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Stay-put Christian businessman killed in Mosul

by Kim Gamel / Associated Press

Monday October 13, 2008, 10:35 PM

APA Christian boy looks on as he sits at the back of his family car after leaving Mosul, at a checkpoint of Qaraqosh area about 30 kilometers (18 miles) east of Mosul, 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq, on Monday, Oct 13, 2008.Thousands of Christians have abandoned their homes in Mosul in recent days to seek refuge in churches and with relatives in neighboring villages or in relatively safe Kurdish-controlled areas nearby. Fears have been raised after at least 10 Christians were killed in separate attacks this month.

BAGHDAD -- The music store owner had too many mouths to feed to consider joining other Iraqi Christians fleeing violence in Mosul. The decision cost him his life as he became at least the 10th Christian slaughtered by suspected Sunni extremists in the northern city so far this month.

APChristian militiamen stand guard outside the Saint George church as they provide security in their Christian community in the village of Tel Asquf, Mosul, 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq, on Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008.

Gunmen stormed into Farques Batool's store late Sunday in an eastern part of the city, killing him and wounding his teenage nephew, according to police and a neighbor.

Batool, an Armenian Christian, was supporting his mother, his wife, a daughter, as well as the family of his dead brother, according to his neighbor.

"He was a very kind man who refused to leave Mosul and insisted on staying to take care of his family," Raid Bahnam said. The family fled the city after his death, leaving his wounded nephew in the hospital.

They joined thousands of other Christians who have abandoned their homes in Mosul to seek refuge in churches and with relatives in neighboring villages or in relatively safe Kurdish-controlled areas nearby.

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American arrested in Pakistani border region

by Associated Press

Monday October 13, 2008, 10:25 PM

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A 20-year-old American man was arrested late Monday at a checkpoint near the Afghan border in a tribal region where Pakistani troops are fighting Taliban and al-Qaida militants, police said.

Officers were investigating what the man was doing in the border area, said one officer, Pir Shahab. The frontier region has seen months of fighting between militants and security forces and is believed to be a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and other foreign extremists.

Shahab said the man -- identified on his passport as Juddi Kenan -- did not have permission to be in the region as is required by Pakistani law. He was arrested at a checkpoint trying to enter Mohmand agency, Shahab said.

"He is holding an American passport, which shows him as a resident of Florida," Shahab said.

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Europe puts more on the line for banks than U.S.

by Angela Charlton / Associated Press

Monday October 13, 2008, 10:24 PM

PARIS -- Europe put $2.3 trillion on the line Monday to protect the continent's banks, a figure that dwarfs the Bush administration's $700 billion rescue program, in its most unified response yet to the global financial crisis after a stumbling start.

APFrench President Nicolas Sarkozy, gestures, as he delivers his speech after a crisis summit at the Elysee palace in Paris, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008. Euro nations agreed Sunday to temporarily guarantee bank refinancing as part of a raft of emergency measures to ease the credit crunch.

Bush to unveil expanded bank bailout

The pledges by Britain and the six countries that use the euro helped soothe stock markets, along with a promise by top central banks to provide unlimited short term dollar credits.

The action by Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Austria and Britain came after weeks in which the governments often acted at cross purposes and sniped at each other -- a piecemeal approach that failed to stop steep and frightening slides on financial markets.

"The time of each one for itself is fortunately over," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, following a Cabinet meeting that approved France's spending in the framework of the plan.

"United Europe has pledged more than the United States," added Sarkozy, who has taken a lead in getting the cooperation.

The pledged money will not go into a collective pot. Instead, governments were deciding individually how much to commit to supporting their own banks under broad guidelines agreed at a summit Sunday. The sums are considered a maximum, and might not all be spent if the financial crisis eases.

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UK House of Lords axes 42-day terror detention

by Gregory Katz / Associated Press

Monday October 13, 2008, 10:16 PM

APBritain's Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, reads a statement to the House of Commons, Monday Oct. 13, 2008. Plans to increase detention without charge to 42 days will be dropped from the Counter Terrorism Bill, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said tonight. The measure will instead be the subject of a separate piece of legislation to be brought to Parliament if required, she told lawmakers after the proposal was defeated in the House of Lords by 191 votes. At right listening is Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

LONDON -- Britain's House of Lords rejected a controversial plan to extend the amount of time police can hold terror suspects without charge from 28 to 42 days and the government said it would abandon the proposal.

The 309-118 vote came after an impassioned debate Monday, dealing the government a significant defeat. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said hours after the vote that the government would drop the 42-day clause from the government's counterterrorism bill.

But Smith said a different version would be put into new legislation even though it wouldn't be automatic -- prosecutors would have to apply to a court each time they wanted a terror suspect held for that long and Parliament would then have to vote on each case if the court agreed to it.

The government had said the initial proposal -- endorsed by the House of Commons in June by a margin of only nine votes -- was needed to fight the complex international terrorist threats facing Britain.

The issue has divided Britons in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks raised fears of terrorism. At the time, there was a two-day limit on detention without charge, which could be increased to seven days with court permission.

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Police fight anti-Kosovo protesters in Montenegro

by Predrag Milic / Associated Press

Monday October 13, 2008, 10:07 PM

APPro-Serb Montenegrin rioters clash with police in downtown Podgorica, Montenegro, Monday, Oct. 13, 2008, after anti-government crowds rallied against Montenegro's recognition of Kosovo's independence.

PODGORICA, Montenegro -- Police fired tear gas Monday at thousands of angry pro-Serb Montenegrins who pelted state buildings with rocks and flares to protest their government's recognition of Kosovo's independence. At least 34 were injured.

APA pro-Serb Montenegrin displays the Serbian flag with lettering that reads "Kosovo is Serbia" in downtown Podgorica, Montenegro, Monday, Oct. 13, 2008.

The protesters chanted "Treason! Treason!" and "Kosovo is Serbia!" to condemn the government's decision last week to recognize Kosovo, the former Serbian province that declared independence in February.

Eleven protesters and 23 police officers were injured during the running clashes in downtown Podgorica, Montenegro's capital, hospital officials said. Police said 28 demonstrators were arrested.

Earlier, around 10,000 protesters gave the country's pro-Western government until Wednesday to withdraw its recognition of Kosovo, or they would try to topple it "by unparliamentary means."

"This is the biggest shame in Montenegrin history," Andrija Mandic, a leader of the pro-Serbian opposition in the parliament, told a rally in downtown Podgorica.

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Canadian PM, rival go coast to coast before vote

by Rob Gillies / Associated Press

Monday October 13, 2008, 9:51 PM

Canadian Press, via AP, FileNatalie Campbell, carries her daughter Breanna, 1, as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, seen in poster, campaigned in Iqaluit, Nunavut, on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2008. Harper says if his Conservative party is re-elected, his government will establish a regional development agency devoted to northern Canada. Harper said the agency would help promote job growth in what is becoming an increasingly important region. The region's oil, gas and minerals were once thought to be too difficult to recover, but as global warming has been shrinking the polar ice cap, numerous countries including Canada, Russia and the United States have been trying to assert control in the area.

OTTAWA -- Canada's Conservative prime minister and his Liberal rival crisscrossed the country Monday in a final day of campaigning, with voters concerned the ruling party is out of touch but also that the opposition's leader has trouble communicating in English.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has had a tenuous hold on power since the 2006 election and is forced to rely on the opposition to pass legislation, called Tuesday's vote in hopes of winning the 155 seats needed for a majority in the 308-seat Parliament.

But Harper, the first G-7 leader to face election since the global credit crisis worsened, has been hurt by his slow reaction to the market meltdown, and that -- among other missteps -- may have cost him his bid for the majority.

Harper's rival, Liberal leader Stephane Dion, hopped from the Atlantic coast province of New Brunswick inland to Quebec and then toward the city of Vancouver on the Pacific coast in a last minute blitz of campaign stops. He urged the divided left to vote for his party and dismissed talk he would step down as party leader if he loses.

Dion is a former professor from the French-speaking province of Quebec whose struggles to communicate in English have become an issue. Dion's English is heavily accented and awkward. He stumbles over words during speeches and his grammar is often mangled.

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New S.African health minister: HIV causes AIDS

by Clare Nullis / Associated Press

Monday October 13, 2008, 7:12 PM

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- South Africa's new health minister broke dramatically on Monday from a decade of discredited government policies on AIDS, declaring that the disease was unquestionably caused by HIV and must be treated with conventional medicine.

AP, FileFormer Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang speaks at a news conference in Cape Town, South Africa, Feb. 14, 2008.

More health coverage: Cleveland.com/healthfit

Health Minister Barbara Hogan's pronouncement marked the official end to 10 years of denial about the link between HIV and AIDS by former President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

Activists also accused Tshabalala-Msimang of spreading confusion about AIDS through her public mistrust of antiretroviral medicines and promotion of nutritional remedies such as garlic, beetroot, lemon, olive oil and the African potato.

"We know that HIV causes AIDS," Hogan told an international AIDS vaccine conference. Monday's speech was her highest-profile public appearance since she became health minister two weeks ago after Mbeki was turned out of office by his party.

"It was imperative to get ahead of the curve of this epidemic 10 years ago," she said. "We all have lost ground. It's even more imperative now that we make HIV prevention work; we desperately need an effective HIV vaccine."

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Iraq calmer, but copycat kidnappings spreading

by Pamela Hess / Associated Press

Monday October 13, 2008, 4:02 PM

APKirk von Ackermann

WASHINGTON -- Five years ago, retired Air Force intelligence officer Kirk von Ackermann became the first of 39 Americans to be kidnapped in Iraq. He's still missing, his wife fearing she'll never see him again.

Besides the personal tragedy, his disappearance and those that have followed have taken on a larger significance. They mark a turning point in terrorist tactics that U.S. intelligence officials say has produced a startling statistic: a 500 percent increase in foreigners taken hostage around the world as militants adopt the methods of the most violent figures in the Iraq insurgency.

Figures compiled by the Defense Intelligence Agency from classified and unclassified sources -- provided exclusively to The Associated Press -- show that in 2004, some 342 foreign and U.S. hostages were taken by terrorist and insurgent organizations.

By 2006 that number had grown to 501.

By 2007 it had jumped to more than 1,500, and it is on track to rise even higher this year, according to Thomas Brown, director of the office that analyzes information about prisoners of war and those missing in action.

His office does not count in the total the kidnapping of a country's own residents by terrorist or insurgent groups -- a much more frequent and long-standing practice.

The office gave the AP data providing a more detailed breakdown, including:

• The total kidnappings, some based on classified information.

• The 1,079 foreign kidnappings since 2001 for which the hostage takers are unknown. That smaller number is drawn from public sources and includes cases in which the details of the disappearance are unverified.

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American Paul Krugman, critic of Bush policies, columnist, wins Nobel Prize for economics

by Karl Ritter and Matt Moore / Associated Press

Monday October 13, 2008, 7:16 AM

Princeton UniversityPaul Krugman

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Paul Krugman, the Princeton University scholar, New York Times columnist and unabashed liberal, won the Nobel prize in economics Monday for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect international trade patterns.

Krugman has been a harsh critic of the Bush administration and the Republican Party in The New York Times, where he writes a regular column and has a blog called "Conscience of a Liberal."

He has also taken the Bush administration to task over the current financial meltdown, blaming its pursuit of deregulation and unencumbered fiscal policies for the financial crisis that has threatened the global economy with recession.

Perhaps better known as a columnist than an economist to the public, Krugman has also come out forcefully against John McCain during the economic meltdown, saying the Republican presidential candidate is "more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago." Krugman (pronounced KROOG-man) also has derided the Republicans as becoming "the party of stupid."

Tore Ellingsen, a member of the prize committee, acknowledged that Krugman was an "opinion maker" but added that he was honored on the merits of his economic research, not his political commentary.

"We disregard everything except for the scientific merits," Ellingsen told The Associated Press.

The 55-year-old American economist was the lone winner of the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award and the latest in a string of American researchers to be honored. It was only the second time since 2000 that a single laureate won the prize, which is typically shared by two or three researchers.

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Arabs decry arrest warrant for Sudan's al-Bashir

by Sarah El Deep / Associated Press

Sunday October 12, 2008, 10:23 PM

CAIRO, Egypt -- Arab justice ministers said Sunday that an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president requested by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has "no sound legal basis."

The group's statement, issued after a daylong meeting in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, was a show of support for Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, who is the first sitting head of state to face genocide charges.

Al-Bashir has dismissed ICC charges that he directed mass killings in Darfur as politically motivated and aimed at destabilizing his government. Sudanese officials have lobbied African and Arab governments to support al-Bashir by calling for the ICC to freeze the prosecution process.

Head ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has asked judges to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir, but no decision has been announced.

The group of Arab justice ministers said it "rejects attempts to politicize the principles of international justice" and stated that the ICC prosecutor's request "has no sound legal basis."

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U.S. bio-weapon fears limit bird-flu vaccine sale

by Robin McDowell / Associated Press

Sunday October 12, 2008, 10:13 PM

AP, FileIn this June 5, 2008, photo, chickens look out of their pen in a downtown neighborhood in Jakarta, Indonesia. When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the U.S. out of fear Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and called it "the nuttiest thing" he'd ever heard. Yet buried deep inside an 86-page supplement to U.S. export regulations is a single sentence barring U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu for the same reason.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the U.S. for fear Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and called it "the nuttiest thing" he'd ever heard.

Yet deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries designated "state sponsors of terrorism."

The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare.

Under this little-known policy, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Sudan may not get the vaccines unless they apply for special export licenses, which would be given or refused according to the discretion and timing of the U.S. Three of those nations -- Iran, Cuba and Sudan -- also are subject to a ban on all human pandemic influenza vaccines as part of a general U.S. embargo.

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Pakistani tribesmen rising up against militants

by Chris Brummitt and Riaz Khan / Associated Press

Sunday October 12, 2008, 10:00 PM

APIn this Oct. 9, 2008, photo, Pakistani tribesmen patrol in troubled area of Daudzai near Peshawar, Pakistan. Pakistani tribesmen are raising armies to battle al-Qaida and Taliban militants close to the Afghan border, a movement encouraged by the army and hailed as a sign its offensive there is succeeding.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani tribesmen are raising armies to battle al-Qaida and Taliban militants close to the Afghan border -- a movement encouraged by the military and hailed as a sign its offensive there is succeeding.

The often ramshackle forces lend force to the campaign in the lawless and mountainous northwest region, but analysts question their effectiveness against a well-armed, well-trained and increasingly brutal insurgency.

The extremists are increasingly targeting the tribal militias, an indication they believe the private armies to be a threat.

Security forces clashed with militants in two northwest Pakistani tribal regions, killing more than 50 alleged insurgents, a paramilitary statement and a government official.

Meanwhile, intelligence officials said that a suspected U.S. missile strike in a nearby tribal region had killed five people, but none was believed to be a foreign al-Qaida fighter.

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Top general says NATO isn't losing Afghan war

by Jason Straziuso / Associated Press

Sunday October 12, 2008, 9:54 PM

APU.S. General David McKiernan, commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, left, speaks during a joint press conference with Afghan deputy defense minister Gen. Mohammad Akram, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The top NATO general in Afghanistan on Sunday rejected the idea that NATO is losing the Afghanistan war to an increasingly bloody Taliban insurgency.

But U.S. Gen. David McKiernan also said he needs more military forces to tamp down the militants, and he depicted a chaotic Afghan countryside where insurgents hold more power than the Afghan government seven years after the U.S.-led invasion. He said better governance and economic progress were vital.

"It is true that in many places of this country we don't have an acceptable level of security. We don't have good governance. We don't have socio-economic progress. We don't have people that are able to grow their produce and get it to market. We don't have freedom of movement," he told a news conference in Kabul.

"We don't have progress as evenly or as fast as many of us would like, but we are not losing Afghanistan," he said.

In the country's wild south, meanwhile, Taliban militants launched a surprise attack on the provincial capital of Helmand, sparking a battle that killed about 60 insurgents, an Afghan official said.

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Meanwhile in fiscally isolated Iraq, stocks soaring

by Kim Gamel / Associated Press

Sunday October 12, 2008, 9:44 PM

APIraqis stock traders and buyers watch the boards at the Iraq stock exchange, in Baghdad, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008. While the rest of the world is facing a financial meltdown, the Iraq stock exchange is enjoying a boom. The ISX index has soared 20 percent since September, boosted by huge growth in the hotel sector as investors grow increasingly confident about recent security gains.

More business news: Cleveland.com/business

BAGHDAD -- While the rest of the world is facing a financial meltdown, the Iraq Stock Exchange is booming.

The ISX index soared nearly 40 percent during September, boosted by increasing confidence in security gains.

APA man uses binoculars to check the boards at the Iraq stock exchange, in Baghdad, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008

The ISX is only open two hours a day, three days a week and brokers track trading activity on the floor with colored markers and white bulletin boards instead of computers. But investors are seeing gains, especially in the hotel sector, even as markets elsewhere are taking a tumble.

"I don't think that the current financial crisis will hurt our economy and especially this market because we are not connected to any of the global markets and we have very few foreign investors," said Omar Mouwaffak, a 73-year-old trader resting on a bench along the wall.

Foreigners comprise less than 3 percent of the daily volume, officials said, but with the improving security situation on the ground and a lack of attractive options elsewhere investors hope that could change.

APIraqi stock traders write on a stock exchange board, in Baghdad, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008. While the rest of the world is facing a financial meltdown, the Iraq stock exchange is enjoying a boom.

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