Football: Ramos heads Real Madrid to Clasico victory

MADRID: Barcelona's recent slump continued as Sergio Ramos' header nine minutes from time handed Real Madrid a 2-1 success for their second win over the Catalans in five days Saturday.

Karim Benzema had given the hosts the perfect start as he stabbed home Alvaro Morata's cross after just six minutes, but Barca were level just 12 minutes later when Lionel Messi equalled Alfredo di Stefano's record for goals scored in Clasicos as he rifled in his 18th strike in clashes between the two.

The introduction of Cristiano Ronaldo from the Madrid bench livened up matters after the break and Madrid eventually found the winner when Ramos rose highest to power home Luka Modric's corner, making it three defeats in four games for the Catalan club.

Barca still lead the table by 12 points and are 13 clear of Real but their woe was compounded in stoppage time as referee Miguel Perez Lasa didn't award a penalty from what appeared to be a trip by Ramos on Adriano and keeper Victor Valdes was sent-off after the final whistle for his protestations.

That infuriated assistant coach Jordi Roura.

"I don't have anything more to say about the refereeing. To me it appears perfectly clear if you look at the images."

Ramos claimed not to be aware if there had been contact with the Brazilian.

"I don't know if there was contact, I would need to see it on TV to have an opinion. However, there were also other decisions in the game and I don't think it was a determining play in the game."

Ramos said Real will keep on fighting against the odds to retain their title.

"In the league 13 points is better than 16. We have reduced the distance and whilst it is still possible mathematically we are obliged to fight."

Coach Jose Mourinho had signalled that Tuesday's Champions League clash with Manchester United was his priority as he made seven changes to the side that started the 3-1 win over Barca in the Copa del Rey semi-final second leg in midweek with Ronaldo's initial absence being the most striking.

However, even without their talisman Madrid made the perfect start as Barca's defensive woes of late continued when Morata swung in a delightful cross from the left and Benzema was on hand to prod the ball home from close range.

But Barca equalised with their first effort on goal 12 minutes later.

A nice through ball from Dani Alves put Messi in behind the Madrid defence and he turned onto his favourite left foot to score for the 16th consecutive league game.

The game then settled down into a familiar pattern with Barca happy to pass the ball around without overly threatening, but Messi did have a good chance when Raphael Varane failed to cut out a pass from David Villa on the edge of the box just after the half hour.

This time, on his right side, he couldn't generate the power needed to trouble Diego Lopez.

The visitors started brighter after the break and nearly found their way through with a trademark move as Messi picked out Alves on the right and then just failed to get on the end of the Brazilian's dangerous cross.

Another moment of magic from Messi then played in Villa but a wonderful recovering challenge from Varane denied the Spanish international a clear effort on goal.

Mourinho then unleashed Ronaldo along with Sami Khedira with just over half an hour to play and the Portuguese soon fired a rasping 30 yard free-kick towards goal that Valdes did well to turn behind.

Ronaldo came close again as he fired into the side-netting at the end of a solo run past three Barca players, before Morata spurned an excellent chance.

But the youngster's miss mattered little six minutes later when Ramos outjumped Gerard Pique to leave Valdes helpless.

And the score could have been even more flattering to the home side as Ronaldo then fired a wicked free-kick off the angle of post and bar.

- AFP/jc

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Rajnath accords 'special welcome' to Narendra Modi at BJP conclave

NEW DELHI: The three-day conclave of BJP kicked off on Friday with the spotlight on Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, projected by some as the party's prime ministerial face, amid voices in the party that his popularity has grown significantly to make a mark on the national polity.

The conclave, convened mainly to ratify the presidentship of Rajnath Singh who took over in January, will see the party deliberate on its road map in the run up to the next general elections besides discussing the political and economic issues confronting the country.

BJP will chalk out a strategy to project itself as an alternative in the next general elections at the meeting of its national council starting on Saturday.

In the national executive meeting on Friday, the rising stock of Modi was visible as party leaders, including Rajnath Singh, gave him a special welcome and noted that the European Union is recognising his achievements.

Modi was lauded by Singh for achieving the unprecedented feat of winning three consecutive assembly elections in Gujarat, with Singh saying no other BJP chief minister has such a record.

"The party president accorded a special welcome to Narendra Modi. He has created a new record among the BJP chief ministers by being the first to be re-elected for the third consecutive term with a very convincing majority. All the national executive members also welcomed him," BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told a press conference.

Singh appreciated Modi's performance again in his speech when he criticised UPA government's "failure" to revive the economy.

"There's a growing interest in Modi as the PM candidate. This is due to a groundswell building up among the people...I think Modi has made a huge mark on Indian polity," Jaitley told a news channel.

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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

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Obama, Congress Fail to Avert Sequester Cuts

President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.

Obama met for just over an hour at the White House today with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.

But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold at midnight.

"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."

READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester

Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.

Federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year.

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The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.

"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."

The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.

The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.

"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."

Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester

Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.

Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like."

But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.

"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."

Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?

The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.

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Obama blames Republicans for "dumb" cuts

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama on Friday blamed Republican refusal to compromise on deficit cutting for "dumb" and "unnecessary" spending cuts about to slam into the fragile US economy.

The arbitrary and automatic $85 billion dollar cuts, known as the "sequester" will begin later Friday, in a self-inflicted wound brought about by deep ideological polarization between the president and his foes in Congress.

"I am not a dictator. I'm the president," Obama said, warning he could not force his Republican foes to "do the right thing", which he sees as raising revenues to combine with targeted spending cuts in a deal to cut the deficit.

"These cuts will hurt our economy, will cost us jobs and to set it right both sides need to be able to compromise," Obama said.

Appearing irritated after meeting top congressional leaders including Republican House speaker John Boehner and top Republican Mitch McConnell, Obama denied blame in the showdown.

"If Mitch McConnell or John Boehner say, we need to go to catch a plane, I can't have Secret Service block the doorway, right?" he said, when asked why talks on averting sequestration had broken up.

"I'm presenting a fair deal. The fact that they don't take it means that I should somehow, you know, do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what's right?"

Boehner emerged from the talks with the president to tersely signal to reporters that Republicans would not budge on Obama's key demand for a deal which be partly based on raising extra tax revenues.

"Let's make it clear that the president got his tax hikes on January 1. This discussion about revenue in my view is over," Boehner said, alluding to the outcome of the so-called 'fiscal cliff' showdown late last year.

"It is about taking on the spending problem in Washington."

Obama was bound by law to initiate the automatic, indiscriminate cuts, which could wound the already fragile economy, cost a million jobs and harm military readiness, by 11.59 pm in the absence of an deficit cutting agreement.

The hit to military and domestic spending was never supposed to happen, but was rather a device seen as so punishing that rival lawmakers would be forced to find a better compromise to cut the deficit.

But such is the dysfunction in gridlocked Washington that neither side tried very hard to get a deal.

The drama instead evolved into the latest philosophical standoff over the size, role and financing of government between Obama, who won re-election vowing to protect the middle class, and fiscally conservative Republicans.

Obama, in effect extending the campaign that won him re-election in November, has mounted a fierce public relations offensive designed to maximize his leverage by pouring blame on Republicans for the cuts.

He acknowledged Friday that the impact of the cuts would not be immediate, but would nevertheless hurt middle class Americans in a "slow grind" squeeze which he said could cost more than half a point of economic growth.

"So every time that we get a piece of economic news over the next month, next two months, next six months, as long as the sequester's in place, we'll know that economic news could have been better if Congress had not failed to act."

Republicans accuse Obama of inflating the impact of the sequester and of using scare tactics, and believe he has painted himself into a political corner.

Although the cuts trim significant amounts from domestic and defense spending, they do not touch entitlements -- social programs like Medicare health care for the elderly and pension schemes.

Many budget experts believe that only cuts to those programs will be able to restore the prospect of long-term fiscal stability.

Obama says he is ready to make painful choices on such funding, but says he will not allow Republicans to preserve tax breaks for the rich and saddle the most needy with the bill for tackling the deficit.

Republicans simply say that Obama is not serious about cutting spending, and is unwilling to take on his own party, which views entitlement programs as an almost sacred trust.

The White House warns that the indiscriminate cuts are written into law in such a way that their impact cannot be alleviated.

It says 800,000 civilian employees of the Defense Department will go on a mandatory furlough one day a week and the navy will trim voyages. The deployment of a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf has been canceled.

About 70,000 children less than five years old will be cut from the Head Start preschool program, resulting in the elimination of 14,000 teaching positions. Services for special needs kids will also take a hit.

Authorities warn that average wait times for passengers at US immigration will increase by 30-50 percent and may exceed four hours during peak times.

-AFP/ac

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Manik Sarkar, son of tailor, to be Tripura chief minister again

AGARTALA: Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar, set to assume office for a fourth time after leading the Left to a huge electoral win, is the son of a tailor who still washes his own clothes.

An unassuming man, the 64-year-old got down to work no soon than he was declared the winner from Dhanpur constituency. He met CPM leaders and activists at Sonamura, 60km from here.

On Thursday, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) bagged 49 of the 60 seats while its ally Communist Party of India won one seat. The Congress finished with only 10 seats.

It was the best result for the Left since 1978 when the legendary Nripen Chakraborty-led CPM swept 56 seats. This time, Sarkar helped the Left Front increase its 2008 tally by one seat.

Undoubtedly, the "poorest" chief minister in India, Sarkar, according to documents filed with the Election Commission, has Rs.10,800 in cash.

In line with CPM rules, Sarkar gives away his salary to the party, which pays him Rs 5,000 a month.

He is probably India's only chief minister who does not own a home, car or bank balance worth mentioning.

He does not even have a mobile phone and has never used the red beacon on his official car.

Sarkar's wife Panchali Bhattacharjee, 62, who retired as a government employee in 2010, has Rs 22,015 in cash and Rs.24,52,395 as savings. The couple has no children.

She said her husband still washed his clothes every morning.

"My wife's pension can sustain us. My expenses are a small pot of snuff and a cigarette a day," Sarkar said.

After the death of his mother in 2009, Sarkar inherited a small house worth Rs.200,000 in Agartala. He donated it to his younger sister.

Sarkar's father Amulya was a tailor and mother Anjali was an employee of the state health department.

Sarkar joined politics in 1967 and was elected secretary of the CPM's Tripura unit in 1993.

A bachelor of commerce from Calcutta University, Sarkar was first elected to the Tripura assembly in a 1980 bypoll and again in 1983.

He is the second in the northeast to be the chief minister for 15 years or more after Gegong Apang of the Congress who ruled Arunachal Pradesh for 24 years over two periods (1980-99 and 2003-07).

On Thursday, Sarkar defeated his Congress rival Shah Alam by 6,017 votes. In 2008, Sarkar's winning margin was 2,918.

"This is a verdict in favour of development, peace and stability besides good governance," Sarkar told reporters.

According to a CPI-M leader, Left Front leaders will meet here Friday and decide when to form a new government.

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WHO: Small cancer risk after Fukushima accident

LONDON (AP) — People exposed to the highest doses of radiation during Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in 2011 may have a slightly higher risk of cancer but one so small it probably won't be detectable, the World Health Organization said in a report released Thursday.

A group of experts convened by the agency assessed the risk of various cancers based on estimates of how much radiation people at the epicenter of the nuclear disaster received, namely those directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, a rural agricultural area about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

Some 110,000 people living around the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant were evacuated after the massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 knocked out the plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water.

In the new report, the highest increases in risk appeared for people exposed as infants to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

"These are pretty small proportional increases," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," he said. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

WHO estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare, one of the most treatable cancers when caught early, and the normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That risk would be half of one percentage point higher for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase in such cancers may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most heavily exposed areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected to the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who was not connected to the WHO report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the WHO of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally-grown food. Kanno accused the report of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

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Benedict Departs Vatican for the Last Time as Pope

Pope Benedict XVI bade his final farewell to the faithful today, lifting off from the Vatican in a white helicopter as the first pope to resign in six centuries.

Just before 5 p.m. local time, Benedict, 85, walked out of the Vatican for the last time as pope, waving to a cheering crowd in the Courtyard of San Damaso as he entered a black Mercedes for the short drive to a nearby heliport.

In a tweet sent from Benedict XVI @Pontifex as his motorcade rolled to the heliport, Benedict said, "Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives."

READ MORE: Pope Benedict XVI Delivers Farewell Address

With church bells ringing across Rome, he then embarked on the 15-minute flight to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence just south of the city and his home for the coming months when he'll be recognized by the church as His Holiness Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus.

When Benedict landed in the gardens at Castel Gandolfo, he was greeted by a group of dignitaries, including the governor of the Vatican City state Giovanni Bertello, two bishops, the director of the pontifical villas, and the mayor and parish priest. Off the helicopter and back into a car, Benedict headed to the palace.

Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images

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In the plaza at Castel Gandolfo, a crowd of supporters, many waving flags or banners, some peering out of windows, gathered to welcome Benedict. When Benedict finally appeared on the balcony, the crowd erupted in applause.

"Thank you for your friendship, your affection," Benedict told them.

Benedict said he was "just a pilgrim starting the last lap of his earthly journey."

After his brief address to the crowd, Benedict waved one last time and walked back into the palace as the sun set around the square.

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In his final remarks earlier in the day to colleagues in the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict had promised "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his eventual successor.

Benedict, in a morning meeting at the Vatican, urged the cardinals to act "like an orchestra" to find "harmony" moving forward.

Benedict spent a quiet final day as pope, bidding farewell to his colleagues and moving on to a secluded life of prayer, far from the grueling demands of the papacy and the scandals that have recently plagued the church.

His first order of business was a morning meeting with the cardinals in the Clementine Hall, a room in the Apostolic Palace. Despite the historical nature of Benedict's resignation, not all cardinals attended the event.

Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, thanked Benedict for his service to the church during the eight years he has spent as pontiff.

Pope Benedict's Last Sunday Prayer Service

For some U.S. Catholics in Rome for the historic occasion, Benedict's departure is bittersweet. Christopher Kerzich, a Chicago resident studying at the Pontifical North American College of Rome, said Wednesday he is sad to see Benedict leave, but excited to see what comes next.

"Many Catholics have come to love this pontiff, this very humble man," Kerzich said. "He is a man who's really fought this and prayed this through and has peace in his heart. I take comfort in that and I think a lot of Catholics should take comfort in that."

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WikiLeaks: Manning says he wanted "public debate" on war

WASHINGTON: US Army private Bradley Manning told a military tribunal on Thursday that he leaked incident logs from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks in order to start a "public debate."

"For me they represent the underground realities of the conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan," Manning told the court, after his lawyer said he plans to plead guilty to some of the charges leveled against him over the leaks.

The 25-year-old, who is being held in military custody pending trial, said he would plead guilty to ten of the less serious of the 22 charges against him, but would deny aiding America's enemies, a crime which carries a life term.

Even if the court agrees to pursue only the lesser allegations, Manning still faces 20 years in military custody for leaking classified material to Australian activist Julian Assange's WikiLeaks whistle-blower website.

Reading a statement to the tribunal, Manning said he had initially attempted to contact traditional media outlets -- the Washington Post, the New York Times and Politico -- before deciding to pass the documents to WikiLeaks.

He sent the organization, which campaigns against government secrecy and publishes leaked information on a secure website, two military logs of daily incidents during the US campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"At the time I believed, and I still believe, these are two of the most significant documents of our time," he said, adding that he wanted to "spark a domestic public debate about our foreign policy and the war in general."

He also provided a vast trove of US diplomatic cables and cockpit video from a US helicopter gunship involved in an incident in which Iraqi civilians died.

Manning explained that he had chosen to work with WikiLeaks as it seemed to him, from what he had read, that the group "exposed illegal activities and corruption" and was "almost academic in nature."

Manning's plea offer was presented to a military tribunal at Fort Meade in Maryland by his lawyer David Coombs, and the young soldier confirmed to the court that he understood the implications of his offer.

He intends to plead guilty to "unauthorized possession and willful transmission" of the video and of documents recounting civilian deaths during US operations Iraq and Afghanistan.

He will also admit "knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily" providing WikiLeaks with the classified diplomatic cables.

Judge Denise Lind asked Manning whether he understood the implications of his plea offer: "Do you understand this? Do you have questions about this? Do you still want to go forward with this?"

"Yes, your honor," he replied, before reading out a 35-page statement of his own attempting to outline his motivation in leaking the material.

-AFP/ac

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18-month-old stuck in US for 7 months finally returns home

KOLKATA: Indrashis Saha, the 18-month old baby who spent seven months in custody of the US child protection agency in New Jersey returned to Kolkata on Wednesday.

Initially zapped by the reception after a 10-hour flight, he clung onto his grandmother's arms as if he had missed all that attention for months.

Indrashis' software engineer father Debasish Saha had gone there to work on a project in July last. The baby injured his head after falling from his bed on August 9 2012. The hospital authorities where he was treated refused to hand over the child suspecting that the injury was due to negligence and Indrashis was taken away by the child protection agency.

"It has been a long and anxious wait. My grandson must have gone through lots in the past seven months. We will make up whatever he has lost all these months," said maternal grandmother Pragati Basak who has been granted custody.

Indrashis boarded the Emirates flight from Newark with his uncle Bhaskar Kundu at 11 pm (IST) on Tuesday. The flight halted in Dubai two hours behind schedule due to technical reasons.

Kundu was suggested along with the paternal grandparents and maternal grandmother for custody. Representatives of US child protection agency visited the houses of each before granting custody to Basak.

"The battle was long but we finally won. Due to differences in cultural, social and family values, the West probably takes it as negligence whenever a problem arises with our children in their country. I am thankful to everyone who stood us by, specially the President of India and Congress leader Om Prakash Mishra," said grandfather Nirmal Chandra Saha.

Mishra too was at the airport on Wednesday to receive the baby. The retired school head master from Balurghat had approached Pranab Mukherjee in October.

Indrashis' mother Pamela is expected to return India soon though Debasish will come back after the completion of the project.

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