Report: Algeria ups security for year-end tourism (AP)

ALGIERS, Algeria ? An Algerian newspaper reports that around 5,000 security agents have been mobilized to protect the around 1,000 Europeans expected to arrive for New Year's celebrations in the Sahara desert.

The daily El Khabar reported said Saturday that security forces would be deployed around the four southern provinces anticipating the arrival of the Germans, French and Italians to celebrate the end of the year.

The forces would be posted around hotels, tourist sites, and will man road blocks on principle roads.

The local branch of al-Qaida has kidnapped around 50 foreign tourists in the remote southern wastes of Algeria and neighboring countries since 2003.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111217/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_algeria_tourism

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China sends long-missing lawyer Gao back to jail (AP)

BEIJING ? More than a year and a half after prominent civil rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng disappeared, China's government gave the first sign Friday that he is alive, saying he would be sent to prison for three years for violating his probation.

A brief report by the state-run Xinhua News Agency did not answer key questions about Gao ? the condition of his health and his whereabouts now and in the 20 months since he disappeared, presumably at the hands of the authorities.

"Are they sending him to a proper prison? Which prison was he at before? Where were they hiding him?" said Gao's brother, Gao Zhiyi, who has been on a quest to find his sibling.

Gao's wife said from the United States she was still uneasy because of the lack of information.

"When I heard what they said, all I could think was 'Oh, it means he's still alive,'" Geng He said, crying, in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

Charismatic and pugnacious, Gao was a galvanizing figure for the rights movement, advocating constitutional reform and arguing landmark cases to defend property rights and political and religious dissenters. Convicted in 2006 of subversion and sentenced to three years, he was quickly released on probation before being taken away by security agents in 2009 in the first of his forced disappearances that set off an international outcry.

The United States expressed deep disappointment over Friday's announcement, describing Gao's forced disappearance and treatment as a serious human rights concern.

"We're especially concerned about Gao's welfare and whereabouts, including reports that his family has been unable to communicate with him. We reiterate our calls for the Chinese government to immediately release Gao from custody and clarify his whereabouts," spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington.

The Xinhua report referred to Gao's 2006 subversion conviction and said Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court found that he "had seriously violated probation rules for a number of times, which led to the court decision to withdraw the probation."

The report did not explain what violations Gao had committed but said his five-year probation was due to expire next Thursday ? timing which legal experts said may have prompted the government to send Gao back to jail. "He would serve his term in prison in the next three years," the report said.

Calls to the No. 1 court and the city's appeals court rang unanswered Friday.

Gao has been held incommunicado in apparent disregard of laws and regulations for all but two months of the last three years. When he emerged from the first 14-month bout in April 2010, he told The Associated Press that he had been shunted between detention centers, farm houses and apartments across north China and repeatedly beaten and abused.

He said he had been hooded several times. His captors made him sit motionless for up to 16 hours and threatened to kill him and dump his body in a river.

"'You must forget you're human. You're a beast,'" Gao said police told him in September 2009.

At one point, six plainclothes officers bound him with belts and put a wet towel around his face for an hour, bringing on a feeling of slow suffocation.

"It's hard to fathom what they might be referring to when they say that he violated his parole given that he seems to have been under constant supervision," said Joshua Rosenzweig, a human rights researcher based in Hong Kong. "It's kind of cynical."

Formalizing Gao's detention as a prison term, Rosenzweig said, gives Chinese leaders a ready response to queries from foreign governments and officials. Gao's case has repeatedly been raised by the U.S. and European governments, drawing cryptic responses if any from Chinese officials. U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke mentioned him in a public statement last weekend.

Gao's wife fled China with their two children, escorted by human traffickers overland to Southeast Asia, around the time he first disappeared. They now live in the United States.

Now living in California, Geng said she learned about the Xinhua report when a friend called her as she was taking her daughter to school. "We've asked them (the Chinese authorities) so many times, and they would never tell us anything," Geng said.

She said the family has yet to receive any notice from the police or courts about Gao's case and they still have no idea where he is.

Adding to the confusion and uncertainty, Geng said local police called Gao's elder sister in Shandong province on Thursday, and asked if Gao was there with her.

"I am not at ease," Geng said. "I still don't know where he is or what kind of condition he's in."

Activists in China seemed astounded and outraged by the news. Huang Qi, who runs a rights monitoring group in Sichuan province, strongly condemned what he said was the use of the judicial system to persecute dissidents and he offered his services to Gao's family.

"Gao Zhisheng has used his actions to write a glorious page in the history of the Chinese democracy movement," Huang said in a statement.

Amnesty International called the move to send Gao to prison "a travesty."

"This inhuman treatment must stop. Gao Zhisheng and his family have suffered enough and he must be freed," Catherine Baber, deputy director in Asia for the group, said in a statement.

German Human Rights Commissioner Markus Loening called the report on Gao a cause of "great worry" and said he would urge China once more to shed light on his case.

"I will push for Gao Zhisheng being able to live a life in dignity and freedom," he said in a statement.

Maran Turner, executive director of Freedom Now, a Washington D.C. rights group that has campaigned for Gao's release said that Gao's formal imprisonment was "blatant repression behind a thin facade of legality."

Bob Fu, the founder of China Aid, a Texas rights group that focuses on Chinese issues, and a friend of Gao's said in an email that the court decision was "totally unacceptable and laughable.

"The top Beijing government leadership owes a clear explanation to the international community and Gao's family for this new hideous detention," Fu said.

He added that "silence was not a diplomatic option" and urged the United States and global community to tell Beijing the Gao case would hinder its interest in the world.

While Gao may be the most prominent government critic to be treated so harshly in years, the authorities have done so with other dissidents.

Du Daobin, an outspoken critic also convicted of subversion and sentenced to three years in prison in 2004, did not immediately start his sentence, according to the Laogai Research Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy group that runs a website for which Du wrote. Instead, Du was released and lived under probation for four years before being sent to prison in 2008, apparently because he continued to criticize the government online.

Gao's family and supporters meanwhile have continued to campaign for him, with little result. His brother, Zhiyi, has been on a constant search for information. When he asked Beijing police in September about his brother, one officer told him Gao Zhisheng was a "missing person and no one knows where he is."

___

Associated Press writers Alexa Olesen and Gillian Wong contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/china/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_as/as_china_missing_lawyer

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Congo's top court declares Kabila election winner (Reuters)

KINSHASA (Reuters) ? Democratic Republic of Congo's Supreme Court confirmed the incumbent Joseph Kabila on Friday as the winner of a disputed November 28 presidential election, rejecting opposition demands for the vote to be annulled over fraud allegations.

The court's president, Jerome Kitoko, said Kabila had won 48.95 percent of the vote.

"In consequence, Joseph Kabila is proclaimed president-elect of the republic with a simple majority," he said at the Justice Ministry.

The court said the opposition had failed to provide proof of their allegations.

Congo's election commission last Friday declared Kabila winner of the vote, which observers said lacked credibility and was marred by irregularities and violence.

The European Union and the United States have separately said the vote was flawed while French Prime Minister Alain Juppe said the situation in Congo was explosive, urging political leaders to seek a solution to the crisis.

Many hoped that Congo's second post-war election would set the vast mineral-rich Central African nation on the path to recovery and further investments in its resources, but the disputed election risks plunging it into a prolonged crisis.

Congo's opposition immediately said they "totally rejected" the ruling.

"The Supreme Court is just an instrument of Kabila, just like the electoral commission," said Alexis Mutanda, head of veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi's election campaign.

Tshisekedi, who came second, has called the election results "a provocation" and said he considers himself Congo's president.

"The party is going to decide what to do, we just think its a masquerade," Mutanda said by phone.

He said the Congolese people were waiting for Tshisekedi to call for protests but could take matters into their own hands.

"He does not have to give the order, the people can take charge on their own," he said.

Kabila has brushed off criticism of the vote while the head of the election commission has said any irregularities during the poll were not enough to have changed the outcome.

Hastily installed as president in 2001 when his father Laurent was assassinated at the height of Congo's 1998-2003 civil war, Kabila went on to win election in a disputed vote in 2006.

He remains a divisive figure among the 70 million Congolese, hailed by some for unifying the vast country after a ruinous war but criticized by others for failing to tackle poverty and graft.

Norbert Mitumba Kilombo, Kabila's representative at the court, said after the judge's decision it was a happy day for Kabila and the country.

"I'm joyful to see that despite the difficulties, this period of the presidential election is coming to a happy conclusion," he said.

(Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Sophie Hares and Kevin Liffey)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111216/wl_nm/us_congo_election

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Shares in Olympus dive on balance sheet worries (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) ? Shares in Japan's scandal-ridden Olympus Corp slumped almost 20 percent on Thursday after it corrected its accounts to reveal a dramatically weakened balance sheet, stoking talk that it might need to merge, sell assets or raise fresh capital.

The maker of cameras and medical equipment ironed out its accounts on Wednesday, unwinding a 13-year book-keeping fraud that came to light in October, and showing that its net assets were $1.1 billion less than it had previously disclosed.

For a graphic, click on http://link.reuters.com/pyt55s

"The stock has been overpriced but after the company came out with their numbers yesterday, it was time for shareholders to decide whether to hold on, or dump the shares," said Masayoshi Okamoto, head of dealing at Jujiya Securities, adding that a recent rally was largely due to short-term speculation.

"A lot of people are disposing of their shares while the price is still inflated," he added.

Olympus avoided an automatic delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange by meeting Wednesday's deadline for producing its overdue second-quarter accounts, giving some initial relief to investors who had feared it might miss the deadline.

But the focus has since turned to the true financial state of the 92-year-old firm and whether the large misstatements it had made in its previous accounts might be sufficiently large to still leave its listing status in doubt. The exchange can decide to delist if it believes the deceit was grave enough.

Investors want to know how the firm will recapitalize and whether there are plans to sell its struggling camera business, and not least of all who will actually run Olympus in future, given its existing board has committed to resign soon.

Ousted Olympus CEO Michael Woodford, who blew the whistle on a $1.7 billion scheme to hide investment losses and is now lobbying shareholders to get his old job back, said on Wednesday he was thinking about options for recapitalizing the company.

He did not give a direct estimate of the sum he felt would be needed but gave an example of how Olympus' strong underlying business would ensure a return on any fresh investment.

"For example, if you put $2 billion into the company, the value of the company would probably go up more than $2 billion," he said in an Internet broadcast.

Olympus shares finished were down about 17 percent at 1,090 yen, after hitting a low of 1,056 yen. The stock has lost more than half its value since the scandal erupted in mid-October, when Olympus sacked Woodford who then blew the whistle on the company's dubious book-keeping.

Since then, two top Olympus executives were found to have masterminded the scheme to cook the books. These executives have since resigned.

CAPITAL BASE

Woodford, who is assembling his own team of candidates for a new board, said he favored private equity or a rights issue over a strategic alliance, which would rob Olympus of its independence.

But rights issues, where existing shareholders are entitled to buy additional shares on a pro-rata basis, are rare in Japan.

Olympus President Shuichi Takayama has said he may sell assets or accept a capital tie-up to bolster the capital base.

Olympus has been dogged by rumors of bid interest from rivals, such as fellow endoscope makers Fujifilm and Hoya, or from private equity since the scandal broke.

The Tokyo exchange said after the announcements that it was keeping Olympus on its watchlist for possible delisting.

Some of the restated accounts also came with qualified opinions from auditors, with KPMG AZSA LLC noting it had been unable to confirm all the money flows involved in the fraud.

In addition to the immediate financing concerns over Olympus, the company also faces a possible proxy battle. The existing board wants to choose its own successors before quitting, potentially rivaling Woodford's comeback campaign.

On Thursday, Olympus said it aimed to hold an extraordinary meeting of shareholders in March or April to vote in new directors, though Woodford wants one by February. Neither he nor the existing board has announced its slate of candidates yet.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/bs_nm/us_olympus

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ABC under fire for cross-dressing comedy "Work It" (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? The ABC comedy "Work It" doesn't even premiere until Jan, 3, and already it's invoking ire from rights groups.

The series has sparked anger from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Human Rights Campaign, who argue that the series could prove harmful to transgendered individuals.

The series stars Ben Koldyke ("How I Met Your Mother") and Amaury Nolasco ("Prison Break") as two friends and former coworkers who, unemployed and desperate, take to cross-dressing in order to get hired by a pharmaceutical company that's looking for female sales reps.

The concept spurred an angry message from GLAAD, which argued that, while the show "does not explicitly address transgender people, many home viewers unfamiliar with the realities of being transgender will still make the connection. 'Work It' invites the audience to laugh at images of men trying to adopt a feminine appearance, thereby also making it easier to mock people whose gender identity and expression are different than the one they were assigned at birth."

GLAAD took particular offense to a print ad for the series, in which the two main characters stand side-by-side at a pair of urinals, while dressed as women.

"Not only does it inadvertently further notions that transgender identities are humorous or artificial, but imagery like this are one of the first things anti-LGBT activists resort to when trying to deny transgender people protections against discrimination," GLAAD argues.

The organization asks that the network not circulate the urinal ad, and to "consider whether airing this show is worth the damage it has the potential to do."

Human Rights Campaign is going one step further, and urging the public to boycott the series.

The HRC has set up a write-in campaign which urges supporters to send a message to ABC reading, "It is never appropriate to belittle or mock those who do not adhere to society's gender norms or the struggles they face ... As an ABC viewer, I urge you not to air a show that reinforces negative and damaging stereotypes about transgender people."

Shouldn't they be more offended that the series sounds like an almost complete ripoff of "Bosom Buddies"?

ABC did not immediately respond to TheWrap's request for comment.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111217/tv_nm/us_crossdressing

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Police: Man called in threats to avoid urine tests

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) ? Police say an Alaska man twice called in bomb threats to a probation office to avoid urine tests.

Anchorage police spokesman Lt. Dave Parker says that 44-year-old Bryant K. Brown was arrested Thursday on two counts of terroristic threatening.

Parker says bomb threats were called into the state Department of Corrections Adult Probation Office on Nov. 22 and Nov. 23 ? the same days Brown was scheduled for surprise urine tests.

He says those on probation receive a card with a certain color on it and must call in every day to see if those with that colored card need to be tested.

Brown had been called for testing on both days that bomb threats were called in.

Brown was scheduled to be arraigned Friday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2011-12-15-Urine%20Tests-Bomb%20Threats/id-a98d461eaa9b4217b95ef29345bd55ec

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Comet Lovejoy Survives Fiery Plunge Through Sun, NASA Says (SPACE.com)

This story was updated at 8:50 p.m. EST.

A newfound comet defied long odds today (Dec. 15), surviving a suicidal dive through the sun's hellishly hot atmosphere, according to NASA scientists.

Comet Lovejoy plunged through the sun's corona at about 7 p.m. EST today (midnight GMT on Dec. 16), coming within 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) of our star's surface. Temperatures in the corona can reach 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 million degrees Celsius), so most researchers expected the icy wanderer to be completely destroyed.

But Lovejoy proved to be made of tough stuff. A video taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft showed the icy object emerging from behind the sun and zipping back off into space.

"Breaking News! Lovejoy lives! The comet Lovejoy has survived its journey around the sun to reemerge on the other side," SDO researchers tweeted today.

SDO is one of many instruments that scientists ? eager to record and study the comet's presumed demise ? trained on Lovejoy as it streaked toward the sun.

"We have here an exceptionally rare opportunity to observe the complete vaporization of a relatively large comet, and we have approximately 18 instruments on five different satellites that are trying to do just that," Karl Battams, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., wrote on the Sungrazing Comets website today, before Lovejoy's closest solar approach.

Battams runs the website, which is devoted to comets discovered by two different spacecraft: NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), which is operated jointly by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). [Death of a Comet: Photos of Sungrazing Comet Lovejoy]

Preparing for the end

Lovejoy has a core about 660 feet (200 meters) wide. It belongs to a class of comets known as Kreutz sungrazers, whose orbits bring them very close to the sun.

All Kreutz sungrazers are thought to be the remnants of a single giant comet that broke apart several centuries ago. They're named after the 19th-century German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first showed that such comets are related.

Comets plunge into the sun on a regular basis, but they rarely give much advance notice of their suicidal intentions. That's why scientists were so excited about Lovejoy. Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy discovered the icy wanderer on Nov. 27, giving researchers plenty of time to map out their observation campaign.

And that campaign has been intense, involving five different spacecraft. In addition to SDO, SOHO and STEREO, scientists planned to use Japan's Hinode satellite and ESA's Proba spacecraft to track Lovejoy's movements, Battams wrote.

NASA also created a website providing updates about the comet's pass through the corona, as well as images of the event beamed down by SDO. It can be found here: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/lovejoy.php

For his part, Terry Lovejoy said he was happy to have made a contribution, and he marveled a bit at all the attention the comet has been getting.

"It's been tremendous," Lovejoy told SPACE.com. "Apparently it's all over Facebook, and I don't use Facebook. But there's a lot of interest. I think a lot of people like the name ? the Lovejoy name seems to strike a chord with people."

A dramatic escape

Lovejoy is quite large for a sungrazing comet, and experts expected it to die an impressive death. The website Spaceweather.com, for example, predicted Lovejoy would blaze as brightly as Jupiter or Venus in the sky as it neared the sun.

Battams also expected a good show, saying the comet might even be visible from the ground around sunset today in the Northern Hemisphere.?

"I do think that it will put on a spectacular show for us and will be the brightest Kreutz-group comet that SOHO has ever observed," Battams wrote last week.

Though the early returns are just starting to come in, those forecasts appear to be on the money. Observations from various spacecraft do indeed show Lovejoy flaring up significantly as it neared our star.

Researchers will keep analyzing the images to better understand the comet's daring solar approach. And now skywatchers apparently have another shot to catch a glimpse of the resilient Lovejoy on Friday morning (Dec. 16).

For observers in North America, the comet will rise approximately 5 to 10 minutes before dawn and will be situated to the?upper right of the sun. If Lovejoy is still shining at least as brightly as Venus, it may be visible, experts say.?

You could also try to spot Lovejoy after the sun comes up, if you're exceedingly careful. Block the rising sun behind a distant building and focus on the part of the sky 3 to 4 degrees above and to the right of the sun (your clenched fist held at arm's length is equal to roughly 10 degrees). CAUTION: Never point binoculars or a telescope at or near the sun, and never look directly at our star with the naked eye. Serious eye damage can result.

And don't get your hopes up, either. The comet may well be too faint to see, experts say.

Note: If you take any good pictures of Comet Lovejoy and would like them to be considered for a future story or image gallery, contact SPACE.com managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.

SPACE.com assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz (@ClaraMoskowitz) contributed to this story. You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/space/20111215/sc_space/cometlovejoysurvivesfieryplungethroughsunnasasays

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