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."

Candidates making Super Tuesday push

Sen. John McCain barnstormed through a skeptical South on Saturday, campaigning for a Super Tuesday knockout in the Republican presidential race. Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton worked the West on the final weekend before primaries and caucuses in more than 20 states.

"I assume that I will get the nomination of the party," McCain told reporters, the front-runner so confident that he decided to challenge rival Mitt Romney in his home state of Massachusetts.

Romney, on the other hand, celebrated a caucus victory in Maine and told reporters he plans to do well Tuesday, "planning on getting the kind of delegates and support that shows that my effort is succeeding, and taking that across the nation. ... I am encouraged by the support which I'm seeing grow for me."

Clinton stressed pocketbook issues, the home mortgage crisis in a discussion with voters in a working class neighborhood, and health care at a noisy rally in California attended by former Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson. "This is a cause that is the central passion of my public life," she said, and jabbed at Obama on the issue.

"My opponent will not commit to universal health care. I do not believe we should nominate any Democrat who will not stand here proudly today and commit to universal health care," she said in the continuation of a monthslong debate over which candidate's plan would result in wider coverage among the millions who now lack it.

Obama stopped in Idaho, where caucuses offer a mere 18 delegates on Tuesday, and he worked to reassure Westerners on two fronts.

"I've been going to the same church for more than 20 years, praising Jesus," he told an audience in Boise, warning his listeners not to believe e-mails that falsely say he is a Muslim.

In a region of the country where hunting is a way of life, he also said he has "no intention of taking away folks' guns." The Illinois senator did not mention his support for gun control legislation.

The two remaining Democratic rivals compete in primaries in 15 states as well as caucuses in seven more plus American Samoa on Tuesday, the busiest day of this or any other nominating campaign. A total of 1,681 delegates is at stake, including 370 in California alone, and the two campaigns have said they do not expect either side to emerge with a lock on the nomination.

Both have already begun turning their attention to Feb. 12 primaries in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Obama told reporters on a flight from Boise to Minneapolis that he thinks the race for votes on Tuesday is getting tighter, even though the schedule seems to favor the more well-known Clinton. "I don't think that there is any doubt that we've made some progress. I don't think that there's any doubt that Senator Clinton — she's still the favorite," he said on the way to a rally that drew 20,000 people to the Target Center.

The Republican political landscape is different for McCain, Romney, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, with nine of the 21 contests on the ballot awarding delegates winner-take-all to the top vote-getter.

At a stop in Minnesota, Romney called his caucus victory Saturday in Maine, where he took little over 50 percent of a presidential preference vote, "a people's victory," noting that it came despite McCain endorsement by the state's two U.S. senators.

"It is, in my view, also an indication that conservative change is something that the American people want to see. I think you're going to see a growing movement across this country to get behind my candidacy and to propel this candidacy forward," Romney said. "I think it's a harbinger of what you're going to see on Tuesday."

Without mentioning him by name, Romney also took a jab at McCain, telling an audience in Edina: "I don't think we win the White House by getting as close to Hillary Clinton as we can be without being Hillary Clinton."

Clinton, Obama, Huckabee and Paul participated via satellite in a televised youth forum during the evening. The event was sponsored by MTV, The Associated Press and MySpace.

Each appearing separately, the Democrats pitched their college aid proposals; Huckabee, his theory of "vertical" leadership that breaks through the "horizontal" politics of left and right; and Paul, his belief that government is best when it gets out of people's way.

Clinton, noting Democrats are choosing between a female and a black candidate, said: "Whichever of us gets the nomination, we are making history," and asserted she is the best equipped to lead. Equally mindful of history, Obama said the contest is not about the race or the sex of the candidates.

If it were just about his race, he said, "I wouldn't have to answer questions. I could just show up."

McCain's rivals have essentially conceded him New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Arizona, five winner-take-all states with 251 delegates combined.

That left McCain free to spend Saturday in Huckabee's probable area of strength, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. All three are home to large numbers of evangelical voters who have been slow to swing behind the Arizona senator on his march through the early primaries and caucuses.

He worked to reassure conservatives, telling them he had a 24-year record in the Senate of "fighting for the rights of the unborn" and boasting he never asked for a single earmark or pork barrel project for his home state of Arizona.

As for the slowing economy, he said the Senate must "stop fooling around and pass the president's stimulus package .... and restore some confidence."

McCain made no mention of Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is his closest pursuer in the race, or of Huckabee, the Baptist preacher-turned-politician.

In Tennessee, McCain made a pitch for the supporters of campaign dropout Fred Thompson, a former Tennessee senator. "He is a fine man. I had the distinct pleasure and honor of sitting next, my desk right next to Fred Thompson for eight years in the United States Senate," he said. Thompson has not endorsed any of the remaining candidates.

Before campaigning in Minnesota, Romney attended the funeral of Mormon Church President Gordon B. Hinckley in Salt Lake City. Romney would be the first Mormon to sit in the White House if he wins the presidency.

Huckabee campaigned across Alabama, taking thinly veiled swipes at McCain and Romney.

"You really would like to get a president to agree with himself on some issues," he said in a reference to Romney, who has switched positions on key issues since he ran against Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy in Massachusetts in 1994. As for McCain and the need to control federal spending, he said, "It doesn't make sense that someone would be sent to the White House who has a Washington address."

McCain emerged as the front-runner in the Republican race with a victory in the winner-take-all primary in Florida last Tuesday. In the days since, he has begun collecting endorsements from establishment figures ranging from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to former Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma.

But a significant number of conservatives remain vocally opposed to him, and Romney hopes to take advantage of their unwillingness to swing behind a longtime party maverick.

"It's going to destroy the Republican Party," radio show host Rush Limbaugh has said of a McCain nomination. Ann Coulter, the conservative author and commentator, has said she would prefer Clinton in the White House over McCain, adding, "I will campaign for her."

Romney wins Maine caucuses

AUGUSTA, Maine - Mitt Romney coasted to a win in presidential preference voting by Maine Republicans on Saturday, claiming his third victory in a caucus state and fourth overall.

The former Massachusetts governor had 52 percent of the vote with 68 percent of the towns holding caucuses reporting. John McCain trailed with 21 percent, Ron Paul was third with 19 percent, and Mike Huckabee had 6 percent. Undecided votes accounted for 2 percent.

The nonbinding votes, the first step toward electing 18 Maine delegates to the Republican National Convention, took place in public schools, Grange halls, fire stations and town halls across the state.

The Associated Press uses presidential preferences expressed in those caucuses to project the number of national convention delegates each candidate will have when they are chosen at Maine's state convention, calculating that Romney will wind up with all 18 delegates when all is said and done.

Campaigning in Minnesota, Romney noted that his victory in Maine came despite McCain's endorsement by the state's two U.S. senators.

"The people of Maine joined those from across the nation in casting their vote for conservative change in Washington ... Like many Americans, the people of Maine are tired of Washington promises made but broken," Romney said in a statement.

The fight for delegate support in Maine came just ahead of Super Tuesday, giving candidates a chance to build momentum for the upcoming contests in more than 20 states.

Most of Maine's caucuses were held Saturday but a scattering of towns will hold theirs Sunday and later in the month. Party leaders were delighted with the heavy turnout, which they said was driven by the most hotly contested race in two decades.

Besides Paul, who visited Maine on Monday, Romney was the only candidate to show up or send a surrogate to campaign as the caucuses drew close. His oldest son Tagg campaigned Friday and appeared at caucuses Saturday.

Romney has also won in the caucus states of Nevada and Wyoming, and finished first in Michigan's primary.

Kim Pettengill, a party activist for more than three decades, said Saturday's was the largest Kennebec County caucus turnout since 1980, the year Ronald Reagan won his first GOP nomination for president.

Party Executive Director Julie O'Brien said other counties reported similarly heavy turnouts.

Overall, the AP tracks the delegate races by projecting the number of national convention delegates won by candidates in each presidential primary or caucus, based on state and national party rules, and by interviewing unpledged delegates to obtain their preferences.

In some states, like Iowa, Maine and Nevada, local precinct caucuses are the first stage in the allocation process. The AP uses preferences expressed in those caucuses to project the number of national convention delegates each candidate will have when they are chosen at county, congressional district or state conventions.

The Maine Democrats hold their presidential preference votes at municipal caucuses on Feb. 10.

Candidates Address Young Voters

NEW YORK -- Democrat Barack Obama told young voters Saturday his multicultural background lets him "see through the eyes of other people" abroad in ways another president could not. Closer to home _ and student pocketbooks _ rival Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke of aggressive steps to make college affordable.

The two Democrats and Republicans Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul joined in a youth-oriented forum sponsored by MTV, The Associated Press and MySpace, each fielding questions separately by satellite. In perhaps a sign of Obama's strength with young people, both Clinton and Huckabee were asked not just about themselves, but about him.

Clinton, asked what Obama symbolized in the contest, said she and her rival together "represent such a sea change in America" _ one bidding to become the first female president, the other wanting to be the first black president. "Whichever of us gets the nomination, we are making history," she said, before rapidly asserting she is the best equipped to lead.

Equally mindful of history, Obama declared the contest is not about the race or the sex of the candidates. If it were just about his race, he said, "I wouldn't have to answer questions. I could just show up."

Clinton was in Tucson, Ariz., and Obama in Minneapolis, each in motion across a vast landscape in the closing stretch before the two dozen presidential nomination contests Tuesday. John McCain and Mitt Romney, top contenders for the GOP nomination, declined to participate in the forum. McCain answered questions solo at an MTV-MySpace forum from New Hampshire in December.

Obama, an Illinois senator, asked young voters concerned about America's place in the world to judge him on his record of standing against the Iraq war and on his background as the son of a Kenyan father and mother from Kansas. He noted his schooldays in Indonesia.

"If I convene a meeting of Muslim leaders to try to bridge the divide between Islam and the West, I do so with the credibility of someone who lived in a Muslim country for four years when I was a child," he said. "And although I'm a Christian I have a sense of that culture."

He said his supporters were diligently countering an anonymous e-mail campaign painting him as a Muslim, a faith he's never practiced.

"I am a member of the same Christian church where I've been for the last 20 years," he said. "I've been pledging allegiance to the flag since I was 3 years old. These are the old smear tactics that we see in every campaign."

Clinton, a New York senator, emphasized college affordability in response to a question, and outlined her proposals to help students pay off debt with national service, to increase Pell grants and to sweeten other college aid.

She said student loan companies should be cut out of the process and colleges should enter contracts with freshmen ensuring no tuition increases until they graduate.

"We are literally slamming the door of college in the face of so many young people," she said. Obama, too, talked about his national service plan to relieve college debt.

Huckabee, opening the forum, complained that he always gets "the God questions" when he'd rather be talking about public policy, and denied there's any conflict between his faith and the right things to do as president.

The former Baptist preacher was asked almost right off if he would be capable of making decisions in the Oval Office that might be at odds with his religion.

"There's not this glaring conflict," he said. "Faith helps me to understand what is right."

Religious conservatives have provided much of Huckabee's support and he's not been shy about courting them.

"I always get asked the God questions," he said, adding that "it's really been frustrating" that people don't want to know more about his work as Arkansas governor.

Paul told the forum he opposed U.S. intervention in Sudan's Darfur region and placed little faith in the ability of the United Nations to relieve the crisis there. He was asked what he'd do to stop the crisis from turning into a genocide on the scale of that experienced in Rwanda.

"I don't believe in using force in that manner," he said. "Under the Constitution, we're not allowed to do that."

He said he might support some interim aid, steered through international agencies, to address "these social problems in Africa." The U.N. estimates that 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced since ethnic African rebels in Darfur took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing it of discrimination, in 2003

Huckabee spoke from Montgomery, Ala., and Paul from Victoria, Texas.

The forum, "Closing Arguments: A Presidential Super Dialogue," was presented live on MTV and more than 1,800 Web sites and radio stations. Questions came from moderators in MTV's Times Square studio and from online and in-studio participants.

Major Progress in Writers' Strike Talks

After weeks of stalled talks, negotiators in the entertainment writers' strike have suddenly made "substantial progress" in their discussions, people with knowledge of the talks said yesterday, raising hopes in Hollywood that a settlement could come as early as this week.

Representatives of the Writers Guild of America and the major movie studios and TV networks appear to have tentatively resolved the major issues that led the labor union's 10,500 members to walk out on Nov. 5, sources said.

Both sides have agreed to a media blackout regarding negotiations, and officials from the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers declined to comment yesterday.

"No one will say it's done," a person with knowledge of the discussions said, but a "staggering amount" of progress was made Friday after nine hours of informal discussions in Los Angeles. The next step, the person said, is to get the results of the negotiation on paper. "Until it's on paper, no one is saying anything" publicly, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the no-comment agreement.

A settlement would restart production of TV dramas and sitcoms, which ground to a halt not long after writers on both coasts walked out 13 weeks ago. A quick resolution would enable the broadcast networks to wind up this disrupted TV season with at least some original fare. However, industry executives say that, even if a deal is struck in the next few days, it could take a few weeks for benched series to get going again.

With television production effectively shut down in Hollywood and in much of New York, the networks have filled their prime-time schedules with reruns and "reality" series, some of which had been ordered as part of the networks' strike contingency plans. Movie production has been less impaired.

A more immediate beneficiary of a quick settlement would be the Feb. 24 Academy Awards telecast. The Screen Actors Guild has said that its members will not attend the event if the writers are still on strike, a move that probably would reduce the Oscars to a glamour-less, celebrity-free event. That fate befell NBC's broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards last month and sent its ratings plunging.

Word of progress in the negotiations, including a report yesterday on the New York Times Web site, set off a flurry of optimistic e-mails in the entertainment industry. Although several people said a deal could be announced as soon as late yesterday, those hopes were quickly dashed. The two sides have yet to commit their agreement to writing.

A member of the guild who writes TV comedies sounded a skeptical note. "I'm hopeful but wary, as these types of early, optimistic rumors have been deliberately seeded by the [producers] in the past to artificially raise and then dash our hopes as a bargaining bludgeon," said the writer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Writers Guild's negotiating committee has scheduled a videoconference for tomorrow to discuss developments. Any settlement proposal would have to be ratified by the guild's members.

The negotiations got a boost on Friday, sources said, when Peter Chernin, the president of News Corp., returned from London and rejoined the talks. Chernin's company owns the 20th Century Fox movie studio and the Fox broadcast network, and he is one of the powerful moguls leading the discussions, along with Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of the Walt Disney Co., as well as Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS.

The studios walked away from negotiations on Dec. 7. But Chernin and Iger resumed informal talks with top Writers Guild officials on Jan. 22 after producers reached an agreement with the Directors Guild of America.

Writers have been seeking bigger fees, known as residuals, from the sale of home videos, and compensation from Internet downloads and streaming of TV programs and movies. The big stumbling block has been the precise formula for Internet residuals.