Weekend News Digest

The report, set for release Monday, is intended to help learn the lessons of the past as President Barack Obama prepares to announce a major escalation of the conflict, now in its ninth year, with up to 35,000 more US troops.

It points the finger directly at Rumsfeld for turning down requests for reinforcements as Bin Laden was trapped in December 2001 in caves and tunnels in a mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan known as Tora Bora.

To the dismay of the Muslim minority here, some 57.5 percent of the population and 22 out of 26 cantons voted to ban the towers or turrets attached on mosques from where Muslims are called to prayer.

Far-right politicians across Europe celebrated the results, while the Swiss government sought to assure the Muslim minority that a ban on minarets was “not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture.”

The intervention is seen as a step to soothe investors and bank depositors after the shock announcement that state-controlled Dubai World wants to halt payments to creditors until at least May next year.

“This is a step aimed to calm investors… Markets should be calmer (than feared) tomorrow,” said Emirati financial analyst Nasser bin Gaith.

“What happens next and, more pertinently, how critical decisions are disclosed will cement its continuing credibility and its place as a financial centre,” said Cubillas Ding, senior analyst at Celent research and consultancy group.

“Dubai’s untested financial legal system is now facing its first real test in relation to how it deals with the international community. No one wants to play in a playground where the rules are unclear,” he said.

Commonwealth leaders shrugged off fears over the mainly French-speaking African nation’s rights record and admitted it as a member at a summit in Trinidad.

Hours later, French officials announced that diplomatic ties cut in 2006 were to be restored.

As the Commonwealth marks 60 years since it rose out of the break-up of the British empire, the African nation and former Belgian colony became its 54th member.

Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma telephoned Rwandan President Paul Kagame late Saturday to tell him the news, a Commonwealth official said.

A delegation led by Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker, European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet and economic and monetary affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia also urged a “gradual and orderly” appreciation of the yuan.

It also warned China to be careful with its exports — often much cheaper than those of other countries — to avoid provoking a protectionist backlash, in the talks held in the eastern city of Nanjing.

In front of cadets at the prestigious West Point military academy, Obama is expected to announce between 30,000 and 35,000 reinforcements as part of a new Afghan strategy intended in his own words to “finish the job” there.

More than eight years after a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime after it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders accused of plotting the September 11 attacks in 2001, the president is also under pressure to lay out an exit strategy in his 8:00 pm (0100 GMT Wednesday) address to the American nation.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and major contributors to the coalition fighting in Afghanistan including the United States as well as regional neighbors will be invited to the London conference on January 28.

Brown made it clear the international community expected Karzai, who has been slipping from global favor among widespread allegations of corruption, to step up and assume his responsibilities.

Karzai needed to draw up a “credible plan” for international forces to start handing over control to Afghan military and police before an international conference in London on January 28, Brown told Sky News in Trinidad.

“I want to know that by the time we get to January 28 we have a credible plan in place from President Karzai so that we can train Afghan troops,” Brown said in the interview late Saturday.

The holding of the general elections with Zelaya out of office — and holed up in the Brazilian embassy where he reappeared in September — marks a victory for those behind his ouster, including business leaders, the courts and Congress.

After a subdued campaign alongside post-coup crisis talks and a string of small bomb attacks, the de facto regime has sought to calm a fearful population to encourage them to vote and legitimize the polls.

But the move to inject liquidity into Dubai’s banks by the central bank of the Gulf Arab state, together with promises by neighboring city-state Abu Dhabi to provide selective support to Dubai companies was seen as by analysts as the bare minimum.

Dubai markets, which are set to open on Monday morning after a four-day holiday, are expected to fall by the maximum daily limit of 10 percent as banks, property and construction firms face investor ire over moves to restructure the Dubai economy.

Consumers said they will have spent nearly 8 percent less on average, or about $343 per person, over the weekend that includes Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and runs through Sunday, according to the National Retail Federation.

While traffic to stores and retail websites rose to 195 million people from 172 million in 2008, the early data this weekend represents a worrisome sign for retailers, who had braced for weak sales and sought ways to protect margins.

Leaders of the 53-nation Commonwealth meeting in Trinidad and Tobago used their summit to bolster a diplomatic offensive seeking wide consensus on how to fight global warming before December 7-18 U.N. climate talks in the Danish capital.

“The clock is ticking to Copenhagen … we believe that the political goodwill and resolve exists to secure a comprehensive agreement at Copenhagen,” Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told a news conference in Port of Spain.

Neither President Manuel Zelaya nor arch-rival Roberto Micheletti, installed as interim president by Congress after Zelaya’s overthrow in June, is in the race. That leaves the door open for someone else to take the coffee-producing Central American nation beyond the gridlock that has crippled it for months and cut off international aid.

Doubts remain over whether the world will recognize the election because it is being run by the coup leaders and could end any hope of Zelaya returning to power.

The international conference in London, to be followed by a meeting in Kabul, will address progressively handing security to Afghan control, Brown and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago.

That would, in theory, allow NATO countries to draw down their forces gradually as public support wanes on both sides of the Atlantic for the costly war that began in late 2001.

If confirmed, the result would be a huge embarrassment for the neutral Swiss government, which had warned that amending the constitution to ban construction of minarets could serve could “serve the interests of extremist circles.”

“The initiative would appear to be accepted, there is a positive trend. It’s a huge surprise,” French-language Swiss television said, 30 minutes after polls closed at midday.

The UAE’s immediate priority was arguably to avert any run, however unlikely, on banks by panicked depositors. But the promise of cheap funds also signaled to global investors that the country’s federal government – backed by oil money – will do what it can to limit the fallout from its indebted emirate’s woes.

In a statement Sunday, the UAE’s central bank said it had sent notice to Emirati banks and foreign banks with branches in the country making clear they would have access to “a special additional liquidity facility.”

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that more Afghan army and police are central to succeeding in the 8-year-old war and more U.S. trainers and equipment can help meet that goal. But it’s unclear, Levin said, what role tens of thousands additional combat troops will play and Obama has to make a compelling case during a national address he’s scheduled to give Tuesday night from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

“The key here is an Afghan surge, not an American surge,” Levin said. “We cannot, by ourselves, win (the) war.”

An Associated Press analysis shows surging proportions of both low-income students and the recently boosted government money that follows them are ending up at for-profit schools, from local career colleges to giant publicly traded chains such as the University of Phoenix, Kaplan and Devry.

Last year, the five institutions that received the most federal Pell Grant dollars were all for-profit colleges, collecting over $1 billion among them. That was two and a half times what those schools hauled in just two years prior, the AP found, analyzing Department of Education data on disbursements from the Pell program, Washington’s main form of college aid to the poor.

With the Senate set to begin debate Monday on health care overhaul, the all-hands-on-deck Democratic coalition that allowed the bill to advance is fracturing already. Yet majority Democrats will need 60 votes again to finish.

Some Democratic senators say they’ll jump ship from the bill without tighter restrictions on abortion coverage. Others say they’ll go unless a government plan to compete with private insurance companies gets tossed overboard. Such concessions would enrage liberals, the heart and soul of the party.

Muslim groups in Switzerland and abroad condemned the vote as biased and anti-Islamic. Business groups said the decision hurt Switzerland’s international standing and could damage relations with Muslim nations and wealthy investors who bank, travel and shop there.

“The Swiss have failed to give a clear signal for diversity, freedom of religion and human rights,” said Omar Al-Rawi, integration representative of the Islamic Denomination in Austria, which said its reaction was “grief and deep disappointment.”

Companies from health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc. to beverage can maker Ball Corp. are arranging for employees with flu symptoms or sick family members to work from home where possible, holding fewer in-person meetings, even discouraging handshakes. And hand sanitizers, disinfectant wipes and tissues are at the ready everywhere as employers make keeping workers healthy their first line of defense.

Employers are playing Dr. Mom, teaching about hygiene, distributing information about the pandemic, telling folks to stay home if they get sick – generally with pay – and scrapping the required doctor’s note. Some companies have even distributed “wellness kits” with thermometers and face masks.

President Asif Ali Zardari’s grip on power is increasingly under threat from opposition lawmakers and elements within the powerful military who want him to resign or divest powers to the prime minister and take on a ceremonial role. Opinion polls show him to be desperately unpopular 15 months into a five-year term.

His presidency suffered another blow Saturday when an amnesty protecting him, several key allies and thousands of other officials from graft prosecution expired. While he enjoys immunity from prosecution as president, opponents could now go to the Supreme Court to challenge his eligibility for office.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke made the comments in an Op-Ed piece to appear in Sunday’s Washington Post, five days before the Senate Banking committee holds a hearing on his nomination for a second term. His current four-year term expires Jan. 31.

Bernanke wrote the nation is challenged to design a financial oversight system that will “embody the lessons of the past two years and provide a robust framework for preventing future crises and the economic damage they cause.”

And not just any sarcophagus. This was the white marble coffin, perhaps from the 18th century, depicting followers of the Greek wine god Dionysus. It was brought back from Europe by a wealthy Rhode Island couple who donated it to the Museum of Natural History and Planetarium in 1904. For years, the coffin sat unceremoniously in the lobby of the building at Roger Williams Park.

Now, the city-operated museum was willing to part with it after more than a century, deciding the mission of the natural history museum was shifting more toward the natural sciences.

The policy is expected to go into effect early next year following more than a decade of concern and a lawsuit over “bioprospecting” in Yellowstone National Park. Bioprospecting – a hybrid of the words “biodiversity” and “prospecting” – is the search for organisms that promise scientific breakthroughs in medicine and chemistry.

“This is about the public, which owns places like Yellowstone, getting some kind of benefit if someone has a commercial product based on research which started in the park,” said Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash.

Mary Norwood, the white candidate, and former state Sen. Kasim Reed, an African-American, are vying for a critical mass of racial crossover votes, with victory likely hinging on black-versus-white turnout.

“What it comes down to is if she gets more black votes than he gets white votes,” said political strategist Tom Houck. “When people say race doesn’t matter, obviously it does. There is no dominant issue that distinguishes these two other than she’s a white woman and he’s a black guy.”

Kim Bracey, 45, an energetic veteran of the struggling manufacturing city’s improvement efforts will take office in January, to the delight of many African-Americans who thought they would never see a black mayor.

“President Obama was one thing, but here in York where few people vote … I really didn’t think I would live to see this take place,” Bracey said in a recent interview at her transition office.

Yes, to be a Chinese tourist these days is to be a widely-sought traveler.

Hawaii has beaches and its famed “aloha spirit” as its siren call. Las Vegas offers gambling and its entertainment-oriented attractions. San Francisco can boast high-end shopping and the Golden Gate Bridge.

It’s been a questionable claim over the past two years at the North Dakota base following a rash of nuclear-related screwups that spurred no mushroom clouds but embarrassed the military and cost several officers their careers.

The new base commander said the foul-ups – including a cross-country flight from Minot of a B-52 bomber mistakenly armed with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles – stemmed from lax attitudes in maintaining the arsenal there.

Porfirio Lobo and Elvin Santos, two prosperous businessmen from the political old guard, are the front-runners. But their campaigns have been overshadowed by the debate over whether Hondurans should vote at all in an election largely shunned by international monitors.

The debate has split Western Hemisphere countries.

The UAE’s immediate priority was arguably to avert any run, however unlikely, on banks by panicked depositors. But the promise of cheap funds also signaled to global investors that the country’s federal government – backed by oil money – will do what it can to limit the fallout from its indebted emirate’s woes.

In a statement Sunday, the UAE’s central bank said it had sent notice to Emirati banks and foreign banks with branches in the country making clear they would have access to “a special additional liquidity facility.”

The money would help developing countries cope with ocean flooding, drought and other effects of climate change, while also helping them cut down on emissions of global-warming gases. The funds might eventually come from new sources, such as a tax on airline flights, but negotiators for now are seeking quicker infusions.

“Rich countries must put at least $10 billion a year on the table to kick-start immediate action up to 2012,” the U.N. climate chief, Yvo de Boer, told reporters last week in a preview of the two-week conference opening next Monday in Copenhagen.

Doctors had taken 15-year-old Ji Xiaoyan off a ventilator and discharged her because her family could no longer pay her hospital bills. So an uncle cobbled together a makeshift ventilator from bicycle and washing machine parts, driven by a noisy electric motor. The contraption pumped air into the teenager’s lungs through a washer hose plugged into an incision in her throat for more than a month, until the family got donations for treatment.

“I knew my child didn’t want to leave this world. We had to save her no matter what,” said Yang Yunhua, the girl’s mother, a farmer in Henan province. “But we are only poor people.”

The late Iraqi dictator is lauded on a mysterious satellite channel that began broadcasting on the Islamic calendar’s anniversary of his 2006 execution.

No one seems to know who is bankrolling the so-called Saddam Channel, although the Iraqi government suspects it’s Baathists whose political party Saddam once led. The Associated Press tracked down a man in Damascus, Syria named Mohammed Jarboua, who claimed to be its chairman.

Relatives of the journalists – among 57 civilians who were shot and hacked to death in a Nov. 23 attack on an election convoy in the southern Philippines – gathered for a wake Sunday at a rundown funeral parlor. The white wooden coffins were all shut except for one to hide their remains, disfigured in a slaughter that used guns, machetes and a backhoe.

The massacre highlighted the violent factionalism that plagues the volatile region – and the deadly risks journalists take in covering it. The powerful clan accused in the killings vowed it was innocent and said Sunday it would wage a legal battle to disprove the allegations.

Training camps in the lawless nation of Somalia are attracting hundreds of foreigners, including Americans, and Somalis recruited by a local insurgent group linked to al-Qaida, according to local and U.S. officials. American officials and private analysts say the camps pose a security threat far beyond the borders of Somalia, including to the U.S. homeland.

In interviews with The Associated Press, former trainees gave rare details on the camps, which are scattered along desert footpaths, rutted roads and steamy coastal dens. They say the recruits are told the United States is the enemy of Islam.

Western governments that have promised to fight corruption so far have done little as companies compete for concessions for petroleum and a burgeoning natural gas industry currently dominated by U.S. multinationals.

Obiang, 67, denies all charges and his government said in a statement released by an expensive U.S. lobbying firm that Equatorial Guinea “is committed to holding fair and democratic elections.”

Jose Mujica’s opponents claimed he would transform the South American country into a radical socialist state, but he campaigned as a consensus builder, and polls suggested most voters were convinced he would govern from the center.

Mujica won 49 percent of the votes in October’s first round of the election, which secured another majority in Congress for the governing Broad Front coalition.

At least 30 journalists and their staff perished in the Nov. 23 massacre that killed 27 other civilians in the deadliest single attack on the media in the world. The carnage drew worldwide condemnations, including from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, but few think the killings will stop.

The victims were in a convoy to cover a local politician’s filing of his intention to run for governor in predominantly Muslim Maguindanao province when dozens of gunmen allegedly led by a political rival abducted and then butchered them en masse on a nearby hill. All 57 people were raked with gunfire at close range and their bodies were hacked up.

“If there’s a person who by nature, sensitivity, mentality, background, culture and political effort is very far from the Mafia, it is me,” the 73-year-old conservative prime minister and media mogul said in a statement.

“If there is a government that, more than any other, has made fighting the Mafia one of its clearest and coherent goals, it is my government,” said Berlusconi.

Jose Mujica, 74, who waged an armed revolt against a democratically elected government in the 1960s and 1970s and was jailed for 14 years, has at least a 6-point lead in polls over his center-right rival, former President Luis Lacalle.

A Mujica victory would keep in power the ruling Broad Front coalition credited by many Uruguayans with lifting the country out of an economic slump earlier this decade and stoking growth this year in the face of the global slowdown.

President Asif Ali Zardari, beset by corruption allegations, has been under pressure to give up sweeping powers that his predecessor Pervez Musharraf accumulated for the presidency.

The transfer of the chairmanship of the National Command Authority (NCA), which oversees Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, came as Zardari could face pressure after the lapse of an amnesty opened several of his top aides to prosecution on graft charges.

First results were expected to be known about midday, with President Hifikepunye Pohamba and his South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) forecast to win a fourth five-year term, but by mid-afternoon no numbers had been reported.

The Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP), seen becoming the official opposition, said some ballot papers lacked an identification stamp, making them invalid, and the ink identifying voters was removable in some cases, allowing people to vote twice. The voters roll was also contested.

In front of cadets at the prestigious West Point military academy, Obama is expected to announce between 30,000 and 35,000 reinforcements as part of a new Afghan strategy intended in his own words to “finish the job” there.

More than eight years after a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime after it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders accused of plotting the September 11 attacks in 2001, the president is also under pressure to lay out an exit strategy in his 8:00 pm (0100 GMT Wednesday) address to the American nation.

Election officials hailed calm voting across the Central American nation, but security forces in the northern city of San Pedro Sula fired tear gas and water cannon at supporters of Zelaya at a protest against the polls.

Journalists and activists at the scene reported some arrests and injuries.

The decisions were set out in a statement at the close of the three-day summit in Trinidad’s capital that also threw the Commonwealth’s full weight behind climate talks soon to start in Copenhagen.

The Commonwealth, a grouping that now counts 54 members with Rwanda’s inclusion, asserted that it remained a vital and relevant institution in the 21st century, having evolved from its origins as an alliance of former British colonies, while maintaining Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as its symbolic head.

It remained unclear why attackers had struck the Nevsky Express, a train popular with well-off Russians and foreign tourists, as it ran from Moscow to Saint Petersburg late Friday evening.

“An active investigative and operational effort is under way to identify and find the individuals involved in the crime,” Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for investigators, said on state television.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk is expected to be pushed into the Munich court in a wheelchair to face 27,900 individual charges of assisted murder while a Nazi guard at Sobibor in occupied Poland between March and September 1943.

If found guilty the infirm elderly man will almost certainly spend the rest of his life in prison. If acquitted, he will face an uncertain future as he has no passport and no country wants him.

Karzai needed to draw up a “credible plan” for international forces to start handing over control to Afghan military and police before an international conference in London on January 28, Brown told Sky News in Trinidad.

“I want to know that by the time we get to January 28 we have a credible plan in place from President Karzai so that we can train Afghan troops,” Brown said in the interview late Saturday.

The heads of government of the 53-nation Commonwealth announced Saturday that a legally binding climate accord was “essential” and they backed the December 7-18 Copenhagen negotiations called to draft a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

The Commonwealth Climate Change Declaration, issued mid-way through a three-day summit in Trinidad, also hailed moves promoted by Britain and France to establish a 10-billion-dollar fund to help offset the cost to poor countries that cut carbon output.

Another violent day on Afghanistan’s Highway 1 had begun.

“Tell them to send three guys and go check it out to make sure no locals were hurt,” U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Hans Beutel told a translator. “Tell them not to get too close, but go take a look.”

On the eve of a WTO meeting of ministers, President Barack Obama’s trade envoy Ron Kirk stressed that Washington remained committed to bringing the elusive Doha Round of trade negotiations to a successful conclusion.

“The United States engages with other economies and plays a leadership role at the World Trade Organization in order to boost American exports and grow the well-paid jobs Americans want and need,” Kirk said in a statement.