Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/151837640?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Saturday, October 22, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Clinton in Pakistan seeking strong antiterror push
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) ? U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in Pakistan to personally deliver a blunt Obama administration demand that Pakistani authorities step up counterterror efforts against insurgents operating on the border with Afghanistan.
Clinton arrived in Islamabad on Thursday from Afghanistan, where she pointedly told Pakistan that it must be part of the solution to the Afghan conflict. She says the U.S. expects the Pakistani government, military and intelligence services to take the lead in not only fighting Pakistan-based militants but also in encouraging Afghan militants to reconcile with Afghan society.
Clinton is leading a high-level U.S. delegation in Pakistan that includes CIA chief David Petraeus and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey. She said the team would "push Pakistan very hard" on the matter.
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Thursday, October 20, 2011
Hamas releases Israeli soldier in prisoner swap: Hamas source (Reuters)
GAZA (Reuters) ? Gaza's Hamas Islamist rulers released captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on Tuesday in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, a Hamas military source said, in a deal ending a saga that has gripped Israel for five years.
The source said Shalit, 25, was taken across the frontier from the Gaza Strip into Egypt's Sinai peninsula, where he was handed over to Egyptian officials who will take him to Israel's Vineyard of Peace border crossing a short distance away down a desert road.
There was no immediate confirmation from Israel or Egypt.
Israel was to release 477 Palestinian prisoners during the day. Some were due to be taken to the Sinai and handed over to Egyptian officials for transfer to the Gaza Strip, which is run by Hamas. Other were to go free in the occupied West Bank.
Some 40 are being sent into exile to Turkey, Qatar and Syria. Another 550 Palestinians are to be released in a second stage of the Egyptian-brokered agreement, expected in about two months.
The mood in Israel was one of joy. Shalit has been popularly portrayed as "everyone's son" and opinion polls showed that an overwhelming majority of Israeli backed the thousand-for-one deal, although many of the prisoners going free were convicted of deadly attacks.
For Palestinians, it was a time to celebrate what Hamas hailed as a victory, and a heroes' welcome awaited the released prisoners. Palestinians see brethren jailed by Israel as prisoners of war in a struggle for statehood.
The deal received a green light from Israel's Supreme Court late on Monday after it rejected petitions from the public to prevent the mass release of prisoners, many serving life sentences for deadly attacks.
Shalit was abducted in June 2006 by militants who tunneled into Israel from the Gaza Strip and surprised his tank crew, killing two of his comrades. He has since been held incommunicado and was last seen looking pale and thin in a 2009 video shot by his captors.
On reaching Israel, Shalit will be flown by helicopter to an air base in the center of the country where he will be greeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reunited with his family. Later he will fly to his home in northern Israel.
HIGH PRICE
The repatriation of captured soldiers, alive or dead, has long been an emotionally charged issue for Israelis. Many have served in the military as conscripts and see it as sacrosanct. But they also feel stung by the high price they feel Israel is paying for Shalit.
"I understand the difficulty in accepting that the vile people who committed the heinous crimes against your loved ones will not pay the full price they deserve," Netanyahu wrote in a letter, released by his office, to bereaved Israeli families.
Israel, which withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, tightened its blockade of the coastal territory after Shalit was seized and taken there.
The deal with Hamas, a group classified by the United States and European Union as a terrorist organization over its refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence, is not expected to have a direct impact on efforts to revive Middle East peace talks.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas rival, has been pursuing U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood in the absence of negotiations with Israel that collapsed 13 months ago in a dispute over settlement-building in the occupied West Bank.
Crowds gathered in both Gaza and the West Bank awaiting the return of their prisoners.
"This is the greatest joy for the Palestinian people," said Azzia al-Qawasmeh, awaiting at a West Bank checkpoint for her son Amer, who she said had been in prison for 24 years.
(Additional reporting by Rami Amichai, Ronen Zvulun, Ari Rabinovitch and Nidal al-Mughrabi and Douglas Hamilton in Gaza and Tom Perry in Ramallah; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
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Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Obama opens campaign-style jobs tour in key states (Reuters)
ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama sought on Monday to turn up the heat on Republicans for blocking his jobs bill in Congress as he began a campaign-style bus tour across states vital to his 2012 re-election chances.
Hitting the road again, this time in the swing states of North Carolina and Virginia, Obama attempted to rally public support pressuring lawmakers to pass at least parts of his $447 billion jobs package, even after the plan as a whole was defeated last week.
"We're going to give members of Congress another chance to step up to the plate and do the right thing," Obama told a cheering crowd at the airport in Asheville, North Carolina, the starting point for his three-day trek in a black armored bus.
As Senate Democrats prepared to force a vote this week on one of Obama's jobs proposals, which would give states money to employ teachers, the president mocked the Republicans who had blocked his original bill.
"Maybe they just couldn't understand the whole all at once. So we're going to break it up into bite-size pieces so they can take a thoughtful approach to this legislation," he said.
Obama's strategy is to force Republicans to accept his proposals or be painted as obstructionists getting in the way of economic recovery as campaigning for the November 2012 presidential and congressional elections heats up.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that the Republicans opposing Obama's jobs plan had not put forward a proposal of their own that would have a meaningful economic or hiring impact in the next 12 to 18 months.
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, said the ideas his party proposed last week to require a balanced budget, promote foreign trade and push offshore energy exploration would have a more significant effect than Obama's short-term stimulus.
"The Republican plan is focused on the type of reforms that will provide a lasting environment for private sector job creation, rather than a fleeting sugar high," Buck said, also questioning why Obama was on the road rather than speaking with lawmakers in Washington to find areas of agreement.
"This bus tour looks a lot like the kind of political game the president has said the American people are tired of," he said.
DEADLOCK IN CONGRESS
Republicans say Obama's jobs package was laden with wasteful spending and counterproductive tax hikes for wealthier Americans who tend to be entrepreneurs and job creators.
Their disagreement has extended the deadlock that brought the United States to the edge of sovereign default in August when Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on deficit cuts as part of a deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.
It looks unlikely that any major steps to spur hiring will be passed before the 2012 election, when Obama will be judged for his economic stewardship.
In Asheville, the president said partisan considerations needed to be set aside for the economy's sake.
"We can't do nothing. Too many folks are hurting out there to do nothing," he said.
The White House billed Obama's trip -- his second bus tour through small-town America since he visited the rural Midwest in August -- as a chance to reconnect with ordinary citizens.
His itinerary takes in two traditionally conservative states he won in 2008 but which polls show he is in danger of losing in his bid for a second term. But the White House said Obama's trip was official business with all costs covered by taxpayers, not from his campaign coffers.
Waving people lined the streets in front of gas stations, fast-food restaurants and shopping malls as Obama's bus, with dark-tinted windows and red and blue flashing lights, led a long motorcade across the green, rolling hills.
The bus tour takes place well over a year before the election during a period when incumbent presidents generally are spending their campaign time raising money.
Obama's focus on retail politicking at this stage suggests he realizes he has a tough road in 2012 and has to start early to hammer home his message that Republicans are refusing to join with him in finding ways to fix the U.S. economy.
At a Southern barbecue restaurant where he stopped for lunch, diners expressed mixed views of the Democrat's record.
"This isn't 'Obama Country' but I voted for him once and I'll vote for him again," said Howard Ward, 76, a retired textile manager. "He's doing the best he can with jobs. But it's going to be very close in this state in 2012."
An elderly woman sitting nearby shook her head as she ate a barbecue chicken sandwich. "He hasn't done anything to fix the economy. He doesn't deserve a second chance," she said.
(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, Steve Holland and Laura MacInnis; Editing by Will Dunham)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111017/pl_nm/us_obama
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Lionsgate announces new TV sales vice president (Reuters)
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Lawrence Szabo, an 18-year veteran of MGM's Worldwide Television Group, was named Lionsgate's new executive vice president of North America television sales, the studio announced on Monday.
He will report to Lionsgate president of worldwide television distribution and digital operations, Jim Packer.
Szabo's North American distribution responsibilities will include sales of all Lionsgate television content across all platforms in the U.S. and all new television content to digital and traditional media platforms. He will also work with Alliance Films on distribution of the Lionsgate filmed entertainment library in Canada.
Szabo most recently served as senior Vice President of the MGM Worldwide Television Group and co-managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, based in London. In this capacity he was responsible for MGM's television distribution and television library sales in other international territories.
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Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Jackson doctor's defense looms in trial's 4th week (AP)
LOS ANGELES ? The trial of Michael Jackson's personal physician will enter a new phase this week, with the doctor's attorneys trying to counter three weeks of damaging testimony and attempting to show that the singer somehow caused his own death.
Lawyers for Dr. Conrad Murray have told jurors that the involuntary manslaughter case will hinge on the science of what killed Jackson in June 2009. They will call their own experts to counter prosecution witnesses who have repeatedly told the panel that Murray was reckless and beyond the fringes of medicine when he administered the anesthetic propofol to help Jackson sleep.
The Houston-based cardiologist has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys continue to maintain that Jackson somehow gave himself the fatal dose of medication. They have abandoned the theory that Jackson died after swallowing propofol, but now contend he was killed after taking several pills of the sedative lorazepam and possibly giving himself a shot of propofol after Murray left the singer's bedroom.
Before the defense lays out its case ? expected to consist of 15 witnesses and last until the end of the month ? it will have to contend with the government's final witness, Dr. Steven Shafer. The Columbia University researcher and professor helped write the warnings and directions included with every vial of propofol ? warnings a prosecutor said in opening statements that Murray ignored.
Defense attorney Nareg Gourjian declined to say Friday who Murray's team would call to testify, but told the judge they would include police officers, experts and some character witnesses. He was not asked, nor did he mention, whether Murray would testify in his own defense.
It seems unlikely that Murray will testify. Jurors have already heard his more-than-two-hour interview in which he laid out his version of events before Jackson's death to a detective who acknowledges he wasn't conducting an interrogation.
If Murray takes the stand, he would undoubtedly be asked by prosecutors about several unanswered questions, such as why he never told paramedics or ER doctors about giving Jackson propofol, why he never told police he was on the phone for long stretches of the morning Jackson died, and why he recorded the singer when he was impaired, stumbling his way through his plans for a children's hospital and cementing a legacy larger than those attained by Elvis Presley or The Beatles.
In his opening statement to jurors, lead defense attorney Ed Chernoff said Murray's team would try to answer two fundamental questions:
"First, how did Michael Jackson get to this point, this desperate point," Chernoff said. "And second, what happened when Dr. Murray was out of the room?"
Prosecution witnesses have acknowledged that only Jackson and Murray know what really happened, but two medical experts testified last week that Murray was grossly negligent. Even if Jackson somehow was able to give himself medication after Murray left the room, the doctor should have been closely monitoring the singer and should have never left any medications within arms' reach, the doctors said.
Ellyn Garofalo, who last year won an acquittal for one of Anna Nicole Smith's doctors charged with improperly prescribing pain medications, said Murray's team should focus on their expert testimony and not start calling character witnesses.
"If they start to call character witnesses, they don't have a great deal of faith in their defense," she said.
She said the experts should be able to show that the case isn't as simple as prosecutors have claimed, and that it is filled with "all kinds of shades of gray."
Murray's attorneys should also try to argue that prosecutors should not be second-guessing medical decisions. "Do we really want the DA's office making medical decisions for doctors," she asked.
Murray's case, she noted, differs in one major respect from the case against her client, who was never accused of causing Smith's death.
Garofalo said Murray's case will be harder to win, and prosecutors so far have done a solid job of showing that the doctor shouldn't have been giving Jackson propofol as a sleep aid in the superstar's bedroom.
"It's a strong case because you have somebody dead after somebody did something that is unheard of," Garofalo said.
Murray's defense strategy also appears to involve calling hostile witnesses, including police officers who prosecutors did not call during their case. The defense scored some points early in the trial by getting a coroner's investigator to acknowledge that she moved some evidence around in Jackson's bedroom before photographing it and that she didn't keep all her notes. The officers would likely undergo the similar harsh questioning about their decisions.
They may also call doctors who previously treated Jackson but have never been formally accused of wrongdoing. They are barred from calling one doctor whose name has been repeatedly mentioned during the trial ? Jackson's longtime dermatologist Dr. Arnold Klein.
Murray's team may also call Jackson's hairdresser, Karen Faye, who they have said will testify that the singer was distraught at the prospect of performing 50 comeback concerts at London's O2 arena. Such an account would be in contrast with several other witnesses who said Jackson was excited about the concerts and that his three children would see him perform.
The trial, which is entering its fourth week, has moved rapidly, with 33 witnesses so far and both sides presenting more than 250 pieces of evidence. At its current pace, jurors should receive the case next week.
___
Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP
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