Violent extremists calling fighters to Somalia

In Somalia's enduring chaos, militant groups have for years come and gone. Today's most powerful -- Al Shabaab -- are much more menacing, say those in Mogadishu.
In Arabic, Al Shabaab means 'the youth', but it is too far-reaching to be just a rabble of youngsters. It controls much of central and southern Somalia and large parts of the capital Mogadishu.
And after years of pledging allegiance to al Qaeda, Al Shabaab formalized the relationship in February. Since then, the Somali government says there's been an influx of foreign fighters.
"With regard to the fighting that's going on in Afghanistan, in Pakistan and in Yemen, some people are looking for a place to hide and Somalia is a good candidate for that," said Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who leads the weak, U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
Ahmed was once a senior, moderate figure in the Union of Islamic Courts -- an alliance that included Al Shabaab and which held power in Somalia for six months in 2006 before being overthrown by Ethiopian forces.
The Ethiopians remained until early 2009 when the TFG took tentative control, clinging to a small part of Mogadishu, and protected by African Union (AU) peacekeepers mainly from Uganda and Burundi.
A quiet figure, President Ahmed sits in his office at the palace grounds while government troops outside fire warning shots to prevent people from venturing too close.

"We used to estimate the number of foreign fighters to be between 800 and 1,200 but that number seems to have been growing," he said.
Al Shabaab has reached out to Somalis living in the West, radicalizing young Muslims via the Internet and encouraging them to move back to the country to join the Jihad.
In November 2009, eight Somali-American men from the U.S. state of Minnesota were charged with offenses including attending Al Shabaab terrorist training camps and fighting for the group. In August 2009 two Somalis were arrested in Melbourne, Australia, for allegedly planning a suicide attack on a military facility.
And a naturalized-American suicide bomber, who blew himself up killing 29 people in October 2008, was born in Somalia.
Although the suicide attack took place in Northern Somalia, there is a growing debate as to whether those Somalis living in the West who are recruited by Al Shabaab may return to the U.S., Canada or Europe to stage attacks.
"[Somalia is] a place to hide and a place to fight, not only with the West but with anybody who disagrees with them," said the president. "They go from place to place but their objectives don't change, they fight people of all persuasions."
This is commonly noted by Somalis who talk about Al Shabaab -- they not only violently oppose the West, but also other Somalis who don't support their war.
"If you are not with them, you are against them," said one official at Mogadishu Airport when asked to describe the group's outlook.
Many Somalis live in fear of even appearing to dissent from the group's orders.
At the African Union base they opened the military hospital to the public in response to the lack of medical facilities in the city. When they run out of drugs and instead issue prescriptions, even the desperately ill throw them away, knowing the risks of being caught with such evidence of "collusion."
In February, the group banned the U.N. World Food Program, even though millions rely on food aid for survival.
Music and radio stations have been banned as well as school bells, which were recently declared too Christian by Al Shabaab and their allies.
Stories of the brutal nature of their control over the city's streets make their way through the hospital staff and into the A.U. camp.
Tales of dismemberment, bodies being chopped up and sent back to families, routine executions, even people being skinned alive emanate from neighborhoods closed off to the international community or any form of governance.
Leaning over the wall of a lookout post at the notorious Kilometer Four junction, one soldier points to a minaret. "That's the Red Mosque," he says. "That's where they chop people up."
Such a fate is often promised to Major Ba-Ho Ku, the Ugandan spokesman for the peacekeepers.
Callers to his cell phone promise death and dismemberment. He dismisses the group as misguided and accuses them of making the lives of ordinary Somalis horrific.
"It's so sad," he says, hanging up on another sinister voice. "They don't know what they are doing. They are just killing their own people."
It is estimated that around half the population of Mogadishu have fled to refugee camps.
Those left behind are caught in an increasingly deadly form of urban warfare. Senior A.U. military figures say the signs of al Qaeda's hand in the fighting are visible through the use of Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, and suicide bombings.
Most of the fighting goes on between the local TFG forces, weak and underfunded, and Al Shabaab.
At the A.U.'s hospital the morning after a skirmish in town, TFG soldiers lie of stretchers, thin and bleeding. Colonel Dr James Kiyengo, a surgeon, leans over one soldier injured by an IED.
"This kind of injury has increased," he says. "Earlier on the soldiers could move out of the camp and come back, and when the Ethiopians withdrew there was a vacuum that was filled.
"I think the insurgents came closer, and into the city, such that we found that these injuries increased. Earlier on there were no IEDs, not as common as it is now."
A major offensive against Al Shabaab to retake large areas of the city has been rumored for months. Military leaders in Mogadishu play down the reports, saying the move against Al Shabaab will happen gradually.
Last month the New York Times reported that the U.S. had become so concerned with the group's activities across Somalia and in Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden, that they were giving direct military support to the TFG. This was strongly denied in Washington.
"The United States does not plan, does not direct, and does not coordinate the military operations of the TFG, and we have not and will not be providing direct support for any potential military offensives," Johnnie Carson, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, told reporters. "Further, we are not providing nor paying for military advisors for the TFG. There is no desire to Americanize the conflict in Somalia."
The dull whir of a nightly drone circling Mogadishu's skies however only adds to speculation amongst locals.
"The American's gather intelligence," one official whispered. "But they don't share it with the Somali government."

Treasury unveils new $100 bill

Benjamin Franklin gets a facelift as the Treasury Department unveils a new $100 bill Wednesday, the first remake of the denomination since 1996.
The new design for the $100 note made its debut during a 10:30 a.m. ceremony at the Department of the Treasury's Cash Room attended by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
"The $100 note is the highest value denomination of U.S. currency in general circulation, and it circulates broadly around the world," according to a statement from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The denomination is popular when large amounts of cash need to be carried internationally.
Anti-counterfeiting measures are the main reason the United States has been making changes in currency.
The currency changes started in 1996 with the $100 bill, followed by a new $20 bill in 2003. The $50 bill got an overhaul in 2004, and the $10 was redesigned in 2006. The $5 bill was upgraded in 2008.
Watch CNNMoney video: Meet the new Benjamin
Security features added to the paper help people to spot bogus bills. They include watermarks and an embedded security thread.

Black farmers call on Congress to pay racial bias settlement

African-American farmers hoping for government settlement money in a racial bias case met with lawmakers Wednesday and called on Congress to come up with a way to fund the $1 billion deal.
A March 31 deadline to appropriate the funds has passed, and farmers now may withdraw from the settlement and pursue independent litigation against the government. Congress now has a target date of the end of May to come up with a plan.
"We spend a billion dollars on a jet to go bomb somebody. We're talking about a billion dollars to help feed our country, and I just don't see why Congress and the president can't go ahead and find [the funds]. It is an emergency," said Gary Grant, with the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association.
Litigation known as the Pigford Case established a longstanding pattern of discrimination at the U.S. Agriculture Department against African-American farmers who had applied for farm loans and support from federal programs.
Under the terms of an involved process overseen by a federal judge and dating to 1999, qualified farmers could receive $50,000 each to settle claims of racial bias. In addition, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has said those farmers may pursue a claim for actual damages from the bias and potentially receive up to $250,000.
Ralph Paige, executive director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, said Wednesday that he believed that Congress was "very close" to coming up with a way to pay the settlement, which covers as many as 80,000 African-American farmers.
"These farmers have suffered much, much too long, and it's time that this thing get behind us. We can settle Pigford once and for all and send a clear message to the country that we are on the right track as a nation," Paige said at news conference.
"We're talking about much more than the money. We are talking about remedying past discrimination," Paige said.
Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-North Carolina, said there is a "total commitment" from President Obama and the majority party in the House and Senate to make sure the settlement is taken care of. Butterfield represents his state's First Congressional District, which is home to Timothy Pigford, who filed the class-action lawsuit more than a decade ago.
Butterfield said lawmakers need to work out how to pay for the settlement under the PAYGO rule, meaning Congress must balance any increased spending with equal savings elsewhere. The other option would be to designate the settlement as an emergency, which would be exempt from PAYGO.
Lawmakers are looking for an appropriate piece of legislation in which to include the settlement to avoid adding to the deficit, Butterfield said.
"If we cannot find the appropriate vehicle, then I would certainly support declaring this settlement as a national emergency and adding it to the next supplemental that may be on the House floor," he said.
Farmers have until May 31 to withdraw from the pending class-action settlement and pursue an independent claim against the government if they feel their chances would be better for a payout. If they choose to stay in the class, they will wait as a group to apply for the promised monetary damages.
Vilsack has said there's no question the damages are due for African-American farmers. In a statement last week, he said, "I have met with and talked to key stakeholders and members of Congress reiterating the administration's ongoing efforts to close this chapter in the history of the department."

Brazil, India pressure China on currency

China is facing growing pressure from other developing countries to begin appreciating its currency, providing unexpected allies for the US in the diplomatic tussle over Beijing's exchange rate policy.
Speaking ahead of a meeting of finance ministers and central bank heads from the Group of 20 countries which starts on Thursday in Washington, Indian and Brazilian central bank presidents have made the most forceful statements yet by their countries about case for a stronger Chinese currency.
While most of the public pressure on China has come from the US, the comments underline that a number of developing economies feel that China's dollar peg has imposed costs on their economies.
CNN readers weigh in on U.S.-China currency flap
Henrique Meirelles, head of the Brazilian central bank, said that a stronger Chinese currency was "absolutely critical for the equilibrium of the world economy". He said there were "some distortions in world markets, one of them is a lack of growth and another is China".
Duvvuri Subbarao, governor of the Reserve Bank of India said that an undervalued renminbi was creating problems for countries, including India.
"If China revalues the yuan, it will have a positive impact on our external sector," Mr Subbarao said. "If some countries manage their exchange rate and keep them artificially low, the burden of adjustment falls on some countries that do not manage their exchange rate so actively."
How much more would you spend on Chinese goods?

Lee Hsien Loong, prime minister of Singapore, added his country's voice to the debate last week, saying it was "in China's own interests" with the financial crisis over to have a more flexible exchange rate.
Some in China have fended off US pressure for a stronger currency, describing it as a distraction from the real causes of the financial crisis. However, criticism from developing countries is not so easy to bat away. "If the rich and emerging economies are united in asking China to revalue, it would be harder to dismiss the request as an example of superpower arrogance," said Sebastian Mallaby at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The increase in criticism of China comes at a time of relative calm between Beijing and Washington over the issue, with many US officials and analysts assuming China has already decided to abandon its peg with the dollar over coming months.
The impact of China's currency policy on other developing countries is not clear-cut, however. Although a number have seen their currencies appreciate sharply over the past year, putting pressure on their exports and exposing them to fiercer competition from China, the economic recovery in China has also provided a boost, especially for its neighbours in Asia as well as commodity-producing countries such as Brazil

The Wall Street 'bailout' that isn't

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell decided last week to portray the Democratic version of financial regulation as a Wall Street "bailout," it seemed like a brilliant, albeit cynical, political move.
What do the voters hate even more than Wall Street? Bailouts. What's the perfect way to combine their antagonism for big banks with their distaste for taxpayer-funded bailouts? Accuse the Democrats of bailing out the banks. Perfect.
A good political move in theory, only it didn't work. First, the outcry was over a "bailout" that wasn't. Granted, there is some money in the bill -- $50 billion -- but it's provided by the banks, not the taxpayers. And it's not there to bail out banks, it's to help the sick ones die properly without creating a panic. "Paying for the funeral" is the way Treasury sources describe it.
Republicans complain it would "open the door" to future taxpayer-funded bailouts. Really? "The notion is wrong," said Elizabeth Warren, who runs congressional oversight of bank bailouts. "At the end of what McConnell calls a bailout, the company is dead."
And get this: When the GOP leadership hatched this idea, it found more than a handful of Republicans -- and not just the usual moderate suspects -- who actually want to vote for financial reform. In fact, the difference between Wall Street reform and, say, health care reform, is that "there truly is a group of us who will hold our side's feet to the fire" to get a bill, one Senate Republican told me.
So when McConnell got all his Republicans to sign a measure to force more negotiations before bringing the bill to the floor, some were with him with a strong caveat: They would not threaten to filibuster a bill they think the country needs. Period.
And then there's the presidential X-factor: With health care, President Obama didn't actively engage until late in the game. This time, though, lesson learned: The president is out there. "This one's easier," senior White House adviser David Axelrod tells me. "Our goal is to be as aggressive as possible." Hence a trip Thursday to the lion's den on Wall Street where he's not going to make nice.
And one more thing. He's not going to let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid write this bill. Been there, done that.
So have the Republicans. And it worked once, on health care, which is still not popular with the American people. But financial reform is different. Voters want it done. In most cases, the supply of government exceeds the demand for it. In fact, a slew of recent polls show that only about 20 percent of the people trust the government to do the right thing. But even so, a majority of folks actually want the government to intervene to fix Wall Street's excesses.
In other words, the banks are so out of control that even the inept government needs to step in and do something.
So it's no surprise that, after some public chest-thumping, the sides are reported to be back at the negotiating table. Truth is, they never left. Serious senators concerned with reform had always been working on it -- but quietly, for months. The GOP leadership takes credit for moving the process along. They may have lit a fire, that's true, but under the Democrats, who were not about to cave.
Negotiate, yes. But kill the bill? Not a chance.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gloria Borger.

Starbucks profit soars as customers come back

There may not be a Starbucks on every corner any more, but Americans are finding their way back into the upscale coffee retailer's stores.
Starbucks' profit surged in the quarter ended March 28, topping Wall Street forecasts and prompting the coffee retailer to boost its forecast for 2010.

The world's largest coffee chain reported earnings of $217.3 million, or 28 cents per share. Stripping out restructuring charges, Starbucks posted an adjusted profit of 29 cents per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who typically exclude one-time items from their forecast, were looking for earnings of 25 cents per share.
Sales jumped 9% to $2.5 billion, beating analysts' expectations of $2.4 billion.
Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500)' shares rose nearly 2% on the news in aftermarket trading, after rising 0.5% during regular hours.
Over the past two years, Starbucks cut costs by closing hundreds of stores, trimming its workforce, overhauling its food menu and adjusting drink prices. The changes finally took hold last quarter, when the company reported a profit that quadrupled its earnings from a year earlier.
Since then, Starbucks has teamed up with Burger King to serve Seattle's Best Coffee and announced it will pay out dividends to shareholders for the first time ever beginning Friday.
Same-store sales, which measure sales at stores open at least a year and are a key gauge of customer traffic, climbed 7% in both the United States and international markets.
U.S. growth was driven by a 5% rise in spending and a 3% uptick in traffic, marking the first increase in more than three years. "An important milestone" for the company, said chief financial officer Troy Alstead.
"Clearly, customers are opening up their wallets and coming back to the brand," said Bart Glenn, analyst at D.A. Davidson.
With business reinvigorated in the United States, Alstead said Starbucks' "best days lie ahead of us." He expects the lion's share of growth for the company to be in opening more stores overseas, with China being the largest market.
0:00 /2:07Starbucks steams into China
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Starbucks raised its outlook and said it expects to earn between $1.19 and $1.22 per share for the full year. In its last forecast, the company said it expected to earn up to $1.09 per share in 2010.
The company also said it is on track to open 100 stores in the United States and 200 in international markets this year, as announced last fall.

Obama to push for tougher financial rules for Wall Street

President Obama is expected to call on Wall Street to join him in his efforts to reform the financial sector in a visit to Manhattan Thursday.
The address at Cooper Union For The Advancement Of Science & Art will take place just blocks from the heart of Wall Street.
Likely provisions of any reform legislation would include making banks and financial firms strengthen their capital cushions, as well as creating a new process for taking down giant failing companies and preventing future Wall Street bailouts.
Other topics for reform would include creating a new consumer financial protection regulator and keeping an eye on the kind of complex financial dealings that led to the crisis.
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke weighed in on one of those issues last week.

During a congressional hearing, when asked whether a consumer financial regulator should be able to act independently of existing regulators, Bernanke said that unchecked independence could adversely impact credit availability for consumers.
Once back in Washington, the president is expected to ask congressional leaders for bipartisan support on a reform bill.
On Wednesday, the Senate Agriculture Committee voted 13-8 in favor of a bill, which would impose regulations on the complex system of Wall Street trades known as derivatives.
Watch how derivatives work
Senate leaders now will look at merging the measure with a financial regulations reform bill already passed by the Senate Banking Committee that is headed for debate by the full chamber.
The House passed a regulatory overhaul in December.
The White House has started some preliminary discussions on Capitol Hill, with Obama meeting with congressional leaders last week in the administration's push for regulatory overhaul.
"All of us recognize that we cannot have a circumstance in which a meltdown in the financial sector once again puts the entire economy in peril," Obama said. "I'm absolutely confident that we can work out an effective bipartisan package that assures that we never have too big to fail again."

Goldman CEO fights back on SEC charges

Lloyd Blankfein on Wednesday attacked the Securities & Exchange Commission's fraud charges in telephone calls to clients as Goldman escalated its campaign to stem the damage to the firm's reputation.
One person who received a call from the Goldman chief said he was told the regulator's case against the bank was politically motivated and would ultimately "hurt America".
Mr Blankfein mounted the campaign to bolster the confidence of its business partners in the wake of the SEC charges that the bank had sold investors a security designed to fail.
In the conversations with private equity executives and others, Mr Blankfein left clients with the impression that he was eager to fight the charges in court. The SEC has requested a jury trial. "He was very aggressive," said one person called by Mr Blankfein on Wednesday. "He feels that the government is out to kill them, that they are under attack and the whole thing is totally political." Mr Blankfein said the SEC action "hurts America", this person said.
Mr Blankfein did not initiate talk about the politics or timing of the SEC charge, announced on Friday. A person familiar with the matter said: "Clients brought up the politics ... and there was a discussion around the context of what happened."

Mr Blankfein's charm offensive with clients came as it emerged that Fabrice Tourre, the Goldman employee also named in the SEC case, would appear with him next week before a US Senate panel investigating Wall Street's role in the financial crisis.
Mr Blankfein said a female staffer at ACA, the manager of the security, new that Paulson & Co intended to bet against the transaction, according to a person that was called. This goes against the SEC charges that Goldman failed to disclose that Paulson was taking the opposite side of the deal. Paulson's short position yielded it a profit of about $1bn while investors who bought into the security lost $1bn, the SEC complaint says.
Goldman this week bolstered its legal team by hiring Greg Craig, a former counsel to the Obama White House. Though Mr Blankfein did not indicate on the calls whether he was considering settling the suit, some clients close to Goldman say they believe it is gearing up for a fight. "They will likely fight aggressively and hope to win clean," the person said.
SEC staff have said that regulators would seek disgorgement of Goldman's profits on the transaction as well as penalties and injunctive relief.
Goldman maintains it made a loss on the transaction. But its argument was hurt by the disclosure on Wednesday that the loss resulted from a failure to sell some positions in the deal.

Mobile app developers tackle Africa's biggest problems

Growing up on a dairy farm in central Kenya, Amos Gichamba says he watched farmers be exploited by the people who bought their cows' milk and sold it to dairy companies.
"The price of milk at the farmer level is very low compared to how much it's sold to consumers. So they end up getting very little money for a lot of work," he said by phone.
The problem, he thought, was one of information. The rural farmers didn't know how much they could charge for their cows' milk. They didn't know what rates dairy farmers other villages were being paid. And without a sense of current market conditions, they weren't sure when to ramp up or slow down production. All of this made them easy targets for scams.
So, with all that in mind, Gichamba, 26, decided to create what he sees as the perfect technological solution for the farmers: a mobile phone app.
He created a text message-based system that lets farmers send questions to a computer. When the app launches at the end of April, a machine will match up farmers' queries with a database of information about local dairy markets -- and then spit answers back in 140 characters or less.
"As Africans, we are the ones who understand Africa the best," he said. "We see situations from the ground. We are involved with what's happening. So, when we are coming up with solutions, we come up with solutions for problems we know."
Gichamba is one of a number of mobile app developers to crop up in Africa in recent years. While developers in the United States rush to make flashy games for Apple's latest gizmo, the iPad, these young developers are trying to tackle Africa's most vexing problems.
Many are doing so with simple text message applications on phones that cost no more than $25.
Text message phone apps now help African people check market prices, transfer money, learn languages and alert authorities to the need for food or other aid in the event of a disaster. And this all comes despite Africa's reputation as the "least wired" continent in the world.
The work of these mobile developers is buoyed in part by the fact that while wired telephone lines and broadband Internet connections are very rare in Africa, cell phone use is exploding.
Mobile phone subscriptions in Africa are growing at a rate of about 50 percent per year in recent years, faster than that of any other continent, according to the International Telecommunication Union. A 2009 ITU report found 28 percent of people in Africa have a mobile phone subscription. By contrast, only 5 percent of people there use the Internet, the ITU says.
In Jessica Colaco's view, the ubiquity of mobile phones makes them vehicles for social change.
The 27-year-old mobile developer says that in some ways, Africa is taking the lead in developing apps that can be used in rural places and can improve livelihoods.
"What we need is more evangelism," she said. "People need to know what Africa is doing -- and how they can adopt from us."
Colaco, who is also a researcher at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya, started a "boot camp" program for young people who want to become app developers. So far, she's held two sessions with 100 participants each, she said, and she has plans for more.
The group has inspired competition and yielded tangible results, she said.
One student, for instance, created a text message app that alerts fishermen when fish trigger sensors in a certain area of a local lake, she said. That way, the fishermen will know exactly where and when to put their lines in the water.
"People in the environment know exactly what they need," Colaco told CNN.
Colaco said African technologists should emulate the successes of Western companies like Apple and Google, but they must work on ideas that work specifically in local conditions.
Her first mobile app was a smartphone map of Nairobi. It came out in 2007, before Google had published detailed maps of the area, she said. She lived there, so she knew that a mobile map would be useful -- and that one didn't exist.
Other developers relayed similar experiences.
Ory Okolloh started the mobile-informed Web site Ushahidi after she traveled to Kenya to vote in the 2007 elections, which turned violent. She posted reports about the violence on her blog, and she asked people to tell their own stories as comments to her posts.
The comment fields filled up so quickly that she thought to create a site where people could share their stories by text message immediately after a crisis. She paired those reports with a map to make the data more useful for crisis responders.
Okolloh emphasized the site is a team effort, with 10 full-time staff members now.
The code that supports the site is available for free and has been used in several disasters since, including the January earthquake in Haiti and the "snowmageddon" storm in Washington, D.C., this February.
"At the heart of apps that have been successful and that will continue to be successful are apps that are practical and allow people to do something that they weren't able to do before -- either with a bank account or to communicate, which is at the heart of Ushahidi ... to allow people to get their story out," she said by phone from Johannesburg, South Africa, where she lives now.
Okolloh said people should be able to develop apps that work all over the world, "whether they're in Alaska or in Timbuktu."
But Africa has a history of "tinkering" -- led by people who learn by necessity to make the most of their limited resources -- that gives the continent's app developers a certain creative, make-it-work determination, she said.
"Just the art of tinkering and making something out of nothing has a long history and tradition that still goes on," she said. "What you're begging to see is shifting that mindset of making something out of nothing into technology."
A number of barriers remain for app development and tech deployment in Africa.
Jon Gosier, founder of a Uganda-based company called Appfrica, said some people aren't comfortable getting information through text, or don't know how to send accurate queries to text-based apps. Others simply can't read. His company tested a call-center model, also tried in India, where farmers can call a free hotline to get information about crop disease.
The number of farmers who use cell phone apps is relatively small, he said.
"I think it's being tried a lot and I think there's a lot of use, but it has to be more ingrained just in, like, people's daily workflow than it is," he said.
Developers said smartphones will have to get much cheaper in order for masses of people to purchase them. The mobile Web and wired broadband connections also have to improve in Africa for tech innovation to make the next leap, the developers said.
And the use of text messaging to get information from a database or an entire social network is relatively new for most people, who tend to think of phones only for one-on-one communication, according to Gichamba, the former farmer in Kenya.
But the African app makers seem largely hopeful.
Gichamba says the phone, especially when enabled with apps, has the power to change people's lives.

Bangkok battles hit tourist industry

Thailand's political turmoil which culminated in the weekend's running street battles is starting to take its toll on tourism, the lifeblood of the economy.
More than 40 countries have issued travel warnings amid reports of thousands of tourists cancelling trips.
The Ministry of Finance said growth in gross domestic product, once estimated at 3.5 to 4.5 per cent for 2010, would be cut by 0.2 to 0.5 per cent because of the unrest. Eknitti Nitithanprapar, executive director of the macro-economic policy bureau at the finance ministry, said tourism and consumption-related industries would be hardest hit.
The severity of the blow was felt on the stock market on Monday, where shares in the travel and leisure sector were hard hit. Thai Airways shares were down 13.6 per cent, contributing to a market fall of 3.6 per cent.
The SET Index, which until last week had proved remarkably resilient to the month-long anti-government demonstrations, has now lost 6.4 per cent since the government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prime minister, invoked a state of emergency last Wednesday.
Tourism, which draws visitors to the temples of Bangkok, the beaches of the Andaman Sea and the mountains of northern Thailand, accounts for almost 7 per cent of GDP, and is an important source of employment.
The family of Tomas Oyarzun, a 19-year-old from Chile, who arrived on Saturday to stay in Bangkok's Khao San Road on the fringe of the fighting, are cutting short their holiday and going to Bali.
"It feels strange here," said Mr Oyarzun, echoing the feelings of many other visitors interviewed by the Financial Times on Monday in the wake of the violence that left 21 people dead.
Tourists party near shrines for Bangkok protest dead

Vichit Prakobgosol, president of the Thai-Chinese Tourism Alliance Association, told the Bangkok Post the violence had led to cancellations of all charter flights from China. Charter flights for holidays during this week's Thai Songkran new year festival had already dropped to just 30 from 100 even before the violence.
"But now all charter flights from China have been cancelled," he said. "We don't want to talk about it any more. Violence is not the right answer and is not good for the country. Everyone, the red shirts included, will be affected."
iReport: Were you there? Send your images, video
Dale Lawrence of the Pacific Asia Travel Association said there was "a dark cloud hanging over the travel and tourism industry. You can't blame people for making alternative plans -- there is no end in sight."
But Mr Lawrence pointed out that Thailand's tourism market had proved robust in the past. Tourist numbers last year were marginally up on 2008 despite the global downturn and the closure of Bangkok's two main airports by protests in December 2008.
Mr Lawrence said the 'Mice' market -- meetings, incentive travel, conferences and exhibitions -- is likely to have been badly hit. Many companies are unable to get insurance to send executives to countries with travel bans in place.
iReport: Watch an eyewitness video of protests
The Thai government set up a scheme over the weekend offering coverage of up to $10,000 for loss of life or a limb and up to $100 a day for losses or damages.
The demonstrators who took on troops on Saturday have been campaigning for a month for Mr Abhisit's resignation. The street battles erupted when soldiers moved in to clear one of the main protest sites near the Khao San Road.
One end of the road still looks like a warzone, with a shrine marking where a protester died. But 40 yards away, western backpackers on Monday were celebrating Songkran with music and water-pistol fights. Businesses said it was a quieter festival than normal, but it was going ahead.
Mr Oyarzun, when asked if he would come back to Thailand after what he had seen, gave a one-word answer: "Definitely".

Report: Airline industry performance up

The performance of the airline industry improved in 2009, compared with the previous year, according to an annual report released Monday.
The 2010 Airline Quality Rating report compiles information on 18 U.S. airlines based on factors such as on-time arrivals, denied boardings, mishandled baggage and customer complaints.
Overall, the airline industry recorded the third-highest score in the 19 years researchers have tracked their performance, the report said.
Fourteen airlines improved their on-time arrival performance in 2009, the report said, though only six airlines had an on-time percentage greater than 80 percent.
Customer complaints fell industrywide to 0.97 per 100,000 passengers, from 1.15 per 100,000 passengers.
The Airline Quality Rating report is a joint research project by Purdue and Wichita State universities. The study is based on figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance for 2009, with 92.1 percent. With 69 percent on-time arrivals, Comair recorded the industry's lowest rate in this category, the report said.

The report said Hawaiian was the best-performing airline in 2009, followed closely by AirTran Airways. JetBlue, Northwest and Southwest rounded up the top five.
Among major carriers, Continental was ranked sixth, U.S. Airways eighth, American ninth, United 13th and Delta 15th.
Compared with 2008, the airline industry scored higher in every category except for denied boardings, which shouldn't come as a surprise, said Dean Headley, a Wichita State professor and one of the report's authors.
"You would expect denied boardings to increase as you tighten up on the number of seats that are available," Headley said in a statement. "When you look at the past 10 years, you find that the airline industry performs most efficiently when the system isn't stressed by high passenger volume."
There's also an explanation for why the airlines did better in the other areas, said Claes Fornell, a professor of business at the University of Michigan and creator of the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
"What has happened is that because there are fewer flights, fewer passengers, you know airlines have been able to lose fewer bags and arrive on time more often, and that's what's driving the numbers up," he said.
"But of course they are losing money also, so this is not a sign that the airlines have really improved. It's a sign of weak demand, and it's easy to handle fewer customers than many customers."
Joe Brancatelli, who flies several times a month and runs JoeSentMe.com, a Web site for business travelers, said he is no fan of the report.
The report "is such a small part of the overall experience, it's almost unimportant, in my opinion," he said.
"There is nothing in this that the government hasn't already reported and it doesn't address the issues the government doesn't address, which is the waits at airports, the fact that there are no empty seats on the plane, which makes the experience terrible, the fee issue -- all those things also go into the experience."
One of the reasons why low-cost carriers are at the top of the ranking is because people know what to expect from their experience, Brancatelli said.
"The ones that do the best -- JetBlue, Southwest, AirTran -- it's not that they're smaller, it's that they're more consistent. They do the same thing every flight, every seat, every route, every day," he said.

Markets rally on Greek aid resolution

Share prices in Athens rose 3.5 per cent, their biggest one-day gain since early January. Bank stocks jumped more than 6 per cent after heavy losses last week.

“The solid form given to the Greek aid package, whether they use it or not, has given the market a much-needed psychological boost,” said Mike Berg, strategist at 4Cast consultancy.
The euro also benefited. The currency enjoyed its best single-day gain since August last year, adding 1.43 per cent before easing to $1.3583, up 0.7 per cent by mid-afternoon in New York. Two-year Greek borrowing costs fell 0.78 percentage points to 6.11 per cent, having dropped as low as 5.42 per cent in early trade.
The Greek government is set on Tuesday to borrow €1.2bn in six and 12-month loans to repay existing debts. The sale is expected to go smoothly.
However, former International Monetary Fund officials said there was uncertainty over how the eurozone would work with the IMF, which would be involved in a rescue.

Morris Goldstein, a former deputy director of the fund’s research department, said the lines of responsibility in the emerging deal were unclear.
Mr Goldstein said both groups might want to take the lead should Greece ask for aid.
The fund, he said, would insist on playing a leading role in setting the conditions for lending. These were likely to involve tough fiscal targets, more transparency on public finance data and possibly some structural reform to hold down wages and reduce costly pension rights.
“This has the makings of a strange dog’s breakfast,” said Mr Goldstein. “If a regional grouping can set IMF conditionality, what is the point of the fund anyway? This could create a very dangerous precedent.”
The rescue package agreed by eurozone members at the weekend would set interest rates of about 5 per cent – higher than eurozone countries’ own borrowing costs, but lower than the levels available to Greece in the markets.
Analysts said the details of the rescue plan had left questions unanswered, including whether it implied that eurozone members were now liable for each others’ debts.
The ongoing struggles of the eurozone to reach a deal have also left a “sour taste” in investors’ mouths, said Simon Derrick, head of currency strategy at Bank of New York Mellon.

Can a Russian Silicon Valley Spur Tech Innovation?

The Kremlin wants to engineer its own Silicon Valley. In a plan that was revealed in February, the Russian high-tech haven will come complete with new-wave architecture and all the comforts of a resort, a place for Russian geniuses to get together and invent the biggest thing since, well, the Internet. That's the hope, anyway. President Dmitri Medvedev, who has cultivated the image of a tech-savvy liberal, is staking much of his economic vision on the plan's success. And Russia has a resource that other nations envy: a fervid hacker culture with a reputation for excellence, or at least daring.
Since the Soviet collapse, no major platforms have emerged in Russia for its computer experts to innovate. As a result, many of them have emigrated, while many others have turned to hacking, a field in which Russians seem to excel. In January, police arrested a 40-year-old computer whiz for hacking into a Moscow advertising mainframe and turning a giant billboard display into a clip of hard-core pornography over one of the city's main streets. To avoid detection, the man had routed his attack through a proxy in Chechnya, a sophisticated trick. But for all his skills, the man was found to be unemployed. He told police he had done it "just to give people a laugh." The Russian government's idea now seems to be giving minds like his something more productive to do. (See 10 ways Twitter will change American business.)
That ambition, at least, is admirable. But for all Medvedev's project evokes of free thinkers brainstorming in a park, it still has a distinctly Soviet feel. It relies on central planning rather than a movement of geeks in garages, and it will be managed by the state. What it reveals, experts say, is the irreconcilable conflict between the Kremlin's new-age ambitions and age-old desire to control.
The government has clear goals. It wants the denizens of its Silicon Valley to hatch lucrative inventions that will help break the economy's dependence on the sale of oil and gas. "The appearance of great ideas, like life itself, is still considered a miracle," said the Kremlin's chief ideologist, Vladislav Surkov, who laid out the project in a rare interview with Vedomosti, a Russian business daily, on Feb. 15. "There are, of course, no miracle workers among bureaucrats and businessmen, but together we need to create an environment where miracles are possible." (See how hackers crippled Twitter.)
Surkov, officially Medvedev's deputy chief of staff, said that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had approved the idea of a Russian Silicon Valley after Medvedev came up with it. Surkov said he himself had been assigned to oversee its creation, most likely on the outskirts of Moscow. It is an unusual role for him. Both under Putin's presidency between 2000 and 2008 and now under Medvedev's, Surkov has been widely seen as Russia's éminence grise. He is the author of the "sovereign democracy" theory that underpins Russia's neo-authoritarianism and the engineer of the Kremlin youth group Nashi, which uses strategic thuggery to discourage opposition. Now he has embraced his role as Russia's innovation guru.
He has been doing his homework. In January, he traveled to MIT to take part in a two-day seminar on innovation, visiting the kinds of labs, design rooms and incubators where new technologies are born. Two weeks ago in Moscow, he hosted a delegation from the real Silicon Valley that included top executives from eBay, Twitter and Cisco Systems. The actor Ashton Kutcher also came along, and documented the visit on his Twitter feed. "Russia is building their own Silicon valley. And they want help," Kutcher tweeted on Feb. 18. "If we rebuilt it today what would we do differently?"

How to nominate a CNN Hero

Great things can happen to those nominated as CNN Heroes:
• Anne Mahlum's Philadelphia running program is now helping the homeless get "back on their feet" in Baltimore and Washington.
• Doc Hendley's 'Wine to Water' organization, which works in three continents, is building sustainable water filtration systems in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
• Jordan Thomas, 20, has raised more than $500,000 to provide prosthetics to underserved children -- including Haiti.
What do they have in common? Each was selected as a CNN Hero after being nominated by someone like you -- someone who wanted us to share their story with the world.
Enter your nominations at CNN.com/Heroes
Now your nomination of a 2010 CNN Hero could help the person that inspires you achieve even greater recognition and success.
Do you know someone who should be recognized as a CNN Hero? Here are some suggestions we hope will help you in crafting your nomination.

• Think about what makes your hero special. Ask yourself: What makes my nominee unique? What specific accomplishment has he or she achieved that is truly remarkable? What impact has their work had on others? We encourage you to watch videos of previous CNN Heroes to familiarize yourself with the achievements of the inspiring individuals we honor as "everyday people changing the world."
• Take a look at our nomination form. We suggest you review the information requested about yourself, your nominee and their work before filling out your submission.
• Tell us about your hero! Take your time and write from the heart. Remember: What you share -- in your own words -- is the most important factor in advancing a nomination for further consideration. You can enter your answers to the essay questions directly on the form, or write them first in a word-processing document and "cut-and-paste" them into each answer field. Please note that the information you provide will be used in accordance with our privacy policy.
• Click "Submit." If your nomination has been successfully transmitted, you'll see a "thank you" message on your screen. If you provided us with your e-mail address, we'll also send a confirmation that your nomination has been received. And yes, we read each and every one.
That's it! Nominations for 2010 CNN Heroes remain open through August 1.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Who is eligible to be considered as a CNN Hero?
A: Nominations must be in the name of a single individual, at least 13 years of age, whose accomplishment occurred (or continued) after November 26, 2009. Nominees in the "Young Wonder" category must be 25 years of age or younger. Groups and organizations are ineligible for consideration. Citizens of voided countries are also ineligible. For complete details on eligibility requirements and other rules governing selection of CNN Heroes, please read our Legal Disclosures.
Q: How will I know if my hero is selected?
A: Because of the high volume of nominations received, we cannot respond individually to each submission. However, if your nomination advances, we will contact you and your nominee through the contact information you provide.
Q: What if I don't know my nominee's address, e-mail, and telephone number?
A: Please make every effort to provide as much contact information as possible. We require either an email address or telephone number so we may quickly contact your nominee to obtain their permission for consideration as a CNN Hero.
Q: May I submit additional supportive information about my nominee?
A: There's space at the end of the form to provide links to articles or Web sites with more information about your hero. Please do not send additional materials unless requested.
Q: May I mail or fax my nomination?
A: No. All nominations must be submitted online through our Web site.
Q: What if my nomination form is rejected?
A: When filling out your form, please note that certain information is required. Those fields are marked with an asterisk (*). If you are not certain of your hero's nationality, select "Other" from the country drop-down menu. Likewise, if you're unsure which category their cause belongs in, just click "Other."
CNN is not responsible for technical problems that may prevent your submission from being successfully transmitted. You may wish to first write and save the answers to essay questions in a word-processing document. That way, if you need to re-submit your nomination, you can "cut-and-paste" those answers into the form without re-writing them.
Q: Can I buy tickets to "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute"?
A: Unfortunately, seating for our November telecast is limited and by invitation only. Airdates and times for the global broadcast of "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute" will be announced later this year.

Airline to charge for carry-on bags

With many airlines now charging a fee for checked luggage, the next step had to come sometime: A carrier asking passengers to pay for the privilege of bringing carry-on bags on board.
Well, that time is here.
Spirit Airlines announced Tuesday that it will charge its customers $20 to $45 for items they place in the overhead bins.
The cost depends on whether passengers are members of the airline's ultra-low fare club and whether they "pre-reserve" their carry-on bag in advance.
Each passenger will still able to bring one personal item that fits under a seat for free, such as a purse, briefcase, backpack or laptop computer. They also won't have to pay extra for items such as diaper bags, pet containers and cameras.
Airline officials called it a "bring less; pay less" policy that would ultimately benefit customers.
"In addition to lowering fares even further, this will reduce the number of carry-on bags, which will improve inflight safety and efficiency by speeding up the boarding and deplaning process," Chief Operating Officer Ken McKenzie said in a statement.
Spirit's new fee is effective for reservations made after April 5 for travel starting August 1. Although it's already among the airlines that charge for checked bags, the ultra-low-cost carrier is the first carrier in the United States to implement a fee for carry-ons. It may also be the first airline in the world to do so, said Genevieve Shaw Brown, senior editor at Travelocity.
Spirit, which is headquartered in Miramar, Florida, and flies to destinations in the U.S., the Caribbean and Latin America, says it keeps costs low by starting with rock-bottom fares and asking passengers to pay only for the optional services they want.
Will a backlash follow?
Spirit's new fee structure had industry observers wondering whether other airlines would follow. Shaw Brown called it a "very, very bold move" and predicted that Spirit's competitors would be watching the fee's failure or success very closely.
Others wondered whether it signals even more drastic changes for passengers.
"When will more shoes drop?" asked Airfarewatchdog.com President George Hobica.
"When will we finally see a U.S. airline dare to charge for using a credit or debit card, and who will be the first to eliminate airport check-in counter staff, forcing passengers to show up at the airport with a pre-printed boarding pass and pre-paid luggage fees? ... No human interaction necessary."
Another expert said Spirit's move may be too much for fliers who are already enraged by fees.
"It's interesting that the program will not kick in until August, perhaps giving Spirit time to cut the program if there's significant backlash from customers," said Jami Counter, senior director of TripAdvisor Flights.
"I do think this is a step too far for the traveling public, and other carriers won't follow Spirit's lead on this."
Shop around carefully
The new fee reinforces how important it is for air travelers to stay on top of fees and not be lured by cheap base fares, Shaw Brown warned.
"Travelers are going to naturally gravitate toward the airline with the lowest fare, and they may not realize what those extra charges are going to be and how they can add up very quickly," she said.
"The best advice is, know all the fees, know the kind of traveler you are, how much you do end up packing and how much it's going to cost you, and make sure to add that to the base fare so that you know exactly how much you're going to be paying."
Most major air carriers started adding checked-bag fees in 2008. The airlines reported collecting nearly $740 million in baggage fees in the third quarter of 2009, according to U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Many have also cut costs by eliminating complimentary meals in economy class and have drawn ire for asking passengers to pay for services like reserving a seat in the emergency exit row, which usually has more legroom.
Still, the fees -- even the latest one from Spirit Airlines -- probably won't stop anyone from flying.
"The truth of the matter is, the desire to travel often overcomes these annoyances that people face. People adapt," Shaw Brown said.

Man accused of death threats against U.S. senator

Police arrested a 64-year-old Washington state resident who authorities say made death threats against Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
A department statement said the suspect, identified as Charles Alan Wilson of Selah, Washington, made the threats in phone messages to Murray's office between March 22 and April 4.
Wilson allegedly stated that Murray "had a target on her back" and that he wanted to kill her, according to the statement, which said the threats were in response to congressional passage of the new health care bill.
According to the statement, Wilson allegedly "told undercover FBI agents that he regularly carries a firearm with a concealed weapons permit" and "also stated that he was extremely angry about the passage of the health care reform legislation."
A statement from Murray's office said that after receiving the phone calls, staff contacted the Capitol Police Department, which advised them to contact the FBI. The office declined to comment further, citing the ongoing investigation.
"Senator Murray will continue to focus on working for the people of Washington state," the statement said.
Threatening a federal official is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the Justice Department statement said.
Threats against U.S. senators and representatives increased as Congress held its final debates and votes on the health care bill, which was unanimously opposed by Republicans. In addition, conservative activists around the country protested the bill.
Most of the reported threats were against Democrats, though there were some against Republicans.

Brazil flood toll exceeds 100

The death toll from heavy rain and floods in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and surrounding areas reached 102 on Wednesday, the country's civil defense said.
About 287 people have been rescued, and others were trapped under mudslides caused by the rain, Maj. Ronaldo Nogueira said on Tuesday.
A record-breaking 11.3 inches (288 millimeters) of rain fell in Rio within 24 hours on Tuesday, Mayor Eduardo Paes said, according to the state-run Agencia Brasil news agency.
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The downpour continued Wednesday.
Firefighters were focusing on rescuing people from multiple mudslides throughout the state of Rio de Janeiro.
There were reports of power outages, and schools were closed because of the rain. A high tide came with the rain, making the situation worse, officials said.

L.A. mayor looks at shutting most city services twice a week

The mayor of Los Angeles, California, called Tuesday for a plan to shut down all city services -- except for public safety and revenue-generating positions -- twice a week beginning Monday in an effort to solve the city's budget crisis.
"There are no easy decisions or simple ways to solve this budget crisis," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. "But as the CEO of this great city, it is my responsibility to make these difficult, but necessary, decisions to steer the city out of this crisis and onto solid financial ground."
He said he was asking the city administrative officer to develop a plan to shut down the city for two days a week and calculate the money the city would save from the move.
"We can no longer wait. We can no longer keep saying no. We must act now," he said.
The mayor's announcement comes a day after the Department of Water and Power said it will not be paying $73 million to the city's general fund.
The department's interim general manager, S. David Freeman, said the department's anticipated $73.5 million transfer to the city's general fund was contingent on the city's approval of an electricity rate increase, CNN affiliate KTLA reported. The department said the electricity rate increase was necessary because of the rising cost of energy.
The City Council rejected the increase last week. It had earlier approved a more modest increase, but the department's board voted for a higher one, which the council then rejected, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Without the $73.5 million, City Controller Wendy Greuel said, the city's general fund will be negative $10 million on May 5.
She called the situation "the most urgent fiscal crisis" in the city's recent history. She urged the mayor to transfer $90 million from the city's reserve funds so that she could pay city employees and the city's bills.

FBI joins search for girl who vanished on way to party

A $10,000 reward is being offered in the search for a 12-year-old Colorado girl last seen walking to a birthday party at a friend's home.
Kayleah Wilson, who is from Greeley, Colorado, disappeared on her way to the party on Sunday, March 28. The FBI and the Greeley Police Department hope the reward will solve a mystery that began more than a week ago.
"We can't rule anything out at this point," Greeley police spokesman Sgt. Joe Tymkowych told CNN. "It could be a runaway. It could be an abduction. Right now, we don't have anything to rule out, one side or the other."
Tymkowych said authorities have received more than 300 tips since Kayleah vanished, including two possible sightings at a mall near her home.
"We feel fairly confident that they may have seen her, and those [tips] are being followed up as well," Tymkowych said. "But that would have been during that time span when she left her house and before she was going to arrive at the birthday party."

"We have a contingent of FBI agents and our own investigators that are working pretty much around the clock," Tymkowych said. Officers are using horseback, all-terrain vehicles, search dogs and an airplane, he said.
Kayleah lives with her mother, brother and grandmother, police said. They also told CNN there is no evidence to suggest any domestic conflicts that would cause her to run away.
Kayleah, who is a student at Brentwood Middle School, was not carrying a cell phone or a bag when she left the home Sunday afternoon for what should have been an eight- or nine-block walk to the party, authorities reported.
"We can't prove what happened to her," Tymkowych said. "We just don't know."
The case reminded him of another incident that occurred in Greeley a quarter of a century ago.
"About 25 years ago, we had a young lady about the same age that actually disappeared from her house," Tymkowych said. "We knew she was dropped off there after a school event, she was home for a short while ... but we were never able to determine what happened to her."
Kayleah was wearing a white-and-pink shirt, blue jeans and white-and-red shoes at the time she was reported missing.
She is 5-foot-1, 145 pounds, with brown eyes and brown hair.
Anyone with information about Kayleah's whereabouts is asked to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) or the Greeley Police Department at 970-350-9600.

N. Korea: American sentenced to 8 years

An American man has been sentenced to eight years hard labor for illegally entering North Korea, the reclusive country's official press agency said in a release monitored in Seoul Wednesday.
The American is Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, who was arrested after crossing the North Korea-China border on January 25. The American was, according to South Korean press reports, an English language teacher with strong Christian convictions, who had taken part in anti-North Korean protests in the South.
It is the third recent case of Americans being held in North Korea.
Two American journalists -- Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had crossed the border last March and were arrested and sentenced to 12 years hard labor -- were released in August after an intervention former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Robert Park, a Korean-American Christian evangelist who was arrested after entering the country on Christmas Day, had given a media interview in which he stated his aim to force change in North Korean human rights conditions. He was released in February after telling North Korean state media that he had been wrong about human rights conditions there.
A statement attributed to Park and released by one of his associates -- high-profile anti-North Korean activist Norbert Vollertsen -- on March 24, stated: "Robert Park begs the American government to intervene on Mr. Aijalon Gomes' behalf...Mr. Gomes is one of the most kind, gentle, beautiful and good persons Mr. Robert Park has ever met."
The United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea -- U.S. interests there are represented by Sweden. In an e-mail to CNN, Swedish ambassador to Pyongyang Mats Foyer referred questions on Gomes' welfare to the U.S. State Department.
In recent years, no Americans have been incarcerated in North Korea's harsh labor camp system. Lee and Ling were held in isolation in a guest house in Pyongyang, as was Evan Hunziger, who was held in the country for three months in 1996 after swimming across the Yalu River border. He was released after a diplomatic intervention by former U.S. Congressman Bill Richardson, who maintains high level contacts in Pyongyang.
"The North Koreans don't want anyone to see inside their camps," said Choi Jin-wook of the Seoul-based Korean Institute of National Unification. "He [Gomes] is going to be used by North Korea as a bargaining chip."
North Korean survivors of the camps who have defected to South Korea paint a grim portrait of institutionalized brutality. The most significant peril, however, is death by starvation. With large portions of North Korea's general population routinely suffering malnutrition, occupants of the gulag are at highest risk.

7.7-magnitude quake strikes Indonesia

A 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia early Wednesday, triggering two tsunamis and injuring several people, officials said.
Six people on Simeulue island were injured when the quake hit, and two houses collapsed under the violent shaking, said Dadik, the head of Simeulue police, who goes by only one name.
The island is just off the coast of Banda Aceh, a city at the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island where residents lost power after the temblor.
"The quake was felt quite strong, maybe about three to four minutes," said Dadik, the head of Simeulue police who goes by only one name. "I've ordered my staff to check if there's any damage or casualties, but apparently no damage reported so far."
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Residents in coastal towns fled inland to higher ground just after the quake, according to a local radio station.
The temblor struck 125 miles from Sibolga, situated on Sumatra, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The quake hit at a depth of 19.3 miles at 5:15 a.m. (6:15 p.m. ET, Tuesday) said USGS, which downgraded the quake from an earlier magnitude of 7.8.
Measurements of sea levels indicated that tsunami waves "may have been destructive along coasts near the earthquake epicenter," the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.
Scientists said they do not expect a tsunami to affect the west coast of North America.
The tsunamis, in Banyak Island and Teluk Dalam, were small and not dangerous, measuring just under a foot high, said Fauzi, chief of the Indonesian Meteorological and Geophysics Agency. Fauzi also goes by only one name, which is common in Indonesia.
Indonesian officials acted quickly to announce the tsunami warning, said geophysicist Gerard Fryer with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Indonesia's Meteorological and Geophysics Agency lifted it about two hours later, as did the warning center.
In 2004, a 9.1-magnitude underwater earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people in 14 countries.
The tsunami, which washed away entire communities, caused nearly $10 billion in damage and more casualties than any other tsunami in history, according to the United Nations. Indonesia was among the hardest hit nations.
Indonesia is on the so-called Ring of Fire, an arc of fault lines circling the Pacific Basin that is prone to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Man pleads no contest in slaying of his alleged molester

A California man pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter with the use of a gun Tuesday in the shooting death of a man who he claimed sexually abused him as a teen, a prosecutor said.
The plea comes less than a week before Aaron Vargas' first-degree murder trial was supposed to start for the slaying of Darrell McNeill, a neighbor from his childhood and a family friend whom Vargas claims began molesting him when he was 11 years old.
Under the terms of a plea deal, Vargas, now 32, faces anywhere from probation to 10 years in prison for shooting the former Boy Scout leader and local businessman last year in his home in the Northern California community of Fort Bragg.
Lawyers will return to court April 20 to place a statement of facts on the record before Judge Ronald Brown decides on the final sentence. "There's some relief that we know we won't lose him for the rest of his life, but there's also a lot of anxiety about what the judge is going to do," said Vargas' sister, Mindy Galliani.
"I won't have closure until he's home," she added. "But even when he's home, it's still not going to be closure. We need to get him into treatment so he can get help. I feel like this is only the beginning."
Since his arrest, Vargas' family has waged a tireless campaign to reduce the charges and raise awareness over child sex abuse, earning support from members of the community and giving rise to more sex abuse allegations against McNeill.
McNeill used his position as a Boy Scout troop leader and as active neighborhood father to win the trust of Vargas and other young boys, Galliani said. He took the boys on camping trips or hikes, gave them alcohol or drugs and molested them, Galliani alleged.
The alleged sexual abuse waned as Vargas grew into adulthood, but McNeill continued to call him and visit the home where Vargas lived with his wife and infant daughter. The continued contact drove Vargas to the breaking point, his sister said.
Vargas was under the influence of alcohol the night of February 8, 2009, when he drove to McNeill's mobile home with a loaded gun and shot him in front of his wife, Mendocino County Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Norman said.
The prosecutor said she consulted with the victim's family and reached what they thought a jury may have found -- that his level of intoxication placed the crime more along the lines of an "emotional decision rather than an intentional first-degree murder."
Norman said she has received four reports of sexual abuse involving McNeill, which factored into the decision to strike a plea deal even though she could not prove they were true.
"When you have other victims coming forward, that does lend credibility to that scenario," she said. "These people have written me letters and said this has happened, and I have no way of showing this has happened, but it has been put out there."
The slaying victim's wife, who lived next door to Vargas' family and has known the defendant since he was a child, said she had no reason to doubt his claims of abuse. "I love this young man and feel he needs counseling more than anything," McNeill's wife said in an e-mail. She requested that her name not be published.
"I cannot condone what Aaron has done, but I do understand it. I believe he took the wrong avenue by taking the law into his own hands. Like most of this community, I do not feel he deserves 50 years in prison. Unlike most of this community, I feel he should serve some time, but not much."
The case, with its suggestions of long-buried secrets, has rocked Fort Bragg, a former logging community that has become a coastal tourist destination. Another longtime Fort Bragg resident has come out publicly with allegations of abuse against McNeill.
"I was a reserved kid, some considered me a loner; I just kind of kept to myself as a kid, and he would play on that," Todd Rowan said in an interview in March. "He'd give me pot and beer, and he'd get me stoned and a little drunk, and he took advantage of me that way."
Rowan said the abuse began when he was 15 and continued on and off until he was 19, but the emotional trauma lingered for years, driving him to substance abuse and suicide attempts. He said he brought the allegations to Fort Bragg Police in 2001 but nothing happened.
"All those years, I wanted to forget about and push it away with alcohol because you're supposed to be a man. And then, when police didn't do anything, that pushed me even further down the hole."
Repeated calls for comment to the Fort Bragg Police Department and the Mendocino Sheriff, which handled the investigation of McNeill's death, were not returned. Since then, Rowan said his ability to stay sober for more than two years braced him for news of McNeill's death.
"When I got news that he'd been shot, the first thing I thought was, 'who got him? Somebody got him. Who else did he do it to?'"
McNeill's second wife, Jenny Cotila, who divorced him in 1980, said she also went to Fort Bragg Police in the 1990s after she was told that her ex-husband had sexually abused her son years ago.
"It could've been stopped a long time ago but the police didn't take me seriously when I reported it because they said the statute of limitations was up by the time I found out what happened to my son," Cotila said in a phone interview Tuesday.
Cotila said she has long felt indifference toward her ex-husband but worried about the effects of his death and the abuse allegations were having on their children, now adults.
"It's hard for them to cope because they're friends with Aaron, they knew him," said Cotila. "Darrell's their father and he's their friend. They're having a hard time separating their father from the pedophile."
Members of the community also expressed shock that a "normal" guy like McNeill, a small business owner who installed the blinds in your home after you bought them at his furniture store, was capable of such horrific acts right under their noses.
"Here we have this man, and he's being the normal, small-town businessman, and he's following all the cultural paths available and all the norms, so when you have people coming forward and saying this man is doing something to me that's outside the norm, there's a tendency to not listen closely or to ignore it," said Jeff Edwards, a hospital employee who has lived in Fort Bragg most of his life.
"I guess we are to blame in a way, for thinking that this could never happen in our town."

Shuttle Discovery docks with space station

Space shuttle Discovery docked with the international space station early Wednesday despite a broken antenna that knocked out radar tracking aboard the shuttle.
The shuttle docked with the space station at 3:44 a.m. ET. At the time of docking, both spacecraft were traveling 225 miles over the Caribbean sea near Caracas, Venezuela, NASA said.
Commander Alan Poindexter and his crew completed the rendezvous without the use of the shuttle's Ku-band radar, relying instead on other navigation tools to precisely track the space station, NASA said.
The Discovery's seven-person crew now joins the six-person space station crew for more than a week of work together.
It will mark the first time four women have been in space at one time.
Three women -- mission specialists Stephanie Wilson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger and Naoko Yamazaki -- comprise part of the Discovery's crew. NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson is already at the space station.
Discovery launched Monday morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The shuttle's 13-day mission includes three planned spacewalks, replacing an ammonia tank assembly and retrieving a Japanese experiment from the station's exterior.
It is scheduled to return to Earth on April 18 at 8:35 a.m. ET.
There are only three shuttle missions remaining before the space shuttle fleet is retired.

Remains of 2 people found in trash bags in New Jersey, officials say

Authorities in Linden, New Jersey, have launched a homicide investigation after the discovery Monday of a pair of trash bags containing the dismembered remains of two people, officials said.
The medical examiner has confirmed the body parts are "indeed human," the Union County Prosecutor's Office said in a news release.
"There were two bodies found inside trash bags near the intersection of Essex Avenue and Cranford Avenue," spokesman John Holl said in the release, adding that the remains are from adults, one male and one female.
Yellow police tape surrounded the scene Monday afternoon, tied to the tree trunks lining the quiet residential street where the black trash bags were discovered earlier in the morning.
Linden Mayor Richard J. Gerbounka, who was at the site, called the shocking discovery "very unusual for this area."
"We've got the homicide investigative team out and they're in the process of culling the area for evidence," he said.
Along with the Linden Police Department, investigators from the county prosecutor's office and the city fire department also were at the site. Officials spread a white sheet around the trash bags before loading the remains onto two stretchers and taking them away for further study.
Autopsies were scheduled for Monday afternoon, according to the prosecutor's office.

Destroyer nears oil tanker seized by Somali pirates

A South Korean navy destroyer Tuesday caught up with a South Korean oil tanker that was seized earlier by pirates off the coast of Somalia, official Korean media reported.
The 4,500-ton destroyer was keeping a close watch on the hijacked vessel about 30 miles away, South Korean defense officials told Yonhap news agency.
Pirates captured the South Korean tanker Sunday about 690 miles (1,111 km) north of the Somali coast. News of the attack came as the Combined Maritime Forces -- a cooperative effort by several countries to patrol international waters -- warned that pirates in the Somali basin and Gulf of Aden are venturing farther from home waters to target commercial vessels.
The 300,000-ton supertanker, Samho Dream, was seized while on its way to Louisiana in the United States.
Twenty-four crew members -- five South Koreans and 19 Filipinos -- were aboard.
"Ships operating in Somali waters are often accompanied by private or government escorts because of rampant pirate activity in the area, but the ship did not have any guards on board as it was operating in areas where piracy is not frequent," the Yonhap report said.
Valero Energy Corp., the U.S. company that owns the cargo, did not say how much oil was on the ship. But ships of that size generally carry around 2 million barrels of oil, company spokesman Bill Day said.
At current prices, that cargo could be worth about $170 million.

Explosions near U.S. Consulate in Peshawar kill at least 8

A terrorist attack near the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, killed two consulate security guards and at least six others Monday, authorities said.
The two consulate employees who died were Pakistani, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said, and "a number of others were seriously wounded."
At least eight people were killed in all, a government official said.
All U.S. citizens were accounted for, and some had minor injuries, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
The coordinated attack involved a vehicle suicide bomb and attackers who tried to enter the consulate by using grenades and weapons fire, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

The blasts in the capital of the North West Frontier Province came hours after a suicide attack killed at least 30 people and wounded 50 others in another part of the province.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks. In a phone call to CNN, Azam Tariq, spokesman for Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, said the group was behind the attacks in Peshawar and Dir.
The U.S. Embassy, in its statement, said the two attacks reflect "the terrorists' desperation as they are rejected by people throughout Pakistan."
Peshawar is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from Islamabad, the country's capital.
Bashir Ahmad Bilour, a senior provincial minister, told reporters at the scene that several militants came in two vehicles. The first vehicle exploded near a security checkpoint, and gunmen in the second car opened fire.
The dead included two Pakistani security personnel working for the U.S. Consulate, one policeman, two civilians and three unidentified bodies, said Karim Khan, a senior police official in Peshawar.
"They were well-organized. They were well-equipped," he said of the attackers.
The three explosions went off within a span of 15 minutes in the area of Saddar and Hayatabad Avenue, near the American consulate and the Peshawar headquarters of Pakistan's intelligence agency, which was the target of a deadly car bomb attack in November.
The North West Frontier Province is rife with Islamic extremists and has been the site of recent clashes between Pakistani security forces and militants.
Monday's earlier suicide attack took place at a rally for the province's ruling Awami National Party in Timargarah in the lower Dir district, said lawmaker Mehmood Zeb Khan.
Hundreds of the participants had gathered for a rally to change the name of the province to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The bomber walked into the government building where the meeting was going on and blew himself up, said provincial spokesman Mian Iftikhar Hussain.
The province was given its current name during the British colonial rule. The party, which heads a coalition government in the province, wants the area's name to reflect its majority Pashtun population.
A bill to amend the constitution in support of the name change was expected to be introduced in parliament on Monday.