Rioters Break Into Belgrade's U.S. Embassy

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serb rioters set fire to an office inside the U.S. Embassy Thursday and police clashed with protesters outside other embassy buildings after a large demonstration against Kosovo's declaration of independence.

Masked attackers broke into the U.S. compound, which has been closed this week, and tried to throw furniture from an office. They set fire to the office and flames shot up the side of the building. Fire trucks arrived after the rioters had fled and swiftly put out the fire.

Serbia's President Boris Tadic, on an official visit to Romania, appealed for calm and urged the protesters to stop the attacks and move away from the streets. Tadic said that violence was "damaging" Serbia's efforts to defend Kosovo, which declared its independence from Belgrade on Sunday.

More than a dozen nations have recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany. But the declaration by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership has been rejected by Serbia's government and the ethnic Serbians who populate northern Kosovo.

For several days, Kosovo's Serbs have shown their anger by destroying U.N. and NATO property, setting off small bombs and staging noisy rallies.

On Thursday, the neighboring Croatian Embassy also was targeted by the same group of protesters at the U.S. Embassy, and smaller groups attacked police posts outside the Turkish and British embassies in another part of the city but were beaten back.

Elite police paramilitaries drove armored jeeps down the street outside the U.S. Embassy and fired dozens of tear gas canisters to clear crowds. The protesters fled into side streets where they continued clashing with the police.

Groups also broke into a McDonald's restaurant and demolished the interior. A number of other shops were also ransacked and people were seen carrying off running shoes, track suits and other sporting goods from a department store.

Doctors at Belgrade's emergency clinic reported treating more than 30 injured, half of whom were policemen. All were lightly injured, said Dusan Jovanovic, deputy chief of the clinic, adding that most of the injured protesters were "extremely drunk."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. ambassador to Serbia was at his home and in contact with U.S. officials. Security officials and Marine guards were in a different part of the compound, but nobody was inside the embassy building, he said.

"We want to strongly urge them, and we are in contact with them, to make sure that they devote the assets to deal with this situation," McCormack told reporters, referring to the Serbian government.

Serbia has "a responsibility now to devote the adequate resources to ensure that that facility is protected," he said.

Kosovo, which is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, has not been under Belgrade's control since 1999, when NATO launched airstrikes to halt a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. A U.N. mission has governed Kosovo since, with more than 16,000 NATO troops and KFOR, a multiethnic force, policing the province.

But Serbia _ and Kosovo's Serbs, who make up less than 10 percent of Kosovo's population _ refuse to give up Kosovo, a territory considered the ancient cradle of Serbs' state and religion.

Earlier Thursday, police estimated that about 150,000 people had attended a rally in the Serbian capital. The crowd waved Serbian flags and carried signs reading "Stop USA terror." One group set fire to a red-and-black Albanian flag.

At Least 80 Killed in Afghan Suicide Bombing

Afghanistan - A suicide bomber blew himself up in a large crowd of people gathered at a dog fighting festival just outside this city in southern Afghanistan, killing some 80 people and wounding nearly 100 more.

Read more at nytimes.com

GTA IV: Reinventing a World

Tucked away in a secluded bungalow in West Hollywood's Châteaux Marmont, a hotel as famous for those who stay there as it is infamous for those who have died there, a world reimagined comes into focus.

Standing hands akimbo, a nonplussed expression planted firmly on his almost cel-shaded face, Niko Bellic could easily be a touched-up still. But it's no bullshot. The world around Bellic is bustling with activity: Bits of trash float on a digital drift of wind, people walk by, cars cruise in and out of the shot, an almost familiar skyline fills the hazy background. A palette of city sounds laid over this living diorama completes the effect.

"We decided we wanted to go back to the basics and reimagine the world," Jeronimo Barrera, Rockstar Games Vice President of Product Development, says. "The results have been incredible."

Grand Theft Auto IV is, its creators tell me, the biggest leap forward in experiential sandbox gaming to ever come to the franchise, larger even than the one that brought the once 2D top-down series into the third dimension.

"In many ways it's a bigger leap going from San Andreas to GTA IV than it was going from 2D to 3D," Barrera says.

That shift isn't delivered in one mighty leap, he adds, but rather in a collection of tweaks and changes made to the basic nature of the franchise.

"It was about hitting reset and reworking a bunch of things," he said. " We reworked everything from locomotion to targeting."

Bellic is on the street, a local tough has asked him to kill off a guy who's about to talk to police. Instead of telling him where the guy is, he suggests Bellic get his hands on a cop car and use the laptop to find out where he usually hangs out.

Bellic calls 911 on his cell phone and then when the cop car arrives, he carjacks it and drives away. In this latest GTA your wanted level corresponds to the place in which you commit the crime. As soon as you break the law a shaded circle pops up on your radar showing you where police are looking for you. If you can get out of that area before your spotted you can lose the cops and, eventually, your notoriety.

Bellic tears around the corner and drives to an area where he can pull over. When he taps into the cop car's computer a screen comes with tons of options including one to search for suspects either by name or photo. Using a pop-up QWERTY keyboard, he taps in the name and gets an address to go to which is added to the car's in-board GPS.

When Bellic tracks the guy down he runs, kicking off a car chase. The drive through town doesn't look or feel like a scripted event, and a Rockstar employee is in full control of Bellic and his stolen car, but some of the things that happen, like a large truck dumping its load of barrels onto the street, were written about by other publications which saw the game as well. I suspect that there might be a number of events like this which can be automatically triggered depending on where you are and what's happening.

After zipping through the rolling barrels, Bellic catches up with his quarry, whose car is marked with a red arrow, on a bridge and manages to fire off enough shots to first flatten the suspect's tires and then set the engine compartment on fire. The car, riding on rims now, tries to zip between two cars and misses the gap, fishtailing into a vehicle before rolling. The bad guy is thrown from the car, sliding across the bridge to stop near the railing, and then the car explodes, catapulting the would-be informant up and off the bridge.

The Rockstar guys erupt into laughter. "Did he just go off the bridge?" one asks, laughing.

The mission's complete, but Bellic still needs to get off the bridge and two cop cars are speeding toward him from the other side. He zips past them and comes to a stop. Getting out of the car, he pulls out a rocket launcher, which slides out of his pocket like a gag from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and fires a shot off at the police cars blowing both up. Instantly, Bellic's wanted level is raised to three stars and the cacophony of an approaching army of police can be heard in the distance.

"You're three stars? How'd you get three stars?" Barrera asks of the demo player. "Oh you blew up those cop cars."

"You told me to."

The sound's getting louder.

Bellic hops back into his car and makes his way toward the other side of the bridge, as he approaches we can see that it's been blocked by police and not just police cars, but what looks to be police humvees. Bellic rams his way through and tears down into a tunnel. He makes it up through the other side as police follow in hot pursuit, guns firing. The car, now on its rims and engine smoking, rolls slowly into a gas station.

"Oh, a gas station," someone in the room says.

There is, it seems, a moment of breathless anticipation as Bellic jumps from the car and runs past rows of gas pumps. He turns to see dozens of police cars descending on his still smoking car. And then the world explodes, the image on the screen literally blurs as the car, the gas station and all of the police cars near it turn into a blooming fireball.

Bellic turns and runs down a grass hill to another highway, but two police cars are already descending on him. Above a helicopter is following. He pulls out that rocket launcher from his pocket, looks up at the sky and fires off a shot at the copter. It's hit, smoke billows from its engine, it starts to spiral, dropping suddenly to the ground about 100 feet from Bellic and explodes.

An alert pops up on the screen "ONE MAN ARMY ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED" before the demo player quickly gets rid of it and uses a cheat to rid himself of his escalating wanted level.

While the setting for this latest Grand Theft, based on Manhattan and its surrounds, isn't as large as San Andreas in terms of land mass, it's more detailed and there's more to do, the Rockstar guys tell me. You can drive boats, helicopters, motorcycles, cars, trucks, hail cabs, but you can't fly a plane.

"It's not like people in New York fly airplanes around, it's more of a helicopter town," Barrera says.

The games intertwined storyline takes place over a number of months in the city with two minutes of gameplay translating to an hour in the game world.

The game now incorporates auto-saving to make it a bit more player friendly this time around. After every mission the game saves.

"It makes it more accessible," Barrera says, "gamers shouldn't have to fight against the save system to enjoy a game."

Other neat tweaks include a cinematic mode which slows time to a crawl on the fly and can be used at anytime in the game, making it easier to do things like slip through rush hour traffic at high speeds, cab rides which can either be enjoyed from beginning to end or, for a small fee, skipped entirely. You can also bribe the cabbie to break traffic laws to get you to your destination faster.

The game's once tragically flawed targeting system has also been heavily reworked. I got a good look at the system in a mission that involved Bellic having to take out a bunch of mobsters from a construction site.

The mission starts with Bellic sniping three guards from atop a nearby high rise. The demo player takes out the first two guards with headshots. The first man toppling from his position high atop the construction site, tumbling end-over-end until he lands with a thud on the ground below, his rifle popping out of his dead hands and letting off a single shot.

The third man is taken out with a shot to the leg. As he falls to the ground, he appears to weakly flail. The man's body finally crashes into the roof of the car, crushing it flat.

Once Bellic clears the guards he makes his way across the street. The demo player, hurrying to get into the heart of the mission, lets a car clip Bellic, who falls to the ground. Getting up slowly, Bellic plants his hands in front of him, gets to his knees and then slowly stands, a nice touch.

Once in the construction site is cleared, Bellic moves into the yard and almost immediately has to duck for cover, a new addition to the game's fighting system that allows you to stick to cover like you can in games like Drake's Fortune or Gears of War.

Once in cover, Bellic can fire blindly from his hiding spot or lock onto a target and plug away at them. You can also now free fire in the game.

"It's comparable to a shooter," Barrera said.

A target's health is shown in the targeting reticule when you lock-on, while Bellic's appears in a green bar that wraps around the radar. A blue bar shows his armor, like a bullet proof vest. As Bellic's adversaries die the items they drop glow in the dark showing where to find ammo, weapons and cash. And when Bellic finally, inevitably, dies in the heat of battle the world fades to black and white.

The game will, Rockstar has said, feature multiplayer, but they're not quite ready to talk details on what that will entail. They did tell me that there won't be cooperative multiplayer because it wouldn't really fit in with the game's story.

'There's really only one main character, so it wouldn't fit," Barrera said.

As with most of Rockstar's games there are definite cultural themes at play in Grand Theft Auto IV, though in this game it might not be as easily definable as the gang culture of San Andreas or school culture of Bully.

"There is an immigrant theme, a world culture theme," Barrera says. "This is Rockstar's ten year anniversary and when we got started we all moved to New York at the same time, so there's a lot of that in there.

"The beauty of our games is that we don't hire a research firm to figure out what we should be making games about."

Instead they make it about the things that interest them, and it it shows.

Rio Rocks As Samba Groups Parade

A two-story high lion led an army of spinning women in gold-and-red hoop skirts Saturday night to open the carnival parade in a Rio stadium, a fierce competition between second-division samba groups seeking a promotion.

Estacio de Sa was the first group to go in the Sambadrome, sending down the golden lion on an enormous float surrounded by some 80 dancing men and women in skin-tight lion costumes. The whirling women followed, topped by headdresses fashioned from crystals and feathers.

"I've been all over the world. I've done carnival in the Caribbean and there's nothing like Brazil," Edgardo Levita, a 23-year-old Argentine decked-out in a pirate costume.

Saturday's parade is a warm-up for the "Special Group," which includes the city's top 12 samba schools all mounting 80-minute long parades Sunday and Monday nights in an effort to impress a panel of judges and be declared the year's champion.

But there's much at stake in Saturday's event. The group that receives the highest score gets promoted to the top division.

"We work all year for this one day," said Fabio Ricardo, carnival designer for the second-division samba group Academicos da Rocinha. "It's not a game, it's a competition, like a marathon or like the Olympics."

Jumping from the second division to the first can be a financial windfall for a Samba group. The city provides second-tiered groups about $171,000 for the parade, while in the first-division they get $1.71 million, said Pedro Aridio, Rocinha's carnival director.

It's also hard to attract additional funding for a parade that isn't going to appear on TV.

Rocinha rose to the first division in 2005 only to see their hopes of staying in the elite group dashed by the pouring rain, which washed away the feathers and sequins and made the ground slippery for dancing.

"In carnival you never know what will happen until you hit the avenue," said Aridio, who believe the group has at least a fighting chance with this year's theme paying homage to the poor immigrants from Brazil's northeast, who make up most of the population of Rocinha, the city's biggest slum.

Meanwhile, revelers crowded downtown Rio de Janeiro to partake in the free-for-all celebrations around the Cordao de Bola Preta, the city's most traditional carnival band, which expects to attract over half a million people this year.

In the northeastern city of Recife, crowds topping the million mark turned out for the traditional Galo de Madrugada, or Midnight Rooster, celebrations that long ago were rescheduled for midday in order to reduce violence.

In the coastal city of Salvador, revelers got an early start clogging the major avenues to fall in behind bands playing Axe music from atop huge sound trucks and Blocos Afros, featuring hundreds of exotically costumed drummers.

And all across the nation, partiers and tourists nursed their hangovers on the beach.

"Wow, I can't remember most of it, but it was good," said Richard Cohen, a South African tourist as he sat on Copacabana beach, scraping away red nail polish painted on the night before at a carnival ball.

US, Iraqis Vow to Avenge Bombings

Atop U.S. commander said Saturday that two bombings carried out by women wrapped in bombs that killed nearly 100 people in Baghdad underscored that al-Qaida in Iraq remains a serious threat, but he vowed the military would "not give back any terrain" to the terror network.

Iraqis in Baghdad demanded more protection for markets, saying one of the bombers wasn't searched because she was known as local beggar and the male guards were reluctant to search women because of Islamic sensitivities.

U.S. and Iraqi officials said Saturday that pictures showed the bombers had Down syndrome and likely did not know they were being used in Friday's attacks.

Ali Nassir, a 30-year-old day laborer whose hobby is raising birds, said people with disabilities often beg for food and money at the weekly al-Ghazl pet bazaar on Fridays.

"I saw the suicide bomber and she was begging," Nassir said, adding the woman was known to the vendors. "The security guards did not search her because she is a woman and because it is not unusual to have beggars, mainly women and children, moving around in the market."

Iraqi officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were authorized to release the information, raised the death toll of Friday's attacks to at least 99 — 62 people in the first blast at the central al-Ghazl bazaar and 37 others about 20 minutes later at the New Baghdad area pigeon market in southeastern Baghdad.

Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, the top U.S. commander in Baghdad, said the women appeared to be unwitting attackers.

"It appears the suicide bombers were not willing martyrs, they were used by al-Qaida for these horrific attacks," he said. "These two women were likely used because they didn't understand what was happening and they were less likely to be searched."

He also reiterated military warnings that al-Qaida remains a serious threat despite major inroads against the network since the Americans began sending some 30,000 extra troops to the capital and surrounding areas in the spring.

"These two suicide vest attacks represent the worst of human nature," Hammond said during a news conference. He said American forces would continue their targeted operations that have succeeded in decreasing attacks.

"We will not give back any terrain here in Baghdad," he said.

Iraqi officials said they had pictures of the two women's heads that were found at the scene that proved they had Down syndrome, and they said the explosives had been detonated by remote-control.

"This is very credible information," said Lt. Gen. Abboud Qanbar, the chief Iraqi military commander in Baghdad, adding the photos would not be released to the public because of humanitarian concerns.

Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a military spokesman for the Baghdad area, said "they were both females and they both looked like they had Down syndrome." Medical experts with his division had examined the photos and agreed the women probably suffered from the genetic disorder, he said.

A cell phone image of one of the heads viewed by The Associated Press was inconclusive.

The U.S. military, which gave a lower combined death toll of 27, blamed the attacks on al-Qaida in Iraq and said they signaled a new desperation as concrete blast barriers and other security measures have stanched the group's ability to stage deadly car bombings and similar attacks.

"It sounds like (al-Qaida in Iraq) has stooped to a new low where they're using people who may not even know what they're doing and strapped something to them and told them go into a market," Stover said.

He said one of the women was carrying a backpack that was stuffed with ball bearings and shrapnel to maximize the casualties, while the other one was wearing an explosives vest.

The bombings served as a reminder that Iraqi insurgents are constantly shifting their strategies in attempts to unravel recent security gains around the country. Women have been used in ever greater frequency in suicide attacks — six times now since November.

Friday's blasts were the deadliest in the capital since an April 18 suicide car bombing that killed 116 and wounded 145.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed to crack down on the militants. "The ugliness of this crime will not deter our security forces. It will increase our determination to continue crushing the dens of the terrorists," he said in a statement.

Onlookers gathered at the New Baghdad pigeon market Saturday, peering through twisted metal into the charred remains of stalls and shops. Vendors sifted through ruined wares. One man held up a tattered piece of clothing, ripped apart by Friday's blast or in the frenzied panic that followed.

Haider Jabar, a 28-year-old government employee who lives near the market and often goes for a stroll among the cages, said the woman used in that attack was a stranger to the locals.

"The woman seemed to be handicapped. It was uncommon to have a woman walking inside New Baghdad bird market, this fact had attracted many teenagers who had gathered around her at the time of the explosion," he said.

Others called on authorities to step up measures to protect the market, which unlike many others in the capital is not surrounding by concrete barriers.

"Every place in Baghdad is exposed to terrorist attacks," said survivor Badir Sami, 42. "I demand tighter security measures at popular markets like this, where many people gather especially on Fridays."

Another pigeon dealer, Ali Mansour, said he was packing up his shop after surviving three attacks in the al-Ghazl market.

Al-Maliki, meanwhile, turned his attention to the northwestern city of Mosul, promising what he said would be the final showdown with al-Qaida in Iraq led insurgents said to have taken refuge there to escape U.S.-led offensives in Baghdad and surrounding areas.

U.S. commanders in northern Iraq have said the battle to oust al-Qaida in Iraq from its last urban stronghold will not be a swift strike as al-Maliki suggested, but rather a grinding campaign that will require more firepower.

Iraqi police and military units have been dispatched to the area, and al-Maliki said he was eager to "end the matter as soon as possible," although he gave no start date. The prime minister also named the commander of the security operations in and around Mosul as newly promoted Lt. Gen. Riyadh Jalal, a senior officer in the region.

"We have come here to start the march of liberating Mosul from terrorists and outlaws," al-Maliki said during a meeting with Iraqi military commanders in the city, which is the capital of Ninevah province. "The stabilization of this province will send the last message that al-Qaida and the remnants of the former regime are defeated."

French President Marries Model

They had a glitzy, jet-setting courtship, but when it came time for the wedding, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former supermodel Carla Bruni opted for a simple, classic ceremony — and the bride wore white.

Sarkozy, 53, and Bruni, 40, were married Saturday in a small private ceremony at the presidential Elysee Palace, less than three months after they reportedly first met, and less than four months after his divorce from the previous first lady, Cecilia.

The newlyweds said in a statement only that they tied the knot "in the presence of their families in the strictest privacy." The mayor who performed the ceremony filled in the details.

"The bride wore white; she was ravishing, as usual," Francois Lebel, mayor of Paris' eighth arrondissement, or neighborhood, told Europe-1 radio. The groom wore a suit and tie, and he "wasn't bad either," Lebel said.

About 20 friends and family members attended the 20-minute official ceremony in an Elysee drawing room, Lebel said. He referred to Sarkozy and Bruni as "young newlyweds" and said the wedding showed "great simplicity and apparently a lot of affection between the spouses."

Under French law, couples must marry before a mayor to make their union official. Usually weddings take place at a city hall, with an official wedding announcement published beforehand, but Sarkozy and Bruni apparently had a dispensation to maintain their privacy.

On a busy day, Sarkozy squeezed the ceremony in amid official business. Addressing a crisis in the former French colony of Chad, where rebels penetrated the capital, Sarkozy also called a meeting at the Elysee Palace and spoke by telephone with Chad's president.

As of Saturday evening, no images of the ceremony had leaked to media. The small wedding contrasted with their highly publicized romance — which surprised many French, accustomed to presidents keeping their love lives under wraps.

At a news conference in January, Sarkozy revealed that his relationship with the blue-eyed singer and former model was "serious" and hinted that wedding plans were in the works, though he did not reveal a date.

Sarkozy and Bruni carried out their courtship in such public locations as Disneyland Paris and the ruins of Petra, Jordan. The tabloids even showed the couple at an Egyptian beach resort, Bruni clad in a tiny black bikini, Sarkozy in trunks, gold chain and Ray-Ban sunglasses.

Sarkozy's approval ratings dropped while they were dating — in part, analysts say, because older, more traditional voters were put off by the budding romance and by Sarkozy's glitzy style.

During their courtship, Sarkozy was nicknamed the "bling-bling president" by the media as the couple flew in a private jet borrowed from a billionaire investor and reportedly lavished each other with expensive presents.

Their relationship proved tricky for protocol planners in foreign countries Sarkozy visited. Before a visit to Saudi Arabia, a senior official in the Gulf state urged Sarkozy to respect conservative Islamic culture by leaving his girlfriend at home. She did not accompany him.

Being married will end such concerns.

"First off, he wanted to (tie the knot), and it also helps clarify things," Patrick Balkany, a lawmaker and friend of Sarkozy's, told RTL radio.

Former first lady Bernadette Chirac, congratulating the couple, said being president is easier with the support of a spouse.

Sarkozy was not the first French president to marry in office: Gaston Doumergue tied the knot at the Elysee Palace in 1931.

The wedding was the third for Sarkozy, who has three sons. It was the first for Bruni, an Italian-born heiress whose mother is a concert pianist and whose late father was an industrialist at the head of a tire company, as well as a composer. Bruni grew up in France, where her family fled for fear of the Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist group active in Italy in the 1970s.

As a young woman, the brunette with high cheekbones had a major modeling career and the love life to go with it. Bruni dated rockers Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, tycoon Donald Trump and actor Vincent Perez. She has a young son, Aurelien, from a relationship with philosophy professor Raphael Enthoven.

In interviews well before she began dating Sarkozy, Bruni often talked freely of her love life, reportedly telling Madame Figaro magazine that she was "bored to death by monogamy."

Bruni has reinvented herself as a singer in recent years. French news reports have said the Elysee Palace is being fit with a recording studio for the new first lady.

Plane Lands Safely After Engine Problem

An Austrian Airlines jet carrying about 100 passengers made a safe landing at Leeds Bradford International Airport in northern England on Saturday after a problem with one of its engines, officials said.

"The pilot indicated that he was going to be making an emergency landing at speed," a spokeswoman for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said on condition of anonymity in line with department policy. "Thankfully the aircraft made a safe landing and no one was injured.

Austrian Airlines confirmed that account, but said it should not be called an emergency.

"It was not an emergency landing," airline spokeswoman Livia Dandrea-Boehm said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. "It was a normal landing with one engine in idle mode."

The plane, a Fokker 100, was traveling from Innsbruck, Austria, to Leeds when the crew noticed that one of the engines was malfunctioning, airport spokeswoman Sam Wynzar said.

After starting the descent to Leeds Bradford, the pilot noticed vibrations on the right-hand engine and decided to put it in idle mode, Dandrea-Boehm said, adding that the other engine was operating normally.

"According to procedures, the landing has to be performed like a single-engine landing — although both engines were working with one at idle — which means having priority for landing at air traffic control," Dandrea-Boehm said.

Landing was normal and passengers were never in any danger, she said.

Chronically high suicide rate moves Japan to act

If the Golden Gate Bridge had been built in Japan, there might be little discussion about erecting a barrier to keep people from jumping off.

Since 1998, an average of 30,000 Japanese people have committed suicide annually, according to the National Police Agency. In a nation of 128 million inhabitants, that's 24 per 100,000 people - the highest rate among developed nations. In contrast, the U.S. suicide rate is 11 per 100,000 (Lithuania currently has the world's highest with 38.6 per 100,000 people, according to the World Health Organization).

Most observers in Japan say a key reason for the rash of suicides has been financial problems, which began in earnest in the 1990s with an economic recession that caused high unemployment, lower incomes, mounting debt and bankruptcies. But even after the economy began to improve in 2002, suicides continued unabated with little government reaction, most critics say.

"This country has done nothing until recently to prevent suicide," said Yukio Saito, director of the 24-hour suicide hot line Inochi no Denwa, or Phone of Life, which he says receives an estimated 720,000 calls a year at 49 call stations across Japan.

Saito and other critics say the government traditionally treated suicide as a personal problem, one that didn't need state intervention or be discussed publicly. But pressure from suicide prevention groups finally spurred the Japanese parliament known as the Diet to pass prevention legislation in 2006 and issue a white paper outlining the problem in November.

The new law provides still unspecified support to families who have lost loved ones. But government actions do include training for medical doctors to better identify patients with mental problems and legal consultants for those mired in debt. Most important, the legislation created the Office for the Policy of Suicide Prevention inside the Cabinet office controlled by the prime minister. Last year, it launched the nation's first-ever suicide prevention week to educate the public about the signs of stress and depression that can lead to suicide.

The government white paper, meanwhile, found that many suicides are committed by middle-aged males at the beginning of the workweek during early morning hours. The most common method: hanging.

"We suspect that streamlining human resources and hiring freezes at companies that happened 10 years ago may have put those in their 30s and 40s who stayed at the companies in a difficult working environment," said Hioyuki Takahashi, director of the Office for the Policy of Suicide Prevention.

For the past decade, many Japanese companies have relied on temporary workers, who, unlike full-time employees, receive less salary and no benefits. Many companies also ignore labor laws by requiring employees to work overtime without extra pay, according to Yasuyuki Shimizu, who directs the Tokyo suicide prevention organization called Lifelink. In 2006, for example, a Japanese court ruled that overwork pushed a 28-year-old Fujitsu software developer to commit suicide in a company dormitory four years earlier after working 159 hours of overtime in one month.

Another contributing factor to rising suicides may be Japanese mores, says Takahashi of the government's suicide prevention office.

"In the Japanese culture, there is a positive view toward one taking their own life - to take responsibility," for their own actions, he said.

Jose Bertolote, the coordinator at the Management of Mental and Brain Disorders of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the World Health Organization, said that Christianity's negative view of suicide may curb many potential suicides in Western countries. But in most Asian countries, he said, "people believe in reincarnation. So if people die, they will reincarnate, so dying is not so bad."

Meanwhile, the jisatsu-sa, or "person who commits suicide" clubs that captured international headlines in the past several years of mostly young people who committed suicide in groups, have largely ended thanks to the National Police Agency's Cybercrime Project. The task force cracked down on the Internet sites with help from the public.

Lifelink's Shimizu believes the government's recent steps to stem suicides are a good beginning. His organization is gathering information on 1,000 suicides by interviewing victims' families and working with local authorities. The group rated each prefecture on how well it has adopted the new suicide prevention measures and has alerted the press when guidelines are not being followed.

"We're trying very hard to make up for lost time," said Shimizu. "Japanese society has had to pay a high cost for not responding quickly."

Egypt reseals Gaza border breach

Egyptian troops have sealed the border with the Gaza Strip, ending 10 days of freedom of movement for Palestinians.

The troops are still allowing Palestinians and Egyptians to return home, but have stopped allowing any new cross-border movement.

The border was breached when Hamas militants blew up sections of the wall to break a blockade imposed by Israel.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians took the opportunity to cross into Egypt to buy supplies.

Map of the Egypt-Gaza border area

Egyptian forces came with barbed wire and barricades to close the only remaining gap in their side of the border.

Troops patrolled in armoured cars and stood in rooftop emplacements as the border was resealed.

The closure followed talks between Hamas and Egyptian officials on Saturday, after which Hamas said it would co-operate with Egypt to restore control of the border.

"We have concluded an agreement between us and our brothers in Egypt to operate channels at the local level at the crossing and along the border," said Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar.

Meanwhile Egypt arrested 15 Palestinians armed with weapons and explosives in the Sinai peninsula.

Israel has said it is concerned that militants have been taking advantage of the freedom of movement to bolster their stores of weapons and explosives.

Earlier this week, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank but not Gaza, endorsed a 2005 plan for EU and Israeli monitors to prevent cross-border smuggling.

Hamas is opposed to EU or Israeli involvement in the running of the border, but says it is flexible about its own role there.

Colombo railway blast kills eight

At least eight people have been killed and up to 100 hurt in a suicide attack in the main railway station in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo, officials say.

Police said a female suicide bomber blew herself up as a suburban train pulled into a station platform.

The attack comes amid increased security ahead of celebrations on Monday to mark the 60th anniversary of Sri Lanka's independence from Britain.

On Friday, 18 people died in a blast in the central town of Dambulla.

Both attacks have been blamed on Tamil Tiger rebels.

The rebels, who have been fighting for an independent state in the north and east since 1983, have carried out frequent suicide and bomb attacks in the city and other areas.

The civil war has intensified since last month, when the government pulled out of a ceasefire with the rebels.

'Policeman bleeding'

The BBC's Roland Buerk in Colombo says there are large numbers of police in the station and the scene of the blast has been cordoned off.

Eyewitnesses described what happened.

"I was near my counter and I heard a big blast. When I looked behind I saw a policeman bleeding," said ticket inspector Ravindra Pinto.

"As I took him and rushed out, I saw many men and women on the ground," he said.

Colombo station is situated in the heart of the city, near the president's offices and several major hotels.

Our correspondent says people are concerned that there may be more attacks to coincide with the anniversary.

Huge parades have been planned in the city, large parts of which have been closed off.

A bomb attack on the city zoo earlier on Sunday injured four people.

The blast, near an aviary, is thought to have been caused by a grenade.

Iraqis Say Death Toll In 2 Blasts Is Near 100

BAGHDAD, Feb. 2 -- Iraqi officials said Saturday that as many as 100 people may have been killed in two bombings at Baghdad markets, broadening the scope of the carnage in what was the deadliest day in the Iraqi capital in months.

The top U.S. military commander in Baghdad, meanwhile, said there were indications that the two female bombers in Friday's attacks were "mentally handicapped" and that they might have been coerced into blowing themselves up by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

"From what I've seen, it appears the suicide bombers were not willing martyrs, they were used by al-Qaeda for these horrific attacks," Maj. Gen. Jeffery W. Hammond told reporters in Baghdad. "These two women were likely used because they didn't understand what was happening and they were less likely to be searched."

Lt. Col. Steven Stover, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said that U.S. officers had reviewed photographs of the heads of the two women after the attack and that "they had the facial features of somebody who basically has Down syndrome."

An Iraqi military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qasim Ata' Zahil, said that the two females bore a striking resemblance to each other and that he believed both were younger than 16. He said some shopkeepers in the two Baghdad markets recognized them as regular visitors to the area.

The two bombs exploded within about 10 minutes of each other Friday morning amid the crowds in two markets. In the first attack, at the Ghazil pet market, the bomber wore a suicide vest, Stover said. In the second, at the Dove Market in the New Baghdad neighborhood, the bomber wore a backpack filled with ball bearings. Stover said the second bomb might have been detonated remotely.

"It's appalling that someone would do something that evil to get these two to carry it into a market," he said.

The day after the bombings, the death toll varied widely. U.S. military officials stuck with their initial tally of 27 people killed, while Brig. Gen. Zahil said 56 people were killed. The Associated Press, citing Iraqi officials, reported that 62 people died in the first blast and 37 others in the second. Iraqi television stations also said the death toll was in the 90s.

There are often discrepancies in the number of dead reported by American and Iraqi sources. Some of the difference may be attributed to the quick removal of bodies from the scene before an accurate count can be taken.

Special correspondent Naseer Nouri contributed to this report.

No Body Left Untoned Preparing for Carnival

RIO DE JANEIRO — It was the last rehearsal of the Vila Isabel samba school at the famed Sambadrome, and Natalia Guimarães, Miss Brazil 2007, wondered if she was truly ready for Carnival.
She surveyed the high-energy samba dancers gliding down the avenue in five-inch high heels, sweat pouring off their bare stomachs as they gyrated their rear ends at dizzying speeds for an hour, with barely a minute’s rest.

Had the 25 flights of stairs she climbed each day in her hotel and the countless hours training with a samba queen and lifting weights been enough to prepare her for her role as a drum corps queen?

“They say Brazilians all have some samba in their feet,” Ms. Guimarães, a 23-year-old native of Minas Gerais, said. “I didn’t have much in mine. I know it has to improve, and I’m practicing hard.”

She is hardly alone. More than ever, it is survival of the fittest at Rio’s renowned Carnival celebration — a full-tilt sport in high heels. Women, and some men, put themselves through intense training programs months in advance. Health clubs in trendy Ipanema and Leblon offer specialized pre-Carnival boot camps aimed at putting members in the best shape of the year, and perhaps their lives, for the five-day pre-Lent celebration.

“For these women, Carnival is their Olympics,” said César Parcias, a personal trainer at Proforma gym in Leblon who teaches a pre-Carnival workout class.

Women, especially, put heavy pressure on themselves to measure up on the samba stage and in the bacchanal block parties that began winding through this city of six million people on Saturday. Sun-worshiping and visible tan lines are mandatory. Some even turn to plastic surgery for pre-Carnival adjustments.

But for most of Rio’s residents, known as Cariocas, more is never enough when it comes to Carnival. They feel that the eyes of the world are upon them, and they do not plan on disappointing.

To that end, more flesh is on the agenda this year, too.

“This year our costumes are tiny, and there are no feathers to cover our bums,” said Livia Candido, an 18-year-old dancer with the Vila Isabel samba school. “That means there’s a lot of pressure to get our bums in perfect shape.”

Marcelo Misailidis, a choreographer for Vila Isabel, said the demands to be physically fit for Carnival are growing. As samba schools get bigger, to ensure that the several hundred people in the group finish the parade in time, the samba rhythms have become faster, he said. The competition in the Sambadrome features 12 schools, each with 80 minutes to parade its way down samba “avenue.” Schools are penalized if they exceed that time. Each parader, known as a componente, is on the avenue for up to an hour.

Julio Cesar da Conceição, a fitness trainer and member of Vila Isabel’s samba troupe, estimated that during that hour, a componente dancing a frenetic samba could burn up to 1,200 calories and sweat up to a gallon of water in the humid, 90-plus-degree temperatures.

Mr. Misailidis says he remembers a time not too long ago when people who paraded down the avenue were not as physically fit. “Some would pass out halfway through,” he said. “These days, people know better.”

Just as physically demanding — especially for die-hard samba dancers — are the less formal, and often more brazen, Carnival parties and parades known as blocos. They continue for hours on end, often fueled by copious drinking. Costumes are common at these mobile parties, but they tend to be even more minimalist than the revealing sequined and feathered samba parade get-ups.

To get the Carnival-ready body, many Cariocas swear off fried food weeks before and stock up on energy bars and energy drinks, an increasing number of which contain guaraná, a caffeine-rich plant native to the Amazon rain forest. Once the Carnival parties kick off, revelers drink huge amounts of coconut water, which is thought to have broad healing powers.

Priscyla Vidal, a “muse” for the Bola Preto bloco, said a diet rich in black beans gave her the fuel to spend hours on the Stairmaster machine. “Carnival is all about vanity, but it has changed,” said Ms. Vidal, 27. “It used to exalt whoever could dance samba the best. Now it is more about who looks more glamorous.”

Mr. Parcias, the personal trainer in Leblon, knows that only too well. Last week, some 40 people attended his one-hour class. They were of all ages, but were mostly young women in form-fitting bodysuits. They seemed utterly focused, staring ahead at the mirror and never uttering a complaint.

The Carnival classes, held five days a week, begin five weeks before the event. “Some people get here before Carnival and they are desperate to start training after a full year where they’ve done almost no training,” he said. “Some people go overboard, but of course we discourage that.”

Like triathletes recovering after a race, Mr. Parcias’s students will spend the six weeks after Carnival in less-intensive workouts, a “period of recuperation,” he said.

When exercise is not enough, some Brazilians go under the knife to perfect their beauty. Angela Bismarchi had her 42nd plastic surgery on Monday. Already the Brazilian record holder for the most plastic surgeries, Ms. Bismarchi, 36, had nylon wires implanted in her eyes to give them an Asian slant, to help her look the part for this year’s theme of her samba group, Porto da Pedra: the centennial of Japanese immigration to Brazil.

Ms. Bismarchi said in a telephone interview that she had timed the operation to “be much more beautiful during Carnival.” Once it is over, she said, she will have another operation to remove the wires. “I will return to being Angela,” she said.

After Carnival, Ms. Guimarães, who has focused her months of Carnival training on having a “healthier, more muscular and curvaceous” body for samba dancing, will have to transform her body again to return to the modeling world.

“I have to get skinny again,” she said. “Being in shape by New York standards, by fashion standards, means being skinny.”

For Israel's Olmert, scraping by is a strategy

Facing a scathing interim report on his conduct of the 2006 Lebanon war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert boasted last year he was "indestructible".

Many Israelis scoffed at that, hearing what sounded like the desperate bluster of an unpopular career politician who had been propelled to power by the illness of his predecessor, ex-general Ariel Sharon, and then failed to pass muster on the battlefield.

But Olmert survived. And after the Winograd Commission of inquiry spared him serious censure in a final report delivered on Wednesday, he looks likely to continue defying calls from foes and even some allies to quit or hold early elections.

The reprieve came as little surprise to analysts who say the 62-year-old marathon runner's strategy often amounts to devising way of scraping by crises -- including cancer -- as they come.

"He has been the eternal death-row inmate of Israeli politics. And now, as we gather before the guillotine in the town square, we learn that the defendant has fled," said Maariv newspaper's Ben Caspit. "Olmert will not fall. Not now, anyway."

Olmert's critics had held little hope of the Winograd Commission demanding his ouster, noting that the prime minister had hand-picked the panelists. There were those who suggested the 17-month lag in issuing the report was due to deliberate government delays designed to dull public memories of the war.

But Olmert has also built a broad coalition government and a booming economy, and has the backing of U.S. President George W. Bush, who hopes, in his last year in office, to see the Israeli leader make peace with the Palestinians.

Furthermore, Olmert lacks clear potential challengers. His most obvious rival in government, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, has signalled he won't break rank.

BLESSED BY LOW EXPECTATIONS

Olmert may have been blessed, paradoxically, by low expectations in a country disgruntled by deadlocked conflicts with the Arabs, and politics rife with infighting and scandals.

An opinion poll conducted after Winograd's conclusions came out found 56 percent of Israelis want Olmert to resign while 27 percent do not -- a rebuke, but arguably an improvement for a premier who once suffered single-digit ratings and public criticism from his own daughter over Israel's policies in Gaza.

Former justice minister Yosef Lapid, an Olmert confidant, said his almost four decades in parliament had "innoculated" him to challenges and given him an edge over even the many grizzled warriors who parachute in to Israeli politics from the military -- former premiers Barak, Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin among them.

"Olmert has rich experience and a very strong personality," Lapid said. "I would say his style is like the Americans -- a U.S. president has to be elected once, and then he runs the show. Unfortunately, that doesn't quite fit the Israeli scene."

Not the least of Olmert's continuing worries is the early stage prostate cancer for which he says he will have surgery.

Olmert's elder brother, Amram, recalled how the prime minister, denied a posting in the army special forces due to a childhood sporting injury, re-enlisted when he was in his 30s and married to undergo a gruelling combat officer's course.

"He had that need to prove to himself that he could do it," Amram Olmert told Reuters, adding that his younger brother retains something of a relish for the fight.

"He has an extraordinary sensitivity for the needs of other people, but let's just say he also likes to know that he's an animal who can handle all the other animals in the forest."

Taliban attacks on allied troops soar by up to a third

Attacks by the Taliban in Afghanistan surged last year, according to previously unpublished figures from allied military forces fighting insurgents.

Statistics compiled by the multinational International Stabilisation Force in Afghanistan show attacks on international troops and the Afghan government have gone up by between a fifth and a third.

But although admitting the figures show a 'significant rise', Nato insists the geographic extent of the violence remains limited. 'Seventy per cent of the incidents took place in just 10 per cent of the country, where no more than 6 per cent of the population live, and many have been initiated by our forces as we engage with the enemy,' a Nato source said. 'That is the same area as in 2006 which shows the insurgency is not spreading.'

The figures, expected to be released shortly, will fuel the bitter dispute between Nato countries over military contributions. Nato has about 37,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 14,000 from the US and 7,700 from Britain. The US has 11,000 other soldiers operating outside the Nato mission and has announced that more than 3,000 more troops will be deployed over this year.

Recent weeks have seen fierce criticism of European nations' efforts in Afghanistan by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. In recent days there has been a bad-tempered exchange between Berlin and Washington after the Germans received a 'stern' letter from Gates asking for an increase in the 3,500 soldiers that they have deployed in the north of Afghanistan. Canada threatened to withdraw its troops, who have been fighting in the south and taking heavy casualties, if other nations did not do more.

In an attempt to cool the row, the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is flying to London this week and a mini-summit of Nato defence ministers is also planned. The argument comes as a series of reports warning of 'failure' in the strategically critical country. British policy in Afghanistan sustained a major blow with the rejection of the nomination of Paddy Ashdown to a post as UN special envoy in Afghanistan.

Nato sources argue that more troops are needed to fill gaps in the south west in particular but argue that targeting resources on providing more training teams for the nascent Afghan army would do more good than pouring in soldiers. A particular frustration for the US is the restrictions imposed by national governments on the deployment of their troops. Germany, France, Italy and Spain - the latter two countries with troops in western Afghanistan - all agreed last year to send troops to the violent south, but only in extremis. Since the agreement, no troops from those countries have been deployed.

General Carlos Branco, spokesman for Nato forces in Afghanistan, conceded to reporters last month that violence had increased in Afghanistan, but argued that suicide bombs reflected desperation by the Taliban. 'As an insurgency movement, the Taliban movement are a failure,' he said.

Iraq vows to "crush terrorists" after 99 killed

Iraq's prime minister vowed on Saturday to ensure improved security is not derailed after two female bombers killed 99 people in the deadliest attacks in Baghdad since last April.

Nuri al-Maliki said Friday's bombings at popular pet markets in the capital would not herald a return to the savage violence that took Iraq to the brink of all-out sectarian civil war. The U.S. military blamed al Qaeda for the attacks.

"I swear on the blood (of the victims), we will achieve all our goals in securing a stable Iraq," he said in a statement. "We will continue to ... crush the terrorists and target their strongholds."

In the bloodiest attack, police said a female bomber killed 62 and wounded 88 at the Ghazil pet market in central Baghdad, one of the most popular meeting places in the city and a previous target for attacks.

That came just minutes after another blast killed 37 and wounded 57 at a bird market in southern Baghdad, police said.

Iraq's military has said the two women were mentally handicapped and the bombs were detonated by remote control.

"The terrorists used handicapped women in this crime. This shows the moral degradation of these criminal gangs and how much they hate mankind," Maliki said.

U.S. military officials said they had seen no evidence to suggest the women were handicapped, but one spokesman said on Saturday: "We don't have any reason to doubt that either".

Al Qaeda in Iraq, blamed by the U.S. military for the blasts and most other large-scale bombings, has increasingly used women wearing suicide vests to carry out strikes after increased security and protective walls made car bombings more difficult.

Friday's death toll was the worst in Baghdad since April 18, when multiple car bombings killed 191 people around the city.

The scale of the attack could damage growing confidence amongst Iraqis that their streets were becoming safer, leading them to venture out to markets and restaurants.

It also raises questions for the U.S. military, which has begun to reduce troop levels. Attacks have fallen by 60 percent across Iraq since last June, when 30,000 extra U.S. troops became fully deployed.

Troop levels will drop to around 135,000 by the middle of the year when more than 20,000 combat soldiers are withdrawn. There are currently around 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

U.S. commanders say they will have enough soldiers to maintain security. But they have repeatedly warned that al Qaeda remained a dangerous foe.

The fall in overall violence has also been attributed to local police units mainly made up of Sunni Arab tribes who turned against al Qaeda and a ceasefire by the feared Mehdi Army militia of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

U.S. won't say who killed militant

WASHINGTON -- The top U.S. military officer on Friday described the airstrike that killed a leading Al Qaeda commander in Pakistan as an important victory, but he refused to say whether the U.S. government had anything to do with it.

"The strike was a very important one, it was a very lethal one," Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference. He brushed aside questions about any role the Pentagon may have played.

The CIA and the Pakistani government also refused to say who might have fired the missile or missiles that are believed to have killed Abu Laith al Libi and perhaps other Al Qaeda leaders in a small compound in northwest Pakistan this week.

The U.S. government's reluctance to take public credit for the killing of Al Libi underscores the growing tensions between the United States and Pakistan over how to attack Al Qaeda as it entrenches itself on Pakistani territory, current and former U.S. officials and other experts said.

The government in Islamabad won't allow U.S. forces onto its soil to conduct counter-terrorism missions, so Washington has resorted to airstrikes launched from across the border in Afghanistan. But despite the occasional success, few in the counter-terrorism community believe that airstrikes are enough, and some have been openly pressing for more access.

In recent weeks, Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell and CIA Director Michael V. Hayden made a trip to Pakistan to press for more cooperation from military and intelligence officials there. And Friday, Mullen said he too would be traveling to Islamabad this month to meet with Pakistani leaders, including the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiani.

"While this particular strike was very successful, and we were very pleased with the outcome, there is still a great deal more work to do," Mullen said.

He said the U.S. remained "concerned about the safe havens" in the tribal areas near the Afghan border, a concern heightened by an increase in Al Qaeda and Taliban violence against targets in Pakistan in recent months.

"Being able to have an impact in a safe haven, I think, is an important one," Mullen said. "We're very committed to working with the Pakistanis on this."

He acknowledged that the United States was essentially powerless to do anything within Pakistan without the government's cooperation. He said he hoped to establish a personal relationship with Kiani and the rest of the Pakistani leadership and to "make sure that I understand his concerns and in fact work very hard to support them. . . . We will only do what is requested by Pakistan."

President Pervez Musharraf has maintained that Pakistani forces are capable of defeating Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militants in the tribal areas. He has remained silent on Al Libi's death, which was announced this week on some Al Qaeda-affiliated websites.

Local officials had said about 12 people were killed in the strike late Monday or early Tuesday, most of them "foreigners" -- Arabs and Central Asians not from the area -- which fits the profile of Al Qaeda fighters in the tribal areas.

Residents had reported a missile strike on the small compound just outside the town of Mir Ali, which is considered a militant stronghold. Witnesses said they heard what they believed were Predator drones flying in the area shortly before the compound was hit.

Two Predator airstrikes were launched at suspected Al Qaeda targets, including Ayman Zawahiri, the network's second in command, in the tribal areas in 2006, but both appeared to be unsuccessful. One of them, on Jan. 13, 2006, in Damadola, sparked outrage among Pakistanis because at least 13 civilians were killed, prompting a sharp rebuke from Musharraf.

On Friday, some current and former U.S. counter-terrorism officials said Predator strikes would have little impact on Al Qaeda, especially given its increasingly strong connections to the Taliban and to tribal groups that also appear to be throwing in their lot with Osama bin Laden, or at least protecting his network out of loyalty or in return for financial compensation.

Bruce Riedel, a veteran Pakistan expert formerly with the CIA, State Department and National Security Council, said the silence surrounding who was behind the airstrike was designed to hide the fact that the U.S. was being forced to fight Al Qaeda at a distance without the full support of the Pakistani government.

"That no one seems to be responsible shows just how delicate and fragile our relationship . . . with Pakistan is," Riedel said. He said the situation in Pakistan had deteriorated significantly in recent months, and that the U.S. has grown more concerned with the spread of Taliban militants, especially since the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and given the Musharraf government's preoccupation with winning parliamentary elections this month.

"We are now seeing a huge Al Qaeda and Taliban presence in Pakistan, and a Pakistan government that is not capable of dealing with it itself, and is reeling because of its own domestic political problems, and we have to resort to fighting it indirectly through unacknowledged Predator strikes. That is far from an optimal way of going about it," said Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a centrist Washington think tank.

Lisa Curtis, who was a Pakistan expert at the CIA, the State Department and as a professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the silence on who launched this week's attack was understandable given that a large percentage of Pakistanis have said they oppose their government's cooperation with the United States on counter-terrorism.

"The reason the United States and the Pakistanis don't talk openly about the details is because there is a possibility of a backlash among the general population, parts of which have sympathies with the Taliban," said Curtis, a senior research fellow on South Asia issues at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

"We have to assume that there is more cooperation than Musharraf wants to discuss publicly. The Pakistanis generally want to resolve the extremist problem in other ways beyond just military operations," Curtis said, adding that Washington was cooperating with Islamabad on some of these efforts.

Female bombers kill 72 at Baghdad pet markets

Female bombers detonated by remote control killed 72 people in attacks blamed on al Qaeda at two Baghdad pet markets on Friday, the Iraqi capital's deadliest bombings in more than seven months.

Police said a female suicide bomber killed 45 people and wounded 82 at the Ghazil pet market in central Baghdad. Another blast minutes earlier killed 27 people and wounded 67 at a bird market in southern Baghdad, police said.

The U.S. military, which gave a lower death toll, said both attacks were caused by female suicide bombers and blamed al Qaeda. An Iraqi military official said the two women were mentally handicapped and the bombs detonated by remote control.

"By targeting innocent Iraqis they show their true demonic character," Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Stover, a spokesman for U.S. troops in Baghdad, said in a statement referring to al Qaeda in Iraq.

Stover later told Reuters the U.S. military had seen no evidence to suggest the women were handicapped.

While attacks have fallen across Iraq in recent months, the blasts underscore U.S. military warnings that Sunni Islamist al Qaeda remains dangerous and a return to violence that took Iraq to the brink of sectarian civil war is still possible.

The attacks are also a bitter blow to the hopes of many Iraqis that security in the capital was getting better.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the bombings underlined "the absolute bankruptcy and brutality" of those who carried them out.

"This is the most brutal and the most bankrupt of movements," Rice told reporters in Washington. "The Iraqi people have been right to turn against these terrible, violent people in their midst who will do anything."

At the Ghazil market, one of Baghdad's most popular gathering places, people stared at the destruction as workers swept up body parts and blood-stained animal boxes.

"I came here to enjoy myself. I don't know how I survived," said Abu Haider, who was covered in blood as he stood among ruined stalls and carcasses of birds and other animals.

"I was right there at the scene when the blast happened. It knocked me over. When I managed to get up, I saw dozens had been killed and wounded," he said.

One witness said the female bomber entered the market saying she had birds to sell. Scores of people gathered and then the bomb underneath her clothing went off, the witness said.



DETONATED BY REMOTE CONTROL

Major-General Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for the Iraqi military in Baghdad, said the suicide bombs were detonated remotely by mobile telephones.

"We found the mobiles used to detonate the women," he said, adding the women were mentally handicapped. He did not elaborate on how the Iraqi military knew about their mental condition.

Ambulances tried to push through packed streets to get to Ghazil after the blast, which occurred in almost exactly the same spot as a bombing which killed 13 people on Nov. 23.

Police and civil defence officials piled the wounded into wheelbarrows, cars and the back of pick-up trucks while U.S. soldiers helped secure the area. Officials at nearby hospitals said they struggled to cope with the wounded.

"Most people who visit this market are poor and just want to enjoy themselves but they came and got killed," said Hassan Salman, who sells bird seed at the Ghazil market.

The Ghazil market opens only on Fridays and sells a colourful range of creatures from guard dogs and monkeys to parrots, pigeons and tropical fish.

The November blast, caused by a bomb hidden inside a box of birds, was a big psychological blow for residents who had just begun returning to the streets after security crackdowns last year helped arrest a slide towards all-out sectarian civil war.

The combined death toll from Friday's attacks is the deadliest for Baghdad since June 19, when a car bomb killed 87 people near a Shi'ite mosque.

Violence has fallen sharply across Iraq, with the number of attacks down 60 percent since last June.

The declining violence has been attributed to 30,000 extra U.S. troops, which became fully deployed last June, and the growth of primarily Sunni Arab local police units. (Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim, Wisam Mohammed and Was Qusay in Baghdad and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Writing by Paul Tait and Michael Holden; Editing by Robert Woodward)

Kenya's parties agree to stop violence

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's feuding parties agreed on Friday to a framework for talks to resolve a violent political crisis, in which some 850 people have died, within 15 days, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said.

The two sides, at odds since a Dec. 27 election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power in a vote opposition challenger Raila Odinga says he rigged, said they had agreed only a skeleton model for talks but hoped to make progress quickly.

Annan said they would discuss stopping ethnically motivated killings, how to deliver humanitarian aid to the affected and how to resolve the immediate political crisis before tackling a longer term solution, which could take a year.

"The first is to take immediate action to stop the violence," Annan, who is heading the mediation, told reporters.

"But more importantly, the parties agreed that the first three items could be handled and resolved within 7 to 15 days."

Talks are to resume on Monday. Senior opposition official Musalia Mudavadi said they two sides agreed to urge supporters to end the violence, in which rival tribes are locked into a cycle of killings and lootings.

"We ... agreed on the agenda items ... We have made substantial progress on the first agenda item ... We are calling on the public to disband any illegal militia," he said.

Kenya's Justice Minister Martha Karua agreed and said steps would be taken to protect life and property after post-poll protests descended into bloodshed.

Annan's announcement followed a visit by his successor, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, to give clout to diplomatic efforts.

Ban met negotiating teams for Kibaki and Odinga trying to reach a deal to end the crisis in what had been one of the continent's more stable nations and strongest economies.

"What is important at this time is to maintain peace and security," he told reporters. "The killing must stop."

But even as he spoke, violence continued in flashpoints all over western Kenya.

"I saw around 20 torched houses including shops and two policemen with arrow wounds," said a local journalist who had visited the area and did not want to be named.

"At least 10 people have died from both sides."

Leaders at an African Union summit in Ethiopia want urgent action. Ban flew in from there for a one-day visit to Kenya.

"You have lost already too much in terms of national image, economic interest," he said.

More than 300,000 Kenyans are living as refugees.

Kibaki says he is Kenya's elected leader but international observers said the count was so chaotic it was impossible to tell who won.

KIBAKI BLAMES RIVALS

At a meeting of an east African regional grouping, Kibaki made provocative statement accusing his rivals of instigating the bloodshed and telling them again to challenge his disputed re-election in court.

"Regrettably, although the election results reflected the will of the majority of Kenyans, the leaders in the opposition instigated a campaign of civil unrest," he said.

Odinga says he would not get a fair hearing in court because the judiciary is biased toward Kibaki, although the opposition has challenged legislative elections in the courts.

The unrest has taken the lid off decades-old divisions between tribal groupings over land, wealth and power, dating from British colonial rule and stoked by Kenyan politicians during 44 years of independence.

The United States and European countries have pledged their support for Annan's mediation efforts. Donors have said aid programmes to Kenya are under review.

Fresh protests, in which witnesses said at least two people were killed, broke out on Thursday after a police officer in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret shot dead an opposition legislator.

He was the second killed in a week.

The officer who fatally shot the legislator and also a female police officer with him, appeared in court on Friday.

Police have said they are treating the killing as a "crime of passion", but Odinga again called it a politically-motivated assassination when he viewed the legislator's body at a Nairobi mortuary on Friday.

Soldiers fired into the air to disperse angry mobs in Eldoret after the shooting killing. Hospital sources said at least 20 people were wounded in the fighting.

Texas UIL Realignment Released Today

The University Interscholastic League realigned schools throughout the state of Texas this morning in a new UIL Realignment announcement released today.

2008-09 and 2009-10 Tentative Football and Basketball District Assignments and Reclassification Information

The University Interscholastic League announces the 2008-09 and 2009-10 tentative football and basketball district assignments on the enclosed list. The spring meet and other athletic district alignments will be released at a later date.

An organizing school list is also enclosed. It is the responsibility of the organizing school to organize the district and notify the UIL office of the name and the school of the permanent chairman for each sport so that district executive committee mailings are sent to the correct person. Contracts cannot be made until February 22, 2008.

Schools may discuss scheduling possible games beginning on February 1, but cannot actually contract until February 22. Districts with an odd number of schools may meet prior to February 22 to determine "open" dates within the district schedule. These districts cannot set the district schedule, but may draw byes. District Executive Committees may begin contracting games on February 22, 2008.

The Chair of the Legislative Council shall appoint a District Assignment Appeals Committee. A participant school may request an appeal of the district assignment by filing its request and a supporting statement with the District Assignment Appeals Committee and informing, in writing, the superintendent and principal of the schools in the district to which it was assigned and to the district to which it wishes to be assigned. This appeal must be made by February 14, 2008. The meeting at which appeals will be heard is scheduled for February 21, 2008.

Ferry runs aground off Blackpool

A roll-on roll-off ferry which ran into trouble in high winds in the Irish Sea has run aground off Blackpool.

A total of 19 crew members and four passengers were flown to safety from the Riverdance, after it was hit by a freak wave in bad weather.

Nine of the crew members were still on board when it ran aground on the north shore of Blackpool beach on its journey from Northern Ireland to Heysham.

Owner Seatruck Ferries said it was trying to salvage the ferry.

Initially four passengers and 10 crew members were rescued, with the remaining nine crew rescued later.

A spokesman for Seatruck Ferries said: "The conditions are such that the master requested helicopter transfer of all personnel.

"All nine (crew members) are now safely off."

He added: "The issue was that as we approached high water the vessel started to rotate broadside on the beach.

"The high swell caused a list and, under those circumstances, the master decided safety came first."

He said the boat was listing 30 degrees and there was a risk that a helicopter rescue would be impossible if it was delayed any longer.

"We have now organised salvage assistance for the vessel," he added.

The Riverdance got into difficulties on Thursday evening, 10 nautical miles off the coast of Fleetwood, Lancashire, over a bank known as Shell Flat.

It had been sailing from Warrenpoint in Northern Ireland.

The vessel issued a Mayday at about 1930 GMT and three helicopters from the RAF, Royal Navy and Coastguard, were sent to the scene to help winch those on board to safety.

People were lifted two at a time into the helicopters, with nine crew staying on board to try and prevent the vessel from sinking.

Two lifeboats with volunteer crews also assisted in the rescue operation.

Rich Taylor, one of the RAF winch men involved, said: "It took some time to get the first rope down to the boat.

"Unfortunately, we then lost contact with that rope just through the boat moving away from us in the big swirl.

"So we had another bash at it and managed to get another rope down."

Seatruck Ferries Limited said the stricken vessel had been carrying trucks and trailers from Warrenpoint in Northern Ireland to the port of Heysham in Lancashire, when it was struck by the freak wave.

The wave caused the ship's cargo to shift resulting in the vessel developing a significant list.

Speaking during the rescue operation, John Matthews from Fleetwood RNLI described the sea conditions as "horrendous" with 7m waves and winds of up to 60mph (96km/h).

'Extremely unlucky'

Kevin Hobbs, the chief executive of Seatruck Ferries Limited, defended the decision to run the service in bad weather.

"When the vessel sailed there was no cause for concern," he said.

"There are many ships at sea at the moment in these conditions and we've just been extremely unlucky."

Those flown to safety have been taken to Blackpool Airport to recover and be assessed for injuries.

Supt Richard Spedding, of Lancashire Police, said a couple of them had "very, very minor injuries" but they were "glad to be safe on dry land".