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Tuesday, January 26, 2010 -- 3

NEWS BRIEFS
WASHINGTON
Feds to explore
offshore drilling in
Atlantic Ocean
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
says he is nearly ready to begin an
environmental analysis that could
lead to drilling 200 miles offshore
in the Atlantic Ocean.
Salazar told reporters he will
soon launch a 45-day comment
period on a planned study of how
drilling would affect the ocean
floor. He said federal officials
know little about the Atlantic
Coast because of a long-standing
moratorium on oil and gas explo-
ration across much of the nation's
Outer Continental Shelf.
Information on the possible effect
of Atlantic drilling "is 30 years out
of date," Salazar said Monday.
PARIS
France may ban
hijabs in public
A parliamentary panel will recom-
mendtoday that France ban face-cov-
ering Muslim veils in public locations
such as hospitals and schools, but not
in private buildings or on the street,
the group's president said.
The decision appeared to indicate
that the 32-member, multiparty panel
had heeded warnings that a full ban
of the all-encompassing veils would
be unfair, possibly unconstitutional,
and could even cause trouble in a
country where Islam is the second
" largest religion:
The approximately 170-page
report, to be released today, culmi-
nates a six-month inquiry into why a
tiny minority of Muslim women wear
such veils and the implications for
France.
The work began after President
Nicolas Sarkozy announced in June
that such garb "is not welcome" on
French territory. However, Sarkozy
has since pulled back from commit-
ting himself to a full ban.
Such dress is considered by many
as a gateway to extremism. However,
it also is widely seen as an insult to
gender equality and an offense to
France's profoundly secular founda-
tions.
Parliament will not be required to
act on Tuesday's recommendation.
And given the deep divisions within
the panel - its 12 Socialist members
refused to vote in a dispute with the
governing right - the recommenda-
tion for a partial ban on the face-
covering veils may only result in a
nonbinding government resolution.
MARYVILLE, Tenn.
Powdered donught
actually cocaine,
police say
East Tennessee police said a
Knoxville woman who was later
arrested for cocaine possession
initially told an officer that she had
been eating a powdered doughnut.
The Maryville Daily Times report-
ed that a 21-year-old woman was
arrested on Thursday and charged
with possession of a Schedule II sub-
stance with intent to sell or deliver.
She was also cited for driving on a

suspended driver's license, driving
without proof of insurance, failure to
maintain her lane of traffic and pos-
session of drug paraphernalia.
According to an Alcoa police
report, a field test on the substance
indicated that the white powder
she put in her mouth as an officer
approached the car was cocaine, not
a sugary pastry.
She was being held in the Blount
County Jail on a $12,250 bond pend-
ing a court hearing on Monday.
GROVE CITY, Pa.
Mother, son face
charges for burglary
A western Pennsylvania man has
been ordered to stand trial on charg-
es he burglarized a home after get-
ting a ride to the crime scene from
his mom. That woman, 50-year-old
Judith Martin, of Cochranton, still
faces a preliminary hearing Feb. 3
on conspiracy and other charges she
faces in the Jan.13 break-in allegedly
committed by her son, 20-year-old
Robert Martin.
Police said Robert Martin took
knives, jewelry, a telephone answer-
ing machine and other items from the
home in Liberty Township, Mercer
County. That's about 50 miles north
of Pittsburgh.
Police said a neighbor recognized
Martin and police said they later
found some of the stolen items at his
mother's house.
Neither Martin has a listed tele-
phone and online records don't list
attorneys for them.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports

C1inton: aid
to Haitineeds
new roadmap


.

Sec. of State says
Port-au-Prince
exodus complicates
relief efforts
MONTREAL (AP) - An effec-
tive recovery strategy for Haiti
must take into account a sud-
den rush of thousands of quake
survivors from Port-au-Prince
into the countryside, where the
economy cannot sustain them,
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton said yesterday.
Clinton, speaking to report-
ers during a break in a daylong
conference intended to review
and improve the delivery of
short-term aid as well as chart
a course for long-term recovery,
said she was encouraged by the
analysis of Haitian Prime Minis-
ter Jean-Max Bellerive. He told
the conference that the exodus
from Port-au-Prince has added
a new twist to the post-quake
challenge.
"The distribution of peo-
ple (and) their needs have
changed," Bellerive said. "We
have to reassess the whole coun-
try," in terms of job creation and
requirements for housing.

At a closing news conference,
Clinton said the U.S. would host
an international donors confer-
ence for Haitian relief in March
at U.N. headquarters in New
York.
Clinton told the concluding
news conference that it would
be unwise to organize a donors
conference now, in the absence
of a reliable assessment of Hai-
ti's needs and a solid roadmap
for how to coordinate and exe-
cute an international recovery
plan.
"We are still in an emergen-
cy" with many Haitians suffer-
ing and desperate for immediate
relief, she said, adding that the
Montreal talks were a first step.
"We're trying to do this in the
correct order," she said.
Canadian Foreign Minister
Lawrence Cannon told the final
news conference that Monday's
talks had produced "the begin-
nings of a roadmap" for helping
get Haiti back on its feet, as well
as a "shared vision" of the island
nation's longer-term rebuilding.
Earlier, Clinton said after a
one-on-one meeting with Cana-
dian Prime Minister Stephen
Harper that she was pleased to
see Haitian leaders addressing
this problem.

Al Iraqiyah via APTN/AP
Saddaw Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, was hanged in Iraq yesterday after receiving his fourt
death sentence for the Halabja poison gas attack in 1988 that killed some 5,000 people.
'Chemical Aui'
executed in Iraq-

CA gay marriage
hearing continues

Ali Hassan al-Maid
hanged after
receiving fourth
death sentence
BAGHDAD (AP) - Saddam
Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-
Majid, who was hanged yesterday,
ordered the infamous poison gas
attack on the northern Iraqi Kurd-
ish village of Halabja in 1988 that
killed 5,000 people and earned
him the chillingmoniker "Chemi-
cal Ali."
The chemical air raid is
thought to be the worst single
attack of its kind against civil-
ians. Graphic pictures taken after
the attack showed bodies of men,
women, children and animals
lying in the streets where they
inhaled the gas.
Al-Majid was executed a week
after he received his fourth death
sentence on Jan. 17, the final one
for the Halabja attack. He bore a
striking resemblance to Saddam
and was one of the most brutal
members of the dictator's inner
circle.

The general led sweeping mili-
tary campaigns in the 1980s and.
1990s that claimed tens of thou-
sands of lives - wiping out entire
villages in attacks against rebel-
lious Kurds and cracking down
on Shiites in southern Iraq.
He was one of the last high-
profile members of the former
Sunni-led regime still on trial in
Iraq.
Al-Majid was a warrant offi-
cer and motorcycle messenger in
the army before Saddam's Baath
party led a coup in 1968. He was
promoted to general and served
as defense minister from 1991-95,
as well as a regional party leader.
In 1988, as the eight-year Iran-
Iraq war was winding down,
al-Majid commanded a scorched-
earth campaign known as Anfal
to wipe out a Kurdish rebellion in
the north. An estimated 100,000
people - most of them civilians
- were killed in less than a year.
Later, al-Majid boasted about
the attacks, as well as the sepa-
rate March 16, 1988, gas attack
on Halabja, where an estimated
5,000 people died.
During the trials of figures in
Saddam's regime, prosecutors

played audiotapes of what they
said were conversations between
Saddam and al-Majid.
In one of the recordings, al-
Majid was heard vowing to "leave
no Kurd (alive) who speaks the
Kurdish language."
Poison gas had largely fallen
out of use after its horrendous
effects in World War I until Sad-
dam used it as a way to stave off
Iran's superior numbers during
the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
"For Saddam Hussein, chemi-
cal weapons were a force mul-
tiplier, a way of countering the
Iranian human-wave infantry
tactics that were overwhelming
Iraqi positions," said Jonathan
Tucker, author of "War of Nerves:
Chemical Warfare from World
War I to Al-Qaida" and a Wash-
ington-based senior fellow at the
James Martin enter for Nonpro-
liferation Studies.
Under al-Majid's leadership,
chemical weapons became the
Iraqi tool of choice against the
villages of the rebellious Kurds
hidden in the mountainous ter-
rain of the north - making the vic-
tims primarily civilians this time
instead of enemy soldiers.

Professor says gay
rights movement
is strong
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -
Gay people in California enjoy
substantial political power as a
result of nearly unanimous sup-
port from high-ranking elected
officials, labor unions, newspa-
pers, corporations and progres-
sive religious groups, a political
scientist testified yesterday in a
federal trial on the state's same-
sex marriage ban.
Kenneth Miller, a professor
at Claremont. McKenna College
who teaches California politics
and researches ballot initiatives,
was the first defense witness in
the trial over the constitutional-
ity of Proposition 8, the voter-
approved ban.
Last week, a Stanford Univer-
sity political scientist testified
that gays do not have a meaning-
ful level of political power.
Miller said perhaps the largest
single indication of the strength
of the gay rights movement
was the $43 million amassed
to defeat the gay marriage ban
in 2008. That was $3.4 million
more than initiative backers
raised.
"It's exceptionally rare" for bal-
lot measures on social issues to
generate that kind of cash, Miller
said.

Lawyers for the two same-sex
couples challenging Proposition
8 rested their case earlier in the
day after showing videotape of
a simulcast in which support-
ers of the ban said gay marriage
would lead to polygamy and
bestiality.
The footage was shown as an
example of the work of San Diego
pastor Jim Garlow, whb helped
organize evangelical Christian
support for the Proposition 8 bal-
lot measure in 2008.
In one video rally led by
Garlow, an unidentified pastor
warned "the polygamists are
waiting in the wings, because
if a man can marry a man and
a woman can marry a woman,
the polygamists are' going to
use that exact same argument
and they probably are going to
win."
An unidentified woman later
said "a man wanting to marry a
horse, brothers and sisters, any
combination would have to be
allowed."
It appeared the lawyers were
introducing the material to
demonstrate the campaign for
the ban appealed to religious-
based, anti-gay bias to scare
voters into supporting the mea-
sure.
Proposition 8 sponsors object-
ed to the video, saying the con-
tent of the simulcast was not
controlled by campaign manag-
ers or leaders.

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