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Honduras rallies to beat US 2-1 in WCup qualifier

Jerry Bengston took advantage of a defensive mix-up to score the go-ahead goal in the 79th minute, and Honduras rallied to beat the United States 2-1 Wednesday in the opener of the final qualifying round for next year's World Cup.

Clint Dempsey put the Americans ahead in the 36th minute but the Americans, using a new-look defense that featured Omar Gonzalez and Timmy Chandler, gave up the lead when Juan Carlos Garcia tied the score in the 40th at San Pedro Sula.

Bengston, who plays for Major League Soccer's New England Revolution, scored the winner when defender Geoff Cameron and goalkeeper Tim Howard both went for a pass by Maynor Figueroa to Oscar Boniek Garcia. That allowed Garcia to tap the ball across to Bengston for a shot into an open net, and Gonzalez was too late to challenge him.

Should we still fear al Qaeda?

Labels: Lifestyle

Mali military battles Islamist insurgents

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Peter Bergen: U.K. politicians called North Africa terror an existential threat

Bergen says core al Qaeda has been greatly weakened, hasn't mounted serious operations

Terror groups loosely affiliated with al Qaeda have also lost ground, he says

Bergen: Jihadist violence does continue, but it does no good to overstate threat

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad", and a director at the New America Foundation.

Washington (CNN) -- The attack in January on a gas facility in Algeria by an al Qaeda-linked group that resulted in at least 37 dead hostages has sparked an outpouring of dire warnings from leading Western politicians.

British Prime Minister David Cameron described a "large and existential threat" emanating from North Africa. Tony Blair, his predecessor as prime minister, agreed saying, "David Cameron is right to warn that this is a battle for our values and way of life which will take years, even decades."

Hang on chaps! Before we all get our knickers in a tremendous twist: How exactly does an attack on an undefended gas facility in the remotest depths of the Algerian desert become an "existential threat" to our "way of life"?

Across the Atlantic, American politicians also got into sky-is-falling mode. Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, fulminated, "This is going to get worse. You cannot allow this to become a national security issue for the United States. And I argue it's already crossed that threshold."

Peter Bergen

Previous real U.S. national security threats and their manifestations include 9/11, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (from the potential use of nuclear weapons) with the Soviets, Pearl Harbor and Hitler's armies taking over much of Europe.

A ragtag group of jihadists roaming the North African deserts is orders of magnitude less significant than those genuine threats to the West and is more comparable to the threats posed by the bands of pirates who continue to harass shipping off the coast of Somalia. They are surely a problem, but a localized and containable one.

Western politicians and commentators who claim that the al Qaeda linked groups in North Africa are a serious threat to the West unnecessarily alarm their publics and also feed the self-image of these terrorists who aspire to attack the West, but don't have the capacity to do so. Terrorism doesn't work if folks aren't terrorized.

North African group hasn't attacked in the West

Western politicians and commentators who claim that the al Qaeda linked groups in North Africa are a serious threat to the West unnecessarily alarm their publics...
Peter Bergen

Much has been written, for instance, in recent weeks about al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al Qaeda's North African affiliate, a splinter group of which carried out the attack on the Algerian gas facility. But according to Camille Tawil, who has authoritatively covered Islamist militant groups over the past two decades for the leading Arabic daily Al-Hayat and has written three books about al Qaeda, AQIM doesn't threaten the West: "To my knowledge no known attacks or aborted attacks in the West have been linked directly to AQIM."

AQIM was formed seven years ago so the group has had more than enough time to plot and carry out an attack in the West. By way of comparison, it took two years of serious plotting for al Qaeda to plan the 9/11 attacks.

So, what is the real level of threat now posed by al Qaeda and allied groups?

Let's start with "core al Qaeda" which attacked the United States on 9/11 and that is headquartered in Pakistan. This group hasn't, of course, been able to pull off an attack in the United States in twelve years. Nor has it been able to mount an attack anywhere in the West since the attacks on London's transportation system eight years ago.

Core al Qaeda on way to extinction

Osama bin Laden, the group's founder and charismatic leader, was buried at sea a year and half ago and despite concerns that his "martyrdom" would provoke a rash of attacks in the West or against Western interests in the Muslim world there has instead been.... nothing.

Meanwhile, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan during President Obama's tenure alone have killed 38 of al Qaeda's leaders in Pakistan, according to a count by the New America Foundation.

Those drone strikes were so effective that shortly before bin Laden died he was contemplating ordering what remained of al Qaeda to move to Kunar Province in the remote, heavily forested mountains of eastern Afghanistan, according to documents that were discovered following the SEAL assault on the compound where bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Core al Qaeda is going the way of the dodo.

Affiliates are no better off

And a number of the affiliates of core al Qaeda are in just as bad shape as the mother ship.

Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the virulent Southeast Asian al Qaeda affiliate that killed hundreds in the years after 9/11 is largely out of business. Why so? JI killed mostly Westerners in its first attacks on the tourist island of Bali in 2002, but the subsequent Bali attack three years later killed mostly Indonesians. So too did JI's attacks on the Marriott hotel in the capital Jakarta in 2003 and the Australian embassy in 2004. As a result, JI lost any shred of popular support it had once enjoyed.

At the same time the Indonesian government, which at one point had denied that JI even existed, mounted a sophisticated campaign to dismantle the group, capturing many of its leaders and putting them on trial.

In the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf Group, a number of whose leaders had trained in Afghanistan in al Qaeda's camps, and which specialized in kidnapping Westerners in the years after 9/11, was effectively dismantled by the Philippine army working in tandem with a small contingent of U.S. Special Operations Forces.

In Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban in 2009 took over the once-tranquil mountainous vacation destination of Swat, and destroyed some 180 schools and beheaded 70 policemen there. Suddenly, they were only 70 miles from the capital Islamabad and some warned that the Pakistani state was in danger. Today, the Pakistani Taliban have been rolled back to their bases along the Afghan border and 16 of their leaders have been killed by CIA drones since President Obama took office.

Al Qaeda militants based in Saudi Arabia mounted a terrorist campaign beginning in 2003 that killed dozens of Saudis, and they also attacked a number of the oil workers and oil facilities that lie at the heart of the Saudi economy. This prompted the Saudi government to mount such an effective crackdown that the few remaining al Qaeda leaders who were not killed or captured have in recent years fled south to Yemen where the remnants of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) are now based.

From its new headquarters in Yemen AQAP has made serious efforts to attack the United States, sending the "underwear bomber" to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and also smuggling bombs on to U.S.-bound cargo shipments in October 2010.

None of these attempts were successful.

Yemen militants decimated

As a result of the threat posed by AQAP, the United States has mounted a devastating campaign against the group over the past three years. There was one American drone strike in Yemen in 2009. In 2012 there were 46. That drone campaign has killed 28 prominent members of the group, according to a count by the New America Foundation. Among them was the No. 2 in AQAP, Said al-Shihri, who was confirmed to be dead last week.

In the chaos of the multiple civil wars that gripped Yemen in 2011, AQAP seized a number of towns in southern Yemen. But AQAP has now been pushed out of those towns because of effective joint operations between U.S. Special Operations Forces, the CIA and the Yemeni government.

The Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, even went to the United Nations General Assembly in September where he publicly endorsed the use of CIA drones in his country, something of a first.

A couple of years ago, al Qaeda's Somali affiliate, Al- Shabaab ("the youth" in Arabic) controlled much of southern Somalia including key cities such as the capital Mogadishu.

Once in a position of power, Shaabab inflicted Taliban-like rule on a reluctant Somali population, which eroded its popular legitimacy. Shabaab was also the target of effective military operations by the military of neighboring Kenya, troops of the African Union and U.S. Special Operation Forces.

As a result, today the group controls only some rural areas and for the first time in two decades the United States has formally recognized a Somali government.

Mali conflict shows weakness of jihadist militant groups

Similarly, groups with an al Qaeda-like agenda captured most of northern Mali last year, a vast desert region the size of France. Once in power they imposed Taliban-like strictures on the population, banning smoking and music and enforcing their interpretation of Sharia law with the amputation of hands. The militants also destroyed tombs in the ancient city of Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, on the grounds that the tombs promoted "idol worship."

None of these measures endeared the jihadist militants to the population of Mali. In the past weeks, as a relatively small force of some 2,000 French soldiers has rolled through Mali putting the militants on the run, the French have been cheered on by dancing and singing Malians.

When French soldiers are greeted as an army of liberation in an area of the world that in the past century was part of a vast French empire, you can get a sense of how much the jihadist militants had alienated the locals.

Last week the French military took the city of Timbuktu. The defeat of the al Qaeda-linked groups as effective insurgent forces in Mali is now almost complete.

What has just happened in Mali gets to the central problem that jihadist militant groups invariably have. Wherever they begin to control territory and population they create self-styled Islamic "emirates" where they then rule like the Taliban.

Over time this doesn't go down too well with the locals, who usually practice a far less austere version of Islam, and they eventually rise up against the militants, or, if they are too weak to do so themselves, they will cheer on an outside intervention to turf out the militants.

The classical example of this happened in Iraq where al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) controlled Anbar Province, about a third of the country in 2006. AQI cadres ruled with an iron fist and imposed their ultrafundamentalist rule on their fellow Sunnis, who they killed if they felt they were deviating from their supposedly purist Islamic precepts.

This provoked the "Sunni Awakening" of Iraqi tribes that rose up against AQI. These tribes then allied with the U.S. military and by the end of 2007 AQI went from an insurgent group that controlled vast territories to a terrorist group that controlled little but was still able to pull off occasional spectacular terrorist attacks in Baghdad.

Jihadist violence still a threat

The collapse of core al Qaeda and a number of its key affiliates does not, of course, mean that jihadist violence is over. Such religiously motivated mayhem has been a feature of the Muslim world for many centuries. Recall the Assassins, a Shia sect that from its base in what is now Iran dispatched cutthroats armed with daggers to kill its enemies around the Middle East during the 12th and 13th centuries. In so doing the sect gave the world the useful noun "assassin."

And so while core al Qaeda and several of its affiliates and like-minded groups are in terrible shape, there are certainly groups with links to al Qaeda or animated by its ideology that are today enjoying something of a resurgence.

Most of these groups do not call themselves al Qaeda, which is a smart tactic, as even bin Laden himself was advising his Somali affiliate, Al Shabaab, not to use the al Qaeda name as it would turn off fundraisers because the shine had long gone off the al Qaeda brand, according to documents recovered at bin Laden's Abbottabad compound.

One such militant group is the Nigerian Boko Haram, which bombed the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria in 2011 and has also attacked a wide range of Christian targets in the country. However, the group has shown "no capability to attack the West and also has no known members outside of West Africa," according to Virginia Comolli of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies who tracks the group.

Ansar al-Sharia, "Supporters of Sharia," is the name taken by the militant group in Libya that carried out the attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in September in which four Americans were killed. Similarly, in Yemen militants that are aligned with al Qaeda have labeled themselves Ansar al-Sharia.

But this new branding hasn't done the militants much good in either country. In Libya, shortly after the attack on the U.S. consulate, an enraged mob stormed and took over Ansar al Sharia's headquarters in Benghazi. And, as we have seen, in Yemen the jihadists have now been forced out of the towns in the south that they had once held.

One strong foothold in Syria

The one country where jihadist militants have a serious foothold and are likely to play an important role for some period in the future is in Syria. That is because of a perfect storm there that favors them. The Sunni militants in Syria are fighting the regime of Bashir al Assad, a secular dictator who is also an Alawite, which many Muslims believe to be a heretical branch of Shiism.

For the jihadists, Assad's secularism makes him an apostate and his Alawi roots also make him a heretic, while his brutal tactics make him an international pariah. This trifecta makes funding the Sunni insurgency highly attractive for donors in the Gulf.

And for the Arabs who form the heart of al Qaeda the fight against Assad is in the heart of the Arab world, a contest that happens to border also on the hated state of Israel. Also Syria was for much of the past decade the entry point for many hundreds of foreign fighters who poured into Iraq to join Al Qaeda in Iraq following the American invasion of the country. As a result, al Qaeda has long had an infrastructure both in Syria and, of course, in neighboring Iraq.

The Al Nusra Front is the name of arguably the most effective fighting force in Syria. In December the State Department publicly said that Al Nusra, which is estimated to number in the low thousands and about 10% of the fighters arrayed against Assad, was a front for Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Al Nusra certainly seems to have learned from AQI's mistakes. For starters, it doesn't call itself al Qaeda. Secondly, it hasn't launched a campaign to crack down on social issues such as smoking or listening to music and so has not alienated the local Sunni population as AQI did in Iraq.

Barak Barfi, a journalist and fellow at the New America Foundation who has spent several months on the ground in Aleppo in northwestern Syria reporting on the opposition to Assad, says Nusra fighters stand out for their bravery and discipline: "They are winning over the hearts and minds of Aleppo residents who see them as straight shooters. There is a regimented recruiting process that weeds out the chaff. Their bases are highly organized with each person given specific responsibilities."

Arab Spring countries seen as an opportunity

The chaotic conditions of several of the countries of the "Arab Spring" are certainly something al Qaeda views as an opportunity. Ayman al-Zawahiri the leader of the group, has issued 27 audio and video statements since the death of bin Laden, 10 of which have focused on the Arab countries that have experienced the revolutions of the past two years.

But if history is a guide, the jihadist militants, whether in Syria or elsewhere, are likely to repeat the mistakes and failures that their fellow militants have experienced during the past decade in countries as disparate as Somalia, the Philippines, Yemen, Iraq, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and now, Mali.

That's because encoded in the DNA of al Qaeda and like-minded groups are the seeds of their own destruction because in power they rule like the Taliban, and they also attack fellow Muslims who don't follow their dictates to the letter. This doesn't mesh very well with these organizations' claims that they are the defenders of Muslims.

These groups also have no real plans for the multiple political and economic problems that beset much of the Islamic world. And they won't engage in normal politics such as elections believing them to be "un-Islamic."

This is invariably a recipe for irrelevance or defeat. In not one nation in the Muslim world since 9/11 has a jihadist militant group seized control of a country. And al Qaeda and its allies' record of effective attacks in the West has been non-existent since 2005.

With threats like these we can all sleep soundly at night.

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Cops: Salon bandit was paying for cocaine habit

Labels: Health

Jason Logsdon, 41, of Evanston has been charge with 11 counts of armed robbery.

The man accused of holding up hair salons in Chicago and the suburbs used a BB gun, picked places where there would be no male workers, and told police the robberies paid for his crack cocaine habit, authorities say.

Jason Logsdon, 41, also used his girlfriend's car during at least one of the robberies, which finally led to his arrest this week, police said. He was tracked down in Skokie after someone at his last robbery on the North Side of Chicago provided a partial license plate number, authorities said.

Jason Logsdon

Surveillance photos from a Skokie robbery of a man believed to have robbed several suburban and city hair salons. Skokie police photos

Video: Suspect arrested in hair salon robberies

Hair salon bandit strikes again in Skokie

Police arrest suspect in beauty salon robberies

See more stories »

Maps

1200 North Ashland Avenue, Chicago, IL 60622, USA

Niles, IL, USA

Skokie, IL, USA

Morton Grove, IL, USA

Bensenville, IL, USA

Lombard, IL, USA

Glen Ellyn, IL, USA

1000 West Webster Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614, USA

Police said they recovered the BB gun along with a red coat that the Evanston man wore during the robberies.

Logsdon is accused of robbing a hair salon in Broadview, five in Chicago, one in Morton Grove, two in Niles and two in Skokie. The DuPage County state’s attorney’s office is pursuing additional charges against Logsdon for two robberies in Lombard, one in Glen Ellyn and one in Bensenville, officials said.

Logsdon, wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt and jeans, kept his head lowered during a hearing where Judge Marcia Orr ordered him held without bond. "I am considering the number of crimes in the short time in which they were committed," she said.

His public defender described Logsdon as a student at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Chicago. He was expecting to graduate in February, according to his lawyer. A spokesman at the school said he could not confirm or deny that information.

Logsdon is unemployed but has worked as a chef before, his lawyer said. He has lived in Evanston four years. He was arrested in 2003 for a DUI in Missouri, but otherwise has a clean record, lawyers said.

Logsdon was arrested after a salon in the Wicker Park neighborhood was hit. A man stole about $250 in cash from the Great Clips salon in the 1200 block of a well-trafficked North Ashland Avenue around 10:45 a.m. Monday, police said.

The man brandished a handgun before presenting a dark bag to three salon workers, which one of them filled with money, Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Daniel O'Brien said. Wearing a red and gray jacket, blue jeans and a hat and scarf, the man walked north on Ashland and hopped in a gray colored sedan, which left driving southbound, police said.

No one was injured, police said.

A witness from that robbery provided a license plate number that was one digit off, according to Brian Baker, Skokie’s commander in charge of the investigative division.

Chicago police ran variations on the number until they found a vehicle with a similar make and model as reported by the witness. The woman who owned the car had “no knowledge that these (robberies) were occurring,” Baker said.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

Tunisian government out after critic's killing causes fury

Labels: Business

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia's ruling Islamists dissolved the government on Wednesday and promised rapid elections in a bid to calm the biggest street protests since the revolution two years ago, sparked by the killing of an opposition leader.

The prime minister's announcement that an interim cabinet of technocrats would replace his Islamist-led coalition came at the end of a day which had begun with the gunning down of Chokri Belaid, a left-wing lawyer with a modest political following but who spoke for many who fear religious radicals are stifling freedoms won in the first of the Arab Spring uprisings.

During the day, protesters battled police in the streets of the capital and other cities, including Sidi Bouzid, the birthplace of the Jasmine Revolution that toppled Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.

In Tunis, the crowd set fire to the headquarters of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party which won the most seats in an legislative election 16 months ago.

Prime Minister Hamdi Jebali of Ennahda spoke on television in the evening to declare that weeks of talks among the various political parties on reshaping the government had failed and that he would replace his entire cabinet with non-partisan technocrats until elections could be held as soon as possible.

It followed weeks of deadlock in the three-party coalition. The small, secular Congress for the Republic, whose leader Moncef Marzouki has served as Tunisia's president, threatened to withdraw unless Ennahda replaced some of its ministers.

Wednesday's events, in which the Interior Ministry said one police officer was killed, appeared to have moved Jebali, who will stay on as premier, to take action.

"After the failure of negotiations between parties on a cabinet reshuffle, I have decided to form a small technocrat government," he said.

"The murder of Belaid is a political assassination and the assassination of the Tunisian revolution," he said earlier.

It was not clear whom he might appoint but the move seemed to be widely welcomed and streets were mostly calm after dark.

A leader in the secular Republican Party gave Jebali's move a cautious welcome.

"The prime minister's decision is a response to the opposition's aspirations," Mouldi Fahem told Reuters. "We welcome it principle. We are waiting for details."

Beji Caid Essebsi, leader of the secular party Nida Touns, who was premier after the uprising, told Reuters: "The decision to form a small cabinet is a belated move but an important one."

DIVISIONS

The widespread protests following Belaid's assassination showed the depth of division between Islamists and secular movements fearful that freedoms of expression, cultural liberty and women's rights were under threat just two years after the popular uprising ended decades of Western-backed dictatorship.

"This is a black day in the history of modern Tunisia. Today we say to the Islamists, 'get out', enough is enough," said Souad, a 40-year-old schoolteacher outside the ministry.

"Tunisia will sink in the blood if you stay in power."

Calls for a general strike on Thursday could bring more trouble though Belaid's family said his funeral, another possible flashpoint, might not be held until Friday.

Ennahda, like its fellow Islamists in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, benefited from a solid organization that survived repression by the old regime, to win 42 of seats in the assembly elected in October 2011 to draft a new constitution.

And as in Egypt, the Islamists have faced criticism from secular leaders that they are trying to entrench religious ideas in the new state. A constitution is still due to be agreed before a parliamentary election which had been expected by June.

Belaid, 48, was shot at close range as he left for work by a gunmen who fled on the back of a motorcycle. Within hours, crowds were battling police, hurling rocks amid volleys of teargas in scenes reminiscent of clashes in Egypt last month.

World powers, increasingly alarmed at the extent of radical Islamist influence and the bitterness of the political stalemate, urged Tunisians to reject violence and see through the move to democracy they began two years ago, when their revolution ended decades of dictatorship and inspired fellow Arabs in Egypt and across North Africa and the Middle East.

As in Egypt, the rise to power of political Islam through the ballot box has prompted a backlash among less organized, more secular political movements in Tunisia. Belaid, who made a name for himself by criticizing Ben Ali, led a party with little electoral support but his vocal opinions had a wide audience.

The day before his death he was publicly lambasting a "climate of systematic violence". He had blamed tolerance shown by Ennahda and its two, smaller secularist allies in the coalition government toward hardline Salafists for allowing the spread of groups hostile to modern culture and liberal ideas.

On Wednesday, thousands demonstrated in cities including Mahdia, Sousse, Monastir and Sidi Bouzid, the cradle of the revolution, where police fired teargas and warning shots at protesters who set cars and a police station on fire.

While Belaid's nine-party Popular Front bloc has only three seats in the constituent assembly, the opposition jointly agreed to pull its 90 or so members out of the body, which is acting as parliament and writing the new post-revolution charter. Ennahda and its fellow ruling parties have some 120 seats.

Since the uprising, Tunisia's new leaders have faced many protests over economic hardship and political ideas; many have complained that hardline Salafists may hijack the revolution.

Last year, Salafist groups prevented several concerts and plays from taking place in Tunisian cities, saying they violated Islamic principles. Salafists also ransacked the U.S. Embassy in September, during international protests over an Internet video.

The embassy issued a statement condemning Belaid's killing and urging justice for his killers: "There is no justification for this heinous and cowardly act," it said. "Political violence has no place in the democratic transition in Tunisia."

ECONOMIC TROUBLES

Declining trade with the crisis-hit euro zone has left the 11 million Tunisians struggling to achieve the better living standards many had hoped for following Ben Ali's departure.

Its compact size, relatively skilled workforce and close ties with former colonial power France and other European neighbors across the Mediterranean has raised hopes that Tunisia can set an example of economic progress for the region.

Lacking the huge oil and gas resources of North African neighbors Libya and Algeria, Tunisia counts tourism as a major currency earner and further unrest could scare off visitors vital to an industry only just recovering from the revolution.

Jobless graduate Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in December 2010 in the city, 300 km (180 miles) southwest of Tunis, after police confiscated his unlicensed fruit cart, triggering the uprising that forced Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia less than a month later, on January 14, 2011.

President Moncef Marzouki, who last month warned the tension between secularists and Islamists might lead to "civil war", cancelled a visit to Egypt scheduled for Thursday and cut short a trip to France, where he addressed the European Parliament.

"There are political forces inside Tunisia that don't want this transition to succeed," Marzouki said in Strasbourg. "When one has a revolution, the counter revolution immediately sets in because those who lose power - it's not only Ben Ali and his family - are the hundreds of thousands of people with many interests who see themselves threatened by this revolution."

Belaid, who died in hospital, said this week dozens of people close to the government had attacked a Popular Front group meeting in Kef, northern Tunisia, on Sunday. He had been a constant critic of the government, accusing it of being a puppet of the rulers of wealthy Gulf emirate Qatar.

DENIES INVOLVEMENT

Human Rights Watch called his murder "the gravest incident yet in a climate of mounting violence".

Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi denied any involvement by his party in the killing.

"Is it possible that the ruling party could carry out this assassination when it would disrupt investment and tourism?" Ghannouchi told Reuters.

He blamed those seeking to derail Tunisia's democratic transition: "Tunisia today is in the biggest political stalemate since the revolution. We should be quiet and not fall into a spiral of violence. We need unity more than ever," he said.

He accused opponents of stirring up sentiment against his party following Belaid's death. "The result is burning and attacking the headquarters of our party in many areas," he said.

Witnesses said crowds had also attacked Ennahda offices in Sousse, Monastir, Mahdia and Sfax.

French President Francois Hollande said he was concerned by the rise of violence in Paris's former dominion, where the government says al Qaeda-linked militants linked to those in neighboring countries have been accumulating weapons with the aim of creating an Islamic state across North Africa.

"This murder deprives Tunisia of one of its most courageous and free voices," Hollande's office said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Writing by Alison Williams and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Wall Street bounces back after sell-off; results a boost

Labels: World

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks climbed on Tuesday, recovering a day after the market's biggest sell-off since November, as stronger-than-expected earnings brightened the profit picture.

Dell Inc's stock rose after the world's No. 3 computer maker agreed to be taken private in a $24.4 billion deal, the largest leveraged buyout since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. The stock gained 1.1 percent to $13.42.

All 10 S&P sectors were higher, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq gained more than 1 percent.

The market's bounce follows a sell-off on Monday that gave the S&P 500 its biggest percentage decline since mid-November. The benchmark remains up 6 percent since the start of the year and is less than 4 percent away from its all-time closing high of 1,565.15 from October 2007.

Analysts said fourth-quarter results have been among factors helping to boost stocks. On Tuesday, Archer Daniels Midland reported revenue and adjusted fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, boosted by strong global demand for oilseeds. Shares rose 3.3 percent to $29.38.

"There's not a huge upside surprise by any means, but we're definitely seeing slightly better-than-expected earnings overall," said Bryant Evans, portfolio manager at Cozad Asset Management, in Champaign, Illinois.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 99.22 points, or 0.71 percent, at 13,979.30. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 15.58 points, or 1.04 percent, at 1,511.29. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 40.41 points, or 1.29 percent, at 3,171.58.

The market shot higher at the start of the year after U.S. lawmakers were able to come to a last-minute agreement to avoid a national "fiscal cliff," but questions on spending cuts remain.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to pass a small package of spending cuts and tax reforms. Though the plan was quickly rebuffed by Republican leaders, investors are looking for an agreement.

"I think there's some hopefulness out there that a reasonable compromise will be made," Evans said.

Also in earnings, Estée Lauder Cos Inc reported a higher quarterly profit and raised its full-year profit forecast. The stock rose 6 percent to $64.71.

With results in from more than half of the S&P 500 companies, 69 percent have beaten profit expectations, compared with the 62 percent average since 1994 and the 65 percent average over the past four quarters. Sixty-six percent of companies have beaten on revenue.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are expected to rise 4.5 percent, according to the data, above the 1.9 percent forecast at the start of earnings season.

On the down side, McGraw-Hill shares slumped 10.7 percent to $44.92 after the U.S. Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit seeking $5 billion over mortgage bond ratings. Standard & Poor's, a McGraw Hill unit, was accused of inflating ratings and understating risk out of a desire to gain more business from investment banks.

On Monday, McGraw-Hill stock suffered its worst one-day decline since the 1987 market crash.

Volume was roughly 6.7 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 nearly 11 to 4 and on the Nasdaq by about 3 to 1.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

World Peace suspended, Howard out for Lakers

Labels: Technology

NEW YORK (AP) — Forward Metta World Peace has been suspended for one game because he hit Detroit's Brandon Knight in the face, and the Los Angeles Lakers also will be without Dwight Howard again when they face the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday.

World Peace grabbed Knight around the neck and struck him in the jaw with the knuckles of his mostly open hand on Sunday with 1:43 left in the first half of the Lakers' 98-97 win over the Pistons.

Howard missed that game with a sore right shoulder that remains painful. He says he will miss his third straight game.

Pau Gasol will start at center in Howard's place, and the Lakers will have to move someone into World Peace's starting forward spot.

The former Ron Artest was also suspended seven games in April after an elbow to the head of Oklahoma City's James Harden. He is notorious for his 86-game suspension in 2004 for his role in the brawl with Pistons fans in Detroit.

World Peace also served a seven-game suspension in 2007 for his no-contest plea on a domestic violence charge.

Richard III 'still the criminal king'

Labels: Lifestyle

Richard III on stage and screen

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Dan Jones: Richard III's remains found; some see chance to redeem his bad reputation

Jones says the bones reveal and confirm his appearance, how he died and his injuries

Nothing changes his rep as a usurper of the crown who likely had nephews killed, Jones says

Jones: Richard good or bad? Truth likely somewhere in between

Editor's note: Dan Jones is a historian and newspaper columnist based in London. His new book, "The Plantagenets" (Viking), is published in the U.S. this spring. Follow him on Twitter.

(CNN) -- Richard III is the king we British just can't seem to make our minds up about.

The monarch who reigned from 1483 to 1485 became, a century later, the blackest villain of Shakespeare's history plays. The three most commonly known facts of his life are that he stole the crown, murdered his nephews and died wailing for a horse at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. His death ushered in the Tudor dynasty, so Richard often suffers the dual ignominy of being named the last "medieval" king of England -- in which medieval is not held to be a good thing.

Like any black legend, much of it is slander.

Richard did indeed usurp the crown and lose at Bosworth. He probably had his nephews killed, too; it is unknowable but overwhelmingly likely. Yet as his many supporters have been busy telling us since it was announced Monday that Richard's lost skeleton was found in a car park in Leicester, he wasn't all bad. In fact, he was for most of his life loyal and conscientious.

Dan Jones

To fill you in, a news conference held at the University of Leicester on Monday confirmed what archaeologists working there have suspected for months: that a skeleton removed from under a parking lot in the city center last fall was indeed the long-lost remains of Richard III.

News: Richard III: Is this the face that launched 1,000 myths?

His official burial place -- under the floor of a church belonging to the monastic order of the Greyfriars -- had been lost during the dissolution of the monasteries that was carried out in the 1530s under Henry VIII. A legend grew up that the bones had been thrown in a river. Today, we know they were not.

What do the bones tell us?

Well, they show that Richard -- identified by mitochondrial DNA tests against a Canadian descendant of his sister, Anne of York -- was about 5-foot-8, suffered curvature of the spine and had delicate limbs. He had been buried roughly and unceremoniously in a shallow grave too small for him, beneath the choir of the church.

He had died from a slicing blow to the back of the head sustained during battle and had suffered many other "humiliation injuries" after his death, including having a knife or dagger plunged into his hind parts. His hands may have been tied at his burial.

Opinion: What will the finding of Richard III mean?

In other words, we have quite a lot of either new or confirmed biographical information about Richard.

He was not a hunchback, but he was spindly and warped. He died unhorsed. He was buried where it was said he was buried. He very likely was, as one source had said, carried roughly across a horse's back from the battlefield where he died to Leicester, stripped naked and abused all the way.

All this is known today thanks to a superb piece of historical teamwork.

The interdisciplinary team at Leicester that worked toward Monday's revelations deserves huge plaudits. From the desk-based research that pinpointed the spot to dig, to the digging itself, to the bone analysis, the DNA work and the genealogy that identified Richard's descendants, all of it is worthy of the highest praise. Hat-tips, too, to the Richard III Society, as well as Leicester's City Council, which pulled together to make the project happen and also to publicize the society and city so effectively.

However, should anyone today tell you that Richard's skeleton somehow vindicates his historical reputation, you may tell them they are talking horsefeathers.

News: Back from the grave, King Richard III gets rehab

Richard III got a rep for a reason. He usurped the crown from a 12-year old boy, who later died.

This was his great crime, and there is no point denying it. It is true that before this crime, Richard was a conspicuously loyal lieutenant to the boy's father, his own brother, King Edward IV. It is also true that once he was king, Richard made a great effort to promote justice to the poor and needy, stabilize royal finances and contain public disorder.

But this does not mitigate that he stole the crown, justifying it after the fact with the claim that his nephews were illegitimate. Likewise, it remains indisputably true that his usurpation threw English politics, painstakingly restored to some order in the 12 years before his crime, into a turmoil from which it did not fully recover for another two decades.

So the discovery of Richard's bones is exciting. But it does not tell us anything to justify changing the current historical view of Richard: that the Tudor historians and propagandists, culminating with Shakespeare, may have exaggerated his physical deformities and the horrors of Richard's character, but he remains a criminal king whose actions wrought havoc on his realm.

Unfortunately, we don't all want to hear that. Richard remains the only king with a society devoted to rehabilitating his name, and it is a trait of some "Ricardians" to refuse to acknowledge any criticism of their hero whatever. So despite today's discovery, we Brits are likely to remain split on Richard down the old lines: murdering, crook-backed, dissembling Shakespearean monster versus misunderstood, loyal, enlightened, slandered hero. Which is the truth?

Somewhere in between. That's a classic historian's answer, isn't it? But it's also the truth.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dan Jones.

Father saw 'horrifying' accident injure son during opera rehearsal

Labels: Health

A day after he was burned while playing a fire-breathing stilt walker at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, actor Wesley Daniel was doing well and sending out photos of himself at the hospital, according to friends and relatives.

"He’s all bandaged up but he’s got this funny look in his eyes like, ‘Look at the mess I’ve got myself into,' " said David Kersnar, who directed Daniel in Lookingglass and Next Theatre productions last year.

Daniel was performing in a dress rehearsal of the opera "Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg" Monday afternoon when the mishap occurred. Daniel picked up a torch and a little jar of fluid and blew two fire balls, according to his father, Clifton Daniel, who was in the audience.

Then suddenly his son’s mask appeared to be on fire and he started patting his neck and chest before walking across the stage toward stagehands who were carrying fire extinguishers, Daniel's father said.

Clifton Daniel said he ran to his son backstage, where he was being treated with compresses. Paramedics had already been called and his son was upbeat, even giving a thumbs-up, the father said.

“It’s horrifying,” said Clifton Daniel, 55. “You don’t believe it. At first, everything’s fine. You’re proud of him. You’re amazed at what he’s learned to do, and suddenly he’s in trouble.”

The 24-year-old actor was taken in serious-to-critical condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital suffering burns to his throat and second-degree burns to his face, fire officials said. He was transferred to Loyola University Medical Center, where doctors inserted a breathing tube, officials said.

Clifton Daniel said there was no damage to his son's lungs or airway and the tube was removed Monday night. "Doctors likened them to a severe sunburn and he will heal,” his father said of the burns. “He shouldn’t have any scarring.”

The hospital told him his son should be released Thursday.

Clifton Daniel said his son graduated from Roosevelt University and has been acting for about three years. He was hired as a back-up for the opera in case someone called in sick or didn’t show up. Wesley Daniel stepped in when an actor was involved in a mishap last week, his father said.

Drew Landmesser, the Lyric’s deputy general director who focuses on backstage activities, said the company is still trying to determine the accident’s cause.

“We don’t exactly know the cause of the accident, just that it was a terrible accident and he seems to be doing well,” Landmesser said.

He stressed that Daniel was experienced with such a fire-spitting stunt, which he characterized as routine in the entertainment world.

“You’ve seen this a thousand times: at carnivals, at Renaissance fairs, at kids parties,” Landmesser said. “It’s a common routine for a performer like this.”

That said, Daniel was the replacement for a previous performer who was removed after a mishap involving the same stunt. “He had a handlebar mustache, and handlebar mustaches and fire-spitting don’t go well together,” Landmesser said, noting that the mustache “got singed, but there was no injury.”

Landmesser said Daniel’s mask never caught fire, nor did his costume.

“The fuel he was spitting was the only thing that was on fire,” he said, adding that the stunt has been removed from the production mostly so audience members won’t become distracted during one of the opera’s climatic scenes. “I think that frankly the press made something hysterical that was a rather calm event, but why upset people, let anyone misunderstand what happened or how safe it is?”

Tribune photographer Jason Wambsgans, who was at the rehearsal, said it resumed after a 30-minute break but was finally cut short, ending about 6 p.m.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration opened up an investigation into the incident after hearing about Wesley’s accident through the media, said agency spokesman Scott Allen. A compliance officer went to the Lyric Opera House this morning and talked to witnesses and employees to find out what may have caused the accident and if the opera house violated any OSHA regulations, he added.

Kersnar, who worked with Daniel at Roosevelt University, described the young actor as an experienced physical performer with circus training.

“It was the first time he was on the Lyric stage, but this is what he does,” said Kersnar, a Roosevelt adjunct professor. “He’s very funny, very strong, very skilled and smart. He doesn’t do stupid stuff. I was very surprised to hear this went wrong.”

Kersnar said Daniel performed various stunts for him, such as dressing as an ingenue and lifting the title character of “Pulcinella,” at the Lookingglass performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “This is the actor life. They do a lot of different things. He’s a jack of all trades.”

Clifton Daniel said he is the grandson of former President Harry S. Truman and Wesley Daniel is the president's great-grandson.

jdelgado@tribune.com

lford@tribune.com

ehirst@tribune.com

Iran's Ahmadinejad kissed and scolded in Egypt

Labels: Business

CAIRO (Reuters) - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was both kissed and scolded on Tuesday when he began the first visit to Egypt by an Iranian president since Tehran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

The trip was meant to underline a thaw in relations since Egyptians elected an Islamist head of state, President Mohamed Mursi, last June. But it also highlighted deep theological and geopolitical differences.

Mursi, a member of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, kissed Ahmadinejad after he landed at Cairo airport and gave him a red carpet reception with military honors. Ahmadinejad beamed as he shook hands with waiting dignitaries.

But the Shi'ite Iranian leader received a stiff rebuke when he met Egypt's leading Sunni Muslim scholar later at Cairo's historic al-Azhar mosque and university.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, head of the 1,000-year-old seat of religious learning, urged Iran to refrain from interfering in Gulf Arab states, to recognize Bahrain as a "sisterly Arab nation" and rejected the extension of Shi'ite Muslim influence in Sunni countries, a statement from al-Azhar said.

Visiting Cairo to attend an Islamic summit that begins on Wednesday, Ahmadinejad told a news conference he hoped his trip would be "a new starting point in relations between us".

However, a senior cleric from the Egyptian seminary, Hassan al-Shafai, who appeared alongside him, said the meeting had degenerated into an exchange of theological differences.

"There ensued some misunderstandings on certain issues that could have an effect on the cultural, political and social climate of both countries," Shafai said.

"The issues were such that the grand sheikh saw that the meeting ... did not serve the desired purpose."

The visit would have been unthinkable during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the military-backed autocrat who preserved Egypt's peace treaty with Israel during his 30 years in power and deepened ties between Cairo and the West.

"The political geography of the region will change if Iran and Egypt take a unified position on the Palestinian question," Ahmadinejad said in an interview with Al Mayadeen, a Beirut-based TV station, on the eve of his trip.

He said he wanted to visit the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory which neighbors Egypt to the east and is run by the Islamist movement Hamas. "If they allow it, I would go to Gaza to visit the people," Ahmadinejad said.

Analysts doubt that the historic changes that brought Mursi to power will result in a full restoration of diplomatic ties between states whose relations were broken off after the conclusion of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

OBSTACLES TO FULL TIES

At the airport the two leaders discussed ways of improving relations and resolving the Syrian crisis "without resorting to military intervention", Egyptian state media reported.

Egypt is concerned by Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is trying to crush an uprising inspired by the revolt that swept Mubarak from power two years ago. Egypt's overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population is broadly supportive of the uprising against Assad's Alawite-led administration.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr sought to reassure Gulf Arab allies - that are supporting Cairo's battered state finances and are deeply suspicious of Iran - that Egypt would not jeopardize their security.

"The security of the Gulf states is the security of Egypt," he said in remarks reported by the official MENA news agency.

Mursi wants to preserve ties with the United States, the source of $1.3 billion in aid each year to the influential Egyptian military.

"The restoration of full relations with Iran in this period is difficult, despite the warmth in ties ... because of many problems including the Syrian crisis and Cairo's links with the Gulf states, Israel and the United States," said one former Egyptian diplomat.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he was optimistic that ties could grow closer.

"We are gradually improving. We have to be a little bit patient. I'm very hopeful about the expansion of the bilateral relationship," he told Reuters. Asked where he saw room for closer ties, he said: "Trade and economics."

Egypt and Iran have taken opposite courses since the late 1970s. Egypt, under Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat, concluded a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and became a close ally of the United States and Europe. Iran from 1979 turned into a center of opposition to Western influence in the Middle East.

Symbolically, Iran named a street in Tehran after the Islamist who led the 1981 assassination of Sadat.

Egypt gave asylum and a state funeral to Iran's exiled Shah Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the 1979 Iranian revolution. He is buried in a mosque beside Cairo's mediaeval Citadel alongside his ex-brother-in-law, Egypt's last king, Farouk.

(Additional reporting by Ayman Samir, Marwa Awad and Alexander Diadosz; Writing by Paul Taylor and Tom Perry; Editing by Andrew Roche and Robin Pomeroy)

S&P 500 posts worst day since November; McGraw-Hill shares sink

Labels: World

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks slid on Monday, giving the S&P 500 its worst day since November, as renewed worries about the euro zone crisis caused the market to pull back from recent gains.

Shares of McGraw-Hill shed 13.8 percent to $50.30, their worst daily percentage decline since the October 1987 market crash, after news the U.S. Justice Department plans to sue Standard & Poor's, a unit of McGraw-Hill, over its mortgage bond ratings. It would be the first such federal action against a credit rating agency related to the recent financial crisis.

Chevron and Wal-Mart were among the biggest drags on the Dow after analyst downgrades, and all 10 S&P 500 sectors were lower. The losses follow Friday's market climb that left the S&P 500 at a five-year high and the Dow above 14,000.

"The market is extended and due for a pullback. I think people are looking for an excuse to make sales, and there (is) the concern coming from Europe," said Michael James, senior trader at Wedbush Morgan in Los Angeles.

Spanish and Italian bond yields rose, renewing worries about the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis. Spain's prime minister faced calls to resign over a corruption scandal, while a probe of alleged misconduct involving an Italian bank was expected to widen three weeks before a national election.

Adding to market pressure, data from the U.S. Commerce Department showed overall factory orders for December were below economists' expectations.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 129.71 points, or 0.93 percent, at 13,880.08. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 17.46 points, or 1.15 percent, at 1,495.71. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 47.93 points, or 1.51 percent, at 3,131.17.

With 18.7 billion shares traded, it was the busiest day on record for McGraw-Hill shares. Shares of ratings agency Moody's Corp fell 10.7 percent at $49.45, their worst one-day drop since August 2011.

The benchmark S&P 500 rose on Friday, leaving it roughly 60 points away from its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09, while the Dow's march above 14,000 was the highest for the index since October 2007.

The S&P index remains up about 5 percent for the year, with nearly half of the gains coming after U.S. legislators temporarily sidestepped the "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts.

The CBOE Volatility index VIX <.vix>, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, jumped 13.7 percent.

Chevron dipped 1.1 percent to $115.20 after UBS cut its rating to neutral, while Wal-Mart Stores Inc shed 1.2 percent to $69.63 after JP Morgan lowered its rating on the world's largest retailer and reduced its price target.

Shares of household products company Clorox rose 0.7 percent to $79.72 after quarterly profit beat analysts' estimates as a severe flu season boosted sales of disinfecting wipes.

According to Thomson Reuters data, of the 256 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings through Monday morning, 68.4 percent have reported earnings above analyst expectations, compared with the 62 percent average since 1994 and the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are expected to rise 4.4 percent, according to the data. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast at the start of earnings season, but well below the 9.9 percent forecast on October 1.

In deal news, software maker Oracle Corp agreed to buy network equipment company Acme Packet Inc for $1.7 billion net of cash. Shares of Oracle were down 3 percent at $35.13 while Acme Packet shot up 23.7 percent to $29.59.

Shares of Herbalife Ltd ended up 1.3 percent at $35.54, recovering its losses ahead of the close. The New York Post reported the seller of weight loss products is facing a probe by the Federal Trade Commission.

Volume was roughly 6.3 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.

Decliners outpaced advancers on the NYSE by nearly 4 to 1 and on the Nasdaq also by about 4 to 1.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

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Iran's Ahmadinejad kissed and scolded in Egypt

S&P 500 posts worst day since November; McGraw-Hill shares sink

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