Wall Street Journal says hit by Chinese hackers too

WASHINGTON: The Wall Street Journal said Thursday its computers were hit by Chinese hackers, the latest US media organisation citing an effort to spy on its journalists covering China.

The Journal made the announcement a day after The New York Times said hackers, possibly connected to China's military, had infiltrated its computers in response to its expose of the vast wealth amassed by a top leader's family.

The Journal said in a news article that the attacks were "for the apparent purpose of monitoring the newspaper's China coverage" and suggests that Chinese spying on US media "has become a widespread phenomenon."

"Evidence shows that infiltration efforts target the monitoring of the Journal's coverage of China, and are not an attempt to gain commercial advantage or to misappropriate customer information," said a statement from Paula Keve of Journal parent Dow Jones, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

The Journal gave no timeline for the attacks but said a network overhaul to bolster security had been completed on Thursday.

"We fully intend to continue the aggressive and independent journalism for which we are known," Keve said.

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that hackers have over the past four months infiltrated computer systems and stole staff passwords.

The effort has been particularly focused on the emails of Shanghai bureau chief David Barboza, the newspaper said.

According to a Barboza story published on October 25, close relatives of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao have made billions of dollars in business dealings.

"Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached The Times' network," the newspaper said, citing a wealth of digital evidence gathered by its security experts.

The newspaper said the IT consultants believed the attacks "started from the same university computers used by the Chinese military to attack United States military contractors in the past."

The hackers stole corporate passwords and targeted the computers of 53 employees including former Beijing bureau chief Jim Yardley, who is now the Times' South Asia bureau chief based in India.

The Times said Bloomberg News was also targeted by Chinese hackers, after publishing in June a report on the wealth accumulated by relatives of Xi Jinping. In November, Xi was elevated to leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

In a related development, CNN said its international service went down for several minutes in response to its reporting on the hacking at the New York Times.

"CNNI went dark for 6 minutes," said a tweet from CNN International anchor Hala Gorani. "#China blacks out CNN for @HalaGorani interview on hacking of @nytimes."

In Beijing, China dismissed any notion that it was involved in any hacking.

"The competent Chinese authorities have already issued a clear response to the groundless accusations made by the New York Times," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters in Beijing.

"China is also a victim of hacking attacks," he said. "Chinese laws clearly forbid hacking attacks, and we hope relevant parties take a responsible attitude on this issue."

The US online security firm Symantec, cited by the New York Times for having failed to prevent the infiltration, issued its own statement deflecting any blame.

"Advanced attacks like the ones the New York Times described... underscore how important it is for companies, countries and consumers to make sure they are using the full capability of security solutions," the company said.

"Turning on only the signature-based anti-virus components of endpoint solutions alone are not enough in a world that is changing daily from attacks and threats."

- AFP/jc

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Syria protests over Israel attack, warns of "surprise"

BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - Syria protested to the United Nations on Thursday over an Israeli air strike on its territory and warned of a possible "surprise" response.

The foreign ministry summoned the head of the U.N. force in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to deliver the protest a day after Israel hit what Syria said was a military research centre and diplomats said was a weapons convoy heading for Lebanon.

"Syria holds Israel and those who protect it in the Security Council fully responsible for the results of this aggression and affirms its right to defend itself, its land and sovereignty," Syrian television quoted it as saying.

The ministry said it considered Wednesday's Israeli attack to be a violation of a 1974 military disengagement agreement which followed their last major war, and demanded the U.N. Security Council condemn it unequivocally.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "grave concern". "The Secretary-General calls on all concerned to prevent tensions or their escalation," his office said, adding that international law and sovereignty should be respected.

Israel has maintained total silence over the attack, as it did in 2007 when it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear site - an attack which passed without Syrian military retaliation.

In Beirut on Thursday Syria's ambassador said Damascus could take "a surprise decision to respond to the aggression of the Israeli warplanes". He gave no details but said Syria was "defending its sovereignty and its land".

Diplomats, Syrian rebels and security sources said Israeli jets bombed a convoy near the Lebanese border on Wednesday, apparently hitting weapons destined for Hezbollah. Syria denied the reports, saying the target was a military research centre northwest of Damascus and 8 miles from the border.

Hezbollah, which has supported Assad as he battles an armed uprising in which 60,000 people have been killed, said Israel was trying to thwart Arab military power and vowed to stand by its ally.

"Hezbollah expresses its full solidarity with Syria's leadership, army and people," said the group which fought an inconclusive 34-day war with Israel in 2006.

Russia, which has blocked Western efforts to put pressure on Syria at the United Nations, said any Israeli air strike would amount to unacceptable military interference.

"If this information is confirmed, we are dealing with unprovoked attacks on targets on the territory of a sovereign country, which blatantly violates the U.N. Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motives," Russia's foreign ministry said.

Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdullahian said the attack "demonstrates the shared goals of terrorists and the Zionist regime", Fars news agency reported. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad portrays the rebels fighting him as foreign-backed, Islamist terrorists, with the same agenda as Israel.

An aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday Iran would consider any attack on Syria as an attack on itself.

In battle-torn Damascus, residents doubted Syria would fight back. One mother of five said she had heard retaliation would come later. "They always say that. They'll retaliate, but later, not now. Always later," she said, and laughed.

"The last thing we need now is Israeli fighter jets to add to our daily routine. As if we don't have enough noise and firing keeping us awake at night."

BLASTS SHOOK DISTRICT

Details of Wednesday's strike remain sketchy and, in parts, contradictory. Syria said Israeli warplanes, flying low to avoid detection by radar, crossed into its airspace from Lebanon and struck the Jamraya military research centre.

But the diplomats and rebels said the jets hit a weapons convoy heading from Syria to Lebanon and the rebels said they - not Israel - attacked Jamraya with mortars.

One former Western envoy to Damascus said the discrepancy between the accounts might be explained by Jamraya's proximity to the border and the fact that Israeli jets hit vehicles inside the complex as well as a building.

The force of the dawn attack shook the ground, waking nearby residents from their slumber with up to a dozen blasts, two sources in the area said.

"We were sleeping. Then we started hearing rockets hitting the complex and the ground started shaking and we ran into the basement," said a woman who lives adjacent to the Jamraya site.

The resident, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity over the strike, said she could not tell whether the explosions which woke her were the result of an aerial attack.

Another source who has a relative working inside Jamraya said a building inside the complex had been cordoned off and flames were seen rising from the area after the attack.

"It appears that there were about a dozen rockets that appeared to hit one building in the complex," the source, who also asked not to be identified, told Reuters. "The facility is closed today."

Israeli newspapers quoted foreign media on Thursday for reports on the attack. Journalists in Israel are required to submit articles on security and military issues to the censor, which has the power to block any publication of material it deems could compromise state security.

Syrian state television said two people were killed in the raid on Jamraya, which lies in the 25-km (15-mile) strip between Damascus and the Lebanese border. It described it as a scientific research centre "aimed at raising the level of resistance and self-defense".

Diplomatic sources from three countries told Reuters that chemical weapons were believed to be stored at Jamraya, and that it was possible that the convoy was near the large site when it came under attack. However, there was no suggestion that the vehicles themselves had been carrying chemical weapons.

"The target was a truck loaded with weapons, heading from Syria to Lebanon," said one Western diplomat, echoing others who said the convoy's load may have included anti-aircraft missiles or long-range rockets.

The raid followed warnings from Israel that it was ready to act to prevent the revolt against Assad leading to Syria's chemical weapons and modern rockets reaching either his Hezbollah allies or his Islamist enemies.

A regional security source said Israel's target was weaponry given by Assad's military to fellow Iranian ally Hezbollah.

Such a strike or strikes would fit Israel's policy of pre-emptive covert and overt action to curb Hezbollah and does not necessarily indicate a major escalation of the war in Syria. It does, however, indicate how the erosion of the Assad family's rule after 42 years is seen by Israel as posing a threat.

Israel this week echoed concerns in the United States about Syrian chemical weapons, but its officials say a more immediate worry is that the civil war could see weapons that are capable of denting its massive superiority in airpower and tanks reaching Hezbollah; the group fought Israel in 2006 and remains a more pressing threat than its Syrian and Iranian sponsors.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny and Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow and Marcus George in Dubai; editing by David Stamp and Philippa Fletcher)

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How Drought on Mississippi River Impacts You

Woe is the Mississippi. A barge carrying light crude hit a bridge near Vicksburg, Mississippi, on Sunday, causing an oil spill.

But if you think that is the worst thing that's happened this winter to the river, you'd be wrong.

The middle Mississippi—the 200-mile (322-kilometer) stretch from St. Louis to Cairo, Illinois—is experiencing drought conditions unrivaled in the last 50 years. That's been the case  since November.

From December to March, this part of the river is always at its lowest because extra feed from the Missouri is cut off when that river's navigation season ends. The Mississippi typically loses about three feet at St. Louis as a result.

But this winter the river has lost more depth, since spring ice melt and rains weren't forthcoming and reservoirs that help feed the river didn't get filled.

The result is that transport along the Mississippi is down dramatically. In December, total barge cargo was down more than 1,100 kilotons from December 2011. (Video: Drought 101)

Barges have had to lighten their loads considerably to avoid bottoming out. Right now barges on the middle Mississippi can only afford to sink 9 feet (2.7 meters) into the water, some only 8 feet (2.4 meters). They usually run 12 feet (3.7 meters) deep, more laden with goods to get them to market faster and cheaper.

If that doesn't sound like a lot, consider that barges lose about a hundred tons of capacity for each 6 inches (15 centimeters) less deep they can sink in the water.

According to the American Waterways Operators (AWO), in December and January alone more than $7 billion worth of goods was at risk of not reaching their destination.

"It's not like someone is going to put up a sign and say the Mississippi River is closed, but there's not very many vessels that can move in those conditions," says AWO spokesperson Ann McCulloch.  (Read "Road Trip on the Northern Mississippi.)

One of the effects is that farmers on the middle Mississippi, the drought-strapped area, are paying a dollar more to ship each bushel of crops than are farmers on the lower Mississippi, who can fully load barges before sending them down the river, says Joe Kellett, deputy district engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' St. Louis District.

For middle Miss farmers, it's more trips—so higher fuel costs—with less cargo.

Spreading the Costs of Drought

If you don't live along the waterway, likely you don't think often of the Mississippi beyond its Huckleberry Finn-fueled place in American mythology.

But you should be thinking of Big Muddy in more concrete terms. If you live in the United States and many other parts of the world, the Mississippi carries an awful lot of stuff you use every day—corn, cement, coal, and crude oil, among other things.

And the Mississippi is more central on the world stage than those who don't live beside it realize.

"Harvest to market also means Centralia, Illinois, to Tokyo," says Mike Peterson, a spokesman with the Army Corps of Engineers, which constructs and maintains the riverbed of the Mississippi, kind of like a watery Department of Transportation. He notes that Japan gets 90 percent of its livestock feed off the river.

When one of the river lock's gates broke during the 1997 harvest season, Jack Yui of Japan's Zen-Noh grain corporation sent a fax to the corps' lockmaster: "I need to know when lock and dam 27 will be repaired to know if the government will need to release the grain reserves of Japan," it read. Yui wanted a daily report.

He likely wasn't the only one. Sixty percent of farm exports for the entire U.S.—largely corn and soybeans—move along the Mississippi.

"We are blessed to have our great breadbasket and river system line up," says Dave Busse, the chief of engineering and construction for the corps' St. Louis District.  "In Brazil, they grow soybeans but spend a lot to get it to the water. The Nile [and] Congo don't have much grain around them."

And choked-off agricultural exports can affect Americans  too. If Kobe cattle can't get their feed, for instance, fancy burger prices would soar in the U.S.

There are plenty of other domestic implications. If road salt, shipped only in the winter months, can't shimmy northward, northern towns are hard-pressed to deal with icy streets. Fertilizer can't make it to farms for spring planting.

As the oil spill suggests, the Mississippi is carting petroleum and crude, too. Barges and tankers carried almost 48,000 barrels from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast in 2011, nearly double the amount in 2007.

It's important for other energy sources as well. If the river doesn't run at full capacity, coal from West Virginia is slow to get to St. Louis, where it fuels the power plant that fires the Anheuser-Busch factory there, one of only a handful of places in the U.S. where Budweiser gets made.

There are dozens of other power plants that pepper the river's shores that also rely on it to get coal.

How to Run a River

The Army Corps of Engineers is tasked by Congress to maintain the Mississippi as a channel that's 9 feet (2.7 meters) deep and 300 feet (91 meters) wide.

It's often a bit wider in the bends: Tugs have to tow through bends sideways, a process called planking, then let the flow turn the barges straight.

Tugs pulling rafts of 15 barges at a time—three wide and five deep—can fit through the middle Mississippi simultaneously and often do.

During winter the river is typically helped by a system of reservoirs, which allows the corps to keep the Mississippi running at its prescribed height and depth.

Water control managers make decisions on whether and how much to tap reservoirs every two hours, all day, every day.

They have to be vigilant. Water levels in the last year have dropped more than 30 feet (9 meters) from 2011's flood to current conditions.

The drought is challenging reservoirs already stretched to their limit; they didn't get enough rain to fill them enough to start with. "There's an entire ballet going on to squeeze every last drop out of the system to make sure the river stays open without impacting the other purposes of those reservoirs," says Kellett.

During a drought, the corps' annual dredging is even more important. The typical dredging season in St. Louis runs from July to December, when flow is at its lightest, to keep sediments deposited by the flow from building up.

"It's repetitive," says Busse. "The next time the water comes up, all that work disappears."

This year's dredging is more intense. "We're gathering close to twice as much as a regular year, and we're going out earlier and staying out later," says Petersen.

As a more drastic measure, the corps is in the process of lowering the river bottom at Thebes, Illinois, removing limestone and shale pinnacles that range in size from that of a bowling ball to that of a small car and that can make navigation impossible if the water goes any lower.

In the meantime, engineers have been releasing just enough extra water from reservoirs to keep navigation moving. "It was a fight of inches," says Busse.

There is 12 days-worth left of supplemental water. Busse says pinnacle removal should be completed before that water runs out. For now at least, engineering seems to be outpacing natural disaster.

Kellett notes that current low water levels are not unprecedented in the modern era. The year 1963 saw a similar low.

"The river is cyclical—in the '40s, the '60s, the '80s, the early 2000s—every other decade or so we have hit these levels of lows," he says. "What I don't know is the role that climate change is playing here."

The long-term National Weather Service forecast is for temperatures above normal, which dry out soil and evaporate more water.

"What we know is that droughts rarely occur for only one year," says Busse.

What Might the Oil Spill Do?

The lower Mississippi—the stretch from Cairo, Illinois, south to the Gulf of Mexico—had been running at normal capacity because it's fed by the Ohio River, a healthy-size tributary.

But that's the part affected by Sunday's spill.

The barge was carrying 80,000 gallons (303,000 liters) of light crude. About 7,000 gallons (26,000 liters) of oil wasn't in the tank where it should be; it's undetermined how much seeped into Big Muddy.

The Coast Guard, the river's traffic cop, closed the waterway for the cleanup.

Compared to drought effects, the spill is a shorter-term problem. The last oil spill on the Mississippi, 10,000 gallons (38,000 liters) last February, was resolved in less than a day. In 2008, 283,000 gallons (1 million liters) shut off the waterway for just six days.

This week, 5,300 feet (1615 meters) of booms helped block flow downstream toward the Gulf, and workers have skimmed 7,650 gallons (29,000 liters) of oil-and-water mixture so far.

But the cleanup has slowed traffic on the Mississippi even more.

"It will stay closed until we can safely move traffic without impeding the cleanup efforts," said chief petty officer Bobby Nash of the U.S. Coast Guard on Tuesday. The 16-mile affected stretch opened with restrictions at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday.

As of Thursday afternoon, 52 tugs bearing 844 barges—377 headed north and 467 south—were sitting and waiting.

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Arias' Ex-Boyfriend Kept Affair Secret

Accused murderer Jodi Arias was kept away from the Mormon friends of her lover Travis Alexander and their torrid sex affair was kept secret by Alexander who was an elder in the Mormon church and was supposed to be a virgin, according to court testimony today.

The testimony in Arias' trial for killing Alexander in 2008 was intended to bolster the defense's argument that she killed him in self defense, that Alexander was a sexual deviant who treated Arias as his "dirty little secret."

Today's witness was the latest in a string called by the defense, including Alexander's former girlfriend Lisa Daidone, who told the court that Alexander had professed to be a virgin.

Daniel Freeman continued his testimony today, describing how he was a friend of both Arias and Alexander but that Alexander kept Arias distanced from his Mormon pals.

"Travis had made more friends at (the Mormon) ward, and had (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fight nights at his house many times, and Jodi was in town, but she wasn't there," Freeman said.

"There was that group of friends, them and Jodi, two different groups, and so Lisa [Daidone] and friends from church were there, but Jodi wasn't there," Freeman said.

Alexander's behavior, the defense hopes to prove, shows that he mistreated Arias.

Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Former Boyfriend Takes Stand Watch Video

Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Defense's First Day of Witnesses Watch Video

Arias, 32, is on trial for murdering Alexander, whom she dated for a year and continued to have a sexual relationship for a year after that. Her attorneys claim that Alexander was abusive and controlling toward Arias, and that she was forced to kill him.

Freeman described how he took a trip with his sister, Alexander, and Arias, and how Alexander had asked him to come along so that he and Arias "would not get physical."

"I don't know that I can say he didn't want to be alone with her, but he liked that when I was there, and my sister was there. They weren't as physical," Freeman said.

Freeman admitted that he had no idea Alexander and Arias had been having a sexual relationship the entire time they were together. He said Alexander never mentioned that to his friends.

In fact, Freeman noted that Alexander was considered to be a church elder when he baptized Arias into the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Both a church elder and a convert were expected to abide by the church's strict law of chastity, which banned any sexual relations outside of marriage.

"One thing people give up in this baptism process was sex," prosecutor Juan Martinez said. "Did you know she was having oral sex with Mr. Alexander at the time of her baptism? Would that be an insincere baptism?"

"She would not be ready to be baptized in that case," Freeman said.

"You were asked about Miss Arias, whether she was worthy of baptism if she was performing oral sex, but what about the elder receiving oral sex?" defense attorney Kirk Nurmi said.

"They would not be worthy of performing that ordinance at that time until they had gone through repentance," Freeman said. "They would go to a discipline council and could face excommunication or a probation period or have their priesthood removed."

Freeman said that Alexander never confessed to having a sexual relationship with Arias.

Freeman's testimony came on the third day of the defense's attempt to paint Alexander as a controlling, sex-obsessed liar who was cruel to Arias. Other witnesses have said that Alexander cheated on other women he dated with Arias, and lied to his friends and family about their relationship.

The defense also had Freeman point out that Alexander was strong and fit. They are expected to conclude that Alexander was physically threatening Arias when she killed him.

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John Kerry defends Senate, bidding farewell to a ‘great’ institution

In an unusually emotional speech, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) bid farewell to his colleagues Wednesday by rejecting criticisms of a “broken Senate,” forcefully defending the chamber and all its unique rules as an institution that’s meant to forge great compromise among competing personalities.

The next secretary of state — once considered aloof and always searching for a promotion out of the Senate — tearfully sketched out a 50-minute rebuttal to the growing cacophony that deem the Senate’s customs and procedures outdated in today’s political environment. He declared the current version of the chamber “a lasting memorial to the miracle of the American experiment.”

He specifically rejected the calls for reforming the Senate rules to lessen, or even eliminate, filibusters, warning junior Democrats who have pushed such changes to the institution that they would regret such a move. “It’s not the rules that confound us, per se,” Kerry said. “It’s the choices people make about those rules.”

The speech began with Kerry greeting his fellow Vietnam War hero, former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.), in an embrace as he entered the chamber to deliver the speech, and ended with a bipartisan standing ovation amid hugs and handshakes from about 20 colleagues on hand. While few Republicans attended, those on hand included a pair of freshmen who are generationally and ideologically a world apart from Kerry, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), anti-spending conservatives who sat through the entire speech listening intently. Cruz was one of just three Republicans who opposed Kerry’s confirmation in Tuesday’s 94 to 3 vote.

Without singling out Republicans for derision, Kerry chastised the GOP for its inflexibility and abuse of the chamber’s rules, leading to the gridlock that helps eat away at the public support for Congress. “The problems that we live through today come from individual choices of senators themselves, not the rules,” he said. “When an individual senator or a colluding caucus determine that the comity essential to an institution like the Senate is a barrier to individual ambition or party ambition, the country loses.”

Kerry acknowledged how his own ambition and its failings helped shape him into a much better senator. His party’s 2004 presidential nominee -- as well as a runner-up to be the vice-presidential nominee in 2000 and the secretary of state in 2009 -- Kerry became the sort of senator that won acclaim from both sides of the aisle only after he gave up on higher ambition. He dug into the chamber and fashioned a resume of bipartisan work that included sweeping passage of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia and close work with another Vietnam war hero, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), on “Arab Spring” issues.

“Eight years ago, I admit that I had a very different plan [to leave the Senate], but 61 million Americans voted that they wanted me stay here with you,” Kerry joked about his close loss to George W. Bush in 2004. “And so staying here, I learned about humility and I learned that sometimes the greatest lesson in life comes not from victory but from dusting yourself off after a defeat and starting over when you get knocked down.”

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Brazil night club owner attempts suicide

SANTA MARIA: An owner of the Brazilian night club where 235 people perished in a weekend fire tried to commit suicide, police said Wednesday, as the number of survivors seeking medical treatment after the disaster continued to rise.

Elissandro Sphor tried to kill himself with a plastic shower hose, said senior police official Lilian Carus in the town of Cruz Alta 125 kilometres from Santa Maria, where the club owner is hospitalised.

"It was clear he wanted to hang himself," Carus told AFP, adding that a police officer arrived at the scene -- a hospital where Sphor is being treated for gas poisoning -- before anything happened.

Police took Sphor and three others into custody as they pieced together what caused the inferno at the Kiss nightclub, which was packed with partying students when the blaze broke out early Sunday.

About 75 injured victims of the fire are clinging to life, some in critical condition, in the college town of Santa Maria.

Meanwhile, health officials there said about 20 people have been hospitalised since the fire with symptoms of "chemical pneumonitis" after breathing in smoke and toxic gases emitted during the inferno.

The symptoms may take five days to appear and can be severe, health official Neio Pereira said.

Most of the victims died of smoke inhalation as they desperately tried to escape.

Those treated for the respiratory ailments Wednesday were in addition to 123 people hospitalised after the fire, which authorities say was sparked by a cheap flare lit by musicians as part of an illegal pyrotechnics display.

Authorities catalogued a long list of other infractions at club, including a lack of emergency lighting, non-functioning fire extinguishers and suspected overcrowding.

It also was operating with an expired licence and had only one functioning exit, which survivors said was unmarked and blocked by steel barriers, making it difficult to flee the establishment.

Sphor's doctor told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper that since the tragedy, his client -- who is one of two owners of the night club -- cries incessantly, has had to be put on a prescription of tranquilisers, and is emotionally "destroyed."

Meanwhile, dozens of people late Tuesday took to the streets of Santa Maria demanding justice and stricter laws.

"We will work tirelessly until all those responsible are identified," police commissioner Marcelo Arigony promised the demonstrators -- even as many blamed the government itself for failing to carry out the inspections that might have saved lives.

Some survivors said that security guards initially blocked the exit to prevent customers from leaving the club without paying their bar tabs.

Fire chief Sergio Roberto de Abreu said his department had been in the process of reviewing the club's fire extinguisher documentation, but that approval had not yet been given at the time of the fire.

Lawyers for the club, however, have insisted that the establishment was in full compliance.

- AFP/jc

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Egypt curfew scaled back as Mursi seeks end to bloodshed

CAIRO/BERLIN (Reuters) - Egyptian authorities scaled back a curfew imposed by President Mohamed Mursi, and the Islamist leader cut short a visit to Europe on Wednesday to deal with the deadliest violence in the seven months since he took power.

Two more protesters were shot dead before dawn near Cairo's central Tahrir Square on Wednesday, a day after the army chief warned that the state was on the brink of collapse if Mursi's opponents and supporters did not end street battles.

More than 50 people have been killed in the past seven days of protests by Mursi's opponents marking the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

Mursi imposed a curfew and a state of emergency on three Suez Canal cities on Sunday - Port Said, Ismailia and Suez. That only seemed to further provoke crowds. However, violence has mainly subsided in those towns since Tuesday.

Local authorities pushed back the start of the curfew from 9:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. in Ismailia and to 1:00 a.m. in Port Said and Suez.

"There has been progress in the security situation since Monday. Calm has returned," Suez Governor Samir Aglan said.

Mursi, speaking in Berlin before hurrying home to deal with the crisis, called for dialogue with opponents but would not commit to their demand that he first agree to include them in a unity government.

He sidestepped a question about a possible unity government, saying the next cabinet would be formed after parliamentary elections in April.

Egypt was on its way to becoming "a civilian state that is not a military state or a theocratic state", Mursi said.

The violence at home forced Mursi to scale back his European visit, billed as a chance to promote Egypt as a destination for foreign investment. He flew to Berlin but called off a trip to Paris and was due back home after only a few hours in Europe.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who met him, echoed other Western leaders who have called on him to give his opponents a voice.

"One thing that is important for us is that the line for dialogue is always open to all political forces in Egypt, that the different political forces can make their contribution, that human rights are adhered to in Egypt and that of course religious freedom can be experienced," she said at a joint news conference with Mursi.

SPIRIT OF REVOLUTION

Mursi's critics accuse him of betraying the spirit of the revolution by keeping too much power in his own hands and those of his Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement banned under Mubarak which won repeated elections since the 2011 uprising.

Mursi's supporters say the protesters want to overthrow Egypt's first democratically elected leader. The current unrest has deepened an economic crisis that saw the pound currency tumble in recent weeks.

Near Cairo's Tahrir Square on Wednesday morning, dozens of protesters threw stones at police who fired back teargas, although the scuffles were brief.

"Our demand is simply that Mursi goes, and leaves the country alone. He is just like Mubarak and his crowd who are now in prison," said Ahmed Mustafa, 28, a youth who had goggles on his head to protect his eyes from teargas.

Opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei called for a meeting of the president, ministers, the ruling party and the opposition to halt the violence. But he also restated the precondition that Mursi first commit to seeking a national unity government.

The worst violence has been in the Suez Canal city of Port Said, where rage was fuelled by death sentences passed against soccer fans for roles in deadly riots last year.

After decades in which the West backed Mubarak's military rule of Egypt, the emergence of an elected Islamist leader in Cairo is probably the single most important change brought about by the wave of Arab revolts over the past two years.

Mursi won backing from the West last year for his role in helping to establish a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinians that ended a conflict in Gaza. But he then followed that with an effort to fast-track a constitution that reignited dissent at home and raised global concern over Egypt's future.

Western countries were alarmed this month by video that emerged showing Mursi making vitriolic remarks against Jews and Zionists in 2010 when he was a senior Brotherhood official.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said ahead of Mursi's visit that the remarks, in which Mursi referred to Zionists as "descendants of apes and pigs" were "unacceptable".

"NOT AGAINST JEWS"

Asked about those remarks at the news conference with Merkel, Mursi repeated earlier explanations that they had been taken out of context.

"I am not against the Jewish faith," he said. "I was talking about the practices and behavior of believers of any religion who shed blood or who attack innocent people or civilians. That's behavior that I condemn."

"I am a Muslim. I'm a believer and my religion obliges me to believe in all prophets, to respect all religions and to respect the right of people to their own faith," he added.

Egypt's main liberal and secularist bloc, the National Salvation Front, has so far refused talks with Mursi unless he promises a unity government including opposition figures.

"Stopping the violence is the priority, and starting a serious dialogue requires committing to guarantees demanded by the National Salvation Front, at the forefront of which are a national salvation government and a committee to amend the constitution," ElBaradei said on Twitter.

Those calls have also been backed by the hardline Islamist Nour party - rivals of Mursi's Brotherhood. Nour and the Front were due to meet on Wednesday, signaling an unlikely alliance of Mursi's critics from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Brotherhood leader Mohamed El-Beltagy dismissed the unity government proposal as a ploy for the Front to take power despite having lost elections. On his Facebook page he ridiculed "the leaders of the Salvation Front, who seem to know more about the people's interests than the people themselves".

In a sign of the toll the unrest is having on Egypt's economy, ratings agency Fitch downgraded its sovereign rating by one notch to B on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Yasmine Saleh and Marwa Awad in Cairo, Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia and Stephen Brown and Gernot Heller in Berlin; Writing by Peter Graff)

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Water Demand for Energy to Double by 2035

Marianne Lavelle and Thomas K. Grose

The amount of fresh water consumed for world energy production is on track to double within the next 25 years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects.

And even though fracking—high-pressure hydraulic fracturing of underground rock formations for natural gas and oil—might grab headlines, IEA sees its future impact as relatively small.

By far the largest strain on future water resources from the energy system, according to IEA's forecast, would be due to two lesser noted, but profound trends in the energy world: soaring coal-fired electricity, and the ramping up of biofuel production.

National Geographic

If today's policies remain in place, the IEA calculates that water consumed for energy production would increase from 66 billion cubic meters (bcm) today to 135 bcm annually by 2035.

That's an amount equal to the residential water use of every person in the United States over three years, or 90 days' discharge of the Mississippi River. It would be four times the volume of the largest U.S. reservoir, Hoover Dam's Lake Mead.

More than half of that drain would be from coal-fired power plants and 30 percent attributable to biofuel production, in IEA's view. The agency estimates oil and natural gas production together would account for 10 percent of global energy-related water demand in 2035. (See related quiz: "What You Don't Know About Biofuel.")

Not everyone agrees with the IEA's projections. The biofuel industry argues that the Paris-based agency is both overestimating current water use in the ethanol industry, and ignoring the improvements that it is making to reduce water use. But government agencies and academic researchers in recent years also have compiled data that point to increasingly water-intensive energy production. Such a trend is alarming, given the United Nations' projection that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in regions with severe water scarcity, and that two-thirds of the world's population could be living under water-stressed conditions.

"Energy and water are tightly entwined," says Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project, and National Geographic's Freshwater Fellow. "It takes a great deal of energy to supply water, and a great deal of water to supply energy. With water stress spreading and intensifying around the globe, it's critical that policymakers not promote water-intensive energy options."

Power Drunk

The IEA, established after the oil shocks of the 1970s as a policy adviser on energy security, included a warning on water in a special report within its latest World Energy Outlook released late last year. "A more water-constrained future, as population and the global economy grow and climate change looms, will impact energy sector reliability and costs," the agency said.

National Geographic News obtained from IEA a detailed breakdown of the figures, focusing on the agency's "current policies" scenario—the direction in which the world is heading based on current laws, regulations, and technology trends.

In the energy realm, IEA sees coal-powered electricity driving the greatest demand for water now and in the future. Coal power is increasing in every region of the world except the United States, and may surpass oil as the world's main source of energy by 2017. (See related interactive map: The Global Electricity Mix.)

Steam-driven coal plants always have required large amounts of water, but the industry move to more advanced technologies actually results in greater water consumption, IEA notes. These advanced plants have some environmental advantages: They discharge much less heated water into rivers and other bodies of water, so aquatic ecosystems are protected. But they lose much more water to evaporation in the cooling process.

The same water consumption issues are at play in nuclear plants, which similarly generate steam to drive electric turbines. But there are far fewer nuclear power plants; nuclear energy generates just 13 percent of global electricity demand today, and if current trends hold, its share will fall to about 10 percent by 2035. Coal, on the other hand, is the "backbone fuel for electricity generation," IEA says, fueling 41 percent of power in a world where electricity demand is on track to grow 90 percent by 2035. Nuclear plants account for just 5 percent of world water consumption for energy today, a share that is on track to fall to 3 percent, IEA forecasts. (See related quiz: "What You Don't Know About Water and Energy.")

If today's trends hold steady on the number of coal plants coming on line and the cooling technologies being employed, water consumption for coal electricity would jump 84 percent, from 38 to 70 billion cubic meters annually by 2035, IEA says. Coal plants then would be responsible for more than half of all water consumed in energy production.

Coal power producers could cut water consumption through use of "dry cooling" systems, which have minimal water requirements, according to IEA. But the agency notes that such plants cost three or four times more than wet cooling plants. Also, dry cooling plants generate electricity less efficiently.

The surest way to reduce the water required for electricity generation, IEA's figures indicate, would be to move to alternative fuels. Renewable energy provides the greatest opportunity: Wind and solar photovoltaic power have such minimal water needs they account for less than one percent of water consumption for energy now and in the future, by IEA's calculations. Natural gas power plants also use less water than coal plants. While providing 23 percent of today's electricity, gas plants account for just 2 percent of today's energy water consumption, shares that essentially would hold steady through 2035 under current policies.

The IEA report includes a sobering analysis of the water impact of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. If the world turns to CCS as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants, IEA's analysis echoes that of outside researchers who have warned that water consumption will be just as great or worse than in the coal plants of today. "A low-carbon solution is not necessarily a low-water solution," says Kristen Averyt, associate director for science at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. However, based on current government policies, IEA forecasts that CCS would account for only 1.3 percent of the world's coal-fired generation in 2035. (See related story: "Amid Economic Concerns, Carbon Capture Faces a Hazy Future.")

Biofuel Thirst

After coal power, biofuels are on track to cause the largest share of water stress in the energy systems of the future, in IEA's view. The agency anticipates a 242 percent increase in water consumption for biofuel production by 2035, from 12 billion cubic meters to 41 bcm annually.

The potential drain on water resources is especially striking when considered in the context of how much energy IEA expects biofuels will deliver—an amount that is relatively modest, in part because ethanol generally produces less energy per gallon than petroleum-based fuels. Biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel now account for more than half the water consumed in "primary energy production" (production of fuels, rather than production of electricity), while providing less than 3 percent of the energy that fuels cars, trucks, ships, and aircraft. IEA projects that under current government policies, biofuels' contribution will edge up to just 5 percent of the world's (greatly increased) transportation demand by 2035, but fuel processed from plant material will by then be drinking 72 percent of the water in primary energy production.

"Irrigation consumes a lot of water," says Averyt. Evaporation is the culprit, and there is great concern over losses in this area, even though the water in theory returns to Earth as precipitation. "Just because evaporation happens here, does not mean it will rain here," says Averyt. Because irrigation is needed most in arid areas, the watering of crops exacerbates the uneven spread of global water supply.

Experts worry that water demand for fuel will sap water needed for food crops as world population is increasing. "Biofuels, in particular, will siphon water away from food production," says Postel. "How will we then feed 9 billion people?" (See related quiz: "What You Don't Know About Food, Water, and Energy.")

But irrigation rates vary widely by region, and even in the same region, farming practices can vary significantly from one year to the next, depending on rainfall. That means there's a great deal of uncertainty in any estimates of biofuel water-intensity, including IEA's.

For example, for corn ethanol (favored product of the world's number one biofuel producer, the United States), IEA estimates of water consumption can range from four gallons to 560 gallons of water for every gallon of corn ethanol produced. At the low end, that's about on par with some of the gasoline on the market, production of which consumes from one-quarter gallon to four gallons water per gallon of fuel. But at the high end, biofuels are significantly thirstier than the petroleum products they'd be replacing. For sugar cane ethanol (Brazil's main biofuel), IEA's estimate spans an even greater range: from 1.1 gallon to 2,772 gallons of water per gallon of fuel.

It's not entirely clear how much biofuel falls at the higher end of the range. In the United States, only about 18 to 22 percent of U.S. corn production came from irrigated fields, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the remaining water in ethanol production in the United States—the amount consumed in the milling, distilling, and refining processes—has been cut in half over the past decade through recycling and other techniques, both industry sources and government researchers say. (One industry survey now puts the figure at 2.7 gallons water per gallon of ethanol.) A number of technologies are being tested to further cut water use.

"It absolutely has been a major area of focus and research and development for the industry over the past decade," says Geoff Cooper, head of research and analysis for the Renewable Fuels Association, the U.S.-based industry trade group. "Our member companies understand that water is one of those resources that we need to be very serious about conserving. Not only is it a matter of sustainability; it's a matter of cost and economics."

One potential solution is to shift from surface spraying to pumped irrigation, which requires much less water, says IEA. But the downside is those systems require much more electricity to operate.

Water use also could be cut with advanced biofuels made from non-food, hardy plant material that doesn't require irrigation, but so-called cellulosic ethanol will not become commercially viable under current government policies, in IEA's view, until 2025. (If governments enacted policies to sharply curb growth of greenhouse gas emissions, IEA's scenarios show cellulosic ethanol could take off as soon as 2015.)

Fracking's Surge

Fracking and other unconventional techniques for producing oil and natural gas also will shape the future of energy, though in IEA's view, their impact on water consumption will be less than that of biofuels and coal power. Water consumption for natural gas production would increase 86 percent to 2.85 billion cubic meters by 2035, when the world will produce 61 percent more natural gas than it does today, IEA projects. Similarly, water consumption for oil production would slightly outpace oil production itself, growing 36 percent in a world producing 25 percent more oil than today, under IEA's current policies scenario.

Those global projections may seem modest in light of the local water impact of fracking projects. Natural gas industry sources in the shale gas hot spot of Pennsylvania, for instance, say that about 4 million gallons (15 million liters) of water are required for each fracked well, far more than the 100,000 gallons (378,540 liters) conventional Pennsylvania wells once required. (Related: "Forcing Gas Out of Rock With Water")

IEA stresses that its water calculations are based on the entire production process (from "source to carrier"); water demand at frack sites is just one part of a large picture. As with the biofuel industry, the oil and gas industry is working to cut its water footprint, IEA says. "Greater use of water recycling has helped the industry adapt to severe drought in Texas" in the Eagle Ford shale play, said Matthew Frank, IEA energy analyst, in an email.

"The volumes of water used in shale gas production receive a lot of attention (as they are indeed large), but often without comparison to other industrial users," Frank added. "Other sources of energy can require even greater volumes of water on a per-unit-energy basis, such as some biofuels. The water requirements for thermal power plants dwarf those of oil, gas and coal production in our projections."

That said, IEA does see localized stresses to production of fossil fuels due to water scarcity and competition—in North Dakota, in Iraq, in the Canadian oil sands. "These vulnerabilities and impacts are manageable in most cases, but better technology will need to be deployed and energy and water policies better integrated," the IEA report says. (See related story: "Natural Gas Nation: EIA Sees U.S. Future Shaped by Fracking.")

Indeed, in Postel's view, the silver lining in the alarming data is that it provides further support for action to seek alternatives and to reduce energy use altogether. "There is still enormous untapped potential to improve energy efficiency, which would reduce water stress and climate disruption at the same time," she says. "The win-win of the water-energy nexus is that saving energy saves water."

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

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Jodi Arias Trial: Defense Attacks Ex-Boyfriend

Defense attorneys for accused murderer Jodi Arias went on the attack today, drawing testimony from an ex-girlfriend of Travis Alexander in order to portray Alexander as an insensitive philanderer who was obsessed with sex.

Arias is charged with killing Alexander in a jealous rage in June 2008, and her lawyers are attempting to convince the jury that it was a case of self defense against an abusive lover.

One observer, veteran defense lawyer Melvin McDonald, said it was "swimming up Niagara Falls" because of the evidence amassed by prosecutors.

Arias' defense tried to bolster their case by questioning Lisa Daidone, the woman who became Alexander's girlfriend after he broke up with Arias.

"Did you tell him that you felt he wanted you just for your body, that kissing didn't mean anything to him and was just a way for him to let out sexual tension? And that it made you feel used and dirty?" defense attorney Jennifer Willmott asked Daidone.

Daidone agreed that she had told Alexander all of those things, along with other complaints, when she broke up with him in an email in the fall of 2007. She had also found out that Alexander had cheated on her.

"I came to the understanding that he was cheating on me with Jodi Arias," said Daidone, a Mormon like Alexander.

Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Defense's First Day of Witnesses Watch Video

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Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Reported Plea Deal Attempt Watch Video

Daidone said that Alexander always kept in close contact with Arias, texting and calling her often. She was suspicious that he was cheating on her, but did not know they were involved sexually.

Daidone said she was "shocked" to find out Alexander was not a virgin after his death. She and Alexander never had a sexual relationship though she felt pressured to have sex with him, she testified.

The prosecution has shown that Alexander and Arias often traded sexual phone calls and text messages, and engaged in oral and anal sex. On the day she killed him, Arias posed for graphic sexual photos along with Alexander on his bed in his Mesa, Ariz., home.

The defense has argued that Alexander kept Arias as his "dirty little secret" as he pretended to be a virgin to his friends and family.

Daidone's testimony came on the second day of Arias' defense. She is charged with murder for stabbing Alexander 27 times, slashing his throat, and shooting him in the head. Arias could face the death penalty if convicted.

The attacks on Alexander's character may be the only way to help convince jurors that Arias, who admitted to killing Alexander after initially denying it, was acting in self-defense and should not be convicted of murder.

"What you do, obviously, if you're defending this case, especially when the evidence against you is so compelling, is make a case of self-defense. And to do that, you've got to paint this guy as a bad guy," said McDonald, a former judge and prosecutor who has tried cases against Arias prosecutor Juan Martinez.

The testimony today, McDonald said, has still not proven that Alexander might have threatened or been physically violent toward Arias.

"With this other girl, he's feeding her lies and misleading her, but that doesn't show any inclination toward violence whatsoever," McDonald said.

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US Senate confirms Kerry as next secretary of state

WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Tuesday confirmed Senator John Kerry as the next secretary of state, approving President Barack Obama's pick to replace Hillary Clinton by a wide majority.

The Senate voted 94-3 in favour of Kerry, after the chamber's Foreign Relations Committee approved the nomination earlier in the day.

His nomination was pushed through the Senate in a matter of days, given the clear bipartisan support for the 69-year-old veteran Democratic lawmaker, who spent 28 years in the Senate.

Kerry -- a senator from Massachusetts best known outside the United States for his unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign -- was nominated last month by Obama to take over from Clinton as the nation's top diplomat.

He is known to have long coveted the job, but almost lost out to US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who had been seen as Obama's first choice.

But she withdrew from consideration for the post under Republican fire over the administration's response to the September 11 attack on a US mission in Libya that left four Americans dead.

Earlier, Kerry said he was "humbled" and gratified by the support from the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he himself chairs.

"They've been wonderful, they've been really superb," he said of his committee colleagues, adding, "I'm very wistful about it, it's not easy" leaving.

Clinton, 65, is expected to leave her post Friday, amid swirling speculation about whether she will run for the presidency in 2016. For now, she has said only that she is looking forward to some rest after four gruelling years.

At his confirmation hearing last week, Kerry called for "fresh thinking" as he outlined his foreign policy agenda and plans for relations with Iran, China and the Middle East.

"American foreign policy is not defined by drones and deployments alone," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"We cannot allow the extraordinary good that we do to save and change lives to be eclipsed entirely by the role that we have had to play since September 11th, a role that was thrust upon us," he said.

The decorated Vietnam veteran turned anti-war activist has built impeccable credentials during his time in the Senate. He has sat down with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, soothed nerves in Pakistan and visited the Gaza Strip.

- AFP/jc

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Army warns unrest pushing Egypt to the brink

CAIRO/BERLIN (Reuters) - President Mohamed Mursi is to leave Egypt's political crisis behind on Wednesday with a short trip to Germany to seek urgently needed foreign investment and convince Europe of his democratic credentials.

But with the Egyptian army chief warning on Tuesday that the state was on the brink of collapse after days of lethal street violence, Mursi cancelled plans to go on to Paris from Berlin and will instead hurry back to Cairo later in the day.

Fifty-two people have been killed in unrest surrounding the two-year anniversary of Egypt's popular revolution, whose values Mursi's critics say he has betrayed.

His supporters say protesters want to overthrow Egypt's first democratically elected leader, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood that was banned under former President Hosni Mubarak but has come to dominate Egypt since his downfall in 2011.

Mursi on Monday declared a month-long state of emergency in three violence-ridden cities on the Suez Canal - Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, imposing a curfew and allowing soldiers to arrest civilians.

The turmoil eased on Tuesday but the instability has stirred unease in the West about the direction of the Arab world's most populous country, where a currency slump has compounded severe economic problems.

Mursi will be keen to allay those fears when he meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel and powerful industry groups in Berlin.

"TURBULENCE"

"President Mursi is very welcome in Germany," Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told Reuters in an interview last week.

"He is the first democratically elected president in the history of Egypt. We all know that a revolution means a lot of turbulence ... Of course we are not happy with everything that has been decided in the last few months in Egypt but it is necessary to seek solutions, increase the dialogue."

Germany has praised Mursi's efforts in mediating a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza, but became concerned at Mursi's efforts last year to expand his powers and fast-track a constitution with an Islamist tint, something that his critics say does not reflect Egypt's communal diversity.

Mursi's vitriolic remarks against Jews and Zionists in 2010, when he was a senior Brotherhood official, disturbed many in Germany, whose Nazi past and strong support of Israel make it highly sensitive to anti-Semitism.

Germany industry leaders see potential in Egypt but are concerned about political instability there.

"At the moment many firms are waiting on political developments and are cautious on any big investments," said Hans Heinrich Driftmann, president of Germany's Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK).

DIHK's Africa expert Steffen Behm said no companies were leaving Egypt but none were newly setting up there either.

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday that any collapse in Egypt would send shock waves across the wider region.

"(But) it cannot in any way be overlooked that there is a large number of Egyptians who are not satisfied with the direction of the economy and the political reform," she said.

"This is not an easy task. It's very difficult going from a closed regime and essentially one-man rule to a democracy that is trying to be born and learn to walk," said Clinton.

"You have to represent all of the people and the people have to believe that ... You have to have a constitution that respects and recognizes the rights of all people and doesn't in any way marginalize any group."

(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller in Berlin and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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Timbuktu’s vulnerable manuscripts are city’s "gold"

French and Malian troops surrounded Timbuktu on Monday and began combing the labyrinthine city for Islamist fighters. Witnesses, however, said the Islamists, who claim an affiliation to al Qaeda and had imposed a Taliban-style rule in the northern Malian city over the last ten months, slipped into the desert a few days earlier.

But before fleeing, the militants reportedly set fire to several buildings and many rare manuscripts. There are conflicting reports as to how many manuscripts were actually destroyed. (Video: Roots of the Mali Crisis.)

On Monday, Sky News posted an interview with a man identifying himself as an employee of the Ahmed Baba Institute, a government-run repository for rare books and manuscripts, the oldest of which date back to the city's founding in the 12th century. The man said some 3,000 of the institute's 20,000 manuscripts had been destroyed or looted by the Islamists.

Video showed what appeared to be a large pile of charred manuscripts and the special boxes made to preserve them in front of one of the institute's buildings.

However, a member of the University of Cape Town Timbuktu Manuscript Project told eNews Channel Africa on Tuesday that he had spoken with the director of the Ahmed Baba Institute, Mahmoud Zouber, who said that nearly all of its manuscripts had been removed from the buildings and taken to secure locations months earlier. (Read "The Telltale Scribes of Timbuktu" in National Geographic magazine.)

A Written Legacy

The written word is deeply rooted in Timbuktu's rich history. The city emerged as a wealthy center of trade, Islam, and learning during the 13th century, attracting a number of Sufi religious scholars. They in turn took on students, forming schools affiliated with's Timbuktu's three main mosques.

The scholars imported parchment and vellum manuscripts via the caravan system that connected northern Africa with the Mediterranean and Arabia. Wealthy families had the documents copied and illuminated by local scribes, building extensive libraries containing works of religion, art, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, history, geography, and culture.

"The manuscripts are the city's real gold," said Mohammed Aghali, a tour guide from Timbuktu. "The manuscripts, our mosques, and our history—these are our treasures. Without them, what is Timbuktu?"

This isn't the first time that an occupying army has threatened Timbuktu's cultural heritage. The Moroccan army invaded the city in 1591 to take control of the gold trade. In the process of securing the city, they killed or deported most of Timbuktu's scholars, including the city's most famous teacher, Ahmed Baba al Massufi, who was held in exile in Marrakesh for many years and forced to teach in a pasha's court. He finally returned to Timbuktu in 1611, and it is for him that the Ahmed Baba Institute was named.

Hiding the Texts

In addition to the Ahmed Baba Institute, Timbuktu is home to more than 60 private libraries, some with collections containing several thousand manuscripts and others with only a precious handful. (Read about the fall of Timbuktu.)

Sidi Ahmed, a reporter based in Timbuktu who recently fled to the Malian capital Bamako, said Monday that nearly all the libraries, including the world-renowned Mamma Haidara and the Fondo Kati libraries, had secreted their collections before the Islamist forces had taken the city.

"The people here have long memories," he said. "They are used to hiding their manuscripts. They go into the desert and bury them until it is safe."

Though it appears most of the manuscripts are safe, the Islamists' occupation took a heavy toll on Timbuktu.

Women were flogged for not covering their hair or wearing bright colors. Girls were forbidden from attending school, and boys were recruited into the fighters' ranks.

Music was banned. Local imams who dared speak out against the occupiers were barred from speaking in their mosques. In a move reminiscent of the Taliban's destruction of Afghanistan's famous Bamiyan Buddha sculptures, Islamist fighters bulldozed 14 ancient mud-brick mausoleums and cemeteries that held the remains of revered Sufi saints.

A spokesman for the Islamists said it was "un-Islamic" for locals to "worship idols."

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Jodi Arias Borrowed Gas Cans Before Killing Ex

Accused murderer Jodi Arias borrowed two five-gallon gas cans from a former boyfriend the day before she drove to Arizona to kill another ex, Travis Alexander, according to testimony in Arias' murder trial today.

In cross examination, prosecutors also forced Arias' former live-in boyfriend Darryl Brewer to describe his sex life with Arias as "pretty aggressive."

Brewer, 52, dated Arias for four years and shared a home with her in California for two years. He told the court today that Arias called him in May 2008, asking to borrow gas cans, but would not explain why. She called him again at least two more times, and arrived at his house on June 2008, to borrow the cans.

On the day she picked up the gas cans she told Brewer that she was going to visit friends in California and Arizona.

Prosecutors argue that Arias then drove to Mesa, Ariz., where she allegedly had sex with Alexander, took nude photos of him, and then stabbed him 27 times, slashed his throat, and shot him twice in the head. She is charged with murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Brewer said that Arias never returned the gas cans. The pair had been broken up two years earlier and they had only spoken "sporadically," he said.

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Prosecutors also showed receipts from Arias' trip from her California home to Alexander's home in Mesa, showing that she purchased a 10 gallons of gas at one gas station the night before she drove to Arizona, and then another 10 gallons from a different gas station 10 minutes later. Prosecutors are expected to argue she brought the gas with her to fill up her car secretly on the way to Alexander's home, showing premeditation for the murder.

Arias' attorneys called Brewer as one of their first witnesses as they began mounting their case that Arias killed Alexander in self defense, arguing that Alexander was controlling and abusive toward Arias.

They asked Brewer to explain how he and Arias had been in a stable relationship for four years, from 2002 to 2006, and had bought a home together before Arias met Alexander at a business conference and began to change.

"I saw a lot of changes in Jodi. She became a different person than I had known previously," Brewer said, describing how Arias' behavior changed in May 2006 when she joined a company called Pre-Paid Legal. There, she met Alexander and began seeing him. She continued to live with Brewer.

"She had continued to pay the mortgage, but she was not paying other household bills, she began getting into debt or financial trouble," Brewer said. "For me it seemed she was not as rational or logical."

Arias also converted to Mormonism while living with Brewer, telling him that he could no longer curse and she would no longer have sex with him because she was saving herself for marriage.

The pair had previously had an "enthusiastic" and "aggressive" sex life, Brewer admitted to prosecutors. They had engaged in anal sex, Arias had taken nude photos of Brewer, and Arias had purchased breast implants in 2006, he testified.

Brewer said that after Arias began to change, he made arrangements to move closer to his son from his first marriage, and he and Arias broke up.

They kept in touch with occasional phone calls until Arias asked to borrow the gas cans in June 2008, and then called him a week after borrowing the cans to say that her friend had been killed.

Martinez, reading notes from an interview Brewer gave to authorities during the investigation into Alexander's death, asked if Arias had ever mentioned needing an "alibi." Brewer said he did not recall any conversation about alibis.

"After this date of June 4, 2008," Martinez asked, "you received a call from Jodi Arias, and she was very agitated?"

"She was sad," Brewer said.

"Did she tell you that her friend had been killed and she did not have an alibi?"

"I don't remember that," Brewer said.

Arias was arrested a month after Alexander was found dead, in July 2008.

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Bipartisan group of senators to unveil framework for immigration overhaul

A key group of senators from both parties will unveil on Monday the framework of a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, including a pathway to citizenship for more than 11 million illegal immigrants.

The detailed, four-page statement of principles will carry the signatures of four Republicans and four Democrats, a bipartisan push that would have been unimaginable just months ago on one of the country’s most emotionally divisive issues.

The document is intended to provide guideposts that would allow legislation to be drafted by the end of March, including a potentially controversial “tough but fair” route to citizenship for those now living in the country illegally.

[Do you think the new immigration plan will work? Discuss this and other immigration issues in The Washington Post’s new political forums.]

It would allow undocumented immigrants with otherwise clean criminal records to quickly achieve probationary legal residency after paying a fine and back taxes.

But they could pursue full citizenship — giving them the right to vote and access to government benefits — only after new measures are in place to prevent a future influx of illegal immigrants.

Those would include additional border security, a new program to help employers verify the legal status of their employees and more-stringent checks to prevent immigrants from overstaying visas.

And those undocumented immigrants seeking citizenship would be required to go to the end of the waiting list to get a green card that would allow permanent residency and eventual citizenship, behind those who had already legally applied at the time of the law’s enactment.

The goal is to balance a fervent desire by advocates and many Democrats to allow illegal immigrants to emerge from society’s shadows without fear of deportation with a concern held by many Republicans that doing so would only encourage more illegal immigration.

“We will ensure that this is a successful permanent reform to our immigration system that will not need to be revisited,” the group asserts in its statement of principles.

The framework identifies two groups as deserving of special consideration for a separate and potentially speedier pathway to full citizenship: young people who were brought to the country illegally as minors and agricultural workers whose labor, often at subsistence wages, has long been critical to the nation’s food supply.

Expanding visas

The plan also addresses the need to expand available visas for high-tech workers and promises to make green cards available for those who pursue graduate education in certain fields in the United States.

“We must reduce backlogs in the family and employment visa categories so that future immigrants view our future legal immigration system as the exclusive means for entry into the United States,” the group will declare.

The new proposal marks the most substantive bipartisan step Congress has taken toward new immigration laws since a comprehensive reform bill failed on the floor of the Senate in 2007.

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Cycling: UCI disbands independent Armstrong commission

LONDON: The International Cycling Union (UCI) announced Monday it had disbanded the independent commission it had set up to investigate alleged involvement by the global governing body in the Lance Armstrong doping scandal.

The UCI said it was shutting down the commission, which only met in public for the first time on Friday, because both the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the United States Doping Agency (USADA) had refused to co-operate with its investigations and thus any report it produced would be dismissed "as not being complete or credible".

UCI president Pat McQuaid, who attended Friday's hearing in London, said they had been left with little choice but to disband the commission after WADA labelled it a "useless exercise".

"Over the weekend I spoke to John Fahey, president of WADA," McQuaid said in a statement on Monday.

"He confirmed WADA's willingness to help the UCI establish a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC), as well as saying that WADA had no confidence in the existing independent commission process...We have therefore decided to disband the independent commission with immediate effect."

McQuaid added WADA had concluded "the UCI was not allowing the commission to conduct a proper and independent investigation," and had, therefore, "decided not to take part and invest its limited resources into such a questionable and useless exercise".

It was an investigation by USADA that led to Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.

And it was comments in their "reasoned decision" regarding the UCI's alleged complicity in his drug-taking and the conduct of the American's US Postal Service team that led cycling chiefs to set up the independent commission.

An inaugural procedural hearing of the three-member commission chaired by Philip Otton, a former judge in England's Court of Appeal, and also including British Paralympic champion Tanni Grey-Thompson and Australian lawyer Malcolm Holmes, was suspended Friday until this Thursday.

Otton said he hoped the adjournment would allow all those involved to reach agreement on an amnesty, whereby witnesses could give evidence free of the fear of subsequent disciplinary action by the UCI.

However, UCI lawyer Ian Mill told the hearing the governing body could not offer an amnesty to cyclists who admitted doping offences as this would breach existing WADA rules.

Immediately after Friday's hearing, McQuaid insisted the UCI wanted to work with WADA, saying they could not conduct a TRC hearing without them.

But this is set to be a new process given that Thursday's commission hearing won't now take place.

"We do this with regret, but given the stance of WADA we did not see any other option," insisted Irishman McQuaid, UCI president since 2005, who said the commission's work would be shared with the TRC, which he hoped would be running later this year.

He added: "This is too important for rushed discussions, or hasty decisions.

"It is completely unrealistic to expect that we and WADA can sort through all the details of setting up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in just a couple of days, based on an arbitrary deadline set by the independent commission of Thursday."

He also said there were cost implications for the UCI, given WADA "contrary to earlier indications" had refused to contribute financially.

"While I am committed to a TRC, it needs to be a process which is in the best interests of our sport and our federation -- and which also does not bankrupt it," McQuaid said.

"I hope the lessons learned from the truth and reconciliation process will help in particular to educate young riders and to help eradicate doping in its entirety from cycling."

- AFP/jc

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Egyptian protesters defy curfew, attack police stations

CAIRO/ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) - Egyptian protesters defied a nighttime curfew in restive towns along the Suez Canal, attacking police stations and ignoring emergency rule imposed by Islamist President Mohamed Mursi to end days of clashes that have killed at least 52 people.

At least two men died in overnight fighting in the canal city of Port Said in the latest outbreak of violence unleashed last week on the eve of the anniversary of the 2011 revolt that brought down autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Political opponents spurned a call by Mursi for talks on Monday to try to end the violence.

Instead, huge crowds of protesters took to the streets in Cairo, Alexandria and in the three Suez Canal cities - Port Said, Ismailia and Suez - where Mursi imposed emergency rule and a curfew on Sunday.

"Down, down with Mohamed Mursi! Down, down with the state of emergency!" crowds shouted in Ismailia. In Cairo, flames lit up the night sky as protesters set police vehicles ablaze.

In Port Said, men attacked police stations after dark. A security source said some police and troops were injured. A medical source said two men were killed and 12 injured in the clashes, including 10 with gunshot wounds.

"The people want to bring down the regime," crowds chanted in Alexandria. "Leave means go, and don't say no!"

The demonstrators accuse Mubarak's successor Mursi of betraying the two-year-old revolution. Mursi and his supporters accuse the protesters of seeking to overthrow Egypt's first ever democratically elected leader through undemocratic means.

Since Mubarak was toppled, Islamists have won two referendums, two parliamentary elections and a presidential vote. But that legitimacy has been challenged by an opposition that accuses Mursi of imposing a new form of authoritarianism, and punctuated by repeated waves of unrest that have prevented a return to stability in the most populous Arab state.

WEST UNNERVED

The army has already been deployed in Port Said and Suez and the government agreed a measure to let soldiers arrest civilians as part of the state of emergency.

The instability unnerves Western capitals, where officials worry about the direction of powerful regional player that has a peace deal with Israel. The United States condemned the bloodshed and called on Egyptian leaders to make clear violence is not acceptable. ID:nW1E8MD01C].

In Cairo on Monday, police fired volleys of teargas at stone-throwing protesters near Tahrir Square, cauldron of the anti-Mubarak uprising. Demonstrators stormed into the downtown Semiramis Intercontinental hotel and burned two police vehicles.

A 46-year-old bystander was killed by a gunshot early on Monday, a security source said. It was not clear who fired.

"We want to bring down the regime and end the state that is run by the Muslim Brotherhood," said Ibrahim Eissa, a 26-year-old cook, protecting his face from teargas wafting towards him.

The political unrest in the Suez Canal cities has been exacerbated by street violence linked to death penalties imposed on soccer supporters convicted of involvement in stadium rioting in Port Said a year ago.

Mursi's invitation to opponents to hold a national dialogue with Islamists on Monday was spurned by the main opposition National Salvation Front coalition, which rejected the offer as "cosmetic and not substantive".

The only liberal politician who attended, Ayman Nour, told Egypt's al-Hayat channel after the meeting ended late on Monday that attendees agreed to meet again in a week.

He said Mursi had promised to look at changes to the constitution requested by the opposition but did not consider the opposition's request for a government of national unity.

The president announced the emergency measures on television on Sunday: "The protection of the nation is the responsibility of everyone. We will confront any threat to its security with force and firmness within the remit of the law," Mursi said.

His demeanor in the address infuriated his opponents, not least when he wagged a finger at the camera.

Some activists said Mursi's measures to try to impose control on the turbulent streets could backfire.

"Martial law, state of emergency and army arrests of civilians are not a solution to the crisis," said Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement that helped galvanize the 2011 uprising. "All this will do is further provoke the youth. The solution has to be a political one that addresses the roots of the problem."

(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and Abdelrahman Youssef in Alexandria; Writing by Edmund Blair, Yasmine Saleh and Peter Graff)

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Urban Heat May Warm Faraway Places

The massive amounts of heat produced by cities may be heating up rural areas 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away, atmospheric researchers have found in a new modeling study.

Scientists have long invoked the "urban island heat effect" to explain why cities are generally hotter than suburban and rural areas. More people, as well as more cars, houses, and paved surfaces, turn energy into heat, which is radiated into the atmosphere.

But new modeling research from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, suggests that cities in the Northern Hemisphere can also increase the heat of faraway rural places up to 1.8ºF (1°C)—a substantial aggregate increase.

The reason comes down to global air flow.

Heat produced by cars and people travels about 2,500 feet (4,023 kilometers) into the atmosphere, where it disturbs part of the jet stream that continually circulates a belt of cool air around the top of the planet. When hot air intercepts the jet stream, it pushes the belt upward, allowing warmer air from the Equator to come farther north, warming parts of northern Europe and North America that normally would have been cooler.

Over the Northern Hemisphere, 86 major metropolitan areas cover only 1.27 percent of the Earth's surface. But those areas consume 6.7 terawatts of energy annually—representing 42 percent of annual global consumption.

Those cities' influence on global climate is therefore magnified, according to the study, published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Until now, climate researchers have mostly pointed to greenhouse gasses as the sole cause of climate change. But the planet has been warming in some areas faster than models have predicted.

The impacts of urban heat produced by energy consumption may account for some of that extra warming, said Guang Zhang, a meteorologist at Scripps who conducted the study: "Essentially, we are now able to account for a missing part of the warming."

Zhang found that the areas most significantly impacted by this urban heat effect were Siberia and northern Canada, which can see temperatures rise 1.4º to 1.8°F (0.8° to 1°C) due to urban heat in faraway cities like New York or San Francisco.

Further south, areas like Minnesota and Michigan might see a 0.5°F (0.3°C) increase. The modeling was conducted with data from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a leading source of global climate data.

While it's true that the Earth's aggregate climate affects every spot on the planet, the impacts of city heat were most pronounced in the Northern Hemisphere, where nearly 90 percent of the global population lives. And the most dramatic cool usually comes in the fall, the researchers said, for reasons that can't yet be fully explained.

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Immigration Plan Includes Path to Citizenship

A bipartisan group of senators on Monday formally unveiled their proposal to drastically overhaul the nation's immigration system, with the hope of passing a bill out of the Senate by late spring or early summer.

"We believe this will be the year Congress finally gets it done," Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) one of the members of the so-called "Gang of Eight" said during a press conference on Capitol Hill.

See Also: Transcript: Framework for Immigration Reform

Five of the eight members of the group -- Schumer, Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and John McCain (R-Ariz.) -- appeared at the press conference intended to outline their immigration proposal. The proposal would provide a path to citizenship for many of the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants while upping border security and cracking down on businesses that hire workers who are not legally present in the U.S.

Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) were the members not in attendance.

The senators all expressed optimism that their legislation could pass both the House and the Senate. Schumer added that he hopes to have an actual piece of legislation done by the end of March, and then have the Senate act on it right away.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

But while some conservatives have signaled support for the Senate framework, many others have resisted any plan that could grant a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants, saying it amounts to amnesty for people who broke the law.

The Senate's plan does not grant undocumented immigrants automatic "amnesty," rather it requires them to go through an arduous process that includes undergoing a background check, paying fines, back taxes and learning English and American civics over the course of a number of years. The new law would grant eligible undocumented immigrants permission to live and work in the U.S. legally, but would not confer permanent legal status, or a green card, until the border is deemed to be secure. Young people brought into the U.S. illegally as minors and some agricultural workers would face an easier path to citizenship.

"We will never put these people on a path to citizenship until we have secured the border," Schumer said.

McCain, who helped lead the last effort on a comprehensive immigration bill in 2007 said, "We have been too content for too long to allow individuals to mow our lawns, grow our food, clean our homes, and even watch our children while not affording them any of the benefits that make our country so great."

Senators in both political parties suggested that the reason that some Republicans have had a change of heart was because of the results of last November's election, when seven in 10 Latino voters backed President Barack Obama over Republican Mitt Romney.

"The politics on this issue have been turned upside down," Schumer said. "For the first time ever, there is more political risk in opposing immigration reform, than in supporting it."

Perhaps more than anyone on the stage, McCain understands this. While he backed comprehensive immigration reform five years ago, he backed away from it during his 2010 run for Senate, just as his home state was considering the SB 1070 crackdown law on undocumented immigrants.

McCain went so far as to say that the current plan is a "testimonial" to bill he worked on with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), the late liberal icon, in 2007.

Another member of the group, Marco Rubio, had not always voiced support for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants during his Senate career. But on Monday, he said that Congress needs to "address the reality" of the massive undocumented population in the U.S.

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