As the second part of Lance Armstrong’s televised confession that he doped and lied his way to seven Tour de France titles is broadcast on the Oprah Winfrey Network Friday night, The Lede will have real-time fact-checking and analysis from New York Times reporters, including Juliet Macur and Naila-Jean Meyers. We will also round up reactions from fans, bloggers, journalists and fellow riders once the broadcast and live stream gets underway, at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.
Read More..
Exclusive: Japan’s Sharp cuts iPad screen output
Label: TechnologyTOKYO/SEOUL (Reuters) – Sharp Corp has nearly halted production of 9.7-inch screens for Apple Inc’s iPad, two sources said, possibly as demand shifts to its smaller iPad mini.
Sharp’s iPad screen production line at its Kameyama plant in central Japan has fallen to the minimal level to keep the line running this month after a gradual slowdown began at the end of 2012 as Apple manages its inventory, the industry sources with knowledge of Sharp’s production plans told Reuters.
Sharp has stopped shipping iPad panels, the people with knowledge of the near total production shutdown said. The exact level of remaining screen output at Sharp was not immediately clear but it was extremely limited, they said.
Company spokeswoman Miyuki Nakayama said: “We don’t disclose production levels.”
Apple officials, contacted late in the evening after normal business hours in California, did not have an immediate comment.
The sources didn’t say exactly why production had nearly halted. Among the possibilities are a seasonal drop in demand, a switch to another supplier, a shift in the balance of sales to the mini iPad, or an update in the design of the product.
Macquarie Research has estimated that iPad shipments will tumble nearly 40 percent in the current quarter to about 8 million from about 13 million in the fourth quarter, although Apple’s total tablet shipments will show a much smaller decrease due to strong iPad mini sales.
APPLE SHARES
Any indication that iPad sales are struggling could add to concern that the appeal of Apple products is waning after earlier media reports said it is slashing orders for iPhone 5 screens and other components from its Asian suppliers.
Those reports helped knock Apple’s shares temporarily below $ 500 this week, the first time its stock had been below the threshold mark in almost one year.
Apple, the reports said, has asked state-managed Japan Display, Sharp and LG Display to halve supplies of iPhone panels from an initial plan for about 65 million screens in January-March. Apple is losing ground to Samsung, as well as emerging rivals including China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp.
NO BIG CHANGE AT OTHER MAKERS
In addition to Sharp, Apple also buys iPad screens from LG Display Co Ltd, its biggest supplier, and Samsung Display, a flat-panel unit of Samsung Electronics.
Both LG Display and Samsung Display declined to comment.
A source at Samsung Display, however, said there had not been any significant change in its panel business with Apple, which has been steadily reducing panel purchases from the South Korean firm.
A person who is familiar with the situation at LG Display said iPad screen production in the current quarter had fallen from the previous quarter ending in December, mainly due to weak seasonal demand that is typical after the busy year-end holiday sales period.
Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said some of the product cutbacks at Sharp are probably seasonal.
“The March quarter is almost always weaker than the December quarter,” he said, adding that Apple also consolidates suppliers of certain components during quarters with weaker demand. “The Korean manufacturers are more efficient and typically have lower costs.”
Apple’s iPad sales may have also suffered amid a weak Christmas shopping period that hurt other consumer gadget makers as well.
CROWD OF RIVAL PRODUCTS
Apple also faces stiffening competition in tablets from a growing crowd of rival products from makers including Samsung with its Galaxy and Microsoft Corp’s Surface. A consumer shift to smaller 7-inch screen devices, which Apple responded to late last year by launching its iPad mini for $ 329, are adding pressure.
BNP Paribas expects the iPad mini will eat into sales of the full-sized iPad, with the mini rise to 60 percent of total iPad shipments in the January-March quarter.
Looking to cut into Apple’s market share in the smaller segment are Amazon.com Inc with its Kindle and Google Inc with its Nexus 7.
CEO Tim Cook, who is credited with building Apple’s Asian supply chain, has overseen several gadget launches, including the iPhone 5, the latest iPad models and the iPad mini during his first year, is under pressure to deliver the kind of product innovations that wowed consumers during Steve Jobs’ tenure to keep his company’s profit growth stellar.
Sharp, which also supplies screens for the iPhone, has been working with its main banks on a restructuring plan after posting a $ 5.6 billion loss for the past fiscal year. To secure emergency financing from lenders including Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi Financial Group it had mortgaged its domestic factories and offices including the one building screens for Apple.
In December, Qualcomm Inc agreed to invest as much as $ 120 million in Sharp and the two companies said they would work to develop new power-saving screens.
(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Ken Wills and Richard Chang)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Title Post: Exclusive: Japan’s Sharp cuts iPad screen output
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/exclusive-japans-sharp-cuts-ipad-screen-output/
Link To Post : Exclusive: Japan’s Sharp cuts iPad screen output
Rating:
100%
based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
Lilly drug chosen for Alzheimer's prevention study
Label: HealthResearchers have chosen an experimental drug by Eli Lilly & Co. for a large federally funded study testing whether it's possible to prevent Alzheimer's disease in older people at high risk of developing it.
The drug, called solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab), is designed to bind to and help clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.
Earlier studies found it did not help people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's but it showed some promise against milder disease. Researchers think it might work better if given before symptoms start.
"The hope is we can catch people before they decline," which can come 10 years or more after plaques first show up in the brain, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, director of the Alzheimer's center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
She will help lead the new study, which will involve 1,000 people ages 70 to 85 whose brain scans show plaque buildup but who do not yet have any symptoms of dementia. They will get monthly infusions of solanezumab or a dummy drug for three years. The main goal will be slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study will be done at 50 sites in the U.S. and possibly more in Canada, Australia and Europe, Sperling said.
In October, researchers said combined results from two studies of solanezumab suggested it might modestly slow mental decline, especially in patients with mild disease. Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals of significantly slowing the mind-robbing disease or improving activities of daily living.
Those results were not considered good enough to win the drug approval. So in December, Lilly said it would start another large study of it this year to try to confirm the hopeful results seen patients with mild disease. That is separate from the federal study Sperling will head.
About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.
___
Online:
Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov
Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org
___
Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
Consumer sentiment at year low; fiscal debate weighs
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Consumer sentiment unexpectedly deteriorated for a second straight month to its lowest in over a year in January, with many consumers citing fallout from the recent "fiscal cliff" debate in Washington, a survey released on Friday showed.
The sharp drop in sentiment over the last two months coincides with rancorous federal budget negotiations that have led to higher taxes for many Americans.
Just weeks after that deal, President Barack Obama and Republican lawmakers are expected to enter another tough round of negotiations over spending cuts, which could dent consumer confidence still further.
"The handling of the fiscal cliff talks and the realization that paychecks are going to be smaller due to the sunset of the payroll tax holiday are probably weighing on consumer attitudes at the moment," said Thomas Simons, a money market economist at Jefferies & Co. in New York.
While most of the scheduled tax hikes and spending cuts forming the fiscal cliff were avoided when Congress struck a deal on January 1, most U.S. workers saw their take-home salary diminished by the expiry of two percentage-point cut in payroll taxes.
"With the debt ceiling yet to be tackled and more political acrimony on the way, we suspect that confidence has room to deteriorate further," Simons said.
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary reading on the overall index of consumer sentiment came in at 71.3, down from 72.9 the month before. The index was at its lowest since December 2011. It was also below the median forecast of 75 among economists polled by Reuters.
"The most unique aspect of the early January data was that an all-time record number of consumers - 35 percent - negatively referred to the fiscal cliff negotiations," survey director Richard Curtin said in a statement.
"Importantly, the debt ceiling debate is still upcoming and could further weaken confidence," he said.
House Republicans have signaled they might support a short-term extension of U.S. borrowing authority when the government exhausts that capacity sometime between mid-February and early March. A failure by Congress to raise this debt ceiling could result in a market-rattling government default.
On Friday, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the House would consider a bill next week to extend the debt limit by three months in order to force the Senate to pass a budget.
U.S. stocks remained little changed after the data. The S&P 500 <.spx> hit a five-year high in the last session. But on Friday, a weak outlook from Intel
So far there has been a disconnect between what consumers say and do. U.S. retail sales increased a better-than-expected 0.5 percent in December. But given the recent weakening in sentiment investors will be watching for any signs that spending is starting to slip.
"The impact on consumers will be from the hike in the social security tax. That is undoubtedly going to hit discretionary spending. So this may be a signal of things to come," said Michael Woolfolk, a senior currency strategist at BNY Mellon in New York.
The consumer survey's barometer of current economic conditions fell to 84.8 from 87.0 and was below a forecast of 88.0. The gauge hit its lowest since July.
The survey's gauge of consumer expectations also slipped, hitting its lowest since November 2011 at 62.7 from 63.8, and was below an expected 65.2.
The survey's one-year inflation expectations rose to 3.4 percent from 3.2 percent, while the survey's five-to-10-year inflation outlook was unchanged at 2.9 percent.
(Additional reporting by Steven C. Johnson and Ellen Freilich; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
The Lede Blog: Live Updates on Armstrong's Oprah Interview
Label: WorldThe Lede is rounding up online reaction to Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday night in real-time, with additional fact-checking and context provided by Juliet Macur, Sarah Lyall and David Carr. The broadcast begins at 9 p.m. Eastern Time and will be streamed live on the Oprah Winfrey Network’s Web site.
Read More..
Video game puts players in shoes of Syrian rebels
Label: TechnologyBEIRUT (AP) — A new video game based on Syria‘s civil war challenges players to make the hard choices facing the country’s rebels. Is it better to negotiate peace with the regime of President Bashar Assad, for example, or dispatch jihadist fighters to kill pro-government thugs?
The British designer of “Endgame: Syria” says he hopes the game will inform people who might otherwise remain ignorant about the conflict.
Views differ, however, on the appropriateness of using a video game to discuss a complex crisis that has killed more than 60,000 people since March 2011. Computer giant Apple has refused to distribute the game and some consider the mere idea insulting. Others love it, and one fan from inside Syria has suggested changes to make the game better mirror the actual war.
The dispute comes amid wider arguments about violent video games since last month’s shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 children and six adults dead. This week, the National Rifle Association revised the recommended age for a new shooting game after criticisms by liberal groups.
Tomas Rawlings, who designed the Syria game, said he got the idea while watching TV pundits debate the possible consequences of directly arming Syria’s rebels, which Western nations have declined to do. He said he thought a game could explore such questions by allowing players to make choices and see their consequences.
“For those who don’t want to read a newspaper but still care about the world, this is a way for them to find out about things,” said Rawlings, the design and production director of U.K.-based Auroch Digital.
In the simple game, which took about two weeks to build, the player assumes the role of the rebels seeking to topple Assad’s regime. The play alternates between political and military stages. In each stage, the player sees cards representing regime actions and must choose the rebel response.
The choices seek to mirror the real conflict. The regime may get declarations of support from Russia, China or Iran to boost its popularity while the rebels receive support from the United States, Turkey or Saudi Arabia – reflecting the foreign powers backing the two sides.
In battle, the regime may deploy conventional military forces like infantry, tanks and artillery as well as pro-government thugs known as shabiha. The rebels’ choices include sympathetic Palestinian or Kurdish militias, assassins or jihadist fighters known as muhajideen.
Some of the rebels’ strongest attacks also kill civilians, reducing rebel popularity and seeking to reflect the war’s complexity.
All along, the player is given basic information about the conflict, learning that Islamists once persecuted by the regime now consider the fight a holy war and that the shabiha are accused of massacring civilians.
The game ends when one side loses its support or the sides agree to a peace deal. The player is then told what follows. The longer the fighting lasts, the worse the aftermath, as chaos, sectarian conflict and Islamic militancy spread.
The lasting impression is that no matter which side wins, Syria loses.
Rawlings said that’s the game’s point.
“You can win the battle militarily but still lose the peace because the cost of winning militarily has fractured the country so much that the war keeps going,” he said. “You can also end the war so that there is less of that.”
The game was released on the company’s website and as a free download from Google for Android devices on December 12. Rawlings submitted the game to Apple to distribute via its App Store but the company rejected it.
Apple declined to comment, but Rawlings’s rejection referred to a company guideline for mobile apps: ” ‘Enemies’ within the context of a game cannot solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity.”
Rawlings is modifying the game, though he worries it will weaken it.
“It will still be the same overall experience, but it will reduce the value of the game to inform people,” he said.
News of the game was greeted with a mix of interest and outrage online. Some complained that players can’t take the regime side, while others found it wrong to make a game about a brutal war.
“Rawlings has mistakenly understood the Syrian war as a nonchalant ‘experience’ that people can play while waiting for the train to work,” said Samar Aburahma, a university student of Palestinian descent in San Francisco who refused to try the game. “It is beyond insulting to Syrians, especially given the fact that war is ongoing.”
Others find it a valuable, if limited, approach to the conflict.
Andrea Stanton, a religious studies professor at the University of Denver who studies Syria, said she responded emotionally to the game.
“It isn’t really a fun game to play,” she said, noting that she was angry when she lost and felt dread when the frequency of deadly regime airstrikes went up as the game progressed – as it has in the real conflict.
“This a very sobering game in that you sense how quickly the military stakes escalate and how little the political phase has to do with actual Syrians,” she said.
She is organizing a campus activity for students to play and discuss the game.
“I think it is very valuable for teaching and getting people to experience a sense of the limited options the rebels face,” she said.
It is unclear how many people have played the game. Google says it has been downloaded as many as 5,000 times from its site, and Rawlings says more have played online. He guesses more than 10,000 people have tried it.
Few in Syria are likely to have played it, since fighting has made the Internet and even electricity rare in some parts of the country.
One 18-year-old Syrian gamer liked the game so much, however, that he sent Rawlings a list of suggestions for improvement.
Reached via Skype, he said the jihadist fighters should be called Jabhat al-Nusra, after an extremist rebel group that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization.
He also pointed out that few rebel groups have tanks, as they do in the game, and suggested new rebel tactics.
“Car bombs are used lots in Syria, so that would make the game more realistic,” he said.
He said he hoped the game would help people understand the situation.
“I wish there were a 3D strategy game about Syria so you could feel the destruction on the ground,” he said.
The player, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said his feelings playing the game often mirror his feelings about the war. He wants peace but can’t imagine the rebels accepting a negotiated solution given how many people have died.
“Right this second, I want the war in Syria to stop, but when you see what is happening on the ground there is no way to make peace,” he said. “When I play the game like a rebel, I have to reject the peace.”
___
Associated Press writer Michael Liedtke contributed reporting.
Online: http://gamethenews.net/index.php/endgame-syria/
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Title Post: Video game puts players in shoes of Syrian rebels
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/video-game-puts-players-in-shoes-of-syrian-rebels/
Link To Post : Video game puts players in shoes of Syrian rebels
Rating:
100%
based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
See Personal Pics of Rosie O'Donnell's Daughter Dakota
Label: LifestyleAfter welcoming her fifth child, the comedian gives fans an intimate glimpse into her mommy joy in a series of personal photos
Credit: Courtesy of Rosie O'Donnell
Updated: Thursday Jan 17, 2013 | 12:00 PM EST
By: Shanelle Rein-Olowokere
Subscribe Now
Will Obama's order lead to surge in gun research?
Label: HealthMILWAUKEE (AP) — Nearly as many Americans die from guns as from car crashes each year. We know plenty about the second problem and far less about the first. A scarcity of research on how to prevent gun violence has left policymakers shooting in the dark as they craft gun control measures without much evidence of what works.
That could change with President Barack Obama's order Wednesday to ease research restrictions pushed through long ago by the gun lobby. The White House declared that a 1996 law banning use of money to "advocate or promote gun control" should not keep the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies from doing any work on the topic.
Obama can only do so much, though. Several experts say Congress will have to be on board before anything much changes, especially when it comes to spending money.
How severely have the restrictions affected the CDC?
Its website's A-to-Z list of health topics, which includes such obscure ones as Rift Valley fever, does not include guns or firearms. Searching the site for "guns" brings up dozens of reports on nail gun and BB gun injuries.
The restrictions have done damage "without a doubt" and the CDC has been "overly cautious" about interpreting them, said Daniel Webster, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"The law is so vague it puts a virtual freeze on gun violence research," said a statement from Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's like censorship: When people don't know what's prohibited, they assume everything is prohibited."
Many have called for a public health approach to gun violence like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving laws that slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago even as the number of vehicles on the road rose.
"The answer wasn't taking away cars," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
However, while much is known about vehicles and victims in crashes, similar details are lacking about gun violence.
Some unknowns:
—How many people own firearms in various cities and what types.
—What states have the highest proportion of gun ownership.
—Whether gun ownership correlates with homicide rates in a city.
—How many guns used in homicides were bought legally.
—Where juveniles involved in gun fatalities got their weapons.
—What factors contribute to mass shootings like the Newtown, Conn., one that killed 26 people at a school.
"If an airplane crashed today with 20 children and 6 adults there would be a full-scale investigation of the causes and it would be linked to previous research," said Dr. Stephen Hargarten, director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
"There's no such system that's comparable to that" for gun violence, he said.
One reason is changes pushed by the National Rifle Association and its allies in 1996, a few years after a major study showed that people who lived in homes with firearms were more likely to be homicide or suicide victims. A rule tacked onto appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services barred use of funds for "the advocacy or promotion of gun control."
Also, at the gun group's urging, U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey, a Republican from Arkansas, led an effort to remove $2.6 million from the CDC's injury prevention center, which had led most of the research on guns. The money was later restored but earmarked for brain injury research.
"What the NRA did was basically terrorize the research community and terrorize the CDC," said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who headed the CDC's injury center at the time. "They went after the researchers, they went after institutions, they went after CDC in a very big way, and they went after me," he said. "They didn't want the data to be collected because they were threatened by what the data were showing."
Dickey, who is now retired, said Wednesday that his real concern was the researcher who led that gun ownership study, who Dickey described as being "in his own kingdom or fiefdom" and believing guns are bad.
He and Rosenberg said they have modified their views over time and now both agree that research is needed. They put out a joint statement Wednesday urging research that prevents firearm injuries while also protecting the rights "of legitimate gun owners."
"We ought to research the whole environment, both sides — what the benefits of having guns are and what are the benefits of not having guns," Dickey said. "We should study any part of this problem," including whether armed guards at schools would help, as the National Rifle Association has suggested.
Association officials did not respond to requests for comment. A statement Wednesday said the group "has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership" and that "attacking firearms" is not the answer. It said nothing about research.
The 1996 law "had a chilling effect. It basically brought the field of firearm-related research to a screeching halt," said Benjamin of the Public Health Association.
Webster said researchers like him had to "partition" themselves so whatever small money they received from the CDC was not used for anything that could be construed as gun policy. One example was a grant he received to evaluate a community-based program to reduce street gun violence in Baltimore, modeled after a successful program in Chicago called CeaseFire. He had to make sure the work included nothing that could be interpreted as gun control research, even though other privately funded research might.
Private funds from foundations have come nowhere near to filling the gap from lack of federal funding, Hargarten said. He and more than 100 other doctors and scientists recently sent Vice President Joe Biden a letter urging more research, saying the lack of it was compounding "the tragedy of gun violence."
Since 1973, the government has awarded 89 grants to study rabies, of which there were 65 cases; 212 grants for cholera, with 400 cases, yet only three grants for firearm injuries that topped 3 million, they wrote. The CDC spends just about $100,000 a year out of its multibillion-dollar budget on firearm-related research, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said.
"It's so out of proportion to the burden, however you measure it," said Dr. Matthew Miller, associate professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. As a result, "we don't know really simple things," such as whether tighter gun rules in New York will curb gun trafficking "or is some other pipeline going to open up" in another state, he said.
What now?
CDC officials refused to discuss the topic on the record — a possible sign of how gun shy of the issue the agency has been even after the president's order.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement that her agency is "committed to re-engaging gun violence research."
Others are more cautious. The Union of Concerned Scientists said the White House's view that the law does not ban gun research is helpful, but not enough to clarify the situation for scientists, and that congressional action is needed.
Dickey, the former congressman, agreed.
"Congress is supposed to do that. He's not supposed to do that," Dickey said of Obama's order. "The restrictions were placed there by Congress.
"What I was hoping for ... is 'let's do this together,'" Dickey said.
___
Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
Housing, job data push S&P to five-year high; Intel down late
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stronger-than-expected data on housing starts and jobless claims lit a fire under stocks on Thursday, pushing the S&P 500 to a five-year high and its third day of gains.
A pair of economic reports lifted investors' sentiment. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell to a five-year low last week and housing starts jumped last month to the highest since June 2008.
Strength in the housing and labor markets is key to sustained growth and higher corporate profits, helping to bring out buyers even on a day when earnings reports were mixed.
Gains were tempered by weakness in the financial sector, with Bank of America
In other negative earnings news, shares of chipmaker Intel
The S&P 500 ended at its highest since December 2007 and now sits just 5.6 percent from its all-time closing high of 1,565.15.
"Having consolidated really for the last two weeks, the fact that we broke out, I think that that is sucking in quite a bit of money," said James Dailey, portfolio manager of TEAM Asset Strategy Fund in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 84.79 points, or 0.63 percent, at 13,596.02. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 8.31 points, or 0.56 percent, at 1,480.94. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 18.46 points, or 0.59 percent, at 3,136.00.
Better-than-expected earnings and revenue reported by online marketplace eBay
In the housing sector, PulteGroup Inc
Semiconductor shares <.sox> rose 2 percent to the highest close in eight months.
Financials were the only S&P 500 sector to register a slight decline for the day.
Bank of America's fourth-quarter profit fell as it took more charges to clean up mortgage-related problems. Citigroup posted $2.32 billion of charges for layoffs and lawsuits.
Energy shares led gains on the Dow as U.S. crude oil prices jumped more than 1 percent. Shares of Exxon Mobil
S&P 500 earnings are expected to have risen 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter, Thomson Reuters data showed. Expectations for the quarter have fallen considerably since October when a 9.9 percent gain was estimated.
Volume was roughly 6.5 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion.
Advancers outpaced decliners on the NYSE by about 22 to 7 and on the Nasdaq by about 2 to 1.
(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)
U.S. Sees Hazy Threat From Mali Militants
Label: World
WASHINGTON — As Islamic militants methodically carved out a base in the desert of northern Mali over the past year, officials in Washington, Paris and African capitals struggling with military plans to drive the Islamists out of the country agreed on one principle: African troops, not European or American soldiers, would fight the battle of Mali.
But the surprise French assault last Friday to blunt the Islamists’ advance upended those plans and set off a cascading series of events, culminating in a raid on Wednesday by militants on a foreign-run gas field in Algeria. That attack threatens to widen the violence in an impoverished region and drag Western governments deeper into combating an incipient insurgency.
And yet the rush of events has masked the fact that officials in Washington still have only an impressionistic understanding of the militant groups that have established a safe haven in Mali, and they are deeply divided about whether some of these groups even pose a threat to the United States.
Moreover, the hostage situation in Algeria has only heightened concerns that a Western military intervention could transform militant groups that once had only a regional focus into avowed enemies of the United States — in other words, that the backlash might end up being worse than the original threat.
Largely for these reasons, the Obama administration adopted a strategy over the past year to contain the Islamists in Mali until African troops were ready to confront them, rather than to challenge them directly with an American military campaign of drone strikes or commando raids.
During Congressional testimony in June, Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, played down the terrorist threat to the United States from Mali, saying that the Qaeda affiliate operating there “has not demonstrated the capability to threaten U.S. interests outside of West or North Africa, and it has not threatened to attack the U.S. homeland.”
Some Pentagon officials have long taken a more hawkish stance, and they cite intelligence reports that fighters with ties to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which has a loose affiliation to the remnants of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, played a role in the deadly attack in September on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. They have pushed for targeted strikes against Islamist leaders in northern Mali, arguing that killing the leadership could permanently cripple the strength of the militants.
The administration has embraced a targeted killing strategy elsewhere, notably in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, after top White House, Pentagon and C.I.A. officials determined that militants in those countries were bent on attacking the United States.
Asked if fighters from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb posed such an imminent threat, Gen. Carter F. Ham, the top American commander in Africa, said, “Probably not.” But, he said in an interview, “they subscribe to Al Qaeda’s ideology” and have said that their intent is to attack Westerners in Europe and, “if they could, back to the United States.”
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta made it clear on Wednesday that he considered the group a serious danger. “This is an Al Qaeda operation,” he told reporters while traveling in Italy, “and it is for that reason that we have always been concerned about their presence in Mali, because they would use it as a base of operations to do exactly what happened in Algeria.”
It is too early to judge the impact of the French-led offensive in Mali, which came after an urgent plea by Mali’s government for help in repelling Islamist fighters who were rapidly moving south. But on Wednesday, some American officials said that the hostage episode in Algeria could be just the beginning of a wave of attacks against foreigners in the region. And there is a chance that if the Americans taken hostage on Wednesday are killed by their captors, American officials might reconsider their pledges not to commit ground troops to the battle.
Elisabeth Bumiller and Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Copyright © News troubled. All rights reserved.
Design 
