Written on 7:37 PM by yahoo
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- President Hugo Chavez's government called its ambassador back to Caracas for talks.
The shadows of relatives of people kidnapped cast over their pictures during a protest last week in Bogota.
The two countries' leaders have exchanged increasingly sharp words since Colombia's conservative Alvaro Uribe last week ended Chavez's efforts to broker a prisoner swap to free hostages held by Colombian rebels, including three U.S. defense contractors and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.
The guerrillas on Tuesday issued their first statement on recent events, saying that Chavez's participation in the fledgling talks had been "the only hope" for a deal.
Venezuela's foreign ministry announced it had called home Pavel Rondon, its ambassador in Bogota, "to oversee an exhaustive evaluation of bilateral relations."
A foreign ministry official said Rondon has been in Caracas since Saturday.
But Colombia's foreign minister, Fernando Araujo, vowed not to recall Colombia's ambassador in Caracas, insisting his government's dispute is with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, not Venezuela.
"The enemy of the Colombian people is the FARC," Araujo told a news conference.
The Andean neighbors share a 1,380-mile border and $5 billion in trade last year, maintaining friendly relations despite sharp ideological differences -- until now.
Uribe last Wednesday booted the leftist Chavez and a Colombian senator from talks with the FARC, saying the Venezuelan leader had violated the conditions of his involvement by speaking directly to the head of Colombia's army.
"Uribe's attitude is wretched, very wretched, to suspend the humanitarian mediation of President Hugo Chavez and Senator Piedad Cordoba, when it was the only hope for achieving a prisoner swap in Colombia," the guerrilla commander known as "Ivan Marquez" said a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.
The rebel leader, who had traveled to Caracas to meet with the Venezuelan president earlier this month, thanked Chavez and Cordoba for trying to stimulate talks.
Since taking office in 2002, Uribe's government has had no face-to-face talks with the rebels. Some FARC hostages have been held for more than? 10 years.
Chavez on Sunday said he was putting relations with Colombia "in the freezer," calling Uribe a "liar" and accusing him of "not wanting peace."
Uribe replied hours later, claiming that Chavez is pushing an "expansionist project" across Latin America and seems to want Colombia to fall "victim to a terrorist FARC government".
The rebel force is holding 46 high-profile hostages whom it has pledged to release in exchange for hundreds of imprisoned guerrillas.
Uribe in August invited Chavez to help broker a deal with the leftist rebels, who are sympathetic to the Venezuelan leader's socialist ideals.
Colombia, Washington's closest ally in South America, has received billions of dollars in U.S. military aid in the past seven years to fight the FARC and the world's largest cocaine trade.
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Written on 7:33 PM by yahoo
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A quarter of Blackwater security guards in Iraq use steroids and other "judgment-altering substances," according to a lawsuit filed by the families of several Iraqis killed or wounded in a Baghdad shooting in September.
A car burned in the September 16 Blackwater incident sits on a Baghdad street a week later.
Blackwater denies the charges.
The suit, filed Monday in Washington, accuses the company of fostering "a culture of lawlessness" among its guards and says the use of excessive force helps the company preserve a key selling point -- the fact that none of its protectees have been killed during the four-year-old war.
"I think there is a whole corporate culture there that essentially rewards the use of excessive force -- shooting first, asking questions later," said Susan Burke, the lead attorney in the case.
The lawsuit accuses Blackwater of war crimes, wrongful death, assault, negligent hiring and emotional distress. The plaintiffs include two wounded survivors of the September 16 shootings around Nusoor Square, in western Baghdad, and the families of five people killed in the incident. Iraqi authorities say the guards killed 17 people in an act of "premeditated murder."
Blackwater has denied any wrongdoing, arguing its contractors used necessary force to protect a State Department convoy that came under fire from insurgents.
The lawsuit accuses Blackwater of failing to control the use of steroids among its guards -- an allegation Burke said came from "people in that community," and one she said would be backed up as the case progresses.
"The reality is that Blackwater has indeed fired people for steroid use, so they're on clear notice that there's steroid use," Burke said. She said Blackwater has marketed the idea "that their people are kind of tougher and bigger than anybody else," and has turned a blind eye toward "serious, repeated situations of excessive use of force."
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell rejected the steroid allegations, saying all company workers face drug tests during their application process and on a quarterly basis while working for the firm.
"Steroids and performance enhancement drugs, both illegal and prescribed, are absolutely in violation of our policy," Tyrrell told CNN. "Blackwater has very strict policies concerning drug use, and if anyone were known to be using illegal drugs, they would be fired immediately."
The lawsuit states that the guards involved in the September 16 killings violated orders from their Baghdad supervisors by leaving a secure area where they had dropped off a State Department official under their protection.
The guards opened fire "without provocation," the suit states, and continued firing even after one of their comrades tried to stop them from shooting.
The lawsuit also accuses the North Carolina-based military contractor of hiring ex-Chilean commandos who were barred from security or military work in their home country after admitting to human rights violations, and of hiring mercenaries -- a term the company rejects -- from a variety of countries.
The U.S. government has paid the company nearly $1 billion for diplomatic security since the invasion of Iraq, a House committee reported in September.
The Nusoor Square killings spurred Iraqi threats to bar the company from operating in Iraq and a push to lift the legal immunity conferred on contractors by the U.S.-led occupation government in 2004.
The lawsuit does not request a specific amount in damages, but Burke said her clients want both compensation for their own losses and punitive damages against the firm "for having failed to take the reasonable and adequate corporate steps that they should have taken ages ago."
"Blackwater encourages and fosters a culture of lawlessness amongst its employees, encouraging them to act in the company's financial interest at the expense of innocent human life," the lawsuit says.
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Written on 7:31 PM by yahoo
VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France (AP) -- Youths rampaged for a third night in the suburbs north of Paris and violence spread to a southern city late Tuesday as police struggled to contain rioters who have burned cars and buildings and -- in an ominous turn -- shot at officers.
Police said rioters attempted to set fire to buildings by ramming them with burning vehicles.
A senior police union official warned that "urban guerrillas" had joined the unrest, saying the violence was worse than during three weeks of rioting that raged around French cities in 2005, when firearms were rarely used.
Bands of young people set more cars on fire in and around Villiers-le-Bel, the Paris suburb where the latest trouble first erupted, and 22 youths were taken into custody, the regional government said.
In the southern city of Toulouse, 20 cars were set ablaze, and fires at two libraries were quickly brought under control, police said.
Despite the renewed violence, France's prime minister said the situation was calmer than the two previous nights. About 1,000 officers patrolled trouble spots in and around Villiers-le-Bel on Tuesday, he said.
The government was striving to keep violence from spreading in what was shaping up as a stern test for new President Nicolas Sarkozy. The unrest showed anger still smolders in France's poor neighborhoods, where many Arabs, blacks and other minorities live largely isolated from the rest of society.
The trigger was the deaths Sunday of two minority teens when their motorscooter collided with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel, a blue-collar town on Paris' northern edge.
Residents claimed the officers left without helping the teens. Prosecutor Marie-Therese de Givry denied that, saying police stayed on the scene until firefighters arrived.
Rioting and arson quickly erupted after the crash. The violence worsened Monday night as it spread from Villiers-le-Bel to other impoverished suburbs north of the French capital. Rioters burned a library, a nursery school and a car dealership and tried to set some buildings on fire by crashing burning cars into them.
Officials have pledged tough punishments for rioters: Eight people were convicted Tuesday in fast-track trials and sentenced to 3-10 months in prison, the regional government said.
Police reinforcements were moved into trouble spots north of Paris on Tuesday. Helicopters flew overhead, shining powerful spotlights into apartment buildings to keep people from leaving their homes.
"The situation is under control," said Denis Joubert, director of public safety for the region surrounding Villiers-le-Bel.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who was briefed by police in Villiers-le-Bel, said things were "much calmer than the previous two nights, but we feel that things are still fragile, and we need a large preventative force on the ground so that what happened last night does not happen again."
Patrice Ribeiro of the Synergie police union said rioters this time included "genuine urban guerrillas," saying the use of firearms -- hunting shotguns so far -- had added a dangerous dimension.
Police said 82 officers were injured Monday night, 10 of them by buckshot and pellets. Four were seriously wounded, the force said. Police unions said 30 officers were struck by buckshot.
One rioter with a shotgun "was firing off two shots, reloading in a stairwell, coming back out -- boom, boom -- and firing again," said Gilles Wiart, No. 2 official in the SGP-FO police union.
Youths, many of them Arab and black children of immigrants, again appeared to be lashing out at police and other targets seen to represent a French establishment they feel has left them behind.
"I don't think it's an ethnic problem," Wiart said. "Most of all it is youths who reject all state authority. They attack firefighters, everything that represents the state."
Suspicion of the police runs high among people in the drab housing project where the two teenagers died in the crash. The boys were identified in French media only by their first names, Lakhami, 16, and Mouhsin, 15.
There have long been tensions between France's largely white police force and the ethnic minorities trapped in poor neighborhoods.
Despite decades of problems and heavy state investments to improve housing and create jobs, the depressed projects that ring Paris are a world apart from the tourist attractions of the capital. Police speak of no-go zones where they and firefighters fear to patrol.
"The problem of bad relations between the police and minorities is underestimated," said criminologist Sebastian Roche.
Sarkozy, speaking from China, appealed for calm and called a security meeting with his Cabinet ministers for Wednesday on his return home.
Sarkozy was interior minister, in charge of police, during the riots of 2005 and took a hard line against the violence. He angered many in housing projects when he called delinquents there "scum."
The rioting youths "want Sarkozy -- they want him to come and explain" what happened to the two teenage boys, said Linda Beddar, a 40-year-old mother of three in Villiers-le-Bel. Beddar woke Tuesday to find the library across from her house a burned-out shell.
The violence two years ago also started in the suburbs of northern Paris, when two teens were electrocuted in a power substation while hiding from police. The government is keen to keep the new violence from spreading.
In Villiers-le-Bel late Monday, arsonists set fire to the municipal library and burned books littered its floor Tuesday. Shops and businesses were also attacked, and more than 70 vehicles were torched, authorities said.
Rioters even rammed burning cars into buildings, trying to set the structures on fire, authorities said. Police reported six arrests.
Several hundred youths organized in small groups led the rioting in Villiers-le-Bel, and incidents were also reported in five other towns north of Paris, the regional government reported.
It refused to give specific figures on injuries among the police, rioters or other civilians, or the numbers of cars and buildings set on fire, saying it feared that doing so would encourage youths to try to wound more officers and destroy more property
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Written on 7:29 PM by yahoo
TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- A Chinese warship dropped anchor off Tokyo on Wednesday for the communist nation's first military visit to Japan since World War II, in a highly symbolic display of improving ties between the two Asian giants.
The Chinese guided missile destroyer Shenzhen approaches a pier in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday.
The port call by the guided missile destroyer Shenzhen was part of a mutual exchange that will bring a Japanese warship on a visit to China at a later date. It was the first visit ever to Japan by Communist China's People's Liberation Army.
The Chinese ship arrived under heavy security with a Japanese destroyer as its escort and a half dozen helicopters buzzing the sky.
On board, a navy band played "Anchors Away," while a cheering section of Chinese well-wishers brought by bus by the embassy waved Chinese flags and performed a lion dance.
During its four-day stay, the Shenzhen will be opened to the Japanese public for tours. It will also dock at the Japanese naval headquarters in Yokosuka, just south of the capital, before returning to its home base in the southern Chinese port of Zhanjiang.
Diplomatic relations between Japan and China, two nations which are increasingly vying for economic and political clout in the region, have visibly improved over the past year.
Ties hit a low two years ago over territorial disputes and Japanese leaders' visits to a Tokyo war shrine, which many Chinese saw as inflammatory. But both sides have toned down their rhetoric and agreed to expand political and military exchanges.
China said before the Shenzhen departed for the trip that it hoped the call would "have a positive effect on the development of the relationship between the two countries and their defense departments."
Still, distrust between Beijing and Tokyo runs deep, particularly in military issues.
Japan's brutal invasion and occupation of much of China in the 1930s and 1940s have left a legacy of bitterness, one that Beijing has occasionally stoked to cater to nationalist sentiments.
Japanese officials, meanwhile, have repeatedly expressed concerns about China's surging military spending in recent years, calling for more transparency.
Japan and its top ally, the United States, are especially concerned with China's growing naval capabilities and its development of submarines that can operate farther away from China's shores for longer periods.
Washington, which has some 50,000 troops based in Japan, sees China's military growth as a potentially destabilizing factor in Asia.
Beijing last week deeply embarrassed the U.S. by refusing to allow the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier and its battle group entry into the port of Hong Kong.
The Kitty Hawk is home-ported in Japan.
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Written on 6:21 PM by yahoo
PERUGIA, Italy (CNN) -- A judge was considering Monday whether to grant a request for a fresh autopsy on the body of the British student Meredith Kercher, killed in the Italian city of Perugia.
Meredith Kercher was found dead in her villa November 2 with a knife wound to her neck.
Kercher's corpse is still being held in a morgue in Britain as her family awaits permission to bury the 21-year-old who bled to death after she was stabbed in her bed.
The request was received from the lawyers of Patrick Lumumba, one of the four suspects identified by Italian police.
Carlo Pacelli, a lawyer for Lumumba - who was released by Italian police last week but still remains a suspect in the killing - said they wanted to establish more closely the time of death of the victim.
The decision on a second autopsy is expected some time Tuesday, Francesco Marasco, the Kercher family's lawyer, told reporters in Perugia Monday.
Marasco told CNN that Italian investigators would travel to London to carry out a second autopsy if it was granted.
Kercher, an exchange student at Perugia's university, was killed late on November 1 in the villa where she lived, according to police.
Investigators found her the next day, half-naked, with a stab wound to her neck. A report issued more than a week ago by an Italian judge suggested she may have been sexually assaulted at knifepoint before she was killed in her bed.
The original post-mortem put the time of death at between 10 p.m. and midnight, according to a report from Perugia's prosecutor general Claudia Matteini.
However, Matteini said that Kercher probably suffered a "very slow agony" as she bled to death and that the wound could have been inflicted as early as 8:30 p.m. and that she could have died at any time up to 11:30 p.m.
Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner, says he has a solid alibi for the time of the killing, according to his lawyers.
The autopsy request came a day after the latest suspect in the case, Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, claimed that an unidentified assailant attacked the British student, his lawyer told CNN Sunday.
Guede has already admitted being in Kercher's home the night she was killed, but denies any involvement in her death, his lawyer, Walter Biscotti, told CNN.
Last week, investigators said DNA on a vaginal swab taken from Kercher matched Guede's DNA, indicating the two had sex.
Italian police say that they have connected Guede to a bloody fingerprint on a pillow at the crime scene, and that DNA tests on skin cells found on toilet paper there have linked him to the villa.
The suspect, arrested last week after fleeing to Germany, claimed he was in the bathroom when he heard Kercher screaming from the bedroom, Biscotti said.
He claimed he saw a person, whom he describes as "the killer," outside the bedroom door, and that when he went to help the victim she whispered "A.F" into his ear, his lawyer said.
Guede tried to confront the person, but the assailant ran away, according to Biscotti. His lawyer said Guede denies that he and Kercher slept together.
Media reports in Italy and Britain say police are looking at the possibility of a fifth suspect involved in the killing following Guede's claims.
But a source in the prosecutor's office in Perugia told CNN that no fifth suspect was being sought in connection with the killing.
Guede is the only suspect to have acknowledged having been in Kercher's villa the night she died. He is expected to be extradited in the next 10 to 15 days on suspicion of murder and sexual assault.
In addition to Guede, two other suspects remain in custody in connection with the killing: Amanda Knox, 20, Kercher's roommate, and Knox's boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 23.
A source in the prosecutor's office said forensic police will return to the villa before Friday's court hearing to determine whether Solliceto and Knox should continue to be held by police.
The source said forensics investigators had discovered impressions on the victim's bra, which was found near her body, and were trying to determine if the impressions are fingerprints.
According to a report in the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera Saturday, Sollecito said in a statement to police that Knox lived in a dream world but said she was not a murderer.
"She lives life as if it is a dream, she's out of touch with reality. But from here to even just imagining that she is a murderer, it becomes impossible," the newspaper reported Sollecito as saying.
Knox, from Seattle, has told police that she is unclear about what took place on the night of Kercher's death. Even the American's lawyer has admitted he was confused by his client's testimony. Both Knox and Sollecito deny any involvement in the killing.
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Written on 10:21 PM by yahoo
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (CNN) -- More than 5,000 Hindu protesters met water cannons and tear gas in Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Sunday while demanding equal rights and consideration from the government.
Ethnic Indian protesters are sprayed with water by Malaysian riot police in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday.
Despite clashes with police, there were no reports of injuries during the planned protest. Some protesters threw rocks at the water cannon trucks, but others were urging peaceful demonstrations.
Public transportation into the city was stopped, hindering protesters from coming in.
Police stopped protesters as they tried to take a petition to the British High Commission. Talks were under way for authorities to allow six protesters to deliver the petition, should the crowd disperse.
Earlier this month, riot police used water hoses and tear gas against thousands of protesters demanding electoral reform, the largest demonstration in Kuala Lumpur in nearly a decade.
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Written on 7:02 PM by yahoo
Hours after Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf cleared the final legal hurdle to being re-elected to a third five-year term, the 53-nation Commonwealth on Thursday suspended Pakistan from its group.
Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been under pressure to lift a state of emergency.
The Ministerial Action Group cited Musharraf's failure to lift the state of emergency he imposed earlier this month, step down as army chief and reinstate the country's constitution and its independent judiciary.
The suspension is "pending the restoration of democracy and the rule of law in that country," said the group, meeting in Kampala, Uganda.
The group noted that it had urged Pakistan 10 days ago to lift the state of emergency and take further steps, including the "full restoration of fundamental rights and the rule of law that have been curbed."
Calling the situation in Pakistan "a serious violation of the Commonwealth's fundamental political values," the group reiterated its call for Pakistan "to implement the necessary measures ... as soon as possible."
The suspension means Pakistan cannot participate in any of the councils or meetings of the Commonwealth, said Malta's foreign minister Michael Frendo, who chaired Thursday's meeting. In addition, no further Commonwealth programs will be carried out in Pakistan, although the group remains engaged with the nation, he told CNN.
The statement describes Pakistan as a "valued member of the Commonwealth."
Musharraf declared the state of emergency on November 3, suspended the constitution and fired the country's Supreme Court justices, stacking the court and interim cabinet with his allies.
Under the order, Pakistan's government banned independent television networks and forced at least two major TV stations to close completely, although some restrictions have been eased.
Thousands of people were also jailed or put under house arrest, including opposition leaders former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan, a former cricket star. Thousands have since been released, officials said Tuesday, including Bhutto and Khan.
Meanwhile, exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had tried to return from exile in September only to be deported, is poised to return to contest January elections, his party said on Thursday according to The Associated Press.
Sharif had reached "some deal" with authorities in Saudi Arabia, where he is in exile, to return to Pakistan, AP quoted Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party, as saying.
Earlier Thursday the Supreme Court sided with Musharraf on the final legal challenge to his candidacy, paving the way to his re-election.
Musharraf has pledged to step down as military chief before being sworn in again to rule as a civilian president.
The Commonwealth suspended Pakistan in October 1999 and reinstated it as a member in May 2004
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