Armed Nigeria militia marches through largest city

Unidentified members of Oodua People's Congress militia ride on buses carrying guns and machetes during a protest against Boko Haram in Lagos, Nigeria,Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011. The militia group from Nigeria's southwest walked through the streets of the commercial capital firing rifles as police and security forces fled. The group said they were protesting the rise of Boko Haram, a violent Muslim sect in the country's northeast which they claim are responsible for bombings and assassinations




LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The armed militia marched unstopped through Nigeria's largest city, firing shotguns and rifles in the air in what they called a protest against a radical Muslim sect responsible for killings across the oil-rich country.

The demonstration Thursday by members of the Oodua People's Congress highlighted the growing sense of insecurity and widening distrust among Nigeria's more than 160 million people and its major ethnic groups. Men armed with shotguns, rifles and machetes freely roamed the streets of Lagos without a sign of police, while passers-by shouted that their region of Nigeria should be protected — rather than the country as a whole.

"We don't want them to fight here in our Lagos because Lagos is for everybody, not for Yoruba alone, but for everybody," said Chief Orebiyi Ebenezer, a militia leader. "We need peace here in Lagos."

The Oodua People's Congress is a militia made up of Nigeria's Yoruba ethnic group, which dominates the country's southwest. The party takes its name from Oduduwa, the ancestor of the Yoruba race, and formed after military ruler Ibrahim Babangida annulled a presidential election in 1993 that many believe a wealthy Yoruba businessman won.

The group evolved into a quasi-political organization and likely receives the implicit support of major politicians in the region, though its members have been implicated in political violence and thuggery. Rumors abound in Nigeria's southwest that the group maintains a stockpile of firearms in a country where those weapons are strictly regulated by law, if not practice.

Those rumors appeared true as about 100 armed members riding in minibuses and marching by foot came into Lagos on Thursday, home to 15 million people. They fired long rifles and locally made shotguns into the air, unstopped by police as they ended up at Teslim Balogun Stadium, which hosted FIFA's Under-17 World Cup in 2009.

Leke Akintayo, a militia leader, said their protest was a show of force against Boko Haram, a Muslim sect in Nigeria's northeast that has killed at least 388 people this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. The group also claimed responsibility for the Aug. 26 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria's capital Abuja as part of its campaign for the implementation of strict Shariah law across the nation.

"We OPC, we still exist," Akintayo said. "They should not fall (under) our hand. ... This is our father's land."

He added: "We are going to retaliate if there is any bomb blast hitting any place. We are ready for them. Anytime, any moment."

How the group would retaliate remains unclear, but Lagos remains a melting pot city for Nigeria's more than 250 ethnic groups. At risk would be those belonging to the Hausa Fulani ethnic group, Muslims who dominate the country's north.

Such ethnic-based violence remains all too common in Nigeria. Since the nation became a democracy in 1999, tens of thousands have died in communal violence that cuts across religious and ethnic lines, but often takes root in political or economic issues.

Different groups in Nigeria's south have claimed they would fight Boko Haram if the government fails to stop the group, including militants in the country's oil-rich and restive Niger Delta. However, Thursday's march represented the first time a militia took the street armed to display and threaten using force to end the violence.

That threat mixed with theater at one point as one man holding a pump-action shotgun walked by journalists and said in Yoruba: "Should we shoot it for you?" He racked a shell into the shotgun and fired as he walked down the busy street filled with uniformed school children trying to get home.

Iran releases video of downed U.S. spy drone–looking intact

Iran's Press TV on Thursday broadcast an extended video tour of the U.S. spy drone that went down in the country--and it indeed appeared to look mostly intact.

American officials have acknowledged that an unmanned U.S. reconnaissance plane was lost on a mission late last week, but have insisted that there is no evidence the drone was downed by hostile acts by Iran. Rather, they said, the drone likely went down because of a malfunction, and they implied the advanced stealth reconnaissance plane would likely have fallen from such a high altitude--the RQ-170 Sentinel can fly as high as 50,000 feet--that it wouldn't be in good shape.

But Iranian military officials have claimed since Sunday that they brought down an American spy drone that was little damaged. And now they have provided the first visual images of what looks to be a drone that at least outwardly appears to be in decent condition, in what is surely another humiliating poke in the eye for U.S. national security agencies.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the released images Thursday, a Defense Department spokesman told Yahoo News. But military analysts said it appeared to them to be the American drone in question.

"I have been doing this for thirty years, and it sure looks like" a stealthy U.S. drone to me," Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute and consultant to the RQ-170's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, told Yahoo News in a telephone interview Thursday. "I think we are going to face the high likelihood that Iran has an intact version of one of our most important intelligence gathering tools."

Still, Thompson went on, the intelligence "windfall" to Iran from obtaining the advanced U.S. stealthy drone may be mitigated.

"I don't think the Iranians get as much out of it as they might hope," he said. "It probably came into their hands as a result of a technical malfunction. What that means is they still don't have a real defense against the U.S. flying other vehicles that have similar capabilities, without much fear of interception."

Analysts also noted that the video of the drone released by Iran did not show the drone's underside. "Pretty intact," the Center for Strategic and International Studies' James Lewis said by email. "Interesting that they covered the underside."

The New York Times reported Thursday that--unsurprisingly--the RQ-170 was lost while making the latest foray over Iran during an extended CIA surveillance effort of Iran's nuclear and ballistic weapons program.

"The overflights by the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin and first glimpsed on an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2009, are part of an increasingly aggressive intelligence collection program aimed at Iran, current and former officials say," the Times' Scott Shane and David Sanger wrote. "The urgency of the effort has been underscored by a recent public debate in Israel about whether time is running out for a military strike to slow Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon."

Iran in turn has complained that the drone overflights represent an act of aggression and violation of its sovereignty, and summoned the Swiss envoy--who represents U.S. interests in Iran--on Thursday to lodge a protest.

However, while the images of the U.S. drone surely allowed Iran to score another public relations blow against Washington, Iran may find it tough to generate much in the way of international sympathy for being the target of U.S. surveillance.

Last week, Iranian hardliners ransacked the British embassy in Tehran, prompting the United Kingdom to recall its diplomatic staff from Tehran and order Iran's embassy in London closed. Last month, the UN atomic watchdog agency issued a report raising concerns about research Iran is suspected by some nations to have conducted before 2003 on military aspects of its nuclear program. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes. In October, the United States accused elements of Iran's Qods force of plotting to assassinate the Saudi envoy to the United States. The United Nations General Assembly voted last month in favor of a resolution condemning the Iranian plot.

Amid its growing international isolation, Iran, unsurprisingly, seemed intent to play up the drone incident for all it could.

"China, Russia want to inspect downed U.S. drone," proclaimed a headline from Iran's Mehr news agency Thursday.

The RQ-170 Sentinel, however, reportedly did not use the latest U.S. surveillance technology on board, in part because as a single-engine aircraft, it was thought more likely to occasionally go down.

"The basic principles of stealthy aircraft are fairly well known," Thompson said. "In terms of [the drone's] on-board electronics and information systems, it is fairly routine in combat to require authentication codes to make them hard to unlock."

France reduces Tehran embassy staff amid backlash

France is to pull out part of its diplomatic staff from Tehran following the ransacking of Britain's embassy this week by a pro-regime mob, adding to the backlash on Saturday against an increasingly defensive Iran.

The decision -- a temporary precaution according to one French diplomat -- underlined the seriousness of the crisis developing between Iran and the West amid the ratcheting up of sanctions over Tehran's controversial nuclear efforts.

Britain has already evacuated all staff from its Tehran embassy following Tuesday's rampage, and ordered Iran's in London closed.

The expelled Iranian diplomats arrived back in Tehran early on Saturday, passing through airport service corridors to avoid media -- and a pro-regime welcoming crowd of 150 yelling "Death to Britain."

The European Union on Thursday slapped extra sanctions on Iran and warned more could be on the way because of the embassy assault, while the US Congress is poised to pass a law hitting Iran's central bank.

Political tensions are rising in tandem with speculation that Israel is mulling air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, with or without US backing.

France's decision to downsize its diplomatic representation came after the French, German, Dutch and Italian ambassadors were recalled for consultations on the British embassy assault.

More than half of France's personnel, numbering around 30, could be pulled out along with the families and dependants of all its diplomatic staff, according to information gathered by AFP.

Diplomats did not give any precise figures, however.

The 700-strong French community in Tehran -- mostly Iranian-French dual citizens -- has not received any instructions.

The move came despite a warning by Iran to other EU nations not to join Britain's diplomatic retaliation.

"Now the British government is trying to involve other European countries in our bilateral issue. But we have told the Europeans not to trouble relations with Iran because of Britain," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said.

Iranian officials have been defiant over the degrading British ties, saying a parliamentary decision before the ransacking of the British embassy to expel Britain's ambassador over strengthened Western sanctions was justified.

But on Saturday, one senior figure sought to disavow any connection between Iran's regime and the hundreds of pro-regime militia members who trashed the embassy and another British diplomatic compound.

"There is no doubt that Britain is one of the oldest enemies of Iran... but young revolutionaries should not go beyond the law," IRNA news agency quoted Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi as saying in a statement.

"I advise them not to act without the permission of the supreme leader and officials."

Shirazi implicitly rejected British assertions the embassy was assaulted with the backing and connivance of the authorities, while warning Iran could be hurt by the backlash.

"It is important to note that sometimes certain actions overstep the law... And we could pay a high price for it," he was quoted as saying.

Britain's evacuated ambassador, Dominick Chilcott, had said the attack could not have happened without "the acquiescence and support of the state."

Shirazi's defensive comments seemed for the first time to hint at an effort to halt a rising anti-British campaign in Iran.

But it was unclear whether that stance was shared by other factions in power.

The foreign ministry expressed its "regret" in the wake of the attack.

But parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani justified the rampage as an understandable and legitimate response to "the domineering policy" of Britain.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other senior government officials have not yet commented on the embassy attack.

Foreign media in Tehran on Thursday were told that covering all anti-British, pro-regime demonstrations was now forbidden -- an unprecedented restriction that adds to many other existing reporting curbs.

As the political and diplomatic situation tautened, so did concerns over Israeli air strikes against Iran along with warnings that such action would be risky with dim prospects of success.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta warned on Friday there was no guarantee that air strikes would hit intended targets, saying Iran's sites are "difficult to get at."

In comments at an event organised by a Washington think-tank, he said: "The indication is that at best it (military action) might postpone it (Iran's nuclear programme) maybe by one or possibly two years."

Iran has repeatedly insisted its nuclear programme is purely for civilian purposes, to the scepticism of the West.

Congo opposition rejects early presidential vote

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Opposition parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo rejected partial results on Saturday that showed a lead for President Joseph Kabila in a November 28 election, and called on African leaders to act to prevent violence.

The vast Central African nation held its second post-war election on Monday and the camps of both Kabila and veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi have said they are sure of victory, setting the stage for further trouble.

In a joint statement signed by major parties, including Tshisekedi's, the opposition cited irregularities in the way results were being released and said the electoral commission was "psychologically preparing the population for fraud".

"As a consequence, we reject these partial results and consider them null and void," said the statement, read by Vital Kamerhe, a former minister who is widely expected to come third in the poll and has committed himself to the opposition camp.

Partial results released by the electoral commission showed Kabila leading with 3,275,125 votes, while Tshisekedi trailed with 2,233,447 votes, based on 33.3 percent of polling stations counted.

The commission said it was forced to released the partial results after hackers managed to publish fake numbers on its official website that appeared to give Tshisekedi a strong lead.

Commission spokesman Mathieu Mptia rejected accusations of fraud and said the body was working transparently.

The tally included virtually no results from the capital Kinshasa, where Tshisekedi is confident of strong support. The percentage of votes counted varied widely by province.

Provisional results are due by December 6.

Congo's government has beefed up security across the country in anticipation of the announcement of the results. Armed police patrolled the capital Kinshasa on Saturday.

Mobile phone text message services have been barred since Friday night. Security Minister Adolphe Lumanu told UN backed Radio Okapi on Saturday the government had blocked the services until further notice because of a spate of inflammatory texts.

Kikaya Bin Karubi, a senior member of Kabila's camp and Congo's ambassador to Britain, accused the opposition of readying the population to challenge the results in the street.

"We have someone who doesn't know democracy," he said.

Citing the examples of Kenya, Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast, where post-election wrangles led to violence, the opposition coalition called on the international community to act now, rather than wait until it was too late.

"We are calling on everyone to has an influence on the machine to resolve the problem now rather to wait and send in presidents ... while there is shooting in the street," Kamerhe said. "Let us do it now. We know the loser. We know the winner."

"We call on African elders or heavyweight presidents, because we want this to be a completely African mediation, to come and tell their counterpart here that stepping down is not the end of the world. We cannot burn Congo for one person."

NO UNTIY GOVT

New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Friday that 18 people had been killed in the run-up to the poll, with many shot dead by the presidential guard.

A U.N. Security Council statement also on Friday condemned violence in some parts of the country and "noted with concern the level of logistical and technical difficulties encountered ... during the voting process".

Jacquemain Shabani Lukoo, Secretary General of Tshisekedi's UDPS party, said there was "no question" of a government of national unity, and hinted at unrest if the authorities continue to perpetrate what the opposition believes is fraud.

"If they carry on like this there will be trouble, that's for sure, we will not let this lie," he told Reuters.

The election commission defied all odds to hold the election on November 28, though it was marred by chaos, accusations of fraud and the lack of material that meant pockets of the country did not vote until days later.

The African Union and Southern Africa's SADC grouping have broadly given their approval to the vote. Other observer missions praised the Congolese for turning out in large numbers but said it was too early to say if the poll was free and fair.

Alex Ngwete, a respected Congolese blogger, reflected broad fears of trouble, especially in Kinshasa, if Kabila is announced winner of Congo's vote on Tuesday.

"Kinshasa will explode like a powder keg hit by an RPG, and that's not just a figure of speech," he wrote on his blog.

U.N. urges action in Syria, Russia and China object

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations' human rights chief urged world powers on Friday to take action to protect civilians in Syria from "ruthless repression," but her call was swiftly criticized by envoys from China and Russia.

More than 4,000 people have been killed during a military crackdown on street protesters that started in March and more than 14,000 people are believed to be in detention, said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.

"In light of the manifest failure of the Syrian authorities to protect their citizens, the international community needs to take urgent and effective measures to protect the Syrian people," Pillay told an emergency session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

She did not spell out what measures world powers should take - Western leaders have in the past shied away from suggestions of military action, along the lines of the NATO campaign that helped rebels unseat Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in August.

The European Union called for "pro-active action" by the international community, while Kuwait's envoy said that there may be a need for "intervention" to safeguard civilians.

The United States, the EU, members of the Arab League and neighboring Turkey have already imposed sanctions on Syria over Assad's failure to implement commitments to withdraw tanks and troops from restive cities and start talks with his opponents.

After Pillay spoke, envoys from Russia and China, which both have oil projects in Syria, took the floor to warn against foreign interference in Syria in the name of human rights.

Both countries blocked international efforts to condemn the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution in October.

The Russian-Chinese stance, in turn, drew fierce criticism.

"In the face of brutal repression occurring in Syria, it is outrageous that some governments continue to obstruct efforts here and elsewhere in the United Nations to bring an end to these crimes against humanity," Peter Splinter of Amnesty International told the talks, singling out "permanent members of the Security Council," an allusion to Russia and China.

"It is now time for the U.N., including the Security Council, to deliver an effective international response to Syria's human rights crisis," he said.

CHINA, RUSSIA WARNING

"We would like to warn against illegal interference by outside forces even under the pretext of protecting human rights," said Russia's envoy Valery Loshchinin. "This will have serious and unforeseen consequences."

Loshchinin called on all sides in Syria to halt violence. "We hear that the conflict in Syria continues to be fueled by outside forces, armed and terrorist groups being organized and supplied with weapons and money from abroad."

Russia, a longstanding arms supplier to Assad, has now delivered anti-ship cruise missiles to Syria, the Interfax news agency cited an unnamed military source as saying on Thursday.

This was shortly after a U.N. commission of inquiry called for an arms embargo against Damascus.

China's envoy He Yafei said that although China was deeply concerned, views on how to resolve the situation differed widely. "Member states of the United Nations should follow the principles and purposes of the U.N. and refrain from resolving differences through force or threat of force," he said.

"CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY"

Pillay said 307 children had died in the conflict, up from an estimate of 256 that was released earlier this week.

"The Syrian authorities' continual ruthless repression, if not stopped now, can drive the country into a full-fledged civil war ... All acts of murder, torture and other forms of violence must be immediately stopped," she added.

A U.N. commission of inquiry said this week it had found solid evidence of crimes against humanity by security forces, including executions, torture and rapes.

U.S. human rights ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe told reporters there was "evidence of the complicity in these atrocities" by Syrian authorities and said there was no doubt the violence was intentional.

Syria, which bars access to most foreign journalists, says it is fighting an insurgency by armed groups supported from abroad, who have attacked its troops trying to defend the peace.

At the U.N. Human Rights Council meeting, Syrian Ambassador Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui gave an angry speech that won support from Russia, China and Cuba.

"The Syrian problem is one that can be resolved only by Syrians...Only a domestic, national solution ... is possible," Syrian Ambassador Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui told the rights council meeting, referring to reforms Assad has promised for 2012.

"The solution cannot come from the corridors of the international community," he said. "(This) is only resolutions trying to put more oil on the fire."

Thousands protest against Putin in Moscow

MOSCOW (AP) — Several thousand people protested Monday night against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his party, which won the largest share of a parliamentary election that observers said was rigged.

It was perhaps the largest opposition rally in years and ended with police detaining some of the activists. A group of several hundred marched toward the Central Elections Commission near the Kremlin, but were stopped by riot police and taken away in buses. The total number of those detained was not immediately available.

Estimates of the number of protesters at the rally ranged from 5,000 to 10,000. They chanted "Russia without Putin" and accused his United Russia party of stealing votes.

United Russia took about 50 percent of Sunday's vote, a result that opposition politicians and election monitors said was inflated because of ballot stuffing and other vote fraud. It was a significant drop from the last election, when the party took 64 percent.

Pragmatically, the loss of seats in parliament appears to mean little; two of the three other parties winning seats have been reliable supporters of government legislation. But, it is a substantial symbolic blow to a party that had become virtually indistinguishable from the state itself.

It has also energized the opposition and poses a humbling challenge to the country's dominant figure in his drive to return to the presidency. Putin, who became prime minister in 2008 because of presidential term limits, will run for a third term in March and some opposition leaders saw the parliamentary election as a game-changer for what had been presumed to be Putin's easy stroll back to the Kremlin.

Also Monday, more than 400 Communist supporters gathered to express their indignation over the election, which some called the dirtiest in modern Russian history. The Communist Party finished second with about 20 percent of the vote.

"Even compared to the 2007 elections, violations by the authorities and the government bodies that actually control the work of all election organizations at all levels, from local to central, were so obvious and so brazen," said Yevgeny Dorovin, a member of the party's central committee.

Putin appeared subdued and glum even as he insisted at a Cabinet meeting Monday that the result "gives United Russia the possibility to work calmly and smoothly."

Although the sharp decline for United Russia could lead Putin and the party to try to portray the election as genuinely democratic, the wide reports of violations have undermined that attempt at spin.

Boris Nemtsov, a prominent figure among Russia's beleaguered liberal opposition, declared that the vote spelled the end of Putin's "honeymoon" with the nation and predicted that his rule will soon "collapse like a house of cards."

"He needs to hold an honest presidential election and allow opposition candidates to register for the race, if he doesn't want to be booed from Kamchatka to Kaliningrad," Nemtsov said on Ekho Moskvy radio.

Many Russians came to despise United Russia, seeing it as the engine of endemic corruption. The election showed voters that they have power despite what election monitors called a dishonest count.

"Yesterday, it was proven by these voters that not everything was fixed, that the result really matters," said Tiny Kox of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, part of an international election observer mission.

Other analysts suggested the vote was a wake-up call to Putin that he had lost touch with the country. In the early period of his presidency, Putin's appeal came largely from his man-of-the-people image: candid, decisive and without ostentatious tastes.

But, he seemed to lose some of the common touch, appearing in well-staged but increasingly preposterous heroic photo opportunities — hunting a whale with a crossbow, fishing while bare-chested, and purportedly discovering ancient Greek artifacts while scuba-diving. And Russians grew angry at his apparent disregard — and even encouragement — of the country's corruption and massive income gap.

"People want Putin to go back to what he was in his first term — decisive, dynamic, tough on oligarchs and sensitive to the agenda formed by society," said Sergei Markov, a prominent United Russia Duma member.

The vote "was a normal reaction of the population to the worsening social situation," once Kremlin-connected political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Only seven parties were allowed to field candidates for parliament this year, while the most vocal opposition groups were barred from the race. International monitors said the election administration lacked independence, most media were biased and state authorities interfered unduly at different levels.

"To me, this election was like a game in which only some players are allowed to compete," Heidi Tagliavini, the head of the observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said.

Tagliavini said that of the 150 polling stations where the counting was observed, "34 were assessed to be very bad."

Other than the Communist Party, the socialist Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party led by mercurial nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky are also expected to increase their representation in the Duma; both have generally voted with United Russia, and the Communists pose only token opposition.

Two liberal parties were in the running, but neither got the 7 percent of the national vote needed to win seats. Nemtsov's People's Freedom Party, one of the most prominent liberal parties, was denied participation for alleged violations in the required 45,000 signatures the party had submitted with its registration application.

About 60 percent of Russia's 110 million registered voters cast ballots, down from 64 percent four years ago.

Social media were flooded with messages reporting violations. Many people reported seeing buses deliver groups of people to polling stations, with some of the buses carrying young men who looked like football fans, who often are associated with violent nationalism.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. has "serious concerns" about the elections.

Russia's only independent election monitoring group, Golos, which is funded by U.S. and European grants, has come under heavy official pressure in the past week. Golos' website was incapacitated by hackers on Sunday, and its director Lilya Shibanova and her deputy had their cell phone numbers, email and social media accounts hacked.

City evacuates 45,000 to defuse massive WWII bomb

BERLIN (AP) — Officials in Germany's western city of Koblenz say some 45,000 residents have to be evacuated as officials try to defuse a World War II era bomb discovered in the Rhine river.

City officials said Saturday the massive British 1.8 ton bomb will be defused early Sunday, requiring all residents within a radius of about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the bomb site to leave their homes for the day.

Officials say seven nursing homes, two hospitals and a prison are also being evacuated. Train and road traffic in the area, some 130 kilometers northwest of Frankfurt, will come to a halt.

The British bomb was found last week alongside a 275 pound bomb dropped there by U.S. forces during WWII, after Rhine's water level fell due to lack of rain.

Nigeria: FG Extradites 25 Illegal Chinese

Abuja — Federal Government has deported 25 Chinese from the country as it emerged that 300,000 foreigners living in Nigeria were registered by the Nigerian Immigration Service

Comptroller General of Nigeria Immigration Service, Mrs. Rose Uzoma, who said this during an oversight visit by the Senate Committee on Federal Character and Inter-Governmental Affairs, however, lamented that Nigeria had become less attractive for foreign investors.

She told the Senator Dahiru Kuta-led committee that less foreign investment was coming into the country, compared to Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Kenya.

She said: “You have heard so much about Chinese staying illegally in Nigeria, we do remove Chinese regularly. If we discover them, we remove them. Last week, we removed 25 Chinese, we deport those who commit crimes.

“I am not saying that you cannot find one or two foreigners who are not living here on irregular immigration status. But again, there is no country in the world where you cannot find such people,” she added.

“Seeing foreigners on the streets of Nigeria does not mean that they are of irregular status. Most of them are legal residents. Distinguished Senators, there are not many foreigners in Nigeria. We have well over just 300,000 legally resident in Nigeria, in a population of over 160 million people.

“Those of us who travel, when you are coming back to Nigeria, I am sure you can count the number of foreigners in the aircraft. Nigeria is not yet a destination of choice. You see foreigners in Senegal, there are more in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya and other places, you see a lot of tourists there.”

The comptroller-general, who also responded to the senators on the rising incidences of human trafficking in Nigeria, said the NIS was encumbered by inadequate staff and finance to tackle the menace.

She said with only about 23,000 staff, the NIS could not properly man the nation’s land borders, but added that the international airports have been properly upgraded to combat any attempt at trafficking.

“We have secured our international airports; it is very difficult for those people to go through the airport. But our land borders still remain porous. The strength of any security outfit depends on the strength men and logistics. If you secure the international airports, they will go through the land borders,” she said.

A member of the committee, Senator Uche Chukwumerije, in his closing remarks, commended the NIS but added that the committee would ensure that the service adhered strictly to federal character principles.

This, he said, will create a sense of belonging amongst all Nigerian, adding that it was not the intention of the committee that merits and standard should be traded for federal character principle.

His words: “Because of the crucial nature of your assignment, we do not want efficiency to be sacrifice for efficacy of federal character, if we are not efficient in our borders, will be in trouble.”

Kentucky church bans interracial marriage

A small Kentucky church has chosen to ban marriages and even some worship services for interracial couples. The Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church, located in Pike County, made the vote in response to a longtime member who is engaged to a man whose birthplace is in Zimbabwe.

Other pastoral leaders in the area were quick to denounce the church's vote. "It's not the spirit of the community in any way, shape or form," Randy Johnson, president of the Pike County Ministerial Association, told the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The small congregation, which usually hosts about 40 members each Sunday, held the vote after longtime member Stella Harville, brought her fiancé Ticha Chikuni to church with her in June. The couple performed a song together at the church in which Chikuni sang "I Surrender All," while Harville played the piano.

Chikuni, 29, who works at Georgetown College, is black--and Harville, who was baptized at the church but is not an active member, is white. Dean Harville, Stella's father, said he was told by the church's former pastor Melvin Thompson that his daughter and her fiancé were not allowed to sing at the church again. However, Thompson recently stepped down and the church's new pastor, Stacy Stepp, said the couple was once again welcome to sing.

Stepp's decision prompted Thompson to put forth a recommendation saying that while all members are welcome at the church, it does not "condone" interracial marriage, and that any interracial couples would not be received as members or allowed to participate in worship services. The only exception? Funerals.

The Harville family has formally requested the congregation to reconsider the interracial ban, and Thompson has also said he would like to resolve the issue, the area CBS affiliate WYMT has reported.


A copy of the recommendation, obtained by WYMT, reads in part:

That the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church does not condone interracial marriage. Parties of such marriages will not be received as members, nor will they be used in worship services and other church functions, with the exception being funerals. All are welcome to our public worship services. This recommendation is not intended to judge the salvation of anyone, but is intended to promote greater unity among the church body and the community we serve.

Members of the church held a vote on Thompson's proposed language, with nine voting in favor and six voting against. The other members in attendance chose not to vote.

Gawker notes that Pike County is 98 percent white and home to the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud.

The Harville family doesn't see Gulnare's new policy promoting anything like unity or civil peace. "They're the people who are supposed to comfort me in times like these," Stella Harville said.

And Stella's father was much more forceful in his denunciation of the interracial ban. "It sure ain't Christian," Dean Harville said. "It ain't nothing but the old devil working."

Russia to build Ghana’s first nuclear power plant

Russian technocrats will build Ghana’s first nuclear power plant as preparatory works are underway, officials at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) have said.

A Daily Graphic publication sighted on the Energy Ministry’s website December 1, 2011 said, the nuclear plant, undertaken by the Ghana government in collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is expected to be completed by 2020 with a medium-size reactor also expected to be completed by 2018.

Speaking at a one-day seminar on IAEA Project Planning for Sustainable Development Programme in Accra, the publication cited Prof Benjamin Nyarko, Deputy Director-General of GAEC, saying a team led by the Minister of Energy, Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, visited Russia recently and met with some experts in the field of nuclear energy to discuss details of the plant.

The project is aimed at developing a long-term comprehensive energy supply plan for Gha

US Jobless Rate Dips to Lowest Level in More Than 2 Years

Somehow the American economy appears to be getting better, even as the rest of the world is looking worse.
In the midst of the European debt crisis, lingering instability in the oil-rich Middle East and concerns about a Chinese economic slowdown, the American unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped last month to 8.6 percent, its lowest level in two and a half years.

The Labor Department also said that the nation’s employers added 120,000 jobs in November and that job growth for the previous two months was better than initially reported. That looks like good news for President Obama as he heads into the 2012 presidential election — especially since just a few months ago the picture looked bleak.

“If you go back to August, all sorts of people were telling us that the economy was headed straight into recession,” said Paul Ashworth, senior United States economist at Capital Economics. “Since that point, we’ve become more and more worried about the euro zone and other areas of the global economy, but somehow, at least for the moment, the U.S. economy seems to be shrugging all that off.”

Even so, part of the reason the jobless rate fell so low was that 315,000 unemployed workers simply stopped applying for jobs. And resilient as the economy seems to have been since this summer, the fate of the fragile recovery is still tied to external — and especially European — events.

So far Europe’s problems have been relatively contained to the Continent. Many economists worry that a disorderly default of Greece or Italy, which still looks alarmingly possible, could plunge Europe into a depression.

If recent history is any guide, even a modest shock wave from across the ocean could throw the American economy off course; earlier this year, a series of shocks from higher oil prices, the Japanese earthquake and the stalemate over the United States debt ceiling managed to drain the energy from the recovery.

November’s drop in unemployment was a welcome relief, given that the jobless rate had been stuck at 9 percent for most of 2011. It is at the lowest level since March 2009; the rate has been above 8 percent for 33 months.

The share of workers who were unemployed fell in November partly because some people found jobs and partly because some discouraged workers dropped out of the labor force altogether. That left the share of Americans participating in the work force at a historically depressed 64 percent, down from 64.2 percent in October.

A separate survey of employers, which economists pay more attention to than the unemployment rate, found that companies added 120,000 jobs last month after adding 100,000 in October.

These numbers were not particularly impressive by historical standards — payroll growth was just about enough to keep up with population growth — but there were other signs of resilience.

Companies have been taking on more and more temporary workers, suggesting that more permanent hiring may be in the cards. What is more, help-wanted advertising, retail sales and auto sales have risen; jobless claims have fallen; and businesses seem to be getting loans more easily. Perhaps most encouraging was a recent survey of small businesses that found hiring intentions to be at their highest level since September 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed.

“Small businesses were cheering up at the end of last year but then got clobbered by the jump in oil prices, the Japanese earthquake and then the debt ceiling fiasco,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics. “Small businesses employ half the work force, and we need them on board.”

Still, serious concerns remain about the economy’s ability to weather the financial and economic turmoil from abroad. The public sector continues to lay off workers at the federal, state and local level. And excluding the hundreds of thousands who have left the labor force, the country still has a backlog of more than 13 million unemployed workers, whose average period of unemployment is at a record high of 40.9 weeks. The median period, the point between the top and bottom halves, is 21.6 weeks.

“They say businesses are refusing to look at résumés from the unemployed,” said Esther Perry, 59, of Bedford, Mass., who participated in a recent report on unemployed workers put together by USAction, a liberal coalition. “What do you think my chances are? Once unemployment runs out, I don’t know what I will do.”

Even those with jobs are in weak positions. Average hourly earnings fell 0.1 percent in November, and a Labor Department report released Wednesday found that the share of national income going to labor was at a record low last quarter.

These softer spots in Friday’s numbers underscored just how much President Obama could use additional stimulus, a tidy and fast resolution to the European debt crisis or some other economic breakthrough to reinvigorate the job market before the 2012 presidential election.

“As president, my most pressing challenge is doing everything I can every single day to get this economy growing faster and create more jobs,” President Obama said Friday in Washington.

On the issue of government action to stimulate the economy, there has been some movement in Washington toward extending the payroll tax cut, which is scheduled to expire at the end of this month. Economists have said that allowing the tax cut — which lets more than 160 million mostly middle-class Americans keep two percentage points more of their paychecks — to expire could be a severe drag on both job creation and output growth.

“If it isn’t extended, it will have an impact on consumer spending in the first half of next year because it’ll put a big dent in consumer income,” said Conrad DeQuadros, senior economist at RDQ Economics. “To the extent that reduces spending, there will be second-round effects on hiring.”

According to some estimates, an extension would probably lead to 600,000 to one million more jobs. The other major stimulus program scheduled to expire by 2012 is the extension of unemployment insurance benefits, allowing some jobless workers to continue collecting for as long as 99 weeks. Already, millions of people have exhausted their benefits. Failing to renew the federal benefit extensions will cause five million additional people to lose benefits next year, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in an interview.

Unemployment benefits are believed to have one of the most stimulative effects on the economy, because recipients are likely to spend all of the money they receive quickly and pump more spending through the economy.

Russian Court Fines Election Monitor $1,000

MOSCOW — A Moscow court on Friday ruled that the country’s sole independent election watchdog had broken Russian law by publishing citizens’ complaints of campaign abuses during the run-up to parliamentary elections this weekend.
Early Saturday morning, Golos’s director, Lidiya Shibanova, was detained for questioning after she flew into Sheremetyevo airport, said her deputy, Grigory A. Melkonyants. State-controlled television on Friday aired a documentary suggesting that Golos was being used by Western governments to spark Arab-spring-style civil unrest after the Russian elections.

Friday’s court ruling related to Golos’s “Map of Violations,” which has attracted more than 4,500 reports alleging illegal campaign tactics, including stories of employers threatening workers with pay cuts and local officials ordering business leaders to pressure subordinates. Most of the reports concern the ruling party, United Russia, which, with its popularity sagging, is struggling to preserve its control of Parliament in Sunday’s vote.

The Obama administration criticized the court decision and “what appears to be a pattern of harassment directed against this organization,” said a spokesman for the National Security Council, The Associated Press reported.

Judge Svetlana K. Kalantyr ruled that Golos had violated a law that prohibits news outlets from publishing polling data during the five days before an election, and levied a fine of 30,000 rubles, or about $1,000. The major complaint voiced in recent days, however, is that Golos, which was established in 2000 and whose name means “vote” in Russian, receives funding from the United States and other Western governments.

Pressure from authorities has mounted to the point that Golos’s 3,000 election monitors may not be able to observe voting on Sunday, Mr. Melkonyants said. Police on Friday searched a Golos field office in Siberia, and several election observers were warned not to take part, according to the group.

“They are trying to discredit our work in the eyes of the public,” Mr. Melkonyants said. “I think there will be more cases against us. This is only the first one.”

The Kremlin is scrambling to shore up United Russia, which is almost certain to lose the two-thirds majority it has enjoyed since 2007, and to dissuade those inclined to cast a protest vote. During an appearance in St. Petersburg on Friday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin appealed to the public to support a consolidated government, lest “the entire mechanism stops operating.”

If “ you and I sitting at TV screens see lawmakers pulling each other’s hairs, beating and spitting at each other, as it happened here once and happens in some of our neighboring countries, we will not have concerted, effective work,” Mr. Putin said. “If someone wants to see a show, they should go to the circus, or the movies, or the theater.”

A documentary that aired Friday on the NTV channel, which is owned by the national energy giant Gazprom, juxtaposed footage of the group’s training sessions with images of street protests and fistfuls of hundred-dollar bills.

The legal charges were triggered by a letter from Vladimir Y. Churov, the head of the Central Election Commission, to the Russian prosecutor, which describes the organization’s work as “an attempt to appropriate the powers of state authorities.”

Mr. Churov’s letter, which was read aloud in the courtroom on Friday, argued that most of the complaints on the “Map of Violations” were against United Russia. He went on to say that “the activities of the association actually inhibit the election of registered candidates from one (particular) political party, and the party’s achievement of a certain result in the election.”

Aleksandr V. Kynev, chief of analysis at Golos, said Mr. Churov’s letter made it clear that the case had political goals.

“We can see the underlying political motivation is now flying right into the middle of this legal proceeding,” Mr. Kynev said, describing the hearing as “theater of the absurd.”

Russian law allows organizations to accept funding from foreign governments, but bans such organizations from campaigning for candidates.

The documentary broadcast on Friday said that during a search of a Golos office in the Russian Far East, the police found fliers that encouraged voters to check every box on Sunday’s ballots, rendering them invalid, a tactic being promoted as an act of protest. A local representative explained that a visitor had left the pamphlets behind, but the announcer apparently was not persuaded.

“The question arises,” he intoned, in an ominous voiceover, “what are supposedly ‘independent election observers’ doing with fliers from the radical opposition?”

US Defense Chief Says Israel Must Mend Arab Ties

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta spoke sternly on Friday to America’s closest ally in the Middle East, telling Israel that it is partly responsible for its increasing isolation and that it now must take “bold action” — diplomatic, not military — to mend ties with its Arab neighbors and settle previously intractable territorial disputes with the Palestinians.
“I believe security is dependent on a strong military, but it is also dependent on strong diplomacy,” Mr. Panetta said. “And unfortunately, over the past year, we have seen Israel’s isolation from its traditional security partners in the region grow, and the pursuit of a comprehensive Middle East peace has effectively been put on hold.”

He balanced his criticism by noting that “Israel is not solely responsible for this isolation,” and described what he termed “an international campaign under way to isolate Israel.”

Mr. Panetta reaffirmed that the United States would sustain an “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security,” proved by “unprecedented levels of defense cooperation,” including more than $200 million in additional assistance for Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile-defense system.

But the defense secretary made clear that Israel now must prove its commitment to restoring partnerships across the region and resolving historic disputes with the Palestinians.

“Ultimately, the dream of a secure, prosperous Jewish and democratic Israel can only be achieved through two states living side by side in peace and security,” Mr. Panetta said. “With full confidence that the United States is willing and capable of ensuring that Israel can safeguard its security as it takes the risks needed to pursue peace, now is the time for Israel to take bold action and to move towards a negotiated two-state solution.”

Asked specifically what Israel should do first, Mr. Panetta replied, “Get to the damn table” — that is, return to negotiations.

Mr. Panetta also called on Israel to “reach out and mend fences with those who share an interest in regional stability,” specifically Turkey, Egypt and Jordan. If those gestures are rejected in Ankara, Cairo and Amman, he said, “the world will see those rebukes for what they are.”

Mr. Panetta spoke to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, a policy center here. During the evening address, he identified Iran as the most significant national security threat facing the United States, allies and partners in the region.

Notable was the phrasing of a warning to Iran: that any action to block free transit of regional oil shipments and other commerce would be a “redline,” a term describing an unacceptable action that would be countered with an American response.

“No greater threat exists to the security and prosperity of the Middle East than a nuclear-armed Iran,” Mr. Panetta said, noting that a “pillar of our approach to the region is our determination to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”

He pledged the United States was committed to deterring Iran’s “destabilizing activities, particularly those that could threaten the free flow of commerce throughout this vital region. That is a ‘redline’ for the United States.”

American policy to shape Iranian action would use both inducements and penalties, diplomacy and economic sanctions, he said. But the Pentagon would always have military options ready for the president’s consideration, Mr. Panetta said.

“That’s a responsibility I take very seriously, because when it comes to the threat posed by Iran, the president has made it very clear that we have not taken any options off the table,” Mr. Panetta said.

Looking broadly across the region, Mr. Panetta also described how the United States was seeking to sustain a military presence and enhance military-to-military cooperation in the Persian Gulf after the withdrawal from Iraq at the end of this month.

Israeli Prime Minister Is a Liar, French President Tells Obama

French President Sarkozy called Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a liar in a conversation with President Obama caught on an open mic at last week's G-20 summit.

"I can't look at him [Netanyahu] anymore, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, the French media website Arret Sur Images reported.

"You've had enough of him, but I have to deal with him every day," Obama is said to have responded.

The private conversation happened last Thursday in the southern French city of Cannes, heard by half a dozen journalists whose headphones were still receiving audio from the presidents' wireless microphones.

The handful of reporters included one from the Reuters news agency who confirmed the quotes.

"By the time the team from the Elysee [presidential palace] realized, it must have been three minutes," one of the journalists told Arret Sur Images.

Reporters who overheard the remarks decided not to report them because they were intended to be private, but the news leaked out on the Internet nonetheless.

"We didn't record anything and using them [the comments] would admit that we cheated," an anonymous reporter told the website.

It also quoted another member of the media saying, "there were discussions among the journalists there who decided not to do anything. It's a sensitive subject: it's annoying to not publish this information, but at the same time we have agreed to precise ethical rules and printing these sentences would mean violating them."

Netanyahu's office declined ABC News' request for comment and the White House has yet to respond.

Sarkozy and Obama were discussing the recent admission of Palestine to UNESCO, part of its bid to get recognition at the United Nations. The U.S. opposes the Palestinian efforts and Obama was reportedly chiding Sarkozy for not telling him France would vote in favor of Palestine in the UNESCO vote. The U.S. later withdrew its funding for the cultural body which amounts to $70 million annually.

The conversation then turned to Netanyahu, which is when Sarkozy is said to have called him a liar.

At least publicly, the three countries are united on the issue of the day: crippling sanctions for Iran when the International Atomic Energy Agency releases its latest report this week.

Though Iran was the top story in the Israeli media on Tuesday, the main newspapers also ran the Arret Sur Images report.

The Jerusalem Post reported that a spokesman for the opposition party Kadima -- whose last campaign slogan was "Bibi [Netanyahu's nickname], I don't believe him" -- declined to comment, saying, "What Sarkozy said is more than enough."

US warns Nigerian extremists may target hotels in capital

An Islamist sect that carried out deadly bombings in the northeast of the country could next attack hotels and other targets in the capital Abuja, the US embassy in Nigeria warned Sunday.

"Following the recent Boko Haram, aka Nigerian Taliban, attacks in Borno and Yobe State, the US embassy has received information that Boko Haram may plan to attack several locations and hotels in Abuja," during the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday, the embassy said in a statement.

Boko Haram, an Islamist sect based in the north of Africa's most populous country, carried out attacks that claimed 150 lives in the northeastern city Damaturu on Friday, one of the deadliest strikes ever staged by the group. Around 100 other people were injured in the attacks.

The US embassy said potential targets could include the Nicon Luxury, the Sheraton and the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja's premier hotels normally frequented by foreigners, Nigerian politicians and businessmen.

The statement said embassy staff had been told to avoid these hotels

Tunisia Islamists win vote; clashes in cradle of revolt

TUNIS (Reuters) - The Islamist Ennahda party was officially declared winner of Tunisia's election, setting it up to form an Islamist-led government, as poll violence erupted in the town where the Arab Spring uprisings began.

Ennahda has tried to reassure secularists nervous about the prospect of Islamist rule in one of the Arab world's most liberal countries by saying it will respect women's rights and not try to impose a Muslim moral code on society.

Protesters angry their fourth-placed party had been eliminated from the election set fire to the mayor's office in Sidi Bouzid, where 10 months ago vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in a protest against officialdom.

His act ignited unrest that led to the fall of Tunisia's autocratic leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and inspired uprisings in Egypt, Libya and other Arab states.

Ennahda's leader Rachid Ghannouchi paid tribute to the provincial Tunisian town's role in Tunisia's revolution.

"We salute Sidi Bouzid and its sons who launched the spark and we hope that God will have made Mohamed Bouazizi a martyr," said the soft-spoken Islamic scholar, who spent 22 years in exile in Britain.

"We will continue this revolution to realize its aims of a Tunisia that is free, independent, developing and prosperous in which the rights of God, the Prophet, women, men, the religious and the non-religious are assured because Tunisia is for everyone," Ghannouchi told a crowd of cheering supporters.

Announcing the results, election commission members said Ennahda had won 90 seats in the 217-seat assembly, which will draft a new constitution, form an interim government and schedule new elections, probably for early 2013.

The Islamists' nearest rival, the secularist Congress for the Republic, won 30 seats, the commission members told a packed hall in the capital, ending a four-day wait since Sunday's poll for the painstaking count to be completed.

ISLAMIST-LED GOVERNMENT

Ennahda, banned before January's revolution, fell short of an absolute majority in the new assembly. It is expected to broker a coalition with two of the secularist runners-up and, with them, form a government.

The Islamists will get the biggest say on important posts. They have already said they will put forward Hamadi Jbeli, Ghannouchi's deputy and a former political prisoner, for the post of prime minister.

Tunisia's complex election system, which replaced the rigged, one-horse races conducted before the revolution, made it impossible for any one party to win a majority of assembly seats.

Ennahda lies at the moderate and liberal end of the spectrum of Islamist parties in the Middle East. Ghannouchi models his approach on the moderate stance of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

Secularists say they fear the Islamists will try to impose an Islamic moral code on society but Ghannouchi has denied this. His officials say there will be no restrictions on foreign tourists -- a big source of revenue -- drinking alcohol or wearing bikinis on the country's Mediterranean beaches.

The party's victory is the first for Islamists since the Hamas faction won an election in the Palestinian Territories seven years ago.

It is a result which will resonate in Egypt, where a party with ideological ties to Ennahda is expected to do well in a multi-stage parliamentary poll that starts in November.

REVOLUTION'S BIRTHPLACE

Protesters in Sidi Bouzid were angered that election officials had canceled seats won by the Popular List, a party led by businessmen Hachmi Hamdi, over alleged campaign finance violations. The party is popular in the town.

"They have set fire to a large part of the mayor's office, and the police are nowhere to be seen," local resident Mehdi Horcheni told Reuters by telephone from the town.

He said elsewhere in the town, protesters set fire to an Ennahda campaign office and a training center, while police used tear gas in a failed attempt to disperse the crowd.

Another witness, Hafed Abdulli, said the crowd was burning tires in the streets. "People are protesting against the cancellation of the Popular List," he said.

The Popular List was running in fourth place in the election, according to preliminary results, before its seats were canceled. The party's leader used to support Ben Ali and during the election ran a populist campaign heavily promoted on the British-based television station he owns.

The violence appeared confined to Hamdi's supporters, as the three main secularist parties have already accepted defeat and there were no reports of clashes in other towns.

There was none of the violence that was predicted involving hardline Islamists who are more radical than Ennahda or the secularists who believe the election result will threaten their liberal lifestyles.

Ghannouchi and his party officials have issued a carefully-choreographed series of announcements designed to reassure skeptics that there is no need to fear an Islamist government.

Defying stereotypes about Islamists keeping women covered up, one of the party's most prominent candidates is a businesswoman who does not wear the Islamic veil, or hijab, and this week sang along to pop songs at a party rally.

Ennahda has also reached out to anxious investors by saying it will not impose Islamic banking rules. It says it is inclined to keep the finance minister and central bank governor in their posts when it forms the new government.

Ohio Teacher Guilty of Rape

Stacy Schuler, a former health and physical education teacher at Mason High School, is led out of the Warren County Common Pleas
Courtroom of Judge Robert Peeler Thursday Oct. 27, 2011 in Lebanon, Ohio. Schuler, a high school teacher was convicted Thursday
of having sex with five students, some of them football players, after an Ohio judge rejected an insanity defense that argued the teens
took advantage of her.

Russia denies new facility in Serbia is for spying

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Russia has denied news reports that the emergency relief center it is creating in Serbia will be used to spy on neighboring Romania, where U.S. anti-ballistic missile interceptors are likely to be installed.

Those reports began two years ago when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that Serbia and Russia had agreed to create the joint facility at the airport in Nis, Serbia.

But during a ceremony opening it Monday, Sergey Shoigu, Russia's minister for emergency situations, said such speculation is "a pure fabrication."

Shoigu says the center will house relief experts and their equipment, and is intended to fight major forest fires, flooding, earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Australia police get Sri Lanka war crimes dossier

Australian police were Monday examining a war crimes dossier alleging Sri Lankan authorities bombed and shelled civilians during the country's civil war, which ended in 2009.

Prepared by the International Commission of Jurists' Australian chapter, the brief contains testimony from Sri Lankans now living in Australia that they were attacked by government forces during the conflict.

"The substance... is eyewitness evidence which shows the bombing and shelling of civilians, in particular in the no-fly zones, and a whole series of attacks on civilians, contrary to the stance taken by the Sri Lankan government that, in effect, they were not targeted," said ICJ Australia president John Dowd.

"Initially they said there was no loss of civilian life in the last few months (of the conflict), which is clearly nonsense," he added.

The evidence was initially collected for an independent war crimes tribunal but because one had not been established Dowd said the ICJ decided to pass it to Australian police "who have the power to investigate such matters".

Police confirmed they had received the submission and were reviewing it.

"Therefore it is not appropriate to comment further," a spokeswoman told AFP.

Australia can prosecute war crimes committed in other countries including "acts of torture committed outside Australia by a public official, or a person acting in an official capacity or at the instigation of such a person," she added.

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd had also received a copy of the brief, according to his spokeswoman, who said Australia "takes allegations and investigations of war crimes seriously".

Rudd said Australia had urged Sri Lanka to act on United Nations findings of "credible evidence" of war crimes through its Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), due to report in November.

"Australia and the international community will closely examine the LLRC report, due in November 2011, before considering whether further options should be pursued," his spokeswoman said.

The UN's Human Rights Council should also "revisit the matter", Rudd added.

Dowd denied local media reports that the brief named President Mahinda Rajapakse and former Navy chief Thisara Samarasinghe, now Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to Australia.

"We haven't talked about anybody, and we've not identified anybody, nor do we intend to in our submission," Dowd said.

"We have set out the evidence that is available and that evidence is a matter for the Australian Federal Police. It is a matter for them... to comment on who might be the person they investigate."

Samarasinghe did not immediately respond to AFP's requests for comment, but strongly denied any crimes when contacted by the Sydney Morning Herald.

"There is no truth whatsoever of allegations of misconduct or illegal behaviour," said Samarasinghe.

"The Sri Lanka Navy did not fire at civilians during any stage and all action was taken to save the lives of civilians from the clutches of terrorists."

Sri Lanka has persistently denied that its troops committed any war crimes while battling the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were crushed in an offensive that ended in May 2009, bringing the 26-year conflict to a close.

Vietnamese woman cuts off Taiwan husband's penis

A woman cut off her husband's penis with a pair of scissors and threw the severed member into a river in revenge for his affair with another woman and his physical abuse, police in Taiwan said Sunday.

The 30-year-old Vietnamese woman, identified only by her surname, Pan, cut off about half her husband's penis at their home in the southern city of Tainan after he took drugs and sleeping pills and fell asleep, police said.

The woman allegedly claimed she had thrown the severed member of her drug-addicted Taiwanese husband into a river before turning herself in.

"She has been taken into custody on charges of assault," a police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The woman allegedly told police she felt no regret about what she had done to her husband, who is 29 years old, jobless and a known user of illegal drugs.

Police said she claimed to have suffered beatings even though she had worked at a local karaoke shop to support the family since the pair married two years ago.

Her husband's affair with another woman, which he did not attempt to hide, prompted her revenge, the suspect said, according to police.

If convicted, she faces a jail term of up to 12 years.

Italian priest shot dead in southern Philippines

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — An Italian Catholic priest who was about to travel to a clergy meeting was shot dead Monday in his remote southern Philippine parish, police said.

The Rev. Fausto Tentorio was approaching his car when a gunman shot him several times within the church compound in North Cotabato province's mountainous Arakan township, said Chief Inspector Benjamin Rioflorido.

Tentorio, a native of Santa Maria Hoe town in Italy's Lecco province, was dead on arrival at hospital. He was 59.

Rioflorido said that according to a witness, the gunman ran from the scene after the shooting and fled toward an adjacent town on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice.

Investigators have not yet identified suspects or possible motives, Rioflorido said in a telephone interview. He said Tentorio had been a longtime parish priest in Arakan, spoke the dialect fluently and had good ties with the people there.

The priest had been about to travel to the provincial capital, Kidapawan city, to attend a clergy meeting of his diocese.

Kidapawan Bishop Romulo dela Cruz strongly denounced the killing and called on the police and military to solve the killing quickly.

Tentorio belonged to the Rome-based Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions. PIME said he had worked with indigenous people in the south for more than 30 years and was the third PIME missionary to be killed on southern Mindanao Island, the homeland of minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic country. The resource-rich but impoverished region has seen Muslim rebellions for decades.

"We are very sad because we lost already two other priests here in Mindanao," Rev. Julio Mariani, director of PIME's Euntes Mission Center in Zamboanga City, told The Associated Press.

Mariani said Tentorio received unspecified death threats around seven years ago, but had not mentioned new threats when they last met in July.

He said Tentorio's killing could have been related to his work defending the rights of indigenous people and helping them hold on to their ancestral land.

"It was a delicate mission because when you deal with the marginalized and the poor, you are bound to step on the toes of some people and this could have been the source of the problem of why he was killed," Mariani added.

Rioflorido said they did not know of any death threats received by Tentorio.

He said police would interview Tentorio's colleagues and other possible witnesses including teachers at a preschool within the church compound who were attending a flag-raising ceremony when the attack took place.

Italian Ambassador Luca Fornari condemned the killing and expressed shock, sadness and dismay.

"Killing someone who is doing good things is something that we cannot understand," he added.

He said the embassy has asked police to increase security for missionaries.

Italy has warned its nationals, including priests, not to go to Mindanao, but missionaries have disregarded the advisory in order to help people, Fornari said.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario called on police "to immediately bring the perpetrators of this dastardly act to justice" and offered condolences to Tentorio's family and congregation.

Libya government says its flag flies over Bani Walid

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan interim government forces said Monday they had raised the country's new flag over Bani Walid, one of the last bastions of pro-Muammar Gaddafi loyalists, but it was not yet clear if the town had been completely captured.

Along with Gaddafi's hometown Sirte, Bani Walid has been one of only two towns in Libya where there is still armed resistance to the rule of the National Transitional Council (NTC).

"We have reached the city center (of Bani Walid) and have raised the flag," Colonel Abdullah Naker, head of the Tripoli Revolutionist Council, told Reuters Sunday.

Fighters taking part in the assault on Bani Walid also told Reuters they had entered the town which is nestled into rocky hills some 150 km (90 miles) south of Tripoli.

Bani Walid is an ancestral home to the Warfalla, Libya's biggest and one of its most politically-influential tribes. They number about a million out of the country's six million population and were traditional supporters of Gaddafi.

Bani Walid has been under siege for weeks, with hundreds of Gaddafi loyalists dug into its steep valleys and hills resisting advancing interim government forces.

As well as the military assault, NTC officials have been negotiating with tribal leaders inside Bani Walid for its surrender.

A group claiming to represent the people of the town issued an offer of a truce to Libya's new government Monday. In return for pledging loyalty to the NTC, the tribal groups said they would take over the town, but demanded in return the NTC should withdraw its forces from the area and lift the siege.

It was not immediately clear what the government response would be to the offer, or whether the town had already been completely captured by NTC forces.

SIRTE FIGHTS ON

Meanwhile in Sirte, where Gaddafi loyalists have been under siege for weeks, there was little or no sign of NTC forces making any progress Monday.

NTC fighters maintained their bombardment of a small area where they have boxed in the remaining Gaddafi loyalist in the center of Sirte. Libya's new leaders say they will only begin the transition to democracy after they capture Sirte.

Some fighters on the ground have expressed irritation that their commanders had not ordered an advance.

A doctor for the medical aid charity Medecins Sans Frontieres in Sirte has estimated 10,000 people remain trapped in the city of 75,000 residents. Many are women and children, some are sick or injured.

The often chaotic struggle for Sirte has killed scores of people, left thousands homeless and laid waste to much of what was once a showpiece Mediterranean city where Gaddafi entertained foreign leaders.

Arab League to discuss suspending Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — The Arab League has called an emergency meeting Sunday to discuss whether to suspend Syria, officials said, ramping up the pressure on Damascus to end its bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters.

Suspension is unlikely to have a direct, tangible impact on Syria, but it would still constitute a major blow to President Bashar Assad's embattled regime by stripping Damascus of its Arab support and further deepening its isolation.

Despite the growing international chorus for an end to the crisis, Assad has shown no sign of backing down or easing his campaign to crush the 7-month-old uprising. On Sunday, security forces opened fire on a funeral for a slain activist in the east, while forces elsewhere arrested at least 44 people in the capital's suburbs in house-to-house raids Sunday and more than 900 people in the central city of Homs over the past week.

Arab League officials said the meeting Sunday in Cairo was called at the behest of several Gulf countries and aimed to pressure Assad to halt the crackdown, which the U.N. says has killed more than 3,000 people since the uprising began in mid-March.

Many Gulf states, including heavyweight Saudi Arabia, already have withdrawn their ambassadors from Syria to protest the regime's bloody response to the protests. Other Arab countries, however, have remained silent or reluctant in their criticism of the Syrian crackdown.

The suspension of an Arab League member is very rare.

The 22-member League suspended Libya's membership earlier this year after Moammar Gadhafi launched a violent crackdown on protesters there. That gave the international community a free hand to intervene with air power to target Gadhafi's forces.

The League has since reinstated Libya under the country's new leadership.

International intervention is all but out of the question in Syria. Washington and its allies have shown little appetite for stepping into another Arab nation in turmoil. There also is real concern that Assad's ouster would spread chaos around the region.

Syria is a geographical and political keystone in the heart of the Middle East, bordering five countries with which it shares religious and ethnic minorities. Its web of allegiances extends to Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement and Iran's Shiite theocracy.

About 2,000 anti-Assad protesters gathered outside the Arab League building on the edge of Cairo's Tahrir Square, the center of Egypt's uprising.

"Oh, Bashar, son of a dog, go away, Bashar!" they shouted. "Freedom is on fire. Go away, Bashar."

The newly formed opposition body known as the Syrian National Council called on the Arab League to suspend Syria's membership "until a new regime is born." It also appealed for the council to recognize it as the "sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people."

Saudi political scientist Khalid al-Dakhil said a suspension would send a powerful message.

"The Arab League silence was like a green light to the regime to continue killings. It gave a cover for the Syrian regime," he said.

One official said the Arab League will consider other measures if suspension fails to compel Syria to stop the bloodshed. He declined to elaborate. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

An Arab diplomat said League members were divided over what steps to take.

A bloc of six Gulf nations including Saudi Arabia was pushing for suspension and a recognition of the opposition Syrian national Council, he said.

Against the measures, the diplomat said, were Sudan, Algeria, Syria's neighbor Lebanon and Yemen, whose leader is also facing a serious uprising.

During a consultative meeting before the official gathering in Cairo, Arab foreign ministers all rejected foreign intervention but agreed to press the Syrian regime to present a road map for reforms and presidential elections, the diplomat said.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Meanwhile, around 7,000 people took to the streets Sunday in the eastern Syrian city of Deir el-Zour for the funeral of an activist, Ziad al-Obeidi, who was killed a day earlier. Al-Obeidi worked for the British-based Observatory for Human Rights in Syria and had been in hiding since troops stormed the city two months ago.

Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said security forces fired live ammunition to disperse the mourners Sunday, but there was no immediate word on casualties.

Tanks and jets: Kenyan military moves into Somalia

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Kenyan tanks, artillery and hundreds of fighters are moving through militant territory in Somalia, residents said Monday.

Fighter jets and helicopters have been flying overhead since Kenyan forces moved en masse into Somalia on Sunday. The invasion came one day after Kenyan defense officials said the country has the right to defend itself against al-Shabab militants after a string of kidnappings inside Kenya. Four Europeans have been abducted and one killed.

Witnesses in the Somali town of Dhobley on Monday said an estimated 40 Kenyan military vehicles entered the town on Sunday. Ali Abdullahi, a resident in Dhobley, said the army vehicles were towing what he described as "big guns."

No large-scale fighting has yet broken out, the residents said.

Late Sunday evening, a military helicopter crashed and caught fire inside Kenya from an apparent mechanical malfunction, a diplomat and a resident said. No civilian casualties were reported but the status of the pilots on board was not immediately known.

Kenya's government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, said Kenyan troops "are pursuing al-Shabab across the border." He did not give any other details.

In response, al-Shabab, Somalia's most dangerous militant group, tried to raise the alarm in areas it controls. Residents in the town of Qoqani who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals said militants were going into homes and forcibly recruiting new fighters.

"Are you ready to live under Christians?" one al-Shabab official shouted on a militant radio station. "Get out of your homes and defend your dignity and religion. Today is the day to defend against the enemy."

A Somali government spokesman, Abdirahman Omar Osman, said his government welcomes logistical support from "our Kenyan brothers," but said Somalia did not need Kenyan troops.

"Our forces are ready to combat al-Shabab and they are doing so effectively. They are ready at the borders, so sending troops is not needed," Osman said.

The helicopter crashed in Liboi, a town about 10 miles (20 kilometers) from the Kenya-Somalia border. The Liboi resident asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals. The diplomat's employer does not allow him to be identified.

Mutua and Kenya's military spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kenyan troops have frequently crossed the border into Somalia, but Sunday's push appears to be a bigger and more concerted effort. Minister of Internal Security George Saitoti told a news conference on Saturday that Kenyan forces would pursue al-Shabab into Somalia.

"For the first time our country is threatened with the most serious level of terrorism," he said.

The public declaration to attack al-Shabab came two days after armed militants kidnapped two Spanish aid workers with the group Doctors Without Borders from the Dadaab refugee camp, a sprawling expanse of temporary homes where almost 500,000 Somalis live. The population of Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp, has swelled by tens of thousands in recent months because of Somalia's famine.

On Oct. 1, Somali gunmen took a wheelchair-bound Frenchwoman from her home near the resort town of Lamu. Somalis also abducted a British woman from a Kenyan coastal resort in September. Her husband was killed in the attack.

Kenya's push north into Somalia will open another front that Somali militants must contend with. African Union forces from Uganda and Burundi have expanded their control of Mogadishu in recent months and have almost completely forced al-Shabab out of the capital

France: Math teacher immolates herself at school

MONTPELLIER, France (AP) — A high school math teacher in southern France sprayed herself with a flammable product and set herself alight in the schoolyard during recess Thursday, France's education minister said.

The motives behind the incident, which took place early Thursday in the Mediterranean city of Beziers, were not immediately clear.

The teacher, whose name has not been released, was flown via helicopter to nearby Montpellier and hospitalized with serious burns.

"I saw a person who was running and on fire. it was a human torch," said Dolores Roques, a fellow teacher at the school, on France-Info radio. "I didn't believe my eyes. It seemed unreal. The students were screaming everywhere."

Education Minister Luc Chatel visited the hospital, and said a psychological support unit would be set up in the school.

Chatel said her health "is extremely worrying." Speaking on RTL radio, he described her as a "teacher who is in a situation of great fragility" who has been undergoing medical and professional help and that an investigation would help determine the reasons for her "desperate act."

We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

"Tavarez was ... was worried about getting sent back [to patrol] and, you know, the supervisors getting on his case," he recounted at the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.

"I had decided to give him [Tavarez] the drugs to help him out so that he could say he had a buy," Anderson testified last week in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

He made clear he wasn't about to pass off the two legit arrests he had made in the bar to Tavarez.

"As a detective, you still have a number to reach while you are in the narcotics division," he said.

NYPD officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Anderson worked in the Queens and Brooklyn South narcotics squads and was called to the stand at Arbeeny's bench trial to show the illegal conduct wasn't limited to a single squad.

"Did you observe with some frequency this ... practice which is taking someone who was seemingly not guilty of a crime and laying the drugs on them?" Justice Gustin Reichbach asked Anderson.

"Yes, multiple times," he replied.

The judge pressed Anderson on whether he ever gave a thought to the damage he was inflicting on the innocent.

"It was something I was seeing a lot of, whether it was from supervisors or undercovers and even investigators," he said.

"It's almost like you have no emotion with it, that they attach the bodies to it, they're going to be out of jail tomorrow anyway; nothing is going to happen to them anyway."

The city paid $300,000 to settle a false arrest suit by Jose Colon and his brother Maximo, who were falsely arrested by Anderson and Tavarez. A surveillance tape inside the bar showed they had been framed.

A federal judge presiding over the suit said the NYPD's plagued by "widespread falsification" by arresting officers.

U.S. drone kills cleric in Yemen

2 Americans with links to al-Qaida recruiting targeted in 'milestone' attack
Saturday, October 01, 2011
By Adam Baron, Jonathan S. Landay and Lesley Clark, McClatchy Newspapers
SANAA, Yemen -- The death of U.S.-born Muslim preacher Anwar al-Awlaki in a barrage of missiles fired by U.S. drones over Yemen on Friday dealt a sharp blow to al-Qaida's recruiting efforts, but it's likely to do little to crimp the group's ability to carry out attacks.

President Barack Obama, who authorized the killing of the American-born Mr. Awlaki last year, hailed his death as "another significant milestone in the broader effort to defeat al-Qaida and its affiliates."

"This is further proof that al-Qaida and its affiliates will find no safe haven anywhere in the world," Mr. Obama said, labeling Mr. Awlaki a "leader of external operations" for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which he called the terrorist group's "most active operational affiliate."

A second American, Samir Khan, editor of the English-language al-Qaida magazine Inspire, also died in the attack.

Mr. Awlaki's ability to advocate violent jihad in plain English as well as his use of the Internet and social media such as Facebook and YouTube to disseminate his sermons made him an exceptional recruiter for violent jihad, especially among young, English-speaking Muslims.

"There are a range of [radical Islamists] trying to preach on the Internet, but few people were able to generate the following that he did," said Seth Jones, an expert with the Rand Corp., a policy institute, who is writing a history of al-Qaida. He called Mr. Awlaki "extremely effective as a propagandist."

Others noted, however, that Mr. Awlaki wasn't among the top military commanders of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and that the group's top leader, Nasir al Wihayshi, a former aide to the late Osama bin Laden, as well as its military commander, Qasim al Raymi, and chief bomb-maker, Abdullah al Asiri, remain alive.

"In terms of the operations of AQAP, this will not have a debilitating affect; there are plenty of other AQAP figures that present a much greater threat," said Gregory Johnsen, a Princeton University Yemen analyst.

Word of Mr. Awlaki's death received little attention in Yemen, where he wasn't well-known. The country is enmeshed in a months-long political crisis over the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In Egypt, where bin Laden's death in May sparked marches on the U.S. Embassy by Muslim fundamentalists, there was no reaction to Mr. Awlaki's killing.

Some congressional Republicans congratulated Mr. Obama on the killing. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Mr. Awlaki's death a "serious blow to radical Islam and long-overdue justice." Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the killing "is a tremendous tribute to President Obama and the men and women of our intelligence community."

Germany Returns 20 Skulls to Africa

By VICTOR HOMOLA, The New York Times

Namibian government representatives and leaders of the Herero and Nama tribes attended a ceremony at Charité Hospital in Berlin on Friday to take possession of 20 skulls brought to Germany for racial research a century ago. Although it is not clear how the 9 Hereros and 11 Namas died between 1904 and 1908, the four females and 16 males, including a boy of about three, were possibly victims of German colonial forces in their colony South West Africa. Imperial German troops and settlers massacred tens of thousands of tribe members when they revolted in 1904, after being expelled from their land, or recruited them into forced labor. In Berlin, scientists tried to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans over black Africans by analyzing features of the heads, Thomas Schnalke, the head of the Berlin Medical Historical Museum, told The Associated Press. According to Charité officials, there are still roughly 7,000 skulls from all over the world in their collection. "Today's handing over of the skulls into Namibian hands recalls a dark chapter in German Namibian history," Cornelia Pieper, Minister of State at the German Foreign Ministry, said in a statement. "With deep respect I commemorate the people who died more than one hundred years ago in the fight for their self-determination."

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.




Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11274/1179088-82.stm?cmpid=nationworld.xml#ixzz1ZWnbqDbN

Canada boy, treated in U.S. after hospital refuses, dies

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - A 20-month-old Canadian boy with an incurable neurological disorder whose life was extended in the United States after a Canadian hospital declined further treatment, has died at his Ontario home, a family spokesman said on Wednesday.

The plight of the boy, known as Baby Joseph, drew attention in both countries, where end-of-life issues including abortion and euthanasia have stirred passions and political activism.

A Canadian hospital where the boy, Joseph Maraachli, had been treated, as well as several U.S. hospitals, refused further treatment of the child and had recommended allowing him to die at home.

Baby Joseph, who suffered from Leigh's disease, was brought to Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center in St. Louis by his father and Frank Pavone of the New York-based anti-abortion organization Priests for Life.

While in the U.S. hospital, the boy was given a tracheotomy to allow easier breathing and sent back to his home in Windsor, Canada, where he died on Tuesday evening.

"He passed away peacefully at home with his parents and family at his side. Praise God he had seven precious months with his family to be surrounded by love and was not put to death at the hands of doctors," family spokesman Brother Paul O'Donnell said in a Facebook posting.

"We want to thank God and everyone else for the support. I don't think he would have made it that long if there weren't those prayers from all over the world," Maraachli's aunt, Faith Nader, told Canadian television.

Doctors at the London Health Sciences Center hospital in London, Ontario, had recommended sending the baby home in March but allowed the transfer of the child to St. Louis "despite the strongest possible medical advice to the contrary."

Pavone issued a statement Wednesday from Amarillo, Texas, saying, "This young boy and his parents fulfilled a special mission from God. Amidst a culture of death where despair leads us to dispose of the vulnerable, they upheld a culture of life where hope leads us to welcome and care for the vulnerable."

Pavone was also involved in the case of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who went into a coma after a cardiac arrest. Schiavo's parents were opposed to her husband's efforts to disconnect her feeding tube and allow her to die after 15 years in a vegetative state.

The husband ultimately prevailed in court, and Terri Schiavo died in 2005. Pavone was an advocate on behalf of Schiavo's parents and was at her bedside as she was dying, according to the Priests for Life website.

According to the National Institutes of Health, Leigh's disease is an extremely rare inherited neurometabolic disorder that strikes the central nervous system and ultimately kills its victims by impairing their respiratory and kidney function.

Bank of America to charge $5 debit card fee

NEW YORK (AP) -- Bank of America plans to start charging customers a $5 monthly fee for using their debit card to make purchases. The fee will be rolled out starting early next year.

A number of banks have already either rolled out or are testing such fees. But Bank of America's announcement carries added weight because it is the largest U.S. bank by deposits.

Anne Pace, a Bank of America Corp. spokeswoman, said Thursday that customers will only be charged the fee if they use their debit cards for purchases in any given month. Customers won't be charged if they only use their cards at an ATM.

The fee will apply to basic accounts and will be in addition to any existing monthly service fees. For example, one of the bank's basic accounts charges a $12 monthly fee unless customers meet certain conditions, such as maintaining a minimum average balance of $1,500.

A fee for using debit cards is still a novel concept for many consumers and was unheard of before this year. But there are signs it may soon become an industry norm.

SunTrust, a regional bank based in Atlanta, began charging a $5 debit card fee on its basic checking accounts this summer. Regions Financial, which is based in Birmingham, Ala., plans to start charging a $4 fee next month.

Chase and Wells Fargo are also testing $3 monthly debit card fees in select markets. Neither bank has said when it will make a final decision on whether to roll out the fee more broadly.

The growing prevalence of the debit card fee is alarming for Josh Wood, a 32-year-old financial adviser in Amarillo, Texas.

Wood relies entirely on debit cards to avoid interest charges on a credit card. If his bank, Wells Fargo, began charging a debit card fee, he said he would take his business to a credit union.

If a debit fee became so prevalent that it was unavoidable, Wood said he's not sure how he'd react.

"I might use all cash. Or go back to writing checks," he said.

The debit card fee isn't the only unwelcome change for checking account customers are seeing either. The banking industry has been raising fees and scaling back on rewards programs as they adjust to new regulations that will limit traditional revenue sources.

Starting Oct. 1, a regulation will cap the fees that banks can collect from merchants whenever customers swipe their debit cards. Those fees generated $19 billion in revenue for banks in 2009, according to the Nilson Report, which tracks the payments industry.

There is no similar cap on the fees that banks can collect from merchants when customers use their credit cards, however. That means banks may increasingly encourage customers to reach for their credit cards, reversing a trend toward debit card usage in the past several years.

An increasing reliance on credit cards would be particularly beneficial for Bank of America, which is a major credit card issuer, notes Bart Narter, a banking analyst with Celent, a consulting firm.

"It's become a more profitable business, at least in relation to debit cards," Narter said.

This summer, an Associated Press-GfK poll found that two-thirds of consumers use debit cards more frequently than credit cards. But when asked how they would react if they were charged a $3 monthly debit card fee, 61 percent said they'd find another way to pay.

If the fee were $5, 66 percent said they would also change their payment method.

Bank of America's debit card fee will be rolled out in stages starting with select states in early 2012. The company would not say which states would be affected first.

Bank of America shares rose 9 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $6.25 in afternoon trading.