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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

More details sought on mute Boston bomb suspect

In this Friday, April 19, 2013 photo obtained by The Associated Press and authenticated by a member of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF and FBI agents check suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for explosives and also give him medical attention after he was apprehended in Watertown, Mass., at the end of a tense day that began with his older brother, Tamerlan, dying in a getaway attempt. Tsarnaev lay hospitalized in serious condition under heavy guard Saturday as investigators continue piecing together the who and why of the two brothers involved in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings. (AP Photo)

Lt. Mike Murphy of the Newton, Mass., fire dept., carries an American flag down the middle of Boylston Street after observing a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the bombing at the Boston Marathon near the race finish line, Monday, April 22, 2013, in Boston, Mass. At 2:50 p.m., exactly one week after the bombings, many bowed their heads and cried at the makeshift memorial on Boylston Street, three blocks from the site of the explosions, where bouquets of flowers, handwritten messages, and used running shoes were piled on the sidewalk. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

A woman wipes a tear at a memorial for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing on Boylston Street near the race finish line, Monday, April 22, 2013, in Boston, Mass. At 2:50 p.m., exactly one week after the bombings, many bowed their heads and cried at the makeshift memorial on Boylston Street, three blocks from the site of the explosions, where bouquets of flowers, handwritten messages, and used running shoes were piled on the sidewalk. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

A man prays at a memorial for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing on Boylston Street near the race finish line, Monday, April 22, 2013, in Boston, Mass. At 2:50 p.m., exactly one week after the bombings, many bowed their heads and cried at the makeshift memorial on Boylston Street, three blocks from the site of the explosions, where bouquets of flowers, handwritten messages, and used running shoes were piled on the sidewalk. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Audrey Gasteier, left, of Cambridge, Mass., and Aminata Ndiaye, center, of Boston, join others to observe a minute of silence at City Hall Plaza in Boston for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings Monday, April 22, 2013, one week after the explosions. The remembrance was held at 2:50 p.m., the time the first of the two bombs exploded near the race's finish line. (AP Photo/Bill Sikes)

BOSTON (AP) ? The 19-year-old charged with the Boston Marathon bombing, his throat injured by a gunshot wound, wrote down answers to the questions of investigators about his motives and connections to any terror networks.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's answers led them to believe he and his brother were motivated by a radical brand of Islam without major terror connections, said U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

But the written communication precluded back-and-forth exchanges often crucial to establishing key facts and meaning, said officials who cautioned they were still trying to verify what Tsarnaev told them and were poring over his telephone and online communications.

Tsarnaev was interrogated and charged Monday in his hospital room, where he was in serious condition with the throat wound and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway. His brother, Tamerlan, 26, died Friday after a fierce gunbattle with police.

The charges came just hours before a memorial service for one of the three people killed in the bombings, 23-year-old Boston University graduate student Lu Lingzi, was held at the school and attended by hundreds of people, including Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

"She's gone but our memories of her are very much alive," said her father, Lu Jun, who spoke in his native tongue and was followed by an English interpreter. "An ancient Chinese saying says every child is actually a little Buddha that helps their parents mature and grow up."

Tsarnaev, a student at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, was charged with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. He was accused of joining with his brother in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed Lu and two other people and wounded more than 200 on April 15.

The next step in the legal process against Tsarnaev is likely to be an indictment, in which federal prosecutors could add new charges. State prosecutors have said they expect to charge Tsarnaev separately in the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who was shot in his cruiser Thursday night on the campus in Cambridge.

After Tsarnaev is indicted in the bombing, he will have an arraignment in federal court, when he will be asked to enter a plea.

Under federal law, as a defendant charged with a crime that carries a potential death penalty, he is entitled to at least one lawyer who is knowledgeable about the law in capital cases. Federal Public Defender Miriam Conrad, whose office has been asked to represent Tsarnaev, filed a motion Monday asking that two death penalty lawyers be appointed to represent Tsarnaev, "given the magnitude of this case."

A probable cause hearing ? at which prosecutors will spell out the basics of their case ? was set for May 30. According to a clerk's notes of Monday's proceedings in the hospital, U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler indicated she was satisfied that Tsarnaev was "alert and able to respond to the charges."

Tsarnaev did not speak during Monday's proceeding, except to answer "no" when he was asked if he could afford his own lawyer, according to the notes. He nodded when asked if he was able to answer some questions and whether he understood his rights.

Conrad declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

The criminal complaint outlining the allegations shed no light on the motive for the attack. The two U.S. officials who spoke anonymously said preliminary evidence from the interrogation suggests the brothers were motivated by religious extremism but were apparently not involved with Islamic terrorist organizations.

The brothers, ethnic Chechens from Russia who had been living in the U.S. for about a decade, practiced Islam.

A statement released Monday by Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs bolstered the U.S. officials' comments about seeking details on the suspect's other modes of communication and his associations.

Two foreign nationals arrested Saturday on immigration violations are from the central Asian nation and may have known the suspects, the ministry said. U.S. authorities came across the students while searching for "possible links and contacts," it said.

Officials have not disclosed the names of the nationals, who the ministry said were found to have "violated the U.S. visa regime."

In the criminal complaint against Tsarnaev, investigators said he and his brother each placed a knapsack containing a bomb in the crowd near the finish line of the 26.2-mile race. The FBI said surveillance-camera footage showed Dzhokhar manipulating his cellphone and lifting it to his ear just instants before the two blasts.

After the first blast, a block away from Dzhokhar, "virtually every head turns to the east ... and stares in that direction in apparent bewilderment and alarm," the complaint says. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, "virtually alone of the individuals in front of the restaurant, appears calm."

He then quickly walked away, leaving a knapsack on the ground; about 10 seconds later, a bomb blew up at the spot where he had been standing, the FBI said.

The FBI did not say whether he was using his cellphone to detonate one or both of the bombs or whether he was talking to someone.

Among the details in the affidavit:

? Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had gunshot wounds to the head, neck, legs and hands when he was captured hiding out in a boat in a backyard in the Boston suburb of Watertown, authorities said.

? One of the brothers ? it wasn't clear which one ? told a carjacking victim during their getaway attempt, "Did you hear about the Boston explosion? I did that."

? The FBI said it searched Tsarnaev's dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth on Sunday and found BBs as well as a white hat and dark jacket that look like those worn by one of the suspected bombers in the surveillance photos the FBI released a few days after the attack.

Shortly after the charges were unveiled, Boston-area residents and many of their well-wishers ? including President Barack Obama at the White House ? observed a moment of silence at 2:49 p.m. ? the moment a week earlier when the bombs exploded.

In addition to that and the memorial for Lu, who was from Shenyang, China, and studied statistics at BU, a funeral was held Monday at St. Joseph Church for another victim, Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager who had gone to watch a friend finish the race. Services have not been announced for the third bombing victim, 8-year-old Martin Richard, of Boston.

As of Monday, 51 people remained hospitalized, three of them in critical condition. At least 14 people lost all or part of a limb; three of them lost more than one.

___

Sullivan reported from Washington. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Steve Peoples, Allen Breed, Bridget Murphy, Jay Lindsay and Bob Salsberg in Boston and Pete Yost in Washington.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-23-US-Boston-Marathon-Explosions/id-7349a52c90a44fadb1cd4c464b736d31

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In Paraguay, a rich conservative must tackle poverty

By Daniela Desantis and Hilary Burke

ASUNCION (Reuters) - For Horacio Cartes, a millionaire cigarette and soft drink magnate who will be Paraguay's next president, the challenge now is to run a country where most people can only dream of having a sliver of the wealth he does.

The 56-year-old, who won election on Sunday with 46 percent of the vote and will take office in August, campaigned as a center-right conservative at a time when most of Latin America is run by leftists.

Indeed, Cartes has touted a pro-business agenda that includes modernizing the bloated state, which employs about 10 percent of all workers in Paraguay. At a news conference on Monday, he said the state's "main responsibility is to create an environment so that the private sector can work with calm."

He also wants to attract up to $2.7 billion in private capital to refurbish Paraguay's airports and build new highways.

"We have to try to make investments in infrastructure without growing our mass of public workers," he said on Monday.

Yet it may not be quite that easy.

Cartes himself has acknowledged that, to be successful, he must also cater to Paraguay's poor masses. Poverty runs near 40 percent and per-capita gross domestic product was just $5,413 in 2011, the second-lowest in South America behind only Bolivia, according to International Monetary Fund data.

The country of 6.6 million has long been one of the region's most politically unstable, with a fragile economy dependent on agriculture. The last elected president, Fernando Lugo, was impeached last year following civil unrest.

A political novice who never voted before 2009, Cartes will have strong support from Congress, but will also have to sustain the support of his center-right Colorado Party, whose 60-year reign was interrupted by Lugo's election in 2008.

On Sunday, the Colorado Party won control of the lower house and 19 of 45 Senate seats, preliminary election results showed. The Liberals had the second-biggest showing and leftist coalitions came in third place, with Lugo elected senator.

Cartes has promised to reform the Colorado Party, infamous for corruption and whose long period in power included General Alfredo Stroessner's 1954-1989 dictatorship. But some in the party will likely push back against change.

"It's very difficult to know what Cartes wants to do," said political analyst Jose Carlos Rodriguez.

"In principle, he has a neo-conservative project that gives a strong impulse to private companies and nothing to the state. But there's a major inconsistency there and he'll also have a powerful party that will demand certain benefits."

NOTORIOUS FOR CONTRABAND

Paraguay relies heavily on soybean and beef exports but it is also notorious for contraband trade and money laundering. Growth is seen at 13 percent this year after a severe drought caused a contraction in 2012, according to the central bank.

Land conflicts have intensified in recent years and the small, violent left-wing Paraguayan People's Army operates in northern regions.

In January, the Liberal government took an unprecedented step to tap global debt markets, selling $500 million in 10-year bonds that were nearly 12 times oversubscribed.

Cartes expressed misgivings on Monday over the bond, saying the issue was a "very positive step" but that the money could not be used on salaries or other fixed costs that would "grow the daddy state."

On Monday, Paraguay's global bond was trading largely steady. A New York-based trader said it was yielding at 4.37 percent, or 26 basis points tighter than when it was first issued at par, but he said the paper was very illiquid.

Latin America's leftist bloc is especially strong in the Mercosur trade group, which includes Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Uruguay. Mercosur suspended Paraguay in June when Lugo was ousted, arguing the two-day impeachment trial was tantamount to a coup.

Soon after, Mercosur brought in socialist Venezuela even though its inclusion was never approved by Paraguay's Congress.

Cartes told reporters on Sunday that he had already made contacts with Mercosur officials to ensure Paraguay's full return to the group. The presidents of Argentina and Uruguay welcomed Paraguay back into the fold after Cartes' victory.

Fiona Mackie, Paraguay analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit research firm, said she did not think Cartes would pursue plans to open airports and state utilities to private investment due to resistance within the Colorado Party.

"That said, a Cartes government would be relatively open to foreign investment in mineral resources," she wrote last week, noting the recent discovery of a major titanium deposit and plans for an aluminum smelter by Rio Tinto Alcan.

(Additional reporting by Mariel Cristaldo and Joan Magee for IFR in New York; Editing by Brian Winter, Eric Walsh and Vicki Allen)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/paraguay-rich-conservative-must-now-tackle-poverty-200844066--business.html

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Monday, April 22, 2013

Life in India: Girl vanishes. Police are called. Nothing happens.

NEW DELHI (AP) ? A child disappears. Police are called. Nothing happens.

Child rights activists say the rape last week of a 5-year-old girl is just the latest case in which Indian police failed to take urgent action on a report of a missing child. Three days after the attack, the girl was found alone in locked room in the same New Delhi building where her family lives.

More than 90,000 children go missing in India each year; more than 34,000 are never found. Some parents say they lost crucial time because police wrongly dismissed their missing children as runaways, refused to file reports or treated the cases as nuisances.

The parents of the 5-year-old said that after their daughter disappeared, they repeatedly begged police to register a complaint and begin a search, but they were rejected.

Three days later, neighbors heard the sound of a child crying from a locked room in the tenement. They broke down the door and rushed the brutalized girl to the police station.

The parents said the police response was to offer the couple 2,000 rupees ($37) to keep quiet about what had happened.

"They just wanted us to go away. They didn't want to register a case even after they saw how badly our daughter was injured," said the girl's father, who cannot be identified because Indian law requires a rape victim's identity be kept secret.

Delhi's Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar admitted Monday that local police had erred in handling the case.

"There have been shortfalls, so the station house officer and his deputy have been suspended," Kumar told reporters.

Other poor parents of missing children say they also have found police reluctant to help them.

In 2010, police took 15 days to register a missing-persons case for 14-year-old Pankaj Singh. His mother is still waiting for him to come home.

"Every day my husband and my father would go wait at the police station, but they would shoo them away," Pravesh Kumari Singh said as she sat on her son's bed, surrounded by his pictures and books.

One morning in March 2010, she fed her son a breakfast of fried pancakes and spicy potatoes, then left for a community health training program.

"He told me he would have a bath and settle down to study for his exams," said Singh, clutching the boy's photograph to her heart.

When she returned, he was gone. "The neighbors said some boys had called him out. We searched everywhere, went to the police, but they refused to believe that something had happened to our son."

The police insisted he had run off with friends and would return, she said.

"They said we must have scolded him or beaten him, which is why he had run away from home," she said.

Formal police complaints were registered in only one-sixth of missing child cases in 2011, said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer with Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Save the Childhood Movement. He said police resist registering cases because they want to keep crime figures low, and that parents are often too poor to bribe them to reconsider.

Ribhu said the first few hours after a child goes missing are the most crucial. "The police can cordon off nearby areas, issue alerts at railway and bus stations, and step up vigilance to catch the kidnappers," he said.

Activists say delays let traffickers move children to neighboring states, where the police don't have jurisdiction. There is no national database of missing children that state police can reference.

Police have insisted that most of missing children are runways fleeing grinding poverty.

"It's easy enough to blame the police for not finding the children. Some of the parents do not even possess a photograph of the child. Or they will come up with a years-old picture. It becomes difficult when there's not even a photograph to work with," Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said last month when asked about complaints on police inaction in investigating case of missing children.

Many cases involved poor migrant construction workers who move from site to site around the city, Bhagat said.

"The children are unfamiliar with the place and once they lose their way, they wouldn't know how to return," he said.

India's Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath told Parliament last month that the problem of missing children had assumed "alarming" proportions. The National Crime Records Bureau reported that 34,406 missing children were never found in 2011, up from 18,166 in 2009.

Activists say some children are trafficked and forced to beg on the streets. Some work on farms or factories as forced labor and others have their organs harvested and sold. The activists say young girls are pushed into the sex trade or sold for marriage.

"The government is just not ready to confront the issue of trafficking or missing children. And this gets reflected in the apathy of the police in dealing with cases of missing children," said Ribhu, the lawyer.

In 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation said at least 815 criminal gangs were kidnapping children for begging, prostitution or ransom.

The Save the Childhood Movement said police have not cracked a single one of those syndicates.

"Despite our providing the police with all the details of where a child was picked up from, where he was taken, the police are simply not willing to act," said Ribhu.

Two streets away from Singh, in a tiny windowless room crammed with clothes, bedding and a stove, Pinky Devi keeps a prized possession locked away in a drawer: a faded color photograph of her son Ravi Shankar.

One afternoon in November 2011, she says, the 11-year-old went off with other children to a neighborhood fair. He never returned.

Devi said the police visited her home a couple of times and spoke to her neighbors, but their interest soon wore out.

"I'm sure if we had money to spend on them, the police would have been more active in tracing my son," said Devi, her two younger sons and infant daughter clinging to her sari in their one-room tenement in southeast Delhi.

Shantha Sinha, who heads the government's National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, acknowledged that much remained to be done to make police take cases of missing children seriously.

"There has to be a strong message that in every incident of a missing child, a criminal case has to be registered and the case is properly investigated," Sinha said.

Kunwar Pal, a construction worker, fears police indifference crushed his efforts to find his son Ravi Kumar.

Since the 12-year-old disappeared three years ago, the distraught father has cycled across India's sprawling capital, visiting police and railway stations, children's homes and hospitals, handing out posters and photographs of his missing son. Every time he hears of a child found anywhere in the city, he cycles to the police station, hoping it's Ravi.

Pal, a lean 45-year-old with haunted eyes, refuses to think the worst. He believes Ravi was taken by a childless couple who wanted a child of their own.

"If they were to let me know somehow that my son is alive, I would be happy," said Pal, his spare frame wracked by dry heaves. "They can keep him. Just let me see his shadow. Just let me know he's safe."

He also believes police would have worked harder if he had not been poor.

"If I were rich, my son would have been found by now. If I had money, the police would have taken the case more seriously," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/indian-girls-rape-highlights-police-apathy-103156990.html

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Prosecutors move quickly to build Marathon case

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Obama administration has a range of legal options in the Boston Marathon bombings, and they could include seeking the death penalty against the 19-year-old suspect in the case.

The administration has indicated it intends to move quickly to build a criminal case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. But investigators plan to first question him without informing him of his legal rights to remain silent and have an attorney present.

Several Republican lawmakers on Saturday criticized the administration's approach because they said it would afford Tsarnaev more rights than he deserves. The federal public defender for Massachusetts called for the quick appointment of a lawyer to represent Tsarnaev because of serious issues involving his interrogation in the absence of a lawyer.

Prosecution of Tsarnaev in federal court would seem a natural course for an administration that previously won a life sentence against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria for trying to blow up a packed jetliner using a bomb sewn into his underwear on Christmas Day 2009.

The administration also will put Osama bin Laden's son-in-law on trial in January on charges that he conspired to kill Americans in his role as al-Qaida's chief spokesman.

As a U.S. citizen, Tsarnaev could not be tried by a military commission under current law; the only option for prosecuting an American is in civilian courts. A federal official with knowledge of the case said Tsarnaev was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in September 2012. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about details of the case and requested anonymity.

Tsarnaev was under armed guard at a Boston hospital and was reported in serious condition and unable to be interrogated Saturday. He has yet to be charged but prosecutors appear to have no shortage of federal laws at their disposal.

The most serious charge would be the use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill people, which carries a possible death sentence. Three people died in the twin explosions in Boston and more than 180 were injured.

Massachusetts does not have the death penalty, and it remains to be seen whether the administration would try to persuade a jury to sentence Tsarnaev to death. The state could try to bring charges against him, including for the death of Sean Collier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who authorities say was killed by Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan.

An early question that arose after Tsarnaev's capture on Friday was how to conduct his initial interrogation.

The administration said it would not immediately inform him of legal protections known as the Miranda rights. Instead, prosecutors planned to invoke a public safety exception created by the need to protect police and the public from immediate danger.

The American Civil Liberties Union's executive director, Anthony Romero, said the exception applies only when there's a continued threat to public safety, like whether there is imminent danger from other bombs, and is "not an open-ended exception" to the Miranda rule.

The federal public defender for Massachusetts, Miriam Conrad, said her office expects to represent Tsarnaev after he is charged and that he needs a lawyer appointed as soon as possible because there are "serious issues regarding possible interrogation."

But several congressional Republicans said Tsarnaev's rights should be even more restricted than the administration intends.

"I am disappointed that it appears this administration is once again relying on Miranda's public safety exception to gather intelligence which only allows at best a 48-hour waiting period that may expire since the suspect has been critically wounded," Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement hours after Tsarnaev was captured.

Chambliss' concerns were echoed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as well as Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

"A decision to not read Miranda rights to the suspect was sound and in our national security interests," the four said in a statement. "However, we have concerns that limiting this investigation to 48 hours and exclusively relying on the public safety exception to Miranda, could very well be a national security mistake. It could severely limit our ability to gather critical information about future attacks from this suspect."

But Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a former federal prosecutor and member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the administration should ignore "hasty calls to treat the suspect as an enemy combatant."

"This is not a foreign national caught on an enemy battlefield, but an American citizen arrested on American soil," Schiff said. "The Justice Department has demonstrated a far greater ability to successfully prosecute suspected terrorists in federal courts than the military commissions have thus far been able to show. Nothing must be done to compromise the public safety, the ability of prosecutors to seek justice for the victims or our constitutional principles."

While the Republicans asserted that Tsarnaev can be held as an enemy combatant, the Supreme Court has never resolved whether citizens or foreign nationals arrested on U.S. soil can be held by the military, as opposed to civilian authorities.

The court twice was prepared to take up that question in recent years, once while George W. Bush was president and once since Barack Obama became took office. Both times, the administration moved the suspected terrorists, U.S. citizen Jose Padilla and graduate student Ali al-Marri, from a military brig to civilian confinement to head off the high court case.

___

Associated Press writers Denise Lavoie in Boston and Donna Cassata and Alicia A. Caldwell in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/prosecutors-move-quickly-build-marathon-case-194420543--politics.html

Trick or Treat

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Quake jolts China's Sichuan, killing 70

In this photo provided by China's official Xinhua News Agency, a giant rock blocks the road, about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from the county seat of Lushan in Ya'an city, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Saturday, April 20, 2013. A powerful earthquake jolted China's Sichuan province Saturday near where a devastating quake struck five years ago. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Hai Mingwei) NO SALES

In this photo provided by China's official Xinhua News Agency, people gather on a street to avoid aftershocks of an earthquake, in Shifang, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Saturday, April 20, 2013. At least two people were killed Saturday when a powerful earthquake jolted China's Sichuan province near the same area where a devastating quake struck five years ago, with state media warning the casualty toll could climb sharply. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Zhang Xiaoli) NO SALES

In this photo provided by China's official Xinhua News Agency, students gather outside their school buildings to avoid aftershocks of an earhtquake, in Dazhou, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Saturday, April 20, 2013. People were killed Saturday when a powerful earthquake jolted China's Sichuan province near the same area where a devastating quake struck five years ago, with state media warning the casualty toll could climb sharply. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Deng Liangkui) NO SALES

BEIJING (AP) ? A powerful earthquake jolted China's Sichuan province Saturday near where a devastating quake struck five years ago, killing at least 70 people and leaving more than 2,000 hurt, prompting worries the death toll will climb.

The quake ? measured by China's seismological bureau at magnitude-7 and the U.S. Geological Survey at 6.6 ? struck the steep hills of Lushan county shortly after 8 a.m. toppling buildings, many of them older brick structures. Tiles fell from roofs and walls collapsed, sending people into the streets in their underwear and wrapped in blankets.

Rescue workers turned a square outside the Lushan's county hospital into a triage center with medical personnel treating the wounded, according to footage on China Central Television.

The emergency response office for the city of Ya'an, which administers Lushan, said the death toll had climbed to 70, including 56 from Lushan, as of 2 p.m., with more than 2,000 injured.

It said in a written statement that nearly all of the structures in Longmen village collapsed and that nearly 10,000 houses were damaged throughout the county.

Hard-hit parts of the county remained unreachable by road, with several highways cut off, the statement said.

The county's power grid has been disrupted and phone services were only partially available, the authorities said. State media said some text and Internet services were working.

A person whose posts to a micro-blogging account "Qingyi Riverside" on Sina Corp.'s Twitter-like Weibo service carried a Lushan geotag said that many buildings collapsed and that people could spot helicopters hovering above.

Aerial photos released by China's military and shown on state television showed individual houses in ruins and some stretches of the county seat and villages flattened into rubble. The roofs of some taller buildings appeared to have slipped off exposing the floors beneath them.

The quake's shallow depth, less than 13 kilometers (8 miles), likely magnified the impact and CCTV showed footage from local security cameras shaking. Xinhua said that the quake rattled buildings in the provincial capital of Chengdu 115 kilometers (70 miles), to the east. It caused the shutdown of the city's airport for about an hour before reopening, state media said.

Lushan, where the quake struck, is home to 124,000 people where the fertile Sichuan plain meets foothills that eventually rise to the Tibetan plateau. The area is near a well-known preserve for pandas, Bifengxia, which Xinhua said was not affected by the quake. Dozens of pandas were moved to Bifengxia from another preserve, Wolong, after its habitat was wrecked by the 2008 quake.

Ya'an authorities said more than 2,000 rescuers were dispatched to the disaster area, along with excavators, loaders, 200 tents and 1,400 quilts.

Premier Li Keqiang flew to Ya'an to direct rescue efforts, and he and President Xi Jinping ordered officials and rescuers to make saving people the top priority, Xinhua said.

Social media users who said they were in Lushan county posted photos of collapsed buildings and reported that water and electricity had been cut off. At least 35 aftershocks ? at least two of them at magnitude-5 or higher ? shook the area.

"It's too dangerous," said a person with the Weibo account Chengduxinglin and with a Lushan geotag. "Even the aftershocks are scary."

The area lies near the same Longmenshan fault where the devastating 7.9-magnitude quake struck May 12, 2008, leaving more than 90,000 people dead or missing and presumed dead.

"It was just like May 12," said Liu Xi, a writer in Ya'an city, who was jolted awake by Saturday's quake. "All the home decorations fell at once, and the old house cracked."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-20-AS-China-Earthquake/id-001fd65f842440d7ab9cf986b2cabeee

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Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Pressure cooker bombs used in past by militants

CAIRO (AP) ? Homemade bombs built from pressure cookers, a version of which was used in the Boston Marathon bombings, have been a frequent weapon of militants in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen once published an online manual on how to make one, urging "lone jihadis" to act on their own to carry out attacks.

President Barack Obama underlined Tuesday that investigators do not know if the twin bombing the day before that killed three people and wounded more than 170 was carried out by an international organization, a domestic group or a "malevolent individual." There has been no claim of responsibility.

A person briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press that the explosives were fashioned out of pressure cookers and packed with shards of metal, nails and ball bearings to inflict maximum carnage.

The relative ease of constructing such bombs and the powerful punch they deliver has made them attractive to insurgents and Islamic extremists, particularly in South Asia. They have turned up in past bombing plots by Islamic extremists in the West, including a plan by a U.S. soldier to blow up a restaurant frequented by fellow soldiers outside Fort Hood, in Texas. One of the three devices used in the May 2010 Times Square attempted bombing was a pressure cooker, according to a joint FBI and Homeland Security intelligence report issued in July 2010.

Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen gave a detailed description on how to make a pressure cooker bomb in the 2010 first issue of "Inspire," its magazine that only appears online, in a chapter titled "Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom."

"The pressurized cooker is the most effective method" for making a simple bomb, the article said, describing how to fill the cooker with shrapnel and gunpowder and to create a detonator using the filament of a light bulb and a clock timer.

"Inspire" magazine has a running series of such training articles called "Open Source Jihad," which the group calls a resource manual for individual extremists to carry out attacks against the enemies of jihad, including the U.S. and its allies. The magazine is targeted heavily at encouraging "lone wolf" jihadis.

An issue last year reprinted an older article by a veteran Syrian jihadi Abu Musab al-Souri addressing would-be jihadis proposing a long list of possible targets for attacks, among them "crowded sports arenas" and "annual social events."

Notably, Army Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison last year for the Fort Hood restaurant bombing plot, was discovered to have a copy of the "How to build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom" article, according to the FBI. Investigators found bombmaking materials in his hotel that included a pressure cooker and gunpowder, according to testimony at his trial.

The SITE Monitoring Service, a U.S. independent group tracking militant messaging online, noted that Islamic extremists are not the only ones paying attention to the al-Qaida magazine: White supremacists have also circulated copies on their web forums. They found "Inspire" and "other al-Qaida manuals beneficial for their strategies," it said.

Over the course of 10 issues the past three years, "Inspire" has given detailed instructions with diagrams and photos on how to use automatic weapons, produce remote control detonators, set fire to a building or create forest fires. In the most recent issue, put out in March, it described how to set fire to a parked vehicle and how to cause road accidents with oil slicks on a road or tire-bursting spikes.

The chapters, including the one on pressure cooker bombs, were compiled into a booklet titled "The Lone Mujahed Pocketbook," released on Islamic militant web sites in March, according to SITE.

Al-Qaida's Yemeni branch, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has repeatedly tried to carry out direct attacks on U.S. soil, once by dispatching the would-be 2009 Christmas bomber of a U.S. jet ? whose attack failed when the explosives hidden in his underwear failed to go off ? and then the following year by trying to mail explosives to the U.S. in packages that were intercepted.

The pressure cooker bomb's most frequent use seems to be in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and India in attacks against police or the public. This year, local press reports in Pakistan have reported several such bombs found planted on streets, including in the city of Karachi, where multiple militant groups operate.

In 2010, suspected militants attacked the U.S.-based Christian aid group World Vision in northwestern Pakistan, killing six Pakistani employees with a remotely detonated pressure cooker bomb.

That same year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security put out a warning about such explosives, noting their frequent use in South Asia.

"The presence of a pressure cooker in an unusual location such as a building lobby or busy street corner should be treated as suspicious," it said.

AP correspondents Cassandra Vinograd and Paisley Dodds in London and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pressure-cooker-bombs-used-past-militants-204616173.html

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