouse,” Teixeira said, adding that cold weather is much tougher on hitters than pitchers. “The ball doesn’t carry as well, you’re not going to be as loose, and every time you hit the ball off the end of the bat you feel like your hands are broken.”

Teixeira and his teammates may have to get used to it. The forecast for the next several days does not call for much higher temperatures, and the team’s quirky early-season schedule is frontloaded with home games. Twelve of the Yankees’ first 15 games are in the Bronx, the only interruption being a weekend series in a potentially chillier clime: Boston.

Through May 1, only 8 of the team’s first 28 games are on the road, and the 20 home games equal the number the Yankees are scheduled to play in August and September combined.

Manager Joe Girardi said that so many late-season away games did not matter much — “Our club in the past has played well on the road, so that’s not a huge concern,” he said — but the early-season home games can create a problem if weather forces many cancellations.

Swisher raised an eyebrow over the schedule.

“We’re home the whole month of April, but then we have, like, nine home games in August?” Swisher said with an incredulous shrug. “Why would you do that? Why would you not start us off in warmer climates, and then once the Midwest and the East start warming up, play us there. Send us out west, send us down south, send us anywhere. But you’re going to put us here for a whole month?”

The main difficulty for pitchers in the cold is maintaining a feel for the ball, so it does not begin to feel slippery, in Swisher’s phrase, “like a cue ball.”

Phil Hughes, who will start the third game of the season on Sunday, acknowledged that the cold could be a factor in his using the pitch he worked hardest on in spring training: the changeup.

“The first week of the season the adrenaline warms you up a little,” he said, “but it is a feel pitch, and if you can’t feel the baseball as well as you can in warm weather, it might be affected. That’s what these next couple of days are for, to get used to it, and hopefully by Sunday I’ll be all right.”

Cue ball effect aside, generally the players seem to regard cold weather as a boon for pitchers as opposed to hitters.

“Definitely pitchers,” Jeter said, “because pitchers are always moving.”

Joba Chamberlain, the Yankees reliever, agreed.

“Pitchers, we dictate everything that’s going on,” he said. “You can get in on people’s hands.”

He also made the point that before a pitcher enters the game, he warms up. “Even when it’s cold you’re working up a sweat,” he said. “We get hot just to come in.” Both starting pitchers, Verlander and the Yankees’ C. C. Sabathia, responded the same way — with a smile and a four-word sentence — when asked about playing in the cold. “Hitters don’t like it,” they said.

Sabathia, the former Cleveland Indian, added: “I’m used to it, from pitching in Cleveland. I kind of like it.”

Jeter said his least favorite of the elements was wind. “Windy is the toughest,” he said. “Wind makes it colder, plus you’ve got to throw into the wind, and hit into the wind. Wind complicates things.”

Russell Martin, beginning his first season with the Yankees after playing in relatively sunny Los Angeles, said nobody had an advantage in the cold. It was bad for both the hitter and pitcher, he said.

And then there was Mariano Rivera. You’d think, perhaps, that as a native Panamanian, Rivera, the Yanks’ nonpareil closer, would disdain low temperatures and say so. But asked if he preferred pitching in warm weather, what he disdained was the question.

“What I prefer or don’t prefer, it don’t matter,” he said, speaking with characteristic quietude and gravitas. “It’s not going to change anything. We’re here. Whether it’s cold or warm, we have to live with it. We’re ready.”

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Tests Show Irish Banks Still Ailing

Just months after a banking collapse forced an 85 billion euro ($120 billion) rescue package for the country, the Irish central bank is expected to announce on Thursday that the latest round of stress testing shows that the nation’s banks may need 13 billion euros to cover bad real estate debt. On top of the 10 billion euros already granted by Europe and the International Monetary Fund for the banks, that would bring the total bill for Ireland’s banking bust to about 70 billion euros, or more than $98 billion.

Some specialists say the final tally could be closer to $140 billion, an extraordinary amount for a country whose annual output is $241 billion. Trading in shares of Irish Life and Permanent, the only domestic bank to have avoided a state bailout, was suspended Wednesday after reports that it might have to seek government aid as well.

Dermot O’Leary, chief economist for Goodbody Stockbrokers in Dublin, says that Ireland can no longer afford to shoulder the still-growing burden of its banks. The nation’s interest payments are set to rise to 13 percent of government revenue by 2012 — a figure that trails only Greece’s 18 percent, Mr. O’Leary wrote in perhaps the most definitive report to date on Ireland’s financial ills.

“The Irish stress tests will be an important call to arms that shows that it cannot keep putting up the cost for recapitalizing its banks,” he said. “You need burden-sharing with the bondholders. Without that, the debt becomes unsustainable.”

Many proposals have been put forward to deal with the issue, including requiring bondholders to share in losses, as Mr. O’Leary and the new Irish government suggest, and a United States-style stress test with teeth, which would name and shame front-line banks and require them to raise capital.

But European governments have stuck to their position that such measures would further fuel investor fears, rather than calm them.

The second stress test of European banks now under way is beginning to be regarded as too weak, much as the first one was. In the meantime, the condition of the banks is worsening.

In Spain, which is having a brutal housing bust like Ireland’s, fresh data shows that problem loans are growing at their fastest level in a year.

And Portuguese and Greek banks, with their Irish counterparts, have become dependent on short-term financing from the European Central Bank for their survival as their economies deteriorate and doubts increase about their ability to repay their debts.

“Europe hesitates to deal with the banking problem for two reasons,” said Daniel Gros, the director for the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels.

“Our policy makers saw Lehman and want to avoid a repeat of the experience at any cost,” he said, referring to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. “And the weak banks in Germany and elsewhere are too politically connected to fail.”

Irish taxpayers have been left responsible since the government guaranteed all the liabilities of its banks two years ago.

The European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund have refused to accept the notion that investors who bought the bonds of Irish banks, in effect financing their reckless lending, should share the pain with some loss on their holdings.

But a newly elected government has become more vocal in arguing that $29 billion in unsecured senior debt — which is not tied to an asset and as a result is deemed riskier from the start — is ripe for restructuring because the banks that issued it, like Anglo Irish, have essentially failed and been taken over by the government.

So the government should not be obligated to keep paying interest.

It is not clear who owns the senior Irish debt; analysts guess it is a mix of European banks and bargain-hunting hedge funds.

What is clear is Europe’s opposition to imposing reductions in the value of these bonds, often called haircuts. That view was reaffirmed this week when a central bank board member, Jürgen Stark of Germany, described such a move as populist and one that could feed a wider investor panic.

Should investors respond by driving down the value of government bonds from the weaker euro zone economies, the pain would most likely be felt by all. The Continent’s big banks in particular would suffer because many have large piles of sovereign debt, which has yet to be marked down to its market value.

According to Goldman Sachs, European banks hold $270 billion in Greek, Irish and Portuguese bonds.

Greek banks are the most exposed, with $87 billion, mostly in Greek debt, but German banks hold $62 billion in total and French banks $26 billion. Hypo Real Estate, a commercial lender now wholly owned by the German government, is the largest holder of Irish sovereign debt, with $14.5 billion.

With bank lending growth negligible and capital levels thin, especially in the weaker euro zone economies, a fresh round of write-offs is the last thing governments want.

The problem is compounded because banks account for a much larger share of national economies in Europe than they do in the United States.

In Ireland, bank assets are 2.5 times the size of its economy. A recent review of the European banking sector by Morgan Stanley shows that the rest of Europe is also heavily reliant on the health of its banks.

The five largest banks in Britain are 3.5 times the size of the country’s economy, 4.4 times in the Netherlands, 3.25 times in France and two times in Spain. In Germany, the figure is 1.5 times gross domestic product, but that excludes the biggest, Deutsche Bank, which is mainly an investment bank. (The comparable figure for the United States is 60 percent of economic output.)

Spain has managed to separate itself from the malaise surrounding Portugal and others this year by undertaking some aggressive deficit cuts.

But, according to a report this week by Marcello Zanardo, an analyst in London for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, Spain’s problem loans rose 3.3 percent in January from December, the biggest increase in a year. That brought its bad loans to a 17-year high of 6.06 percent of its portfolio. Nonperforming loans jumped 48 percent in 2009 and 15 percent last year, Mr. Zanardo’s data show, driven by the continuing weakness in Spanish home prices.

While Spanish banks are not in as bad shape as their Irish peers, the government has not yet convinced investors that it has addressed the problem despite steps to force local savings banks to raise capital.

Veterans of the three-and-a-half-year bank crisis in Ireland say that the hardest part is accepting how bad things really are, then taking definitive action.

“We need to accept once and for all that Ireland has 100 billion euros in irrecoverable bank loans,” said Peter Matthews, a financial consultant and recently elected member of Parliament who has long argued that Ireland and Europe are underestimating the scope of the country’s debt problem. “People do not relish a write-down but it is the right way to deal with this.”

C.I.A. Agents in Libya Aid Airstrikes and Meet Rebels

 

While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.

In addition to the C.I.A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said.

American officials hope that similar information gathered by American intelligence officers — including the location of Colonel Qaddafi’s munitions depots and the clusters of government troops inside towns — might help weaken Libya’s military enough to encourage defections within its ranks.

In addition, the American spies are meeting with rebels to try to fill in gaps in understanding who their leaders are and the allegiances of the groups opposed to Colonel Qaddafi, said United States government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the activities.? American officials cautioned, though, that the Western operatives were not directing the actions of rebel forces.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.

The United States and its allies have been scrambling to gather detailed information on the location and abilities of Libyan infantry and armored forces that normally takes months of painstaking analysis.

“We didn’t have great data,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, who handed over control of the Libya mission to NATO on Wednesday, said in an e-mail last week. ? “Libya hasn’t been a country we focused on a lot over past few years.”

Several weeks ago, President Obama signed a secret finding authorizing the C.I.A. to provide arms and other support to Libyan rebels, American officials said Wednesday. But weapons have not yet been shipped into Libya, as Obama administration officials debate the effects of giving them to the rebel groups. The presidential finding was first reported by Reuters.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, declined to comment “on intelligence matters,” but he said that no decision had yet been made to provide arms to the rebels.

Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who leads the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that he opposed arming the rebels. “We need to understand more about the opposition before I would support passing out guns and advanced weapons to them,” Mr. Rogers said in a statement.

Because the publicly stated goal of the Libyan campaign is not explicitly to overthrow Colonel Qaddafi’s government, the clandestine war now going on is significantly different from the Afghan campaign to drive the Taliban from power in 2001. Back then, American C.I.A. and Special Forces troops worked alongside Afghan militias, armed them and called in airstrikes that paved the rebel advances on strategically important cities like Kabul and Kandahar.?

In recent weeks, the American military has been monitoring Libyan troops with U-2 spy planes and a high-altitude Global Hawk drone, as well as a special aircraft, JSTARS, that tracks the movements of large groups of troops.? Military officials said that the Air Force also has Predator drones, similar to those now operating in Afghanistan, in reserve.

Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint eavesdropping planes intercept communications from Libyan commanders and troops and relay that information to the Global Hawk, which zooms in on the location of armored forces and determines rough coordinates. The Global Hawk sends the coordinates to analysts at a ground station, who pass the information to command centers for targeting. The command center beams the coordinates to an E-3 Sentry Awacs command-and-control plane, which in turn directs warplanes to their targets.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who recently retired as the Air Force’s top intelligence official, said that Libya’s flat desert terrain and clear weather have allowed warplanes with advanced sensors to hunt Libyan armored columns with relative ease, day or night, without the need for extensive direction from American troops on the ground.

But if government troops advance into or near cities in along the country’s eastern coast, which so far have been off-limits to coalition aircraft for fear of causing civilian casualties, General Deptula said that ground operatives would be particularly helpful in providing target coordinates or pointing them out to pilots with hand-held laser designators.

?The C.I.A. and British intelligence services were intensely focused on Libya eight years ago, before and during the successful effort to get Colonel Qaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program. He agreed to do so in the fall of 2003, and allowed C.I.A. and other American nuclear experts into the country to assess Libya’s equipment and bomb designs and to arrange for their transfer out of the country. ?

?Once the weapons program was eliminated, a former American official said, intelligence agencies shifted their focus away from Libya. But as Colonel Qaddafi began his recent crackdown on the rebel groups, the American spy agencies have worked to rekindle ties to Libyan informants and to learn more about the country’s military leaders.

A former British government official who is briefed on current operations confirmed media reports that dozens of British Special Forces soldiers, from the elite Special Air Service and Special Boat Service units, are on the ground across Libya. The British soldiers have been particularly focused on finding the locations of Colonel Qaddafi’s Russian-made surface-to-air missiles.

A spokesman for Britain’s Ministry of Defense declined to comment, citing a policy not to discuss the operations of British Special Forces.

Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting from London, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

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