Archive for the ‘AP’ Category

NEW YORK (AP) -- The special political action committees that can raise and spend unlimited campaign money while operating independently of candidates have jumped into the presidential contest with an unmistakable message: Game on.

A super PAC supporting Mitt Romney is out with a hard-hitting ad against Newt Gingrich. Another has run ads for weeks for Rick Perry. Spending by a super PAC in New Hampshire may be the only thing keeping Jon Huntsman's struggling campaign afloat.

Nearly two years after the Supreme Court eased restrictions on corporate money in political campaigns, super PACs have become a major force in the presidential contest. They can attack or support individual candidates as long as they don't coordinate directly with the campaigns themselves.

Conservative-leaning groups spent millions to help Republicans wrest control of the House and pick up several Senate seats in 2010. The 2012 campaign is the first to test the groups' influence on presidential politics.

Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College who studies campaign finance, said super PACs are likely to outspend the candidates themselves in the early contests.

"They have substantial amounts of money, they can raise money quickly, and they have every incentive to spend it in the early states," Corrado said. "For a super PAC supporting a particular candidate, now is the time to spend money. It doesn't do any good to wait until April."

Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is set to start running a harsh attack on Gingrich as part of an enormous, $3.1 million advertising buy in Iowa less than four weeks before the state's kickoff caucuses.

The 60-second ad says Gingrich's "baggage," including $1.6 million he took in fees from the mortgage company Freddie Mac before the 2008 housing meltdown, would make him an easy target for President Barack Obama in the general election.

Make Us Great Again, which backs Perry, has spent more than $2 million on ads over several weeks in Iowa, supplementing the campaign's own substantial advertising buy there. The group has also run ads supporting Perry in South Carolina.

The pro-Perry spending hasn't helped the Texas governor much. He still lags badly in Iowa, trailing Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul in recent polls.

The pro-Huntsman Our Destiny PAC has spent about $1.3 million in New Hampshire. They've been the only TV ads airing that support the former Utah governor, whose cash-strapped campaign has lacked the money to run its own ads.

The pro-Romney PAC started soft.

Restore Our Future's first ad, which debuted Thursday, goes after Obama while stressing Romney's background as a governor and successful businessman. But the new, negative ad aims to slow Gingrich's surging momentum in Iowa and elsewhere.

ACEH, Indonesia (AP) -- The man known as Indonesia's "green governor" chases the roar of illegal chainsaws through plush jungles in his own Jeep. He goes door-to-door to tell families it's in their interest to keep trees standing.

That's why 5,000 villagers living the edge of a rich, biodiverse peat swamp in his tsunami-ravaged Aceh province feel so betrayed.

Their former hero recently gave a palm oil company a permit to develop land in one of the few places on earth where orangutans, tigers and bears still can be found living side-by-side - violating Indonesia's new moratorium on concessions in primary forests and peatlands.

"Why would he agree to this?" said Ibduh, a 50-year village chief, days after filing a criminal complaint against Aceh Gov. Irwandi Yusuf.

"It's not just about the animals," he said, men around him nodding. "Us too. Our lives are ruined if this goes through."

Irwandi - a former rebel whose life story is worthy of a Hollywood film - maintains the palm oil concession is by the book and that he would never do anything to harm his province.

But critics say there is little doubt he broke the law.

The charges against him illustrate the challenges facing countries like Indonesia in their efforts to fight climate change by protecting the world's tropical jungles - which would spit more carbon when burned than planes, automobiles and factories combined.

Despite government promises, what happens on the ground is often a different story. Murky laws, graft and mismanagement in the forestry sector and shady dealings with local officials means that business often continues as usual for many companies.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Alec Baldwin says he was kicked off a plane Tuesday at Los Angeles International Airport after having words with a flight attendant over an "addicting" word game he was playing on his cellphone.

The "30 Rock" actor was asked to get off a New York City-bound flight for playing "Words with Friends" while the plane idled at a gate Tuesday, said Baldwin's spokesman, Matthew Hiltzik.

"He loves `Words with Friends' so much that he was willing to leave a plane for it," said Hiltzik, who added that Baldwin boarded another American Airlines flight to New York.

Baldwin, a prolific Twitter user, took to the social media site to vent, saying a "flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing Words With Friends while we sat at the gate, not moving."

It wasn't clear if passengers had been asked to turn off their cellphones, which is typical before a flight backs away from the terminal.

American Airlines spokesman Ed Martelle declined comment, citing customer privacy concerns.

Airport police Sgt. Belinda Nettles said officers did not respond to the incident.

Baldwin tweeted that it would be his last flight with American, despite the fact that they show "30 Rock" for in-flight entertainment. He mocked American Airlines flight attendants on Twitter, saying the airline is "where Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950's find jobs as flight attendants."

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Terrence Howard was ordered Tuesday to stay 100 yards away from his estranged wife after she claimed the Oscar-nominated actor repeatedly threatened and hit her during their marriage.

The star denies the allegations.

Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon granted the stay-away order sought by Michelle Howard after she filed a lengthy declaration alleging abuse began within a week of the couple's January 2010 marriage.

Michelle Howard filed for divorce a year later.

The restraining order remains in effect until a Jan. 17 court hearing.

She claims Howard, 42, has repeatedly hit her and threatened her in a text message last week. She stated in a sworn declaration that she is in constant fear of Howard and has chronic health issues caused by the actor's treatment.

Howard in his own sworn declaration wrote that he has never threatened his wife and that she has repeatedly vowed to ruin his reputation and release private details.

"I live in constant fear of Michelle's endeavors to ruin my reputation; even providing this declaration may well lead to my being subjected to a paparazzi blitz which would not be good for my career," Howard wrote.

HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) -- An unexpected but fruitful relationship has blossomed between two potent forces in the swamps of South Florida: the American crocodile, and a nuclear power plant.

The reptile has made it off the endangered species list thanks in part to 168 miles of manmade cooling canals surrounding Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant in the southeastern corner of the Florida peninsula. It turns out that Florida Power and Light was building prime croc habitat just as virtually every other developer was paving it over.

Federal wildlife officials give the state's largest public utility part of the credit for a five-fold increase in the species' population in Florida. There are only two other sanctuaries for the crocodiles, which are still considered threatened.

"The way the cooling canal system was designed actually turned out to be pretty good for crocodile nesting," said John Wrublik, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "It wasn't designed for crocodiles, but they've done a very good job of maintaining that area."

Hundreds of crocodiles, as long as 15 feet and as heavy as one ton, roam the swampland surrounding the power plant. They're monitored by wildlife biologists hired by the utility, who sometimes need quick reflexes to keep all their fingers.

On one recent nighttime survey, Mario Aldecoa jumped from an airboat in total darkness and darted into the bushes to grab a 13-pound crocodile to mark it for identification.

"It's usually just adrenaline and instinct," he said.

The American crocodile is often confused with its plentiful cousin, the alligator. Alligators are black, have broad, rounded snouts and are found throughout the deep South. Crocodiles are grayish, have narrow tapered snouts and are so sensitive to cold that their only U.S. habitat is in South Florida.

South Florida's rampant development eroded the crocodile's habitat over decades of booming growth. By the 1970s, there were less than 300 in the state. The federal government had classified the species as endangered, meaning it was in danger of becoming extinct.

In 1977, Florida Power employees stumbled upon a crocodile nest in the plant's cooling canal system. A monitoring program set up a year later was originally intended to ensure the plant did no harm to the species, but ended up recording the facility's role in the crocodile's rebound. Dozens of other protected species, including the manatee and loggerhead turtle, also are found on the utility's properties across the state.

There are more than 1,500 American crocodiles in South Florida today. An opinion issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in May 2006 noted that the increase in has been attributed to Florida Power's management activities in its cooling canals.

Canals and berms such as those found at the power plant site provide nesting habitat that has "to some extent compensated for the loss of habitat elsewhere," explained Frank Mazzotti, a professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida.

The recirculating water system at Turkey Point works somewhat like the closed cooling system in a car. Eight large, powerful circulating water pumps take cooling water from canals at Turkey Point and circulate it through a condenser. The water then flows back to the closed-loop canal network, which essentially serves as a giant radiator.

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) -- With the implosion of Herman Cain's campaign amid accusations of adultery and sexual harassment, the once-crowded 2012 Republican presidential field appears to be narrowing to a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

GOP voters have one month before the leadoff Iowa caucuses. Gingrich is showing strength in the latest Iowa poll, while Romney is strong in New Hampshire, site of the first primary.

Romney has maintained a political network since his failed 2008 presidential bid, especially in New Hampshire. Gingrich, whose campaign nearly collapsed several months ago, is relying on his debate performances and the good will he built up with some conservatives as a congressional leader in the 1980s and 1990s.

Gingrich's efforts appear to be paying off in Iowa. A Des Moines Register poll released late Saturday found the former House speaker leading the GOP field with 25 percent support, ahead of Ron Paul at 18 percent and Romney at 16.

Cain's suspension of his campaign Saturday, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry's continued struggles to make headway with voters, have focused the party's attention on Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and Gingrich, a one-time congressman from Georgia. They offer striking contrasts in personality, government experience and campaign organization.

Their political philosophies and differences are a bit harder to discern. Both men have changed their positions on issues such as climate change. And Gingrich, in particular, is known to veer into unusual territories, such as child labor practices.

Romney has said he differs with Gingrich on child labor laws. Gingrich recently suggested that children as young as nine should work as assistant school janitors, to earn money and learn work ethics.

Cain's announcement in Atlanta offered a possible opening for Romney or Gingrich to make a dramatic move in hopes of seizing momentum for the sprint to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus. Neither man did. They appear willing to play things carefully and low-key for now.

At a town hall meeting in New York sponsored by tea party supporters, Gingrich declined to characterize the race as a direct contest between himself and Romney. Any of the remaining GOP contenders could stage a comeback before the Iowa caucuses, he said. "I'm not going to say that any of my friends can't suddenly surprise us," Gingrich said.

But once high-flying contenders such as Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota have not managed to bounce back so far, despite weeks of trying.

In an interview Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Bachmann said she was the "consistent conservative" in the race and her campaign would benefit most from Cain's departure.

DURBAN, South Africa (AP) -- Yvo de Boer said he left his job as the U.N.'s top climate official in frustration 18 months ago, believing the process of negotiating a meaningful climate agreement was failing. His opinion hasn't changed.

"I still have the same view of the process that led me to leave the process," he told The Associated Press Sunday. "I'm still deeply concerned about where it's going, or rather where it's not going, about the lack of progress."

For three years until 2010, the Dutch civil servant was the leading voice on global warming on the world stage. He appeared constantly in public to advocate green policies, traveled endlessly for private meetings with top leaders and labored with negotiators seeking ways to finesse snags in drafting agreements.

In the end he felt he "wasn't really able to contribute as I should be to the process," he said.

Today he can take a long view on his years as a Dutch negotiator in the 1990s and later as a senior U.N. official with access to the highest levels of government, business and civil society. He is able to voice criticisms he was reluctant to air when he was actively shepherding climate diplomacy.

Negotiators live "in a separate universe," and the ongoing talks are "like a log that's drifted away," he said. Then, drawing another metaphor from his rich reservoir, he called the annual 194-nation conferences "a bit of a mouse wheel."

De Boer spoke to the AP on the sidelines of the latest round of talks in this South African port city, which he is attending as a consultant for the international accounting firm KPMG.

World leaders have failed to become deeply engaged in efforts to reach an international accord to control greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming, he said. In recent years, their inattention has been compounded by their preoccupation with the economic and Eurozone crises.

Negotiators have been at the job so long - since the 1992 climate convention - that they have lost touch with the real world, he said. But it wasn't their fault.

"I completely understand that it is very difficult for a negotiator to move if you haven't been given a political sense of direction and the political space to move," he said, chatting on a hilltop terrace overlooking the Indian Ocean.

Rather than act in their own national interests, many leaders look to see what others are willing - or unwilling - to concede.

"You've got a bunch of international leaders sitting 85 stories up on the edge of a building saying to each other, you jump first and I'll follow. And there is understandably a reluctance to be the first one to jump," he said.

The 2009 Copenhagen summit was a breaking point. Expectations soared that the conference would produce an accord setting firm rules for bringing down global carbon emissions. When delegates fell short, hopes remained high that President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, most of Europe's heads of government and more than 100 other top leaders would save the day at the last minute.

De Boer said he spent the last 24 hours of the summit in "a very small and very smelly room" with about 20 prime ministers and presidents, but the time was not ripe for the hoped-for international treaty.

ISLAMABAD (AP) -- A Pakistani actress who posed in the nude for an Indian magazine with the initials of Pakistan's feared and powerful intelligence agency on her arm has triggered fury across this conservative nation.

Veena Malik's photo on the website of FHM India, in advance of its publication in the magazine's December issue, has been lighting up social network websites since earlier this week.

Many here anticipate a backlash, as nationalists and Islamists regularly stage rallies against anything they deem an insult to Islam or to the national honor. India and Pakistan have fought three wars, and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency or ISI has been accused of sponsoring terrorist attacks inside India.

Malik has broken Pakistani religious and national taboos in the past. She is a target for conservative ire and a heroine to some Pakistani liberals.

Conservative cleric Maulana Abdul Qawi declared on Aaj TV on Saturday that her latest venture into controversy was a "shame for all Muslims."

In an interview with Pakistani Geo television broadcast Saturday, however, Malik said the nude photo was published in violation of her agreement with FHM India and she was considering legal action against the magazine.

Malik acknowledged having been photographed for a "bold but not nude shot." She said the editor of the magazine had promised that he would cover most of the photo with the ISI initials.

The photo was intended to poke fun at the Indian fear of Pakistani spies, she said, adding "whatever happens (in India), people say ISI is behind that."

Magazine editor Kabeer Sharma said Malik had given full consent for the shoot and the picture.

"We have all the record(s)," he told the Pakistani television station. "Veena was very excited about that ISI idea."

Zubair Khan, a 40-year-old shopkeeper in the northwestern city of Peshawar, agreed, saying the photo had given rival India another opportunity to insult Pakistan.

"She has earned a bad name for the entire Pakistan nation," he said.

HOUSTON (AP) -- Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney met with former President George H.W. Bush Thursday, but Romney aides say no endorsement is coming.

The former Massachusetts governor ventured onto the turf of a rival, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, to meet with Bush and his wife, Barbara, in the living room of their Houston home.

Romney spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said Romney and the nation's 41st president are friends, but added that the visit doesn't mean Bush will endorse Romney.

Bush spokesman Jim McGrath said the meeting was a courtesy visit, noting that Bush has met with other GOP presidential hopefuls, including Jon Huntsman.

Bush endorsed Perry during a tight race for lieutenant governor in 1998, giving Perry a winning boost.

Bush's son George won the governor's race that year.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Here's a dream come true for cash-strapped filmmakers: A billion-dollar movie budget.

Next month's Sundance Film Festival, the top showcase for independent cinema, includes the comedy "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie." It's the story of two filmmakers who get the most colossal budget ever, only to have it all go wrong.

The movie, one of dozens announced Thursday by Robert Redford's Sundance festival, features Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Zach Galifianakis. Its writer-directors are Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, a comedy duo whose credits include the TV series "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!"

"Billion Dollar Movie" is part of the festival's popular midnight section of horror, over-the-top comedy and other high-energy films.

Among other midnight titles are director Jon Wright's horror comedy "Grabbers," starring Richard Coyle and Ruth Bradley in the tale of villagers in an Irish fishing town who learn that staying drunk might be their only protection against blood-sucking sea monsters.

They also will include Nicholas McCarthy's "The Pact," with Casper Van Dien and Caity Lotz in the story of a woman whose childhood home is beset by a mysterious presence after her mother's death; "Black Rock," with director Katie Aselton, Lake Bell and Kate Bosworth in a thriller about three friends fighting for survival during a weekend getaway; and Dylan Southern and Joe Swanberg's "Shut Up and Play the Hits," a documentary following LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy for two days amid the band's farewell concert in April.

Sundance programming director Trevor Groth said he aimed to rev up the midnight lineup this time, "so I did a lot of outreach into the pockets of filmmakers making the kind of films we want."

"It's actually going to be one of the most exciting collections of films in the midnight section we've ever had. Something for everyone, as long as they like it kind of crazy," Groth said. "Hopefully, it'll keep you awake. For me, it's the stuff that really pushes the envelope. The more outrageous it is for me, the better. I really want to be shocked or surprised or laugh so hard that I pass out."

BRUSSELS (AP) -- EU foreign ministers failed Thursday to reach an agreement to impose an oil embargo against Iran - a measure that some argued would have choked off funding for Iran's alleged program to develop nuclear weapons.

But the ministers, incensed by the attack Tuesday by an angry mob on the British embassy in Tehran, did impose a new round of sanctions targeting dozens of people, groups and businesses in the country.

The ministers also imposed new sanctions on Syrian individuals and businesses in hope of pressuring the regime there to halt its deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the two issues are related, accusing Iran of supporting the violence in Syria. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates Sryian President Bashar Assad's regime has killed more than 4,000 people over the past several months.

"There is a link between what is happening in Iran and what is happening in Syria," Hague said.

In Iran, EU sanctions were imposed on 37 people and 143 "entities" - companies or organizations. The sanctions include a freeze on assets held in the European Union and a ban on traveling to EU countries.

The full list of names of those targeted will not be known until they are published in the official journal of the EU on Friday. But the official conclusions of the meeting said they include the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line and members of, and entities controlled by, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that Greece, which relies on Iranian oil, had objected to a ban on buying it. But he said work toward an embargo would continue.

"Greece has put forward a number of reservations," Juppe said. "We have to take that into account. We have to see with our partners that the cuts can be compensated by the increase of production in other countries. It is very possible."

Iran has denied it is pursuing nuclear weapons. The attack on the British embassy is believed to have begun as a state-approved protest over Western sanctions linked to the country's nuclear program.

Britain pulled its diplomats out of Iran after its embassy was stormed. Germany, France and the Netherlands have recalled their ambassadors in solidarity.

With regard to Syria, the EU foreign ministers imposed sanctions on 12 people and 11 entities, adding to the list of those previously sanctioned by the EU. The bloc is working with the Arab League to halt the violence, and the league's chief, Nabil Elaraby, attended Thursday's meeting.

A statement from the foreign ministers said the crackdown by the Syrian government "risks taking Syria down a very dangerous path of violence, sectarian clashes and militarization."

LONDON (AP) -- Britain ordered all Iranian diplomats out of the U.K. within 48 hours and shuttered its ransacked embassy in Tehran on Wednesday, in a significant escalation of tensions between Iran and the West.

The ouster of the entire Iranian diplomatic corps deepens Iran's international isolation amid growing suspicions over its nuclear program. At least four other European countries also moved to reduce diplomatic contacts with Iran.

The British measures were announced by Foreign Secretary William Hague, who said Britain had withdrawn its entire diplomatic staff after angry mobs stormed the British Embassy compound and a diplomatic residence in Tehran, hauling down Union Jack flags, torching a vehicle and tossing looted documents through windows.

The hours-long assault Tuesday was reminiscent of the chaotic seizure of the U.S. Embassy in 1979. Protesters replaced the British flag with a banner in the name of a 7th-century Shiite saint, Imam Hussein, and one looter showed off a picture of Queen Elizabeth II apparently taken off a wall.

"The idea that the Iranian authorities could not have protected our embassy or that this assault could have taken place without some degree of regime consent is fanciful," Hague told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

The diplomatic fallout from the attack quickly spread to other Western countries with embassies in Iran. Norway announced it was temporarily closing its embassy as a precaution, and Germany, France and the Netherlands all recalled their ambassadors for consultations. Italy said it was considering such a recall.

Iran currently has 18 diplomats in Britain. About 24 British Embassy staff and dependents were based in Tehran.

The White House condemned the attacks and spokesman Josh Earnest said the U.S. backed Britain's ejection of Iranian diplomats.

European Union foreign ministers were to meet Thursday to consider possible new sanctions against Tehran.

France's budget minister, Valerie Pecresse, said the EU should consider a total embargo on Iranian oil or a freeze on Iranian central bank holdings. British officials said the U.K. would likely support new measures against Iran's energy sector.

CAIRO (AP) -- First-time voter Hassan Abdel-Hamid had no idea who to vote for in Egypt's first parliamentary elections since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, so he followed the guidance of the friendly activist from the Muslim Brotherhood who handed him a flyer outside the polling station.

The fundamentalist Brotherhood was emerging as the biggest winner in partial results Wednesday from the first voting this week in Egypt's landmark election in which voters turned out in unexpected droves.

That strength is not necessarily testimony to widespread Egyptian support for its Islamist ideology. More crucial were two other major factors: the Brotherhood's history of helping the poor and a highly disciplined organization of activists, who on the two days of voting seemed to be everywhere.

Outside polling stations around the country, Brotherhood activists were set up with laptop computers in booths, helping voters find their district and voter numbers - which they wrote on cards advertising the party's candidates. Elsewhere, they posted activists outside to wave banners, pass out flyers or simply chat up voters waiting in line.

And in a marked change from previous elections, when Brotherhood members running as independents touted their Islamic credentials, this time their campaign focused on promises to improve services, to appeal to poor voters.

"Do you think any of these guys prays when it's not a holiday?" said Yasser Dawahi, pointing to four friends hanging out in his auto garage in the poor Cairo neighborhood of Zawiya al-Hamra before the vote. All said they'd vote for the Brotherhood.

"It's all about services, clean streets, jobs and hospitals. That's what's important," he said.

For decades, the Mubarak regime suppressed the Brotherhood, which was banned but still established a vast network of activists and charities offering free food and medical services. It transformed this into a potent campaign machine, holding rallies and wallpapering neighborhoods with banners for its Freedom and Justice Party. After voting closed in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria on Tuesday night, Brothers even lined up to protect the road while ballot boxes were moved to the counting center.

During the voting Monday and Tuesday, many parties violated a legal ban on campaigning during elections, but the Brotherhood's operation was by far the slickest and most widespread. The campaigning at the polls is particularly effective because so many parties are new and most Egyptians know almost nothing about them.

Abdel-Hamid, the first time voter, said he received the flyer telling him how to vote from "the guys with the computer."

They sat across the street in front of a huge Freedom and Justice Party banner, punching voters' ID numbers into their computer to get their voter numbers and make sure they were in the right place.

One of them, 25-year-old Essam Ahmed, acknowledged he was a party activist, but denied the group was campaigning. "Here I'm just a volunteer for all citizens," he said.

Shortly after an Associated Press reporters arrived, the men took down the party banner and wrote voter information on plain white paper instead of party brochures.

The election is likely to be the best indicator of Egyptians' political sentiments after decades of elections under Mubarak that were so rigged that few people even bothered to vote. The parliament it seats will play a role in determining if Egypt's new government remains secular or moves in a profoundly Islamist direction.

The Obama administration on Wednesday hailed the vote as Egypt's freest and fairest ever. This week's voting took place in nine of Egypt's 27 provinces, including the capital Cairo. In subsequent rounds, other provinces will take their turn in a process that will last till March.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- The central banks of the wealthiest countries, trying to prevent a debt crisis in Europe from exploding into a global panic, swept in Wednesday to shore up the world financial system by making it easier for banks to borrow American dollars.

Stock markets around the world roared their approval. The Dow Jones industrial average rose almost 500 points, its best day in two and a half years. Stocks climbed 5 percent in Germany and more than 4 percent in France.

The action appeared to be the most extraordinary coordinated effort by the central banks since they cut interest rates together in October 2008, at the depths of the financial crisis.

But while it should ease borrowing for banks, it does little to solve the underlying problem of mountains of government debt in Europe, leaving markets still waiting for a permanent fix. European leaders gather next week for a summit on the debt crisis.

The European Central Bank, which has been reluctant to intervene to stop the growing crisis on its own continent, was joined in the decision by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the central banks of Canada, Japan and Switzerland.

"The purpose of these actions is to ease strains in financial markets and thereby mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesses and so help foster economic activity," the central banks said in a joint statement.

China, which has the largest economy in the world after the European Union and the United States, reduced the amount of money its banks are required to hold in reserve, another attempt to free up cash for lending.

The display of worldwide coordination was meant to restore confidence in the global financial system and to demonstrate that central banks will do what they can to prevent a repeat of 2008.

That fall, fear gripped the financial system after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a storied American investment house. Banks around the world severely restricted lending to each other. Investors panicked, resulting in a meltdown in stocks.

In October 2008, the ECB, the Fed and other central banks cut interest rates together. That action, like Wednesday's, was a signal from the central banks to the financial markets that they would be players, not spectators.

This year, investors have been nervously watching Europe to see whether they should take the same approach and dump stocks. World stock markets have been unusually volatile since summer.

The European crisis, which six months ago seemed focused on the relatively small economy of Greece, now threatens the existence of the euro, the common currency used by 17 countries in Europe.

There have also been signs, particularly in Europe, that it is becoming more difficult to borrow money, especially as U.S. money market funds lend less money to banks in the euro nations because of perceived risk from the debt crisis.

European banks cut business loans by 16 percent in the third quarter. And no one knows how much European banks will lose on their massive holdings of bonds of heavily indebted countries. Until the damage is clear, banks are reluctant to lend.

Banks are also being pressed by European governments to increase their buffers against possible losses. That helps stabilize the banking system but reduces the amount of money available to lend to businesses.

"European banks are having trouble borrowing in general, including in dollars," said Joseph Gagnon, a former Fed official and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "The Fed did the Europeans a favor."

The central banks are reducing by half a percentage point - to about 0.6 percent - the rate they charge banks for short-term dollar loans. The lower rate is designed to get credit flowing again. Dollars are the No. 1 currency for international trade.

The Fed had offered dollar swaps from December 2007, when world financial markets were weakening because of fear about subprime mortgages, until February 2010. It reopened the program in May 2010, as European debt concerns grew, and planned to end it Aug. 1, 2012.

Wednesday, in addition to lowering the interest rate on dollars borrowed, the Fed extended the program to Feb. 1, 2013. If it works, the rates on dollar loans will drop, and stock and bond markets will calm down.

"It shows that policymakers are on the case," said Roberto Perli, managing director at the International Strategy & Investment Group, an investment firm. He said it has symbolic value even if it does not have a big impact on credit markets.

The decision to cut the interest charged on the dollar swaps was taken by the Federal Reserve following a videoconference held by Fed officials on Monday morning. The Fed's policy-setting panel approved it 9-1. The president of the Fed's regional bank in Richmond, Va., voted no.

In New York, the stock market jumped at the opening bell and added to its gains throughout the day. It finished up 490.05 points, its best day since March 23, 2009, two weeks after the stock market's post-meltdown low.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Massive amounts of greenhouse gases trapped below thawing permafrost will likely seep into the air over the next several decades, accelerating and amplifying global warming, scientists warn.

Those heat-trapping gases under the frozen Arctic ground may be a bigger factor in global warming than the cutting down of forests, and a scenario that climate scientists hadn't quite accounted for, according to a group of permafrost experts. The gases won't contribute as much as pollution from power plants, cars, trucks and planes, though.

The permafrost scientists predict that over the next three decades a total of about 45 billion metric tons of carbon from methane and carbon dioxide will seep into the atmosphere when permafrost thaws during summers. That's about the same amount of heat-trapping gas the world spews during five years of burning coal, gas and other fossil fuels

And the picture is even more alarming for the end of the century. The scientists calculate that about than 300 billion metric tons of carbon will belch from the thawing Earth from now until 2100.

Adding in that gas means that warming would happen "20 to 30 percent faster than from fossil fuel emissions alone," said Edward Schuur of the University of Florida. "You are significantly speeding things up by releasing this carbon."

Usually the first few to several inches of permafrost thaw in the summer, but scientists are now looking at up to 10 feet of soft unfrozen ground because of warmer temperatures, he said. The gases come from decaying plants that have been stuck below frozen ground for millennia.

Schuur and 40 other scientists in the Permafrost Carbon Research Network met this summer and jointly wrote up their findings, which were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

"The survey provides an important warning that global climate warming is likely to be worse than expected," said Jay Zwally, a NASA polar scientist who wasn't part of the study. "Arctic permafrost has been like a wild card."

When the Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists issued its last full report in 2007, it didn't even factor in trapped methane and carbon dioxide from beneath the permafrost. Diplomats are meeting this week in South Africa to find ways of curbing human-made climate change.

Schuur and others said increasing amounts of greenhouse gas are seeping out of permafrost each year. Some is methane, which is 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide in trapping heat.

In a recent video, University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Katey Walter Anthony, a study co-author, is shown setting leaking methane gas on fire with flames shooting far above her head.

"Places like that are all around," Anthony said in a phone interview. "We're tapping into old carbon that has been locked up in the ground for 30,000 to 40,000 years."

That triggers what Anthony and other scientists call a feedback cycle. The world warms, mostly because of human-made greenhouse gases. That thaws permafrost, releasing more natural greenhouse gas, augmenting the warming.

There are lots of unknowns and a large margin of error because this is a relatively new issue with limited data available, the scientists acknowledge.

"It's very much a seat-of-the-pants expert assessment," said Stanford University's Chris Field, who wasn't involved in the new report.

RABAT, Morocco (AP) -- The victory of an Islamist Party in Morocco's parliamentary elections appears to be one more sign that religious-based parties are benefiting the most from the new freedoms brought by the Arab Spring.

Across the Middle East, parties referencing Islam have made great strides, offering an alternative to corrupt, long serving dictators, who have often ruled with close Western support.

The Justice and Development Party dominated Morocco's elections through a combination of good organization, an outsider status and not being too much of a threat to Morocco's all-powerful king.

By taking 107 seats out of the 395 seats, almost twice as many as the second place finisher, the party ensured that King Mohammed VI must pick the next prime minister from its ranks and to form the next government out of the dozen parties in Morocco's parliament.

It is the first time the PJD - as it is known by its French initials - will be part of the government and its outsider status could be just what Morocco, wracked by pro-democracy protests, needs.

Although it didn't bring down the government, the North African kingdom of 32 million, just across the water from Spain, was still touched by the waves of unrest that swept the Arab world following the revolution in Tunisia, with tens of thousands marching in the streets calling for greater freedoms and less corruption.

The king responded by modifying the constitution to give the next parliament and prime minister more powers, and held early elections.

But there was still a vigorous movement to boycott the elections. There was only a 45 percent turnout in Friday's polls, and many of those who went to vote turned in blank ballots or crossed out every party listed to show their dissatisfaction with the system.

Election observers from the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute estimated that up to a fifth of the ballots they saw counted had been defaced in such a way.

In the face of such widespread distrust of politics, historian and political analyst Maati Monjib said a government led by a new political force could be the answer.

"If the PJD forms a coalition in a free and independent way and not with a party of the Makhzen," he said referring to the catch-all phrase for the entrenched establishment around the king, "this will be a big step forward for Morocco."

In Tunisia, Morocco, and on Monday most likely also Egypt, newly enfranchised populations are choosing religious parties as a rebuke to the old systems, which often espoused liberal or left-wing ideologies.

"The people link Islam and political dignity," said Monjib, who describes himself as coming from the left end of the political spectrum. "There is a big problem of dignity in the Arab world and the people see the Islamists as a way of getting out of the sense of subjugation and inferiority towards the West."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- New Hampshire's largest newspaper on Sunday endorsed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the 2012 GOP presidential race, signaling that rival Mitt Romney isn't the universal favorite and potentially resetting the contest before the state's lead-off primary Jan. 10.

"We are in critical need of the innovative, forward-looking strategy and positive leadership that Gingrich has shown he is capable of providing," The New Hampshire Union Leader said in its front-page editorial, which was as much a promotion of Gingrich as a discreet rebuke of Romney.

"We don't back candidates based on popularity polls or big-shot backers. We look for conservatives of courage and conviction who are independent-minded, grounded in their core beliefs about this nation and its people, and best equipped for the job," the editorial said.

Romney enjoys solid leads in New Hampshire polls and remains at the front of the pack nationally. A poll released last week showed him with 42 percent support among likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire. Gingrich followed with 15 percent in the WMUR-University of New Hampshire Granite State poll.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas posted 12 percent support and former Utah Gov. John Huntsman found 8 percent support in that survey.

Those numbers could shift based on the backing of The Union Leader, a newspaper with a conservative editorial stance that proudly works to influence elections, from school boards to the White House, in the politically savvy state.

The endorsement, signed by publisher Joseph W. McQuaid, suggested that the only state-wide newspaper in New Hampshire was ready to again assert itself as a player in the GOP primary.

"We don't have to agree with them on every issue," the newspaper wrote in an editorial that ran across the width of the front page. "We would rather back someone with whom we may sometimes disagree than one who tells us what he thinks we want to hear."

While Romney enjoys solid support in national polls, the large pack of Republicans has shifted all year from candidate to candidate in search of an alternative to the former Massachusetts governor. That led to the rise, and fall, of potential challengers such as Huntsman, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Yet with six weeks until the primary, The Union Leader's move could shuffle the race and further boost Gingrich. In recent weeks, he has seen a surge in some polls as Republicans focus more closely on deciding which candidate they consider best positioned to take on President Barack Obama.

But a Gingrich rival, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, said the endorsement points to how changeable the New Hampshire contest is.

"A month ago for Newt Gingrich to have been in the running to capture the Manchester Union Leader endorsement would have been unthinkable," Huntsman told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." "I think it reflects, more than anything else, the fluidity, the unpredictability of the race right now."

As voters started focusing more on the race, Gingrich has turned in solid debate performances and found his stride on a national stage. He has rebuilt his campaign after a disastrous summer that saw many of his top aides resign en masse and fundraising summaries report million in debt.

In New Hampshire, he brought on respected tea party leader Andrew Hemingway to lead his efforts and his team has been contacting almost 1,000 voters each day.

Hemingway's team of eight paid staffers in New Hampshire has been adding more than 100 volunteers each day, campaign officials said. Gingrich's team has lined up leaders in the major cities and has started identifying representatives in each ward in the state.

Gingrich has opened offices in Manchester, New Hampshire's biggest city, along with Dover in the eastern part of the state and in the North Country's Littleton. He plans two more.

Gingrich hasn't begun television advertising and has refused to go negative on his opponents.

Yet The Union Leader's backing could give him a nudge in New Hampshire and provide a steady stream of criticism.

Four years earlier, the newspaper threw its support to Arizona Sen. John McCain's bid and used front page opinion columns and editorials to boost him and criticize chief rival Romney. In the time since, Romney has worked to court Union Leader publisher Joe McQuaid, who often runs columns on the newspaper's front page under his signature.

"The Union Leader's style is we don't just endorse once," McQuaid told The Washington Post in 1999. "We endorse every damn day. We started endorsing Reagan in 1975 and never stopped."

Romney and his wife, Ann, had dinner with the McQuaids at the Bedford Village Inn near Manchester, hoping to reset the relationship earlier this year. Yet it didn't prove enough and McQuaid's newspaper seemed not to appreciate the outreach.

"Newt Gingrich is by no means the perfect candidate," McQuaid wrote. "But Republican primary voters too often make the mistake of preferring an unattainable ideal to the best candidate who is actually running."

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- They are barely blips in presidential polls and their campaign cash is scarce. Some are running on empty, fueled mainly by the exposure that comes with the blizzard of televised debates in this election cycle and interviews they eagerly grant to skeptical reporters.

Yet the second-tier candidates for the Republican presidential nomination soldier on. They argue that the race is far from over and that anything can happen with polls showing a wide-open race in Iowa five weeks before the Jan. 3 caucuses.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum is typical when he resists the conventional wisdom that only candidates with a lot of cash and a big campaign can win.

"I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing and I feel like I'm making a difference in the race," said Santorum, who barely registers in state surveys despite having campaigned in Iowa for more than a year. "I absolutely believe our time will come and we'll have the opportunity to have the spotlight turned on us."

Santorum, who represented Pennsylvania in Congress for 16 years, frankly acknowledges the possibility of a different outcome.

"If it doesn't, you know, it doesn't," he said.

Even more than energy and determination, also-ran candidates rely on particular issues, free media and prospects for the future to drive them to keep their small-scale operations going.

With polls and money putting candidates like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain atop the field of Republican rivals, there's a crop of others likely to remain in the race until voters have their say. One force in that dynamic is the fluidity of this year's contest.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman, was among the many candidates who surged when they got into the race but then plummeted in the polls. She's gotten feistier as her fortunes have sagged.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- They are fuzzy about some issues but the Republican presidential candidates leave little doubt about where they stand on gun rights.

Rick Perry and Rick Santorum go pheasant hunting and give interviews before heading out. Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain speak to the National Rifle Association convention. Michele Bachmann tells People magazine she wants to teach her daughters how to shoot because women need to be able to protect themselves. Mitt Romney, after backing some gun control measures in Massachusetts, now presents himself as a strong Second Amendment supporter.

President Barack Obama, on the other hand, is virtually silent on the issue.

He has hardly addressed it since a couple of months after the January assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz., when he promised to develop new steps on gun safety in response. He still has failed to do so, even as Tucson survivors came to Capitol Hill last week to push for action to close loopholes in the gun background check system.

Democrats have learned the hard way that embracing gun control can be terrible politics, and the 2012 presidential election is shaping up to underscore just how delicate the issue can be. With the election likely to be decided largely by states where hunting is a popular pastime, like Missouri, Ohio or Pennsylvania, candidates of both parties want to win over gun owners, not alienate them.

For Republicans, that means emphasizing their pro-gun credentials. But for Obama and the Democrats, the approach is trickier.

Obama's history in support of strict gun control measures prior to becoming president makes it difficult for him to claim he's a Second Amendment champion, even though he signed a bill allowing people to take loaded guns into national parks. At the same time, he's apparently decided that his record backing gun safety is nothing to boast of either, perhaps because of the power of the gun lobby and their opposition to anything smacking of gun control.

LONDON (AP) -- Writer J.K. Rowling and actress Sienna Miller gave a London courtroom a vivid picture on Thursday of the anxiety, anger and fear produced by living in the glare of Britain's tabloid media, describing how press intrusion made them feel like prisoners in their own homes.

The creator of boy wizard Harry Potter told Britain's media ethics inquiry that having journalists camped on her doorstep was "like being under siege and like being a hostage." Miller said years of car chases, midnight pursuits and intimate revelations had left her feeling violated, paranoid and anxious.

"The attitude seems to be absolutely cavalier," Rowling said. "You're famous, you're asking for it."

The pair were among a diverse cast of witnesses - Hollywood star Hugh Grant, a former soccer player, a former aide to supermodel Elle Macpherson and the parents of missing and murdered children - who have described how becoming the focus of Britain's tabloid press wreaked havoc on their lives.

Rowling said she was completely unprepared for the media attention she began to receive when her first book, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," became a sensation. The seven Potter books have sold more than 450 million copies, spawned a hit movie series and propelled Rowling from struggling single mother to one of Britain's richest people.

"When you become well-known ... no one gives you a guidebook," she said.

Prime Minister David Cameron set up the inquiry amid a still-unfolding scandal over illegal eavesdropping by the News of the World tabloid. Owner Rupert Murdoch closed down the newspaper in July after evidence emerged that it had illegally accessed the mobile phone voice mails of celebrities, politicians and even crime victims in its search of scoops.

More than a dozen News of the World journalists and editors have been arrested, and the scandal has also claimed the jobs of two top London police officers, Cameron's media adviser and several senior Murdoch executives.

It has also set off national soul-searching about the balance between press freedom and individual privacy.

Rowling, 46, said media interest in her began shortly after the publication of her first novel in 1997 and soon escalated, with photographers and reporters frequently stationed outside her home. She eventually moved after stories and photographs revealed the location of her house.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- TITLE: "Believe in America"

LENGTH: 60 seconds

AIRING: In New Hampshire through Sunday

KEY IMAGES: The ad opens with grainy footage from a Barack Obama rally in Londonderry, N.H., in the midst of his 2008 presidential campaign against Sen. John McCain. Obama proclaims "I am confident that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis." Text is then shown on the screen: "He promised to fix the economy. He failed."

The ad then cuts between footage from Obama's rally and stock video of shuttered businesses, foreclosed homes and shuffling workers. On screen, text declares: "Greatest Jobs Crisis Since Great Depression. Record Home Foreclosures. Record National Debt."

The imagery then shifts to blue skies and Mitt Romney's name on the side of a barn. As Romney promises to change government, the ad shows video of him speaking in Iowa, meeting with a voter - with his book "No Apology" on the table between them - and stock video of factory workers.

"I'm going to do something to government. I call it the `Smaller, Simpler, Smarter' approach to government. Getting rid of programs, turning programs back to states and, finally, making government itself more efficient," Romney says, using video from a Nov. 7 appearance in Dubuque, Iowa. "I'm going to get rid of Obamacare. It's killing jobs and it's keeping our kids from having the bright prospects they deserve."

He then turns to the economy, voters' top concern.

"We have a moral responsibility not to spend more than we take in. I'll make sure that America is a job creating machine like it has been in the past. It's high time to bring those principles of fiscal responsibility to Washington, D.C."

The ad closes with a photograph of Romney's campaign announcement event in New Hampshire this spring. His campaign poster hangs on the barn behind him.

ANALYSIS: Romney's first ad of the presidential campaign takes Obama out of context and gives the impression that the president is talking about his time in office, not that of his predecessor.

"Who's been in charge of the economy?" Obama asked the crowd in 2008, criticizing Republicans including President George W. Bush.

The ad shows Obama saying: "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose," giving viewers with the impression that Obama does not want to talk about the dire economy.

In fact, Obama was quoting his opponent's campaign: "Sen. McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, `If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose'", he said.

Romney aides acknowledge they were using video of Obama quoting an anonymous aide McCain. Romney's top communications aide Gail Gitcho disclosed that Obama is quoting someone else in a blog post and later defended the ad.

"Three years ago, candidate Obama mocked his opponent's campaign for saying, `If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose,'" Gitcho said in an email. "Now, the tables have turned. President Obama is doing exactly what candidate Obama criticized. The White House doesn't want to talk about the economy and continues to attempt to distract voters from President Obama's abysmal economic record."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With new trouble appearing in the Middle East and the Pentagon facing possible budget cuts, the Republican White House contenders are debating for the second time in as many weeks how they would do better than President Barack Obama in protecting and extending America's national security.

Six weeks to the day before the first nominating contests in Iowa, the candidates were looking to use the pre-Thanksgiving holiday debate to build or - for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at the head of the pack - sustain momentum in the battle to pick a 2012 election challenger for Obama.

Businessman Herman Cain, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Reps. Ron Paul of Texas and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania also were meeting in Tuesday night's forum put together by CNN, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

With unemployment stubbornly high and the economy sluggish to recover from recession, the candidates also were likely to drive the foreign policy discussion back to pocketbook issues at home.

A day earlier, the congressional deficit supercommittee declared an impasse, and that could trigger deep cuts in 2013 spreading across military as well as domestic spending.

Many of the presidential candidates have called the nation's $15 trillion government debt a national security threat, especially since China is the single largest creditor. Obama's own defense secretary, Leon Panetta, has said big Pentagon cuts "would lead to a hollow force incapable of sustaining the missions it is assigned."

The GOP contenders also were ready to criticize Obama on the Middle East. The administration ordered new sanctions this week aimed at forcing Iran to halt a suspected nuclear weapons program, and protests are under way again in Cairo against the military government.

The Iran sanctions target that country's oil industry as well as companies linked to nuclear activity and Iran's banking system.

They, however, were unlikely to satisfy the GOP contenders who are far more hawkish than Obama and have pledged to carry out military strikes against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities to defend U.S. ally Israel.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- As big as a car and as well-equipped as a laboratory, NASA's newest Mars rover blows away its predecessors in size and skill.

Nicknamed Curiosity and scheduled for launch on Saturday, the rover has a 7-foot arm tipped with a jackhammer and a laser to break through the Martian red rock. What really makes it stand out: It can analyze rocks and soil with unprecedented accuracy.

"This is a Mars scientist's dream machine," said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Ashwin Vasavada, the deputy project scientist.

Once on the red planet, Curiosity will be on the lookout for organic, carbon-containing compounds. While the rover can't actually detect the presence of living organisms, scientists hope to learn from the $2.5 billion, nuclear-powered mission whether Mars has - or ever had - what it takes to nurture microbial life.

Curiosity will be "the largest and most complex piece of equipment ever placed on the surface of another planet," said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars exploration program.

Ten feet long, 9 feet wide and 7 feet tall at its mast, Curiosity is about twice the size of previous rovers Spirit and Opportunity, weighs 1 ton and is loaded with 10 science instruments. Its formal name: Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL.

In a spacecraft first, Curiosity will be lowered to Mars' surface via a jet pack and a tether system similar to the sky cranes used by helicopters to insert heavy equipment in inaccessible spots on Earth. No bouncing air bags like those used for the Mars Pathfinder lander and rover in 1997 and for Spirit and Opportunity in 2004 - Curiosity is too heavy for that.

It is the kind of precision landing that officials said will benefit future human explorers on Mars.

The rover is scheduled to arrive at the mineral-rich Gale Crater next August, 8 1/2 months after embarking on the 354-million-mile voyage aboard an Atlas V rocket.

LONDON (AP) -- Elle Macpherson fired her business adviser for leaking secrets when journalists were actually getting juicy details about the supermodel by hacking into her phone, the former aide told a British inquiry into media ethics Tuesday.

In testimony that illuminated the human costs of the illegal practice, Mary-Ellen Field described how she lost both her job for Macpherson and one at an advisory firm because of the unfounded suspicions - a double-blow that was all the more serious because she was in poor health.

"It had a very serious effect," she told the inquiry. "I had become ill and was falling down all the time." She didn't identify her illness.

Field was one of several victims of press intrusion testifying Tuesday at Britain's Royal Courts of Justice. The inquiry, headed by Lord Justice Brian Leveson, was set up by Prime Minister David Cameron after the scandal over phone hacking and other underhanded tactics used at the News of the World, which was closed by media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July amid allegations of widespread criminality.

The inquiry plans to issue a report next year and could recommend major changes to the way the media in Britain are regulated. It has already heard several alarming tales of media abuse.

Field, with a friendly and open demeanor that showed no traces of bitterness toward the press or her former boss, said her relationship with Macpherson was once close, but it fell apart after the model's intimate secrets began appearing in the press in 2005. Macpherson became convinced that Field, a fellow Australian, was an alcoholic and ordered her to go to an American rehabilitation clinic.

Field said she was shocked by the allegations she was a drunk who'd been blabbing about her employer, but went along with Macpherson's recommendation because she needed her job.

"I have a severely disabled child who can never look after himself, so walking away from a high-paying position is not a good idea," Field said.

The rehab was grueling - she described it as being "like one of those CIA renditions, except they don't put you in chains" - but it didn't help the situation.

Even though staff at the clinic said Field was not an alcoholic, Macpherson fired her anyway, and Field lost her job at her firm shortly afterward. She told the inquiry there was no doubt the sacking was the result of what happened with Macpherson.

Although it has since emerged that the media leaks were the result of phone hacking by the News of the World tabloid, not any indiscretions, Field said she has not heard from Macpherson in years. Macpherson's office did not respond to emails sent by The Associated Press seeking comment.

She was the first in a daylong parade of witnesses chronicling media misdeeds.

Soccer player Garry Flitcroft told of his family's harassment by the media after the failure of a judicial bid to block news of his extramarital affair, saying that at one point journalists used a helicopter to track his movements.

Flitcroft said journalists "wanted to make a statement to me: 'Never take on the press again.'"

British comedian Steve Coogan claimed in his testimony that he was warned in 2002 that Andy Coulson - then deputy editor of News of the World - would be listening in on a phone conversation Coogan had with a woman in a bid to trick him into making indiscreet comments. Coulson later went on to become Cameron's top media adviser, but he lost that job when he became embroiled in the scandal.

The parents of murdered British schoolgirl Milly Dowler and film star Hugh Grant were the first victims to testify to the panel on Monday, with Grant being particularly scathing about the Mail on Sunday tabloid, which he suggested had hacked his phone.

The Daily Mail called Grant's allegations "mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media," but that response in turn sparked outrage, with lawyers at the inquiry saying it smacked of an attempt to intimidate witnesses.

David Sherborne, who represents victims of media intrusion at the inquiry, said his clients feared "the sort of intimidatory tactics that we've seen in the press this morning."

Lawyer Jonathan Caplan defended The Mail, saying the paper's comments were "a response to the fact that (Grant) was commenting freely that there was not a substratum of evidence" to support his allegation.

Leveson had limited sympathy for the Mail's argument, noting that while the paper had defended itself, it had also accused Grant of lying under oath.

"The real issue is whether it's appropriate to go from the defensive to the offensive in that way," Leveson said. He added later: "I would be unhappy if it was felt that the best form of defense was always attack."

---

Online:

Leveson Inquiry: http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/

Raphael G. Satter can be reached at: http://twitter.com/razhael

ROME (AP) -- Ninety-three percent of Italians believe cutting the country's hobbling public debt is a top priority, but few are willing to make personal sacrifices to do so, according to an AP-GfK poll released Tuesday.

Only about a quarter of Italians favor reforming labor laws to make it easier to fire workers, or raising the retirement age from 65 (and sometimes lower) to 67 - two of the reforms considered critical to curb Italy's public spending and boost economic growth.

But while the European Union is demanding such reforms, 52 percent of Italians still have a favorable view of the EU, and a full 76 percent think Italy should stay in the 17-nation eurozone, according to the survey, conducted last week.

Italy has been engulfed in financial turmoil for weeks as markets woke up to the enormous size of its debt - euro1.9 trillion ($2.6 trillion), a eurozone high coming in at 120 percent of gross domestic product. The market turmoil and a loss of confidence in Italy's ability to repay forced Premier Silvio Berlusconi to resign Nov. 12, ending his 17-year domination of Italian politics.

The AP-GfK poll was conducted Nov. 16-20, during the first days of economist Mario Monti's new government, made up of bankers, academics and corporate executives instead of politicians. Monti is under enormous pressure to quickly rein in the debt and get the economy growing again.

Italy's economy is hampered by high labor costs, low productivity, fat government payrolls, excessive taxes, choking bureaucracy, and low numbers of college graduates. Yet as the third-largest economy in the eurozone, Italy is too big for Europe to bail out like it did Greece, Portugal and Ireland.

Monti got high marks from the Italians surveyed after he was tapped to lead the country, garnering a 67 percent favorability rating. Only 10 percent had a negative view and 16 percent were neutral.

"Let's say there's hope," said Fortunato Porcheddu, 63, as he strolled Tuesday with a friend through a piazza in Rome. "If I close my eyes and look back over the past 15 years and everything that has happened, I cringe."

Monti has pledged to reform Italy's pension system, re-impose a property tax annulled by Berlusconi's government, fight tax evasion, streamline civil court proceedings, get more women and young people into the workforce and cut political costs.

But, critically, only 32 percent of Italians surveyed are strongly confident that his technocratic government can fix the country's economic ills. Forty-two percent say they're "moderately confident" and 22 percent say they have little or no confidence he can turn Italy's finances around.

While there is some hopefulness about the future of the economy - 55 percent anticipate a better situation five years from now - the longer-term picture is gloomier. Only 35 percent of Italians think people will be better off in 20 years than they are today, while 43 percent anticipate a harder life for the next generation.

"Our generation always looked forward with the possibility of improvement," said Alfonso Marozzi, 72, as he strolled in Rome. "Now, young people are resigned to wonder if they'll be able to hold onto what their parents were able to build. There's a lack of hope in the future."

The survey found that Italians are especially concerned about corruption: 87 percent called it an "extremely" or "very serious" problem. Unemployment, the debt and organized crime followed.

A full 93 percent of Italians said reducing the public debt was either an "extremely" or "very important" goal for the government to tackle over the next decade. Only 2 percent said it was "not too important" or "not at all important."

Yet only 26 percent of those surveyed favored raising the retirement age to 67 to help cut spending, while 67 percent were opposed. Parliament recently passed legislation raising the retirement age to 67 starting in 2026 and to 70 by 2050, but critics say the reforms are meaningless because any savings they produce are too far in the future.

Monti is expected to seek more reforms to the pension system and to try to make the contribution system more equitable.

Italian politicians have made few efforts to reform the labor market, and the AP-Gfk poll shows why. Seventy percent of respondents opposed deregulating the labor market to make it easier to fire workers, with only 22 percent favoring it. Of the 70 percent opposed, a full 56 percent were "strongly opposed."

Ultimately, labor market reforms are likely to be much broader than just changes involving firing. Monti's government is expected to open up "closed professions," such as lawyers, notaries and taxi drivers, which in some cases restrict entry to people with connections or set standard prices that deprive the market of competition.

Monti also plans to loosen Italy's system of collective bargaining, in which unions negotiate with entire industries rather than individual companies. Italy's biggest carmaker, Fiat, told unions Monday that it is tossing out the old model as of Jan. 1 and will seek to negotiate new contracts plant by plant - something it has already done in four locations.

Raj Badiani, an economist at IHS Global Insight in London, said Fiat "is probably the forerunner of what we need to see." But he cautioned: "Trade union opposition to that will be immense."

Unions have balked at any labor market reforms, and so far the austerity measures that have been passed by Parliament haven't touched the thorny issue.

Still, the AP-GfK survey found that labor unions in general get broadly negative ratings from Italians, with 53 percent of respondents saying they "only sometimes" or "never" trust unions to do the right thing.

Only 20 percent of Italians surveyed had a favorable opinion of Berlusconi, with 67 percent having an unfavorable view and 56 having a "strongly unfavorable" impression of the billionaire media mogul.

After Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the leader with the most favorable ratings? President Barack Obama, with a 78 percent favorability rating.

Armando Manni, a 50-year-old who tends olive groves in Tuscany, said young Italians have to become more like their Anglo-Saxon colleagues and leave home to pursue their dreams rather than stay where their mothers cook, clean and wash their clothes until they're well past age 40.

"A country that doesn't have dreams is a country that is almost dead," he said as he shopped for tomatoes.

The AP-GfK poll of 1,025 Italian adults across the country was conducted Nov. 16-20 using landlines and cell phones by GfK Eurisko Italy under direction of the global GfK Group. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

---

AP Poll is at http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

---

Jennifer Agiesta in Washington, Paolo Santalucia in Rome and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Most of the Republican presidential candidates, with the notable exception of Mitt Romney, set their sights on early-voting Iowa for a discussion on the role of religious faith in public life, along with hot-button social issues such as marriage and abortion.

The setting was a forum Saturday night hosted by a new evangelical group trying to leave its mark on the campaign in a state where influential social conservatives have struggled to rally behind an alternative to Romney. While the former Massachusetts governor has stayed near the top of national polls, some Republican activists have misgivings about his record on cultural issues.

Romney's six more socially conservative challenges are actively competing in Iowa to emerge as the preferred candidate among Christian conservatives with just six weeks to go until the Jan. 3 caucuses.

"People are getting close to decision time," former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum told The Associated Press at a campaign stop in Des Moines. "I think you're going to see some coalescing in the next couple of weeks."

Jobs, the economy and the deficit are voter priorities in Iowa and nationally, but it was a focus on social issues that drew the 2012 hopefuls to the event sponsored by The Family Leader, an organization started last by a former Republican candidate for governor, Bob Vander Plaats.

CAIRO (AP) -- Egyptian riot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets stormed into Cairo's Tahrir Square Saturday to dismantle a protest tent camp, setting off clashes that injured at least 507 people and raising tensions days before the first elections since Hosni Mubarak's ouster.

The scenes of protesters fighting with black-clad police forces were reminiscent of the 18-day uprising that forced an end to Mubarak's rule in February. Hundreds of protesters fought back, hurling stones and setting an armored police vehicle ablaze.

The violence raised fears of new unrest surrounding the parliamentary elections that are due to begin in nine days' time. Public anger has risen over the slow pace of reforms and apparent attempts by Egypt's ruling generals to retain power over a future civilian government.

Witnesses said the clashes began when riot police dismantled a small tent camp set up to commemorate the hundreds of protesters killed in the uprising and attacked around 200 peaceful demonstrators who had camped in the square overnight in an attempt to restart a long-term sit-in there.

"Violence breeds violence," said Sahar Abdel-Mohsen, an engineer who joined in the protest after a call went out on Twitter urging people to come to Tahrir to defend against the police attacks. "We are tired of this and we are not leaving the square."

Police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and beat protesters with batons, clearing the square at one point and pushing the fighting into surrounding side streets of downtown Cairo. State TV, quoting the Health Ministry, reported that 507 people were injured, including 19 policemen.

Abdel-Mohsen said a friend was wounded by a rubber bullet that struck his head and that she saw another protester wounded by a pellet in his neck.

Crowds swarmed an armored police truck, rocking it back and forth and setting it ablaze. Black smoke rose over the crowd.

After nightfall, protesters swarmed back into the square in the thousands, setting tires ablaze in the street and filling the area with an acrid, black smoke screen. Police appeared to retreat to surrounding areas, leaving protesters free to retake and barricade themselves inside the square. The air was still thick with stinging tear gas.

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf urged the protesters to clear the square.

Saturday's confrontation was one of the few since the uprising to involve police forces, which have largely stayed in the background while the military takes charge of security. There was no military presence in and around the square on Saturday.

The black-clad police were a hated symbol of Mubarak's regime.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Bashing the United Nations seldom fails as an applause line for Republican presidential candidates.

Mitt Romney says the U.N. too often becomes a forum for tyrants when it should promote democracy and human rights. Newt Gingrich pledges to take on the U.N.'s "absurdities." Herman Cain says he would change some of its rules. Rick Perry says he would consider pulling the United States out of the U.N. altogether.

All that U.N. bashing has raised questions about whether a Republican victory could strain the relationship between the United Nations and its host country, the United States.

President Barack Obama's Democratic administration considers the U.N. critical to the country's interests, while Republicans traditionally have been disenchanted with the world body over America's inability to reliably win support for its positions. It doesn't help that U.N. members often criticize American policies, especially as they relate to Israel and the Palestinians.

That was reinforced last month when the U.N. cultural agency voted to approve a Palestinian bid for full membership in that body, and the U.S. responded by cutting off funding.

Yet history shows that any American president learns to get along with the United Nations "simply because there's a lot of stuff the U.N. does that is useful to the United States," said David Bosco, who writes the Multilateralist blog for Foreign Policy magazine.

Case in point: Even the harshest American critics were silent earlier this month when the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog concluded that Iran was probably developing nuclear arms.

Bosco, also an assistant professor at American University's School of International Service, noted that the Republican administration of George W. Bush supported a major expansion in U.N. peacekeeping despite regular sniping about the world body.

But the relationship wasn't a smooth one. Tensions ran high between the U.S. and the world body during the Bush presidency, especially when outspoken John Bolton was the U.S. ambassador.

U.N. officials have declined to comment on the possibility that a Republican win could strain the United Nations' relationship with the U.S.

"The United States is an important state at the United Nations and we would expect that relationship would continue under any administration," said Martin Nesirky, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The presidential race has been dominated by the economy and other domestic issues, but foreign affairs are taking on greater importance and will be the subject of a debate by the Republican candidates Tuesday, giving them another chance to air their views on the U.N.

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia is facing a heightened risk of being drawn into conflicts at its borders that have the potential of turning nuclear, the nation's top military officer said Thursday.

Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, cautioned over NATO's expansion eastward and warned that the risks of Russia being pulled into local conflicts have "risen sharply."

Makarov added, according to Russian news agencies, that "under certain conditions local and regional conflicts may develop into a full-scale war involving nuclear weapons."

A steady decline in Russia's conventional forces has prompted the Kremlin to rely increasingly on its nuclear deterrent.

The nation's military doctrine says it may use nuclear weapons to counter a nuclear attack on Russia or an ally, or a large-scale conventional attack that threatens Russia's existence.

Russia sees NATO's expansion to include former Soviet republics and ex-members of the Soviet bloc in eastern and central Europe as a key threat to Russia's security.

Makarov specifically referred to NATO's plans to offer membership to Georgia and Ukraine as potentially threatening Russia's security. Russia routed Georgian forces in a brief August 2008 war over a separatist province of South Ossetia. Moscow later recognized South Ossettia and another breakaway Georgian province of Abkhazia as independent states and increased its military presence there.

Makarov warned that the planned pullout of NATO forces from Afghanistan could trigger conflicts in neighboring ex-Soviet Central Asian nations that could "grow into a large-scale war."

ISLAMABAD (AP) -- The Pakistani government said Thursday that it has not decided whether to accept a resignation offer from its ambassador to the U.S. over a reported attempt to enlist Washington's help to rein in the country's military after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The government has summoned Ambassador Husain Haqqani to Islamabad to question him about any role he may have played in the growing controversy, which was first disclosed in an Oct. 10 column in the Financial Times, said Farhatullah Babar, a Pakistani presidential spokesman.

Mansoor Ijaz, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin, said in the column that a senior Pakistani diplomat asked him on May 9 - a week after U.S. commandos killed bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town - to pass a message from President Asif Ali Zardari to the U.S. asking for help. Ijaz did not name the diplomat.

Zardari was reportedly worried that the U.S. raid had so humiliated his government, which did not know about it beforehand, that the military may stage a coup - something that has happened repeatedly in Pakistan's history, said Ijaz.

The memo sent to Adm. Mike Mullen, the top U.S. military officer at the time, reportedly offered to curb support to Islamist militants from Pakistan's military intelligence service, the ISI, in exchange for American assistance, Ijaz said.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry has called the Financial Times column "a total fabrication."

But Mullen's spokesman, Capt. John Kirby, confirmed to Foreign Policy's website Wednesday that Mullen did receive the memo from Ijaz, but he did not find it credible and ignored it. "Adm. Mullen had no recollection of the memo and no relationship with Mr. Ijaz," Kirby said.

Haqqani said Thursday that he did not write or deliver the memo, but offered his resignation to end the controversy.

"I do not want this non-issue of an insignificant memo written by a private individual and not considered credible by its lone recipient to undermine democracy," Haqqani told The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Newt Gingrich is schlepping some supersized luggage along as his Republican presidential campaign takes off: He's got trunkloads of personal and political baggage.

This week's disclosure that a sweetheart consulting deal with housing giant Freddie Mac earned Gingrich at least $1.6 million over the past decade is only the latest potential liability to surface for the former House speaker.

Negatives that didn't get much attention when Gingrich was an asterisk in the polls are getting a fresh look now that he's risen to the top tier of GOP presidential candidates. Among them: policy flip-flops, inopportune moments of candor, two failed marriages, admissions of adultery, fits of petulance and a tendency to suggest he's the smartest person in the room.

"Everybody will dig up everything they can dig up," Gingrich said Wednesday, resigned to what's ahead.

Businessman Donald Trump allowed of Gingrich on CNN, "Got some baggage, but everybody has some baggage."

True, but sometimes size matters.

When Gingrich went on Fox News this week in his new role as a poll leader, he was asked about fliers distributed by evangelicals in Iowa, the leadoff caucus state, that pointed to adultery in his first two marriages. Gingrich dismissed that as old news.

"I'm very open about the fact that I've had moments in my life that I regret," Gingrich said. He spoke of his current "close marriage" to third wife Callista. He offered himself as an older and wiser 68-year-old grandfather.

A day later, Gingrich's financial dealings were in the spotlight, with reports of the huge sums he'd collected from Freddie Mac for consulting work when the federally backed housing agency was fending off attacks from the right wing of the Republican Party.

Gingrich tried to spin that as a positive, saying: "It reminds people that I know a great deal about Washington. We just tried four years of amateur ignorance and it didn't work very well. So, having someone who actually knows Washington might be a really good thing."

He tried a different tack last summer to explain away a six-figure shopping spree at Tiffany's. When word surfaced that Gingrich and his wife had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at the luxury jeweler, Gingrich said he and his wife were "very frugal" and lived within their budget. But he refused to say what they'd bought, insisting it was "my private life."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Looking for a job? NASA is hiring astronauts. You can even apply online at a giant government jobs website.

There's only one hitch: NASA doesn't have its own spaceship anymore and is sending fewer fliers into orbit right now.

"The experience is well worth the wait," promised NASA flight crew operations director Janet Kavandi as the space agency started a public search Tuesday for new astronauts.

There will be flights, but not many, with the space shuttle fleet retired. A handful of astronauts each year are launching on a Russian Soyuz spaceship to the International Space Station for six-month stays.

In about three to five years, NASA hopes to purchase trips for astronauts headed to the space station on American-built commercial rockets instead. And eventually, NASA hopes to fly astronauts in a government owned Orion capsule to an asteroid or even Mars, but those pioneering trips are more than a decade away.

With veteran astronauts leaving the space agency, Kavandi said NASA is afraid it will not have enough astronauts, something a National Research Council report pointed out in September.

NASA needs about 55 astronauts, and with a new class of nine graduating earlier this month, the astronaut roster is up to 58. One of those new astronauts will get to fly to the space station as early as 2013, Kavandi said.

"We're ready to serve, we're ready to get going," new astronaut Serena Aunon said Tuesday at NASA headquarters.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- After years of Republicans dominating the politics of national security, this year's GOP presidential candidates are struggling to find a coherent national security argument against President Barack Obama.

In the first debate dedicated to security and foreign policy, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney took issue with Obama's plan for drawing down troops in Afghanistan but the dispute amounted to whether some forces should stay an extra few months. Texas Gov. Rick Perry called for sanctions against the Iranian central bank. Romney and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman debated whether the World Trade Organization should investigate Chinese currency practices.

All of the candidates offered only incremental criticism of the Democrat who has racked up a string of security successes, a stark contrast to the with-us-or-against-us politics Republicans have used since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. If the debate made anything clear, it's that Republicans have lost-their go-to national security talking points, with Osama bin Laden's body somewhere in the Indian Ocean, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drawing to a close and Obama expanding the use of unmanned spy planes to hunt terrorists.

"I don't think there's a very strong narrative," said Tony Fratto, who served as a White House and Treasury Department spokesman during the Bush administration. "Is it a significant issue for a majority of Republican voters? No. It's not."

And it's not hard to understand why.

The sluggish economy is at the top of voters' concerns and, thus, dominating the campaign conversation. National security and foreign policy issues have been all but absent from the Republican primary contest and, given that the 9 percent unemployment rate is showing no sign of significant improvement, it no doubt will shape the general election, as well.

LONDON (AP) -- Hollywood's film academy is honoring acting icon Vanessa Redgrave at a star-studded ceremony in London.

Meryl Streep, Ralph Fiennes and James Earl Jones are scheduled to join Sunday's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tribute to Redgrave's 50-year career.

A member of a famous British acting dynasty, Redgrave is also known for her left-wing political activism.

The 74-year-old actress has been nominated for six Oscars and won for her supporting role as an anti-Nazi activist in 1977's "Julia."

SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) -- Key moments in Saturday night's Republican presidential debate:

---

IRAN:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney warned that only his administration could prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

"If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon," Romney said. "And if we elect Mitt Romney, if you'd like me as the next president, they will not have a nuclear weapon."

Herman Cain said he supports regime change in Iran, but stopped short of threatening military action. He favors moving warships to the region to deter Iran and would support the resistance to Tehran to overthrow the regime.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said America should sanction the Iranian central bank to "shut down that country's economy. And that's what the president needs to do."

And rival Ron Paul, a congressman from Texas, says any use of force against Iran would require approval from Congress.

---

PERRY'S GAFFE:

Perry poked fun at himself again for forgetting about the Department of Energy during the last debate when he tried to name the three agencies he'd cut.

On this night, Perry said he was glad that moderator Scott Pelley of CBS News remembered to ask him about the Energy Department. The moderator said he's had some time to think about it.

"Me too," Perry cracked back, drawing laughs from the knowing audience.

---

DON'T BAIT NEWT:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich - who is rising in polls - refused to take the bait when asked to evaluate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who leads the GOP field in polls.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rick Perry and Herman Cain have chosen far different weapons in their race to recover first and best from the crises that have rocked their presidential campaigns. Humor is Perry's choice. For Cain, defiance.

The assignment for both men: Fit the response to the predicament, with no margin for error.

Perry rushed to the talk circuit in a bid to persuade Republican voters not to take his forgetful Wednesday night debate "oops" so seriously.

"I don't know what you're talking about -- I think things went well," the Texas governor joked the next evening on David Letterman's "Late Show." "I wanted to help take the heat off my buddy Herman Cain."

He certainly did, at least for a day, with the stunning 54-second brain freeze in which Perry tried and failed to recall a third Cabinet agency he would abolish.

Cain, a week-and-a-half into denying at least four sexual harassment accusations, finally was able to talk about something else. Facing serious allegations, he hasn't been laughing about any of it - with the brief exception of his reaction Thursday to a question about Anita Hill, who had accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during Thomas' confirmation hearing.

"Is she going to endorse me?" Cain replies on camera, bursting out laughing.

By Friday, he was back to explaining himself.

"He said it in a humorous way, I gave back a humorous response," Cain said on Fred Dicker's radio show in Albany, N.Y. "It was no way intended to be an insult to Anita Hill or anybody else."

Cain, the former CEO of Godfathers Pizza, has opted for defiance, firmly denying all allegations as pushes his insurgent campaign toward the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.

"Over the last couple of weeks, I've been through hell," Cain told his supporters in Kalamazoo, Mich. "But here's the good news: It didn't kill me or slow me down one bit."

Private polling suggests the harassment controversy has taken a bite out of Cain's once-solid lead in Iowa. And a new nationwide CBS News poll out Friday indicates he has lost support among women.

The CBS News poll, conducted Nov. 6-10 during the span of both crises, suggests a three-way tie for the nomination between Cain, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and a resurgent Newt Gingrich among GOP primary voters.

The other candidates are doing what they can to manage their rivals' crises, too.

Romney's technique? Raise his profile in Iowa, stay on message - and let advocates in Congress and elsewhere make an argument that particularly resonates now.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Grammy-winning jazz crooner Tony Bennett is championing a rebuilding effort to help New Orleans residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

At the site of the 101st and final house built by Project Home Again, the 85-year-old singer said Friday that bringing people home is important to protecting the culture and traditions of New Orleans.

Says Bennett: "The gospel music, the music that started in churches here that created the art form of jazz, that needs to be preserved."

MAULDIN, S.C. (AP) -- Mitt Romney didn't win in South Carolina in 2008, but he's back in the state and looking to capitalize on his strong position atop this year's field of Republican presidential candidates. He hopes to sway voters who were cool to him four years ago.

Romney spent part of Veterans Day with military veterans at a barbecue restaurant near Greenville. He said the best way to help service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan is to fix the economy so they can find jobs once they're home.

Romney also suggested he was open to the possibility of introducing a voluntary voucher program to the Veterans Affairs health care system. He says such a system could give veterans money to buy private insurance instead of getting care from the government.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is preparing for a higher profile in Iowa, where he possibly could land a knockout punch if two top rivals don't quickly fix their campaign problems and back-of-the-pack contenders such as Newt Gingrich don't move quickly to energize voters.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, recently recorded a TV campaign ad at a sheet-metal plant in Dubuque, in eastern Iowa. It's not shocking that he would prepare such ads. But every Romney step in Iowa intrigues GOP activists.

After a crushingly disappointing loss there in 2008, he sharply lowered expectations in Iowa, whose caucus is less than two months away. If Romney airs ads soon and heavily in the state, it could signal a new strategy built on calculations that his weakened opponents handed him too tempting an opportunity.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- After decades of scouring the universe, astronomers finally have found two immense clouds of gas that are pristine - free of the metals fired out into the cosmos by stars.

The findings, published in Thursday's Science journal, provide the first solid detection of primitive, uncontaminated gas and support the long-standing theory as to how the chemical elements were formed in the early universe. It is these types of pure gas clouds that formed the first stars.

The research also suggests that stars have not succeeded at distributing metals throughout the entire cosmos; astronomers consider metals to be heavier elements like carbon, silicon, iron, even oxygen.

A separate study in the same issue of Science concludes the early stars were much smaller than thought - tens of times bigger than our sun, versus hundreds of times bigger.

"There's kind of been this missing link in this picture of how elements form. We haven't been able to detect what we expect to be out there, which is otherwise primordial material, stuff that would be metal-free," said co-author J. Xavier Prochaska, an astronomer at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

"This is the first solid detection of such gas," he said in a phone interview. "It's something we expected to find at some level, but it has been challenging to find it."

The two pristine gas clouds were formed 2 billion years after the Big Bang creation of the universe.

Prochaska, along with lead author Michele Fumagalli, a graduate student at Santa Cruz, and John O'Meara, an astronomer at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vt., discovered the two clouds by analyzing light from quasars. They used the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

MOSCOW (AP) -- As Russia's space agency struggled Thursday to fix a probe bound for a moon of Mars that instead got stuck in Earth's orbit, some experts said the chances of saving the $170 million craft looked slim.

Roscosmos spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said efforts to communicate with the unmanned Phobos-Grunt (Phobos-Ground) spacecraft hadn't brought any results yet. The probe will come crashing down in a couple of weeks if engineers fail to fix the problem.

The Phobos-Grunt was launched Wednesday and reached preliminary orbit, but its engines never fired to send it off to the Red Planet. Kuznetsov said controllers on Thursday will continue attempts to fix the probe's engines to steer it to its path to one of Mars' two moons, Phobos.

Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin, said the system that keeps the spacecraft pointed in the right direction may have failed. Other space experts suggested that the craft's computer failure was a likely cause.

If a software flaw was the problem, scientists can likely fix it by sending new commands. Some experts think, however, that the failure was rooted in hardware and will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fix.

ROCHESTER, Mich. (AP) -- Rampant foreclosures, high unemployment and a volatile auto industry create a grim backdrop as the Republican presidential candidates debate in a state hit hard by the 2009 recession and longer-term changes in the American economy.

When they meet late Wednesday, the GOP contenders inevitably will have to contend with fallout from the furor surrounding businessman Herman Cain, who in recent days has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior by at least four women during the 1990s.

But with Detroit - the Motor City whose fortunes have fallen with the decline of the American auto industry - just a few miles away, Mitt Romney, Cain and their rivals also will have little choice but to explain their opposition to a government bailout that saved Chrysler and General Motors and the tens of thousands of jobs they provide, all on President Barack Obama's watch.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Wednesday that Iran won't retreat "one iota" from its nuclear program, denying claims that it seeks atomic weapons. Key ally Russia gave the Islamic Republic a major boost, rejecting tighter sanctions despite a U.N. watchdog report detailing suspected arms-related advances.

In his first reaction to the report, Ahmadinejad strongly chided the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency - a day after it claimed Tehran was on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon - saying the IAEA is discrediting itself by siding with "absurd" U.S. accusations.

The comments, broadcast live on state TV, were a sharp rebuke to Western warnings that Iran appears to be engaged in a dangerous defiance of international demands to control the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions.

MOSCOW (AP) -- A Russian space probe aiming to land on a Mars moon was stuck circling the Earth after equipment failure Wednesday, and scientists raced to fire up its engines before the whole thing came crashing down.

One U.S. space expert said the craft could become the most dangerous manmade object ever to hit the planet.

The unmanned Phobos-Ground craft was successfully launched by a Zenit-2 booster rocket just after midnight Moscow time Wednesday (2016 GMT Tuesday) from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It separated from the booster about 11 minutes later and was to fire its engines twice to set out on its path to the Red Planet, but never did.

Russia's Federal Space Agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said neither of the two engine burns worked, probably due to the failure of the craft's orientation system. He said space engineers have three days to reset the spacecraft's computer program to make it work before its batteries die.

The mishap is the latest in a series of recent launch failures that have raised concerns about the condition of Russia's space industries. The Russian space agency said it will establish its own quality inspection teams at rocket factories to tighten oversight over production quality.

The $170 million Phobos-Ground was Russia's first interplanetary mission since a botched 1996 robotic mission to Mars, which failed when the probe crashed shortly after the launch due to an engine failure. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, and the latest spacecraft aimed to take ground samples on Phobos.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- An asteroid as big as an aircraft carrier zipped by Earth on Tuesday in the closest encounter by such a massive space rock in more than three decades. Scientists ruled out any chance of a collision but turned their telescopes skyward to learn more about the object known as 2005 YU55.

Its closest approach to Earth was pegged at a distance of 202,000 miles at 6:28 p.m. EST. That's just inside the moon's orbit; the average distance between Earth and the moon is 239,000 miles.

The last time a large cosmic interloper came that close to Earth was in 1976, and experts say it won't happen again until 2028.

Scientists at NASA's Deep Space Network in the California desert have tracked the quarter-mile-wide asteroid since last week as it approached from the direction of the sun at 29,000 mph.

Astronomers and amateur skygazers around the world kept watch, too.

The Clay Center Observatory in Brookline, Mass., planned an all-night viewing party so children and parents could peer through research-grade telescopes and listen to lectures. The asteroid can't be detected with the naked eye.

For those without a telescope, the observatory streamed video of the flyby live on Ustream, attracting several thousand viewers. The asteroid appeared as a white dot against a backdrop of stars.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A woman says Republican presidential contender Herman Cain reached under her skirt for her genitals and pushed her head toward his crotch in July 1997.

Sharon Bialek told reporters Monday in New York that she met with Cain to ask about getting her old job back at the National Restaurant Association when the incident happened in Washington. At the time, Cain was chief of a restaurant trade group.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- An asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier will dart between the Earth and moon on Tuesday - the closest encounter by such a huge rock in 35 years.

But scientists say not to worry. It won't hit.

"We're extremely confident, 100 percent confident, that this is not a threat," said the manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program, Don Yeomans. "But it is an opportunity."

The asteroid named 2005 YU55 is being watched by ground antennas as it approaches from the direction of the sun. The last time it came within so-called shouting distance was 200 years ago.

Closest approach will occur at 6:28 p.m. EST Tuesday when the asteroid passes within 202,000 miles of Earth. That's closer than the roughly 240,000 miles between the Earth and the moon.

The moon will be just under 150,000 miles from the asteroid at the time of closest approach.

CANNES, France (AP) -- Palestinian efforts to join U.N. agencies beyond its cultural arm are "not beneficial for anybody" and could lead to cuts in funding sure to affect millions of people, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon warned Thursday.

In an Associated Press interview, the U.N. chief reiterated the world body's support for a viable, independent Palestinian state - but lamented the Palestinian Authority's efforts to join U.N. affiliates before the U.N. itself.

Ban also expressed hope for greater participation of women and youths in Libya's future government, and praised a new Arab League deal with Syria aiming to end President Bashar Assad's bloody crackdown on protesters.

Potential funding woes for U.N. agencies were high in Ban's mind.

ATLANTA (AP) -- Presidential candidate Herman Cain says he never changed his story about sexual harassment allegations against him in the 1990s.

In a Tuesday interview, Cain told Headline News that he didn't contradict himself when he said a day earlier that he was unaware of a settlement between a woman and the National Restaurant Association, where he worked at the time, over allegations against Cain. He said he was aware of an agreement, but not a settlement.

Cain says -- quote -- "So it looked like I had changed my story. I didn't change my story."

In a series of appearances Monday, Cain first insisted he was unaware of any financial arrangements between the trade association and his accuser. In an interview with PBS NewsHour later that night, Cain acknowledged he was aware of an "agreement" but not of a settlement.

LONDON (AP) -- Markets plunged Tuesday on fears that Europe's plan to save the euro was already unraveling after the decision by Greece's leader to call a referendum on the country's latest rescue package.

Should the Greek government lose the referendum vote - and opinion polls say it's going to have real trouble getting enough support - then the implications for Greece and Europe are massive. The vote could end up deciding whether Greece remains in the 17-nation euro currency union.

Markets, it seems, are taking the view that Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou won't be able to pull off a come-from-behind victory - assuming that his government holds together. Papandreou saw his parliamentary majority cut to 2 seats Tuesday after one lawmaker defected, and at least seven more Socialist deputies have called for the formation of a cross-party, national unity government.

"Talk about your all-time bonehead moves," said Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets. "It would reintroduce the risk that Greece could face a disorderly default and potentially be forced to leave the euro."

Papandreou stunned investors, as well as his own citizens and his partners in the eurozone, by announcing late Monday that a plebiscite will be held in what he called "a supreme act of democracy and of patriotism for the people to make their own decision." A confidence vote in the Socialist government will also take place at the end of this week.

The announcement came as the shine from last week's European deal appeared to be wearing off.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Monday he was "falsely accused" of sexual harassment while he led the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s.

Cain was responding to a Politico report that said the trade group settled complaints from at least two women that Cain had engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior.

Cain told Fox News he has never sexually harassed anyone and that he was "falsely accused." He said investigations into any complaints found that they were "baseless."

"I've never sexually harassed anyone," he said. "And yes, I was falsely accused while I was at the National Restaurant Association, and I say falsely because it turned out after the investigation to be baseless."

But he also said he had no idea whether the trade association provided financial settlements to the women who complained, as Politico reported. "I hope it wasn't for much, because I was never aware of it," Cain said.

Cain said he has not been accused of sexually inappropriate behavior in any other context. "Absolutely not," he said when asked if more reports of harassment could surface.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- An air strike hit a refugee camp in southern Somalia, killing at least five people and wounding 45, most of them children, an international aid agency said Monday. Kenya's military acknowledged carrying out an air raid but said it targeted only Islamist militants.

Details emerged, meanwhile, about an American-Somali man who al-Shabab said carried out a suicide attack against an African Union base in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Saturday. Abdisalan Hussein Ali was 19 at the time he disappeared from Minnesota, which has a large Somali-American community, in November 2008.

In July 2010, he was among several men indicted in a long-running investigation in Minnesota. Charges against him included conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiracy to kill, maim, kidnap and injure. The U.S. hasn't yet confirmed the identity of the bomber. FBI spokesman Kyle Loven in Minneapolis said the agency is using DNA to try to make a positive identification.

A Somali Islamist militant group used the casualties from the Kenyan air strike as a recruitment tool to try to win even more recruits. Kenyan military spokesman Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, though, blamed an al-Shabab fighter for the civilian deaths, saying an al-Shabab fighter drove a burning truck of ammunition into the refugee camp in the town of Jilib where it exploded.

Chirchir said the Kenyan air force hit the truck on Sunday as it drove away from an al-Shabab training camp and accused the driver of attempting to use the refugees as a human shield. He said 10 al-Shabab members were killed and 47 wounded in the attack, citing informers on the ground.

But Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medicines Sans Frontieres or MSF, said the aerial bombardment hit the camp for displaced people. MSF said it treated 52 wounded people. As of Monday morning, MSF confirmed five deaths and said it was still treating 45 wounded, 31 of them children. Seven other patients had been discharged after receiving treatment. The head of the MSF mission in Somalia, Gautam Chatterjee, said most of the wounded had shrapnel injuries.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Looking for a big-name speaker?

Now may be the time to send President Barack Obama an invitation, especially if your group represents a key political constituency.

Obama has been making the rounds of Washington's awards dinners and black-tie galas this fall, donning a tuxedo or dark suit and heading to ballrooms across the nation's capital to speak to organizations representing blacks, Hispanics, Jews, women and gays. This weekend, he adds Italian- Americans to that list.

With the 2012 campaign picking up steam and Obama struggling to recapture the enthusiasm of 2008, the president's role as headline speaker has plenty of political undertones. He needs the well-connected, politically active leaders of these groups to help him motivate their members, raise money for his re-election and get people to show up to vote in next year's election.

And the president's remarks give him a chance to address specific criticism from some supporters, and tout lesser-known administration actions that target their needs.

Since September, Obama has been the featured speaker at dinners for the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a forum on American Latino Heritage, and the annual gala for the Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay rights group. The president will speak Saturday at a black-tie dinner for the National Italian American Foundation, and in early November, at an awards dinner for the National Women's Law Center. The Union for Reform Judaism also says Obama will speak at its December conference.

Obama is following the path of many of his predecessors, who have also tried to curry favor with influential Washington-based organizations, particularly those with similar political leanings.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tens of thousands of people who together gave millions of dollars to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign have gone missing this time around. Their failure to give so far may signal that some of the president's earliest supporters have lost enthusiasm.

At the same time, Republican rivals like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney have been gaining financial strength in parts of the country that were instrumental in swinging the last election for Obama, according to an Associated Press analysis of new campaign finance data.

The president's re-election effort is hardly hurting for cash: His campaign and the Democratic Party raised more than $70 million combined since July, outstripping all Republicans combined by millions. But some supporters who wrote Obama larger checks early in the 2008 campaign haven't done so this time, representing more than $10 million in missing donations.

The AP's analysis suggests that Obama, beleaguered by a struggling economy, will have to work harder to win back party stalwarts and swing voters alike. His approval ratings have slumped to 41 percent in a recent Gallup poll, as steadfast supporters have found themselves less able or less willing to open their wallets again.

"He was our state senator, and when I looked at the Republican side, I thought, `We need some fresh blood in the campaign,'" said Janet Tavakoli, 58, a financial analyst from Chicago who gave $1,000 to Obama in 2008. "But I was dead wrong about it," she said, and isn't supporting any candidate this time.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Disgraced financier Bernie Madoff has told an interviewer he has terrible remorse and horrible nightmares over his epic fraud, but also said he feels happier in prison than he's felt in 20 years.

Barbara Walters told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday that she interviewed Madoff for two hours at the prison in Butner, N.C., where he's serving a 150-year sentence. No cameras were allowed in the prison.

CINCINNATI (AP) -- Mitt Romney gingerly distanced himself from a labor issue on the Ohio ballot one day. The next, he embraced the initiative "110 percent."

The reversal not only highlights his record of equivocations but also underscores the local political minefields national candidates often confront in their state-by-state path to the presidency.

Candidates visiting Nevada often wade into the debate about where nuclear waste should go. They're pressed in South Carolina to take a stand on an aircraft maker's labor dispute. In New Hampshire, they face questions about right-to-work issues. And then there are the perennials, such as ethanol subsidies in Iowa and the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina.

Such local issues aren't of concern to most voters across the nation, but these topics can matter greatly to voters wanting to hear the thoughts of candidates soliciting support ahead of presidential primaries. Candidates often work to strike a balance between addressing issues local voters care about without staking out hardline positions that could hurt them elsewhere.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- What did giant plant-munching dinosaurs do when they couldn't find enough to eat in the parched American West? They hit the road. An analysis of fossilized teeth adds further evidence that the long-necked dinosaurs called sauropods - the largest land creatures - went on road trips to fill their gargantuan appetites.

Scientists have long theorized that sauropods foraged for precious resources during droughts because of their preserved tracks and long limbs that were "ideal moving machines" and allowed them to cover long distances, said paleobiologist Matthew Bonnan of Western Illinois University.

ERCIS, Turkey (AP) -- A 2-week-old baby girl and her mother were pulled alive from the rubble of an apartment building on Tuesday in a dramatic rescue, nearly 48 hours after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake toppled some 2,000 buildings in eastern Turkey.

Television footage showed rescuers in orange jumpsuits applauding as the baby, Azra Karaduman, was removed from the wreckage. A rescuer cradled the naked infant, who was wrapped in a blanket and handed over to a medic.

Hours later, the baby's mother, Semiha, was pulled from the flattened building, where she had been pinned next to a sofa, and rushed to an ambulance. The father was also in the rubble, but it was unclear if he survived.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Prime Minister George Papandreou called for unity across Greece's political spectrum Tuesday, as European officials struggled to come up with a definitive solution to Greece's debt woes and prevent it from dragging down other EU nations.

A barrage of meetings among European finance ministers leaders is to culminate in a Wednesday summit where leaders are expected to shore up the eurozone bailout fund to contain the continental debt turmoil and prevent the nation from a catastrophic default.

Eurozone governments hope the enhanced European Financial Stability Fund, or EFSF, will be able to protect larger countries such as Italy and Spain from being engulfed in the debt crisis.

"This is a critical time and I hope that we reach decisions tomorrow - that is the will of our partners, and it is our will," Papandreou said as he briefed Greece's president, Karolos Papoulias, on the latest developments. "We must remain clear-headed and calm with a sense of unity on all sides and all political parties."

The prime minister, who stressed that banks must also share part of the burden of bailing out Greece, urged his European counterparts to act, saying Greece was determined to follow through on pledges to reform its economy.

"We Greeks have demonstrated repeatedly, not only that we fulfill our obligations but that we ourselves want to change our country," he said. "Now is the hour for Europe to take the decision needed to stop this escalating crisis, which is creating insecurity for all the people of Europe."

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The elaborate mission to recover a moon rock led NASA agents to one of the most down-to-earth places: a Denny's restaurant in Riverside County.

But at the end of the sting operation, agents were left holding a speck of lunar dust smaller than a grain of rice and a 74-year-old suspect who was terrified by armed officials.

Five months after NASA investigators and local agents swooped into the restaurant and hailed their operation as a cautionary tale for anyone trying to sell national treasure, no charges have been filed, NASA isn't talking and the case appears stalled.

The target, Joann Davis, a grandmother who says she was trying to raise money for her sick son, asserts the lunar material was rightfully hers, having been given to her space-engineer husband by Neil Armstrong in the 1970s.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Coroner's officials say Lindsay Lohan has arrived late to her first day of community service at the morgue and was turned away.

Spokesman Craig Harvey says the actress was 40 minutes late to an orientation session scheduled for 8 a.m. Thursday, but will be given another chance to show up on time on Friday.

Lohan tried to report to the morgue one day after she was scolded by a judge for being terminated from a community service assignment at a women's shelter. The hearing ended with the 25-year-old actress' probation being revoked and her being led from court in handcuffs.

BERLIN (AP) -- Pieces of a retired German satellite hurtling toward the atmosphere may crash to earth this weekend, the German Aerospace Center said Thursday.

Scientists have now honed their initial estimate of when the satellite would hit from a span of four days to either Saturday or Sunday. As it nears, they will eventually be able to estimate impact within a window of about 10 hours.

HONOLULU (AP) -- Astronomers have captured the first direct image of a planet being born.

Adam Kraus, of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, said the planet is being formed out of dust and gas circling a 2-milion-year-old star about 450 light years from Earth.

The planet itself, based on scientific models of how planets form, is estimated to have started taking shape about 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.

Called LkCa 15 b, it's the youngest planet ever observed. The previous record holder was about five times older.

Kraus and his colleague, Michael Ireland from Macquarie University and the Australian Astronomical Observatory, used Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea to find the planet.

"We're catching this object at the perfect time. We see this young star, it has a disc around it that planets are probably forming out of and we see something right in the middle of a gap in the disc," Kraus said in a telephone interview.

Kraus presented the discovery Wednesday at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Kraus and Ireland's research paper on the discovery is due to appear in The Astrophysical Journal.

Observing planets while they're forming can help scientists answer questions like whether planets form early in the life of a star or later, and whether they form relatively close to stars or farther away.

Planets can change orbits after forming, so it's difficult to answer such questions by studying older planets.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel granted the go-ahead on Tuesday for construction of 1,100 new Jewish housing units in east Jerusalem, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out any freeze in settlement construction, raising already heightened tensions after last week's Palestinian move to seek U.N. membership.

Israel's Interior Ministry said the homes would be built in Gilo, a sprawling Jewish enclave in southeast Jerusalem. It said construction could begin after a mandatory 60-day period for public comment, a process that spokesman Roi Lachmanovich called a formality.

The announcement drew swift condemnation from the Palestinians, who claim east Jerusalem as their future capital. The United States, European Union and United Nations all expressed disappointment with Israel's decision.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Israeli announcement was counterproductive to efforts to relaunch Mideast peace talks. She said both Israel and the Palestinians should avoid provocative actions, and that international mediators will remain focused on guiding the two sides back to direct negotiations.

Richard Miron, a spokesman for U.N. Mideast envoy Robert Serry, said the announcement "sends the wrong signal at this sensitive time."

The Palestinians have demanded that Israel halt all settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the adjacent West Bank - territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war - as a condition for resuming peace talks.

Since capturing east Jerusalem, Israel has annexed the area and ringed it with about 10 Jewish enclaves that are meant to solidify its control. Gilo, which is close to the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, is among the largest, with about 50,000 residents. Israel's annexation of east Jerusalem has not been internationally recognized.

Meir Margalit, a Jerusalem city council member who is critical of east Jerusalem construction, said city officials had given initial approval to the Gilo project more than a year ago.

Margalit said he didn't expect the project to be "an obstacle of peace" since it is in an existing Jewish area that is widely expected to remain part of Israel in any peace deal. But he said Interior Minister Eli Yishai, leader of the hawkish Shas Party, appeared to have timed the approval as a response to the Palestinian statehood gambit. Yishai declined an interview request.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry on Tuesday criticized the Palestinian Authority's effort to seek formal recognition by the U.N. General Assembly and assailed the Obama administration's broader policies in the Middle East.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Ashton Kutcher has bragging rights over Charlie Sheen.

Kutcher's debut in the CBS sitcom "Two and a Half Men" on Monday was seen by 27.7 million people. The Nielsen company says that's more than any other episode in the first eight seasons, when Sheen was the star.

The sitcom's previous best came in May 2005 following the final episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond."

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- Elizabeth Cochran was sitting in her office when her computer suddenly sounded an alarm.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A map of California on her screen lit up with a red dot, signaling an earthquake had struck. A clock next to the map counted down the seconds until shock waves fanning out from the epicenter north of Los Angeles reached her location in Pasadena: 5-4-3-2-1.

Right on cue, Cochran felt her chair quiver ever so slightly from a magnitude-4.2 that rumbled through Southern California on Sept. 1.

"If I hadn't known it was an earthquake, I would have thought it was a truck going by," she said.

After years of lagging behind Japan, Mexico and other quake-prone countries, the U.S. government has been quietly testing an earthquake early warning system in California since February. Cochran belongs to an exclusive club of scientists who receive a heads up every time the state shakes.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a blunt rejoinder to congressional Republicans, President Barack Obama called for $1.5 trillion in new taxes Monday, part of a total 10-year deficit reduction package totaling more than $3 trillion. "We can't just cut our way out of this hole," the president said.

The president's proposal would predominantly hit upper income taxpayers but would also reduce spending in mandatory benefit programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, by $580 billion. It also counts savings of $1 trillion over 10 years from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama's recommendation to a joint congressional committee served as a sharp counterpoint to Republican lawmakers, who have insisted that tax increases should play no part in taming the nation's escalating national debt. Obama's plan would end Bush-era tax cuts for top earners and would limit their deductions.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) -- Thousands of protesters armed with sticks and backed by armed military defectors overran a base of the elite Presidential Guards in Yemen's capital as fighting erupted across much of Sanaa on Monday. The death toll for the worst violence in months rose to nearly 50 in two days of clashes.

The protesters, joined by soldiers from the rebel 1st Armored Division, stormed the base without firing a single shot and seized a large number of firearms, according to witnesses and security officials. The anti-government force used sandbags to erect barricades as they advanced, providing their allied troops with the shelter they needed in case they took fire from inside the base. Republican Guards' troops did not fire at the protesters and eventually fled, leaving their weapons behind.

Violence has flared anew in Yemen in frustration after President Ali Abdullah Saleh dashed hopes raised by the U.S. last week that he was about to relinquish power after 33 years of autocratic rule.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday he won't be deterred from seeking U.N. recognition of a state of Palestine, despite what he said was "tremendous pressure" to drop the request and instead resume peace talks with Israel.

Abbas spoke to reporters en route to New York, where he is to seek U.N. membership for "Palestine" in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. The U.S. and Israel oppose Abbas' bid, saying a state can be established only through negotiations.

Abbas has said that negotiations remain his preference, but that they must be based on the pre-1967 war lines and include a halt of all Israeli settlement construction on occupied land.

Even if your favorite nominee got snubbed, Sunday's Emmycast could have been the most satisfying in memory.

It was funny, bright and skillfully hosted by "Glee" star Jane Lynch.

It moved at a brisk clip, free of the usual stumbles and lulls, and, even better, it flowed almost seamlessly, a next-to-impossible feat for any awards show.

Production values at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles were eye-popping, from the setting - an omega-shaped arch through which presenters made their entrance - to a tour-de-force comic musical number spearheaded by Andy Samberg and fellow "Saturday Night Live" performers that might have had some viewers scratching their heads in bewilderment, but had to leave them dazzled nonetheless.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Stephen Colbert meeting Radiohead is such a special occasion, a regular episode of "The Colbert Report" wasn't sufficient.

The Comedy Central show will air its first hour-long episode Sept. 26, when Colbert sits down with the British rock group.

Radiohead will perform four songs, featuring material off its most recent album, "The King of Limbs," as well as the recently debuted and unreleased track, "The Daily Mail." An additional song will also be performed for the online version of "The Colbert Report."

Colbert said in a statement: "I look forward to meeting the Radioheads and leveraging their anti-corporate indie cred to raise brand awareness for my sponsors."

Colbert lost at the Emmys on Sunday night to "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."

---

Online:

http://www.ColbertNation.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Savoring the unlikeliest of victories, Republicans called their triumph in a New York City congressional race a repudiation of President Barack Obama's policies on the economy and Israel on Wednesday as public and private polls showed his approval ratings plummeting in a district he carried handily in 2008.

"We're not going to sugarcoat it, it was a tough loss," conceded the House Democratic Campaign Committee. Yet party officials and the White House insisted the race was not a referendum on the president as he seeks re-election with the economy stagnant and unemployment stuck at 9.1 percent.

In New York, Rep.-elect Bob Turner, outpolled state Assemblyman David Weprin in a light-turnout election. He will replace former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who resigned in disgrace earlier this year in a sexting scandal. Represented by Democrats since the 1920s, the district includes portions of Brooklyn and Queens, is home to three times as many registered Democrats as Republicans and is nearly 40 percent Jewish.

HAVANA (AP) -- Cuba accused former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson of "blackmail" and slander on Wednesday, categorically denying his claims that he was invited to the island to negotiate the release of a jailed American government subcontractor.

In an exclusive interview with the Associated Press, the Foreign Ministry's head of North American affairs, Josefina Vidal, said Cuba closed the door on Richardson's request to even see imprisoned Maryland-native Alan Gross only after the American politician described him as a "hostage," in an interview with AP.

"His request to see the prisoner ... became impossible due to his slanderous statements to the press in which he described Gross as a 'hostage' of the Cuban government," Vidal said. Richardson made the comment last Thursday after he said his demand to see Gross was rebuffed.

But Vidal said Cuba was already unhappy that word of Richardson's visit was leaked to the press even before it had begun.

"Even before he had met with a single Cuban official the media fallout and the speculation had begun," she said. Vidal insisted that no Cuban official ever led Richardson to believe he would leave the island with Gross.