17 gunmen dead in Thai military base attack

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BANGKOK, Thailand: Scores of heavily-armed gunmen stormed a military base in unrest-plagued southern Thailand, an army spokesman said on Wednesday, in a major assault that left at least 17 militants dead.

"Some 100 fully armed militants stormed the base, where there were 60 marines," Colonel Pramote Promin, southern army spokesman, told AFP.

He said the attack, one of the most ambitious in several years of violence in Thailand's three southernmost provinces, had left at least 17 assailants dead. No military casualties were reported.

- AFP/de




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Businessmen scared to complain against tax officials

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NEW DELHI: The finance ministry's plan to stamp out corruption in customs and excise departments across the country and address other grievances by appointing ombudsmen hasn't taken off with businessmen reluctant to file complaints against tax officials fearing reprisals.

S Dutt Majumdar, the ombudsman for Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal and J&K, said he was facing a peculiar problem - he was swarmed with 'verbal' complaints but no one was ready to come on record or lodge a formal case, barring a few from Delhi. He has been an indirect tax ombudsman for a year now.

"Even from Delhi, the representations are only a few. One would have been happy if this really reflected the scenario that everything is fine, and there are no grievances from trade and industry," Majumdar said.

"But that's not the real story. Some complainants have asked me whether I can act on the basis of their verbal complaints. Their apprehension is that they may face trouble in their future interactions with field officers if they lodge a written complaint," Majumdar said, indicating how some officers in field formations were actually making it difficult to bring in transparency in the system. Though he says a few cases that his office has settled there has been no such complaints he has received.

Majumdar, who retired as the chairman of Central Board of Excise and Customs, said orders and circulars issued from the top were often not implemented at the field level in their true spirit.

"The problem is compounded by lack of proper monitoring at different supervisory levels," Majumdar said. For instance, each commissionerate has a grievance redressal mechanism in place but these do not inspire confidence among people at several places, he added. Affected businessmen got relief only in places where supervisory officers were straight and proactive, he said.

The ombudsman's comments reflect the rampant corruption prevailing in the department. Last month, CBI had raided a senior official of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence for accepting bribes. That was a rare case where an official was trapped. But, usually, those who have to interact with the department on a regular basis and have day-to-day interaction compromise as that is the convenient and easy option.

The government had in 2011 created seven positions of indirect tax ombudsmen, one each in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Lucknow. However, three posts are yet to be filled.

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Where Will Pope Benedict XVI Retire?

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Someone with a suspicious mind and deep knowledge of Vatican trivia might have guessed that something was going on months ago. Last November, a community of cloistered nuns vacated the  Mater Ecclesiae monastery, located inside Vatican Gardens, two years before they were expected to do so.

The monastery has since been closed for renovation.

On Monday, in the press conference that followed Pope Benedict XVI's announcement that he will resign at the end of the month, Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office,  revealed that the monastery will be the retired pontiff's new home. (Photo Gallery: Inside the Vatican.)

"When renovation work on the monastery of cloistered nuns inside the Vatican is complete, the Holy Father will move there for a period of prayer and reflection," Lombardi said.

Until then, the pope will stay at the Apostolical Palace and the Pontifical Villas in Castel Gandolfo, a small lake town about 15 miles (24 kilometers) southeast of Rome, which serves as the traditional summer residence for popes.

The Mater Ecclesiae monastery was founded in 1992 by Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, "to create a place to house an international convent for contemplative life within the walls of Vatican City," according to the Vatican City State website.

It has housed small communities of cloistered nuns whose main task has been to provide spiritual assistance to the pope and to the Roman Catholic Church as a whole by praying in Latin and singing Gregorian chants.

The nuns would also embroider papal garments and cultivate a small organic orchard and a rose garden next to their residence. In a 2009 interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, the monastery's then abbess said that Benedict particularly appreciated the special-recipe marmalade that the nuns would prepare out of the oranges and lemons they picked in the Vatican orchard.

It is not yet clear for how long the soon-to-be-former pope will stay at the monastery. Lombardi has said that Benedict will not participate in the March conclave that will elect his successor, stressing that there will be "no confusion or division arising from his resignation."

Lombardi also said that he wasn't sure of Benedict's future title-there are no canon law provisions or historical precedents regarding the statute, prerogatives, or titles for a retired pope.

Resignations of Popes Past

Only a handful of popes have willfully or forcefully resigned in the church's history, the last case going back to 1415, almost 600 years ago.

"It was Pope Gregory XII, who, in a very sacrificial gesture, offered to resign so that the Council of Constance could assume his power and appoint a new pope, and in so doing bring an end [to the] Great Western Schism," Donald Prudlo, associate professor of history at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, told Vatican Radio.

Italian and foreign commentators have been likening Benedict's choice to a famous case of papal abdication-that of Celestine V, who was elected in 1294 and left the Roman throne only five months later.

"At the end of the 13th century, a very holy hermit named Peter was elected as Pope Celestine V in order to break a deadlock in the conclave that had lasted nearly three years," Prudlo explained. "He was elected because of his personal holiness, sort of a unity candidate. And once he got there, being a hermit, not used to the ways of the Roman Curia, he found himself somewhat unsuited to the task."

So he resigned and lived as a hermit—or, some historians say, as a prisoner—in a castle belonging to his successor, Boniface VIII, before dying in 1296.

Celestine is widely recognized as the object of Dante Alighieri's scolding verses in his Divine Comedy. The former pope was proclaimed saint in 1313.

In 2009, Benedict XVI visited Celestine's tomb in L'Aquila (map) and left the pallium—a vestment that is the symbol of papal authority—on the grave. Now that gesture is being interpreted as a premonition of the choice he would eventually make.


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Officer Dies After Dorner Shootout; Cabin on Fire

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Police are in a tense standoff with fugitive former-cop Christopher Dorner, who barricaded himself inside a remote mountain cabin near Big Bear, Calif., after a shootout with police in which he shot two cops, killing one, authorities said.


Smoke was seen coming from near or at the cabin shortly before 4:30 p.m. PT, and a fire has been reported to authorities.


Dorner, a former Navy marksman wanted for murdering a police officer and suspected in the deaths of two other people earlier this month, engaged in a gunfight with two San Bernardino County Sheriff's deputies who had pursued him.


The two were airlifted to a nearby hospital, where one died, police said.


Dozens of local, state and federal authorities are at the scene in the San Bernardino Mountains, and have the the cabin surrounded. Dorner has sworn to kill police and their family members in a manifesto discovered online last week.


The search for Dorner, one of the largest manhunts in recent memory, culminated in a call to police this afternoon that a suspect resembling Dorner had broken into a nearby home, taken hostages and stolen a car.


Police said the former cop, believed to be heavily armed and extremely dangerous, took two women hostage before stealing a car just after noon local time today, police said.


The two hostages, who were tied up by Dorner but later escaped, were evaluated by paramedics and were determined to be uninjured.


Officials say Dorner crashed the stolen vehicle and fled on foot to the cabin where he barricaded himself and exchanged fire with deputies from the San Bernardino Sheriff's Office and state Fish and Game officers.






Los Angeles Police Department/AP Photo











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Police have sealed all roads going into the area and imposed a no-fly zone above the cabin, nestled in a wooded area that has received several inches of snow in recent days.


Four Big Bear area schools were briefly placed on lockdown.


The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department stopped all traffic leaving the area and thoroughly searched vehicles, as SWAT team and tactical units could be seen driving toward the cabin, their sirens blaring.


FULL COVERAGE: Christopher Dorner Manhunt


Authorities say they believe Dorner may be watching reports of the standoff and have asked media not to broadcast images of police surrounding the cabin.


"If he's watching this, the message ... is: Enough is enough. It's time to turn yourself in. It's time to stop the bloodshed. It's time to let this event and let this incident be over," said Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Andy Smith, told reporters at a press conference.


Dorner faces capital murder charges that involve the killing of Riverside police officer Michael Crain, who was gunned down in an ambush last Thursday.


Since then a massive manhunt has been under way, focused primarily in the San Bernardino Mountains, but extending to neighboring states and as far away as Mexico.


A capital murder charge could result in the death penalty if Dorner is captured alive and convicted. Crain was married with two children, aged 10 and 4.


The charges do not involve the slayings of Monica Quan and her fiance, who were found shot to death Feb. 3. Quan was the daughter of former LAPD Capt. Randal Quan, who was mentioned as a target of Dorner's fury in his so-called "manifesto," which he posted on his Facebook page.



PHOTOS: Former LAPD Officer Suspected in Shootings


In the 6,000 word "manifesto," Dorner outlined his anger at the Los Angeles Police Department for firing him, and made threats against individuals he believed were responsible for ending his career with the police force five years ago.


Dorner's grievance with police goes back five years, to when he was fired after filing what the LAPD determined to be a false report accusing other cops of brutality.


The LAPD has assigned 50 protection details to guard officers and their families who were deemed possible targets.



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A taste for diplomacy

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Critical Loop Information Bulletin for heads of state, foreign ministers and their chefs:


An excellent meal of fine food and wine has often been the key to successful diplomatic negotiations. So if you’re hosting Secretary of State John Kerry
, here are some pointers.


In arranging a dinner with the former senator last year, one host asked whether Kerry had meal preferences.

One aide e-mailed: “Anything is good, as long as there is no celery involved.” Celery?

Shades of President George H.W. Bush’s war on broccoli back in 1990, when he famously declared: “I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid, and my mother made me eat it. I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.”

The edict, banning the offending vegetable from the White House and Air Force One, outraged broccoli farmers and the nutrition-minded.

But simply eschewing celery — while sure to upset the farmers — isn’t very much to go on when you’re putting on a full dinner.

So a second aide, apparently speaking with deep knowledge, refined the menu suggestions:

“He particularly enjoys scallops. . . . You’ll also do well with lamb chops, shepherd's pie, simple salad, clam chowder, chocolate desserts, ice cream. Apple juice, water, Zinfandel wine, Sauv Blanc. He doesn’t drink coffee and the celery restriction is accurate.”

Sounds very New England, maybe a bit old-fashioned. (But best not go overboard into a New England boiled dinner or creamed chipped beef.) In addition, we’ve heard it’s best not to serve farm-raised salmon. Good to know Kerry drinks water. It’s unclear whether sparkling or still, so offer both, just not tap.

Remember, a well-fed secretary of state could be the margin of difference in tense negotiations.


Closed doors, open windows

Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm’s name has been floated for many Cabinet jobs, including secretary of labor or transportation or energy.

But she’s thinking she may be out of the running.

Granholm, who last year hosted a show called “The War Room” on Current TV — the network Al Gore sold in January to al-Jazeera — said Sunday that she’s “probably” going to work at the Pew Charitable Trusts as a spokeswoman on clean-energy matters, though it’s not a “done deal.” (Quite so — a source at Pew says it’s not going to happen.)

Granholm, interviewed on “Platts Energy Week,” an all-energy news and talk show, said she’d been watching confirmation hearings in the past few weeks.

“If you think it was hard getting Hagel confirmed,” she said, referring to Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, “imagine somebody who has run a progressive talk show for the past year, probably poking a few Republicans in the eye,” maybe even some who will be voting on her nomination.

“I might be a little bit of a tough” challenge to confirm, Gran­holm said, “but I’m going to do all sorts of stuff serving on the outside, for sure.”

Sounds as though a Cabinet post is not in her future. On the other hand, there are good jobs that don’t require confirmation.

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Anti-whaling group takes battle to top US court

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WASHINGTON: The Sea Shepherd conservation group asked the US Supreme Court on Monday to lift an order forcing it to steer clear of Japan's whalers, who are seeking legal reprisals over harassment at sea.

Since 2002, Sea Shepherd has annually disrupted Japan's contested hunt in the Southern Ocean but a US court issued an injunction on December 17 for the activists to stay at least 500 yards away from the whaling vessels.

Environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son and namesake of the slain political icon, urged the United States to show support for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and its fugitive founder Paul Watson.

"It's a mission that only they are capable of accomplishing and that is absolutely vital to the enforcement of international agreements on the high seas which otherwise go unenforced," Kennedy told reporters.

The International Whaling Commission has designated a whale sanctuary in the Southern Ocean. Japan kills whales in the area through a loophole in a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling that allows lethal research.

Kennedy called Japan's government-supported Institute of Cetacean Research, which runs the whaling program and sued Sea Shepherd, "a pirate organisation masquerading as a scientific research group."

In a filing to the Supreme Court on Friday, Sea Shepherd and Watson said that the lower court "acted rashly" and voiced concern over the order's "extraordinarily long reach" to areas outside US jurisdiction.

The document said that the injunction marked "a potentially existential threat" to Sea Shepherd as more than 80 per cent of its funding comes from donations, which "may slow to a trickle" without the anti-whaling campaign.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit cited safety concerns when it issued the injunction, effective until a decision on the case.

The Institute of Cetacean Research hit back and was believed to have asked the judge to find Sea Shepherd in contempt of court -- which would potentially lead to punishment.

Sea Shepherd released a letter from a lawyer representing the institute, which complained that MV Brigitte Bardot, a former ocean racer named after the French actress and animal rights activist, violated the 500-yard injunction on January 29.

The letter warned of legal action unless Sea Shepherd ordered the Brigitte Bardot to comply with the injunction or returned it to port.

The Oregon-based group contended that it was observing the injunction, saying that the Brigitte Bardot sails under an Australian flag and is operated by Sea Shepherd's Australian sister organisation.

Japan's institute is "just like a bully who is finally challenged and runs to his mommy," said Scott West, the director of intelligence and investigation for US Sea Shepherd.

Sea Shepherd boasted that it has prevented Japan from killing whales this season. Japan, which makes no secret that meat from whaling ends up on dinner plates, accuses Western nations of disrespecting its cultural traditions.

Gavin Carter, a US-based spokesman for the Institute of Cetacean Research, called Sea Shepherd's Supreme Court filing an "unusual approach."

Watson, a dual US and Canadian citizen, has kept his whereabouts unknown since July, when he jumped bail in Germany, where he was arrested on charges from Costa Rica related to a confrontation over shark finning.

- AFP/jc



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Markanday Katju slams scribe’s detention

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NEW DELHI: Describing detention of journalist IftikharGilani by the Delhi police as "undemocratic" Press Council chairman MarkandayKatju asked Union home secretary for action against the police officials involved and criminal charges pressed against them.

Responding to a complaint filed by Gilani, Katju said that the Delhi police's behavior exposed a high-handed and outrageous behaviour.

In a letter to the home secretary R K Singh Justice Katju also sought immediate institution of criminal proceedings against such officers under relevant provisions of IPC and grant of compensation and apology to Gilani for his alleged harassment. He said the action against the cops should be initiated by the government within 48 hours.

The letter came after Gilani in an email to Katju complained that security agencies had illegally detained him at the house of his father-in-law Syed Ali Geelani following the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru and harassed him for many hours. Syed Ali Shah Geelani is a Kashmiri separatist leader who heads the hardline faction of Hurriyat Conference.

Katju used the opportunity to ask police personnel to not carry out such "illegal" orders of their superiors, "otherwise they will be charged for serious crimes, and if found guilty, severely punished".

On Gilani's charges of harassment, Katju said, "They reveal great high handedness and outrageous behaviour by the Delhi policemen concerned in harassing and tormenting Mr Gilani and his family, including his small children. These were the undemocratic and abhorrent methods of the Gestapo during Nazi rule."

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Kumbh Mela: Pictures From the Hindu Holy Festival

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Benedict's Legacy Marred by Sex Abuse Scandal

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When Pope Benedict XVI resigns at the end of this month, he leaves behind a Church grappling with a global fallout from sex abuse and a personal legacy marred by allegations that he was instrumental in covering up that abuse.


As the sex abuse scandal spread from North America to Europe, Benedict became the first pope to meet personally with victims, and offered repeated public apologies for the Vatican's decades of inaction against priests who abused their congregants.


"No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse," the pope said in a 2008 homily in Washington, D.C., before meeting with victims of abuse for the first time. "It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention." During the same trip to the U.S., he met with victims for the first time.


For some of the victims, however, Benedict's actions were "lip service and a public relations campaign," said Jeff Anderson, a Minnesota lawyer who represents victims of sex abuse. For 25 years, Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, headed the Vatican office responsible for investigating claims of sex abuse, but he did not act until he received an explicit order from Pope John Paul II.


In 1980, as Archbishop of Munich, Ratzinger approved plans for a priest to move to a different German parish and return to pastoral work only days after the priest began therapy for pedophilia. The priest was later convicted of sexually abusing boys.






Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images







PHOTOS: Church Sex Scandals


In 1981, Cardinal Ratzinger became head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the office once known as the Inquisition -- making him responsible for upholding church doctrine, and for investigating claims of sexual abuse against clergy. Thousands of letters detailing allegations of abuse were forwarded to Ratzinger's office.


A lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of the Survivors' Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a victims' rights group, charges that as head of the church body Ratzinger participated in a cover-up of abuse. In an 84-page complaint, the suit alleges that investigators of sex abuse cases in several countries found "intentional cover-ups and affirmative steps taken that serve to perpetuate the violence and exacerbate the harm."


"Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, either knew and/or some cases consciously disregarded information that showed subordinates were committing or about to commit such crimes," the complaint says.


Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's lawyer in the U.S., told the AP the complaint was a "ludicrous publicity stunt and a misuse of international judicial processes."


In the 1990s, former members of the Legion of Christ sent a letter to Ratzinger alleging that the founder and head of the Catholic order, Father Marcial Maciel, had molested them while they were teen seminarians. Maciel was allowed to continue as head of the order.


In 1996, Ratzinger didn't respond to letters from Milwaukee's archbishop about a priest accused of abusing students at a Wisconsin school for the deaf. An assistant to Ratzinger began a secret trial of the priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, but halted the process after Murphy wrote a personal appeal to Ratzinger complaining of ill health.


In 2001, Pope John Paul II issued a letter urging the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith to pursue allegations of child abuse in response to calls from bishops around the world.






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Marco Rubio emerges as GOP’s star. But is he the answer for Republicans?

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Lately, it seems just about everyone is fascinated by the junior senator from Florida.




Time’s current cover proclaims Marco Rubio “The Republican Savior.” The Web site BuzzFeed last week solicited his views on immigration, climate change, gay rights — and the relative artistic merits of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. That test of his hip-hop fluency came after Rubio released a Spotify playlist of 16 songs he is listening to, generating a flood of instant analysis in the blogosphere.


Next up: On Tuesday night, Rubio will give the GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union address — in English and Spanish.

“He carries our party’s banner of freedom, opportunity and prosperity in a way few others can,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in announcing Rubio’s selection to deliver the rebuttal. Republican uber-strategist Karl Rove has called Rubio “the best communicator since Ronald Reagan.”

Rubio is indeed a politician of unusual gifts. But the spotlight that has fallen on this relatively new arrival to the national scene says as much about the state of the Republican Party as it does about the 41-year-old senator. And it remains to be seen whether he represents the solution to the GOP’s problems, or whether the party’s sky-high hopes in an untested newcomer are just another measure of its drift.

His appeal starts with the fact that Rubio embodies two demographic groups with which the GOP needs to connect: young people and Hispanics.

And he has been trying to add substance to his sizzle. Rubio, in the first high-profile tryout of his legislative skills, is taking a leading role in shaping an overhaul of immigration law.

He is part of a bipartisan group of eight senators who put together a carefully calibrated set of principles that include a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million-plus immigrants in this country illegally. Rubio is the group’s point man tasked with selling that idea to the hard-liners on the right, who see it as heresy.

Rubio declined to be interviewed for this article. Aides explained that Rubio wants to dial things back a bit between now and the State of the Union response. When the Time cover appeared, he tweeted: “There is only one savior, and it is not me. #Jesus.”

“Like most things in politics, we are keenly aware of how fleeting this all is and how most news hype is all sound and no fury,” said Rubio’s senior strategist, Todd Harris. “You run the risk of becoming overexposed and overserved, not to mention the fact you might screw up.”

Rubio’s new prominence also comes at a difficult time for his party. Schisms have developed within the GOP as it searches for a path out of the electoral badlands after two presidential defeats.

He is that rare Republican who is beloved by both the party establishment, which is focused on reaching out to centrist and independent voters, and by the anti-establishment insurgent forces who say the party has erred in not holding true to its most conservative principles.

The Florida senator argues for both. Admirers often point to his 2011 declaration that “we don’t need new taxes. We need new taxpayers, people that are gainfully employed, making money and paying into the tax system.” It neatly skirted the charge, prosecuted to great effect by Democrats, that Republicans were simply favoring the rich.

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