Tracy Lee caught all the action from UFC on Fox 2, including Rashad Evans' title-shot earning win, Lavar Johnson's knockout, and Chael Sonnen's controversial win over Michael Bisping. Click through and enjoy.
Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/check-photos-ufc-fox-2-173343584.html
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KITAMAAT VILLAGE, British Columbia?? The latest chapter in Canada's quest to become a full-blown oil superpower unfolded this month in a village gym on the British Columbia coast.
Here, several hundred people gathered for hearings on whether a pipeline should be laid from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific in order to deliver oil to Asia, chiefly energy-hungry China. The stakes are particularly high for the village of Kitamaat and its neighbors, because the pipeline would terminate here and a port would be built to handle 220 tankers a year and 525,000 barrels of oil a day.
But the planned Northern Gateway Pipeline is just one aspect of an epic battle over Canada's oil ambitions ? a battle that already has a supporting role in the U.S. presidential election, and which will help to shape North America's future energy relationship with China.
It actually is a tale of two pipelines ? the one that is supposed to end at Kitamaat Village, and another that would have gone from Alberta to the Texas coast but was blocked by the Obama administration citing environmental grounds.
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Those same environmental issues are certain to haunt Northern Gateway as the Joint Review Panel of energy and environmental officials canvasses opinion along the 731 mile route of the Northern Gateway pipeline to be built by Enbridge, a Canadian company.
The fear of oil spills is especially acute in this pristine corner of northwest British Columbia, with its snowcapped mountains and deep ocean inlets. People here still remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, and oil is still leaking from the Queen of the North, a ferry that sank off nearby Hartley Bay six years ago.
Story: GOP tries new strategy to get Canada pipelineThe seas nearby, in the Douglas Channel, "are very treacherous waters," says David Suzuki, a leading environmentalist. "You take a supertanker that takes miles in order to stop, (and) an accident is absolutely inevitable."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada's national interest makes the $5.5 billion pipeline essential. He was "profoundly disappointed" that U.S. President Barack Obama rejected the Texas Keystone XL option but also spoke of the need to diversify Canada's oil industry. Ninety-seven percent of Canadian oil exports now go to the U.S.
"I think what's happened around the Keystone is a wake-up call, the degree to which we are dependent or possibly held hostage to decisions in the United States, and especially decisions that may be made for very bad political reasons," he told Canadian TV.
Gingrich attacks
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich quickly picked up the theme, saying that Harper, "who, by the way, is conservative and pro-American ... has said he's going cut a deal with the Chinese ... We'll get none of the jobs, none of the energy, none of the opportunity."
He charged that "An American president who can create a Chinese-Canadian partnership is truly a danger to this country."
But the environmental objections that pushed Obama to block the pipeline to Texas apply equally to the Pacific pipeline, and the review panel says more than 4,000 people have signed up to testify.
The atmosphere has turned acrimonious, with Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver claiming in an open letter that "environmental and other radical groups" are out to thwart Canada's economic ascent.
He said they were bent on bogging down the panel's work. And in an unusually caustic mention of Canada's southern neighbor, he added: "If all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: Sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further."
Environmentalists and First Nations (a Canadian synonym for native tribes) could delay approval all the way to the Supreme Court, and First Nations still hold title to some of the land the pipeline would cross, meaning the government will have to move with extreme sensitivity.
Alberta has the world's third-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela: more than 170 billion barrels. Daily production of 1.5 million barrels from the oil sands is expected to increase to 3.7 million in 2025, which the oil industry sees as a pressing reason to build the pipelines.
Critics, however, dislike the whole concept of tapping the oil sands, saying it requires huge amounts of energy and water, increases greenhouse gas emissions and threatens rivers and forests. Some projects are massive open-pit mines, and the process of separating oil from sand can generate lake-sized pools of toxic sludge.
Meanwhile, China's growing economy is hungry for Canadian oil. Chinese state-owned companies have invested more than $16 billion in Canadian energy in the past two years, state-controlled Sinopec has a stake in the pipeline, and if it is built, Chinese investment in Alberta oil sands is sure to boom.
"They (the Chinese) wonder why it's not being built already," said Wenran Jiang, an energy expert and professor at the University of Alberta.
In a report on China's stake in Canadian energy, Jiang notes that if every Chinese burned oil at the rate Americans do, China's daily consumption would equal the entire world's.
Harper is set to visit China next month. After Obama first delayed the Keystone pipeline in November, Harper told Chinese President Hu Jintao at the Pacific Rim summit in Hawaii that Canada would like to sell more oil to China, and the Canadian prime minister filled in Obama on what he said.
Jiang reads that to mean "China has become leverage."
But oil analysts say Alberta has enough oil to meet both countries' needs, and the pipeline's capacity of 525,000 barrels a day would amount to less than 6 percent of China's current needs.
"I don't think U.S. policymakers view China's investment in the Canadian oil sands as a threat," says David Goldwyn, a former energy official in the Obama administration.
"In the short term it provides additional investment to increase Canadian supply; that's a good thing. Longer-term, if Canadian oil goes to China, that means China's demand is being met by a non-OPEC country, and that's a good thing for global oil supply. Right now we are spending an awful lot of time finding ways for China to meet its demand from some place other than Iran. Canada would be a great candidate."
Pipelines are rarely rejected in Canada, but Murray Minchin, an environmentalist who lives near Kitamaat Village, says this time he and other opponents are determined to block construction. "They are ready to put themselves in front of something to stop the equipment," Minchin said. "Even if it gets the green light it doesn't mean it's getting done."
Native communities offered 10 percent ownership
Enbridge is confident the pipeline will be built and claims about 40 percent of First Nation communities living along the route have entered into a long-term equity partnership with Enbridge. The communities together are being offered 10 percent ownership of the pipeline, meaning those which sign on will share an expected $400 million over 30 years.
But of the 43 eligible communities, only one went public with its acceptance and it has since reneged after fierce protests from its members.
Janet Holder, the Enbridge executive overseeing the project, says pipeline leaks are not inevitable, new technologies make monitoring more reliable, and tugboats will guide tankers through the Douglas Channel.
At the Kitamaat hearings, speakers ranged from Ellis Ross, chief of the Haisla First Nation in British Columbia, to Dieter Wagner, a German-born Canadian, retired scientist and veteran sailor who called the Douglas Channel "an insane route to take."
Ross used to work on whale-watching boats, and refers to himself as a First Nation, a term applicable to individuals as well as groups. He testified that the tanker port would go up just as marine life decimated by industrial pollution was making a comeback in his territory.
He held the audience spellbound as he described an extraordinary nighttime encounter last summer with a whale that was "logging" ? the half-doze that passes for sleep in the cetacean world.
"...Midnight I hear this whale and it's right outside the soccer field. ... It's waterfront, but I can hear this whale, and I can't understand why it's so close, something's got to be wrong.
"So I walk down there with my daughter, my youngest daughter, and I try to flash a light down there, and quickly figured out it's not in trouble, it's sleeping. It's resting right outside our soccer field.
"You can't imagine what that means to a First Nation that's watched his territory get destroyed over 60 years. You can't imagine the feeling."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46181932/ns/world_news-americas/
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) ? A 6,500-year-old Sumerian gold jar, the head of a Sumerian battle axe and a stone from an Assyrian palace were among 45 relics returned to Iraq by Germany on Monday.
The items were among thousands stolen from Iraq's museums and archeological sites in the mayhem that followed the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The tiny gold jar, dating to 4,500 BC, the bronze axe head, clay tablets bearing cuneiform script, a metal amulet and other artifacts were seized by German police at public auctions and turned over to Iraqi officials in a ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Alexander Schonfelder, deputy head of the German diplomatic mission in Iraq, said German law dictated that any artifacts taken from Iraq after 1990 should be returned.
"This means that the German government has the right to confiscate them and that is what we have done, and given them back to Iraq," Schonfelder said.
Some 15,000 artifacts were thought to have been looted from the Iraqi National Museum and thousands more from archeological sites since the start of the 2003 war.
Up to than 10,000 of the National Museum pieces are still missing, said Amira Eidan, general director of the museum.
Iraq, which the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia or "land between two rivers" because of its Tigris and Euphrates, is regarded by archaeologists as the cradle of civilization.
Many believe it gave birth to such milestones of human development as agriculture, codified law and the wheel.
In recent years the Iraqi government has slowly reassembled some of the country's lost history.
Last September officials announced the recovery of the headless statue of a Sumerian king and more than 500 other pieces. Two weeks later the National Museum found 600 missing items stashed in a storeroom of the prime minister's office.
In December 2008, Iraqi authorities seized 228 artifacts that smugglers planned to take out of the country.
"We are heading in coming months to retrieve Iraqi artifacts from Britain, from the United States of America, and Canada ... we will follow Iraq's antiquities wherever they are," said Abbas al-Quraishi, head of Iraq's artifact retrieval department.
(Reporting by Aseel Kami; Editing by Jim Loney)
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) ? The family of a missing Kansas City baby has taped an appearance on the "Dr. Phil" show.
Viewers can tune in Friday to watch the interview with Lisa Irwin's parents and a private investigator who's searching for her.
Lisa was reported missing Oct. 4 when her father, Jeremy Irwin, came home from work around 4 a.m. and couldn't find her. Irwin and Deborah Bradley say they think someone broke into the house and took their daughter.
Deborah Bradley has said police have accused her of being involved in Lisa's disappearance. In tearful statements to the media early on, Bradley has repeatedly insisted she doesn't know what happened to her child.
No suspects have been named, despite an intensive search.
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KABUL, Afghanistan ? France's plans to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan a year early drew harsh words Saturday in the Afghan capital, with critics accusing French President Nicolas Sarkozy of putting domestic politics ahead of Afghans' safety.
A wider proposal by Sarkozy for NATO to hand over all security to Afghans by the end of next year also came under fire, with one Afghan lawmaker saying it would be "a big mistake" that would leave security forces unprepared to fight the Taliban insurgency and threaten a new descent into violence in the 10-year-old war.
Sarkozy's decision, which came a week after four French troops were shot dead by an Afghan army trainee suspected of being a Taliban infiltrator, raises new questions about the unity of the U.S.-led military coalition.
It also reopens the debate over whether setting a deadline for troop withdrawals will allow the Taliban to run out the clock and seize more territory once foreign forces are gone.
"Afghan forces are not self-sufficient yet. They still need more training, more equipment and they need to be stronger," said military analyst Abdul Hadi Khalid, Afghanistan's former interior minister.
Khalid said the decision by Sarkozy was clearly political. Sarkozy's conservative party faces a tough election this year, and the French public's already deep discontent with the Afghan war only intensified when unarmed French troops were gunned down by an Afghan trainee Jan. 20 at a joint base in the eastern province of Kapisa.
Sarkozy announced France's new timetable on Friday alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was in Paris for a previously planned visit. He also said Karzai had agreed with him to ask for all international forces to hand security over to the Afghan army and police in 2013, a plan he would present at a Feb. 2-3 meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.
In what could be seen as a gentle rebuke to France, British Prime Minister David Cameron said in London on Saturday that withdrawals must depend on security conditions on the ground.
"The rate at which we can reduce our troops will depend on the transition to Afghan control in the different parts of Afghanistan and that should be the same for all of the members of NATO who are all contributing and helping to (build) a strong, stable and peaceful Afghanistan, which is in all our interests,'" he said after meeting with Karzai.
Afghan lawmaker Tahira Mujadedi said Afghan security forces will not be ready in time for any early NATO withdrawal, saying the current timetable already is rushing the training of national forces.
"That would be a big mistake by the Afghan government if they accept it," Mujadedi said of Sarkozy's plan. "In my view, they should extend 2014 by more years instead of cutting it short to 2013."
She said she sympathizes in the matter of the French soldiers' deaths, but argued that they present no logical reason for France to deviate from the U.S. timetable for NATO to hand over security by 2014.
"When military forces are present in a war zone, anything can happen," Mujadedi said. The French troops "are not here for a holiday."
France now has about 3,600 soldiers in the international force, which is mostly made up of American troops.
Afghan forces started taking the lead for security in certain areas of the country last year and the plan has been to add more areas, as Afghan police and soldiers were deemed ready to take over from foreign troops.
According to drawdown plans already announced by the U.S. and more than a dozen other nations, the foreign military footprint in Afghanistan will shrink by an estimated 40,000 troops at the close of this year. Washington is pulling out the most ? 33,000 by the end of the year. That's one-third of 101,000 U.S. troops that were in Afghanistan in June, the peak of the U.S. military presence in the war, Pentagon figures show.
Sarkozy also said France would hand over authority in the province of Kapisa, where the French troops were killed this month, by the end of March. Karzai's office confirmed that decision Saturday, saying it was made at the French president's request.
The NATO coalition has started to hand over security in several areas of Afghanistan, aiming to transfer about half of the country in the coming months. But Kapisa was not one of the provinces earmarked for handover, according to U.S. Navy Lt. James McCue, a coalition spokesman.
Mujadedi, a lawmaker who represents Kapisa, argued that Afghan forces in her province are not ready to go it alone in fighting the Taliban insurgency, which is especially strong in several of the province's districts. She warned that if NATO forces do pull back from Kapisa, it could also destabilize nearby Kabul.
"We have had so many attacks, ambushes and also suicide attacks in Kapisa," Mujadedi said. "Unfortunately, our national police and army, while present in Kapisa, are unable to provide good security for people."
France's early withdrawal announcement could step up pressure on other European governments like Britain, Italy and Germany, which also have important roles in Afghanistan.
Karzai, who praised the role of France and other NATO allies, didn't object at Friday's joint news conference when Sarkozy said the 2013 NATO withdrawal timetable was sought by both France and Afghanistan.
However, the Afghan leader appeared to suggest that it was a high-end target.
"We hope to finish the transition ... by the end of 2013 at the earliest ? or by the latest as has been agreed upon ? by the end of 2014," Karzai said.
Nick Witney, a senior policy fellow at the Paris-based European Council on Foreign Relations, said public support of the war in Europe started sliding fast after the coalition agreed to end the combat mission in 2014.
"It has become more and more difficult to justify every single casualty, since it's now clear that these are wasted lives," said Witney, a former head of the European Defense Agency.
"Most European policymakers realize that on a purely cost-benefit assessment, we would all leave Afghanistan tomorrow," Witney said.
___
Associated Press writers Slobodan Lekic in Brussels and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.
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Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon, Friday, Jan., 27, 2012, to discuss US Army cuts. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon, Friday, Jan., 27, 2012, to discuss US Army cuts. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon, Friday, Jan., 27, 2012, to discuss US Army cuts. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon, Friday, Jan., 27, 2012, to discuss US Army cuts. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Pentagon's decision announced Friday to take two heavy armor brigades out of Europe in 2013 and 2014 will not necessarily force NATO allies to shoulder more of the load if ground forces are needed for a large-scale conflict in the region, Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said Friday.
Odierno said the military will work hard to mitigate the impact of the shift on European allies, who rely heavily on U.S. military might to provide the bulk of the forces in a ground campaign.
The move to shift brigades out of Europe is part of a broader Pentagon plan to cut the size of the Army by 80,000 soldiers and restructure the service to ensure the military has the capabilities it needs to go to war. Odierno said the mandate to reduce the force from 570,000 soldiers during the height of the Iraq war to 490,000 by 2017 will force the military to rely more on the National Guard and reserves, particularly if the U.S. gets into two major, long-term combat operations at the same time.
Odierno said he is comfortable with the reduction in the force. But he suggested that the U.S. will now have to keep its reserve forces at a higher level of readiness than it did before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pressed tens of thousands citizen soldiers into service to buttress the active duty Army.
He also said his support for the force cuts hinges on the fact that the Army will have more than five years to make the reductions, largely through normal attrition. He acknowledged, however, that a small number of officers may have to be forced to leave.
As the Iraq war dragged on, the Pentagon had to recruit thousands of additional active duty soldiers and beef up and repeatedly tap reserve brigades in order to meet the combat demands there and in Afghanistan. For roughly eight years, the U.S. battled in both countries at the same time, stretching and straining the Army.
Meeting that type of commitment with an Army of 490,000 would not work, Odierno said.
"Do I have the capability to go into Korea and meet the requirements? Yes," he said, when asked about the risks of a smaller force. "Do I have the ability to stay there for 10 years? No."
If the military had to fight two large, simultaneous, long-term wars, he said, the U.S. would rely more heavily on its allies in the region and call for a massive mobilization of the reserves.
"Because of the fact that they (Guard and reserves) have been involved in combat operations for very long period of time, we are going to come up with a readiness model that will keep them at a little bit higher level than they have been in the past," Odierno told reporters during an interview in his Pentagon office. And if needed, he said, the U.S. would use reserves to "buy us time to increase the active component" to wage two large, intensive wars.
NATO allies have long relied on the U.S. ground forces to wage such conflicts, so cutting the European-based force in half will be met with reservations from those leaders.
But one senior defense official said the U.S. is working on a variety of options to compensate for the loss. Those could include further U.S. commitments to NATO's rapid response force, which includes up to 25,000 forces provided by the allies. There also will likely be additional multinational military exercises. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not been finalized.
Odierno said the two brigades being taken out of Europe ? both heavy armor units ? will be eliminated rather than reassigned somewhere in the United States. Both are based in Germany ? the 172nd Infantry Brigade, currently in Grafenwoehr, and the 170th Infantry Brigade in Baumholder. That will leave two U.S. Army combat brigades permanently stationed in Europe, one in Germany and one in Italy.
Baumholder Mayor Peter Lang noted that the German military ? which did away with conscription last year and is downsizing significantly ? is closing two barracks in the area already.
"This is a second tough blow for our region," he told the dapd news agency. The Rhineland-Palatinate state interior minister, Roger Lewentz, said he was holding out hope, however, that the U.S. troops may not leave the area entirely, saying he planned a trip in May to Washington, where he would lobby for at least some logistical facilities to remain open
"In reality, I think in the long run this will benefit all of us," Odierno told reporters. He said U.S. Army units will be rotated in and out of Europe based on the training and other needs of the NATO partners. That system, he said, will allow more U.S. units to work with the allies and "we will be able to tailor our engagements based on their needs."
Over the long-term, U.S. officials said they are planning to slash the number of combat brigades from 45 to possibly as low as 32. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss planning. Odierno said eight brigades will be shelved over the next several years, and officials will decide in the next six months or so if additional units should go.
Officials said the changes will likely increase the size of each combat brigade ? generally by adding another battalion ? in a long-term effort to ensure that those remaining brigades are robust and able to perform their missions without straining the force.
A brigade is usually about 3,500 soldiers but can be as large as 5,000 for the heavily armored units. A battalion is usually between 600 and 800 soldiers.
"We will make our brigades more capable to operate across missions, will eliminate unnecessary overhead, and allow us to sustain more combat capability if we do this right," said Odierno, who did not provide any details about the restructuring.
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By CIARAN FAHEY
Associated Press
Associated Press Sports
updated 10:44 a.m. ET Jan. 26, 2012
BERLIN (AP) -Despite spending freely on new players last year, Bayern Munich has found itself caught up in the closest Bundesliga race in 20 years.
Four teams are separated by only one point for the first time after 18 games since 1991-92. Bayern leads defending champion Borussia Dortmund and in-form Schalke on goal difference, while Borussia Moenchengladbach is a point behind.
"You could put four dice with the respective club logos in a cup, shake, and whoever comes out first will be German champions," said Udo Lattek, the former Bayern, Moenchengladbach and Barcelona coach.
After losing to Moenchengladbach 3-1 last weekend, Bayern is hoping to get back on track when it hosts Wolfsburg on Saturday.
Wolfsburg has been the only side to rival Bayern's spending this season, paying out a reported ?27.2 million ($35.4 million) for eight players in January to make up for a disappointing first half to the season.
"You could see their potential," Wolfsburg coach Felix Magath said about his new players after a 1-0 win over Cologne last week.
Also Saturday, Dortmund hosts Hoffenheim and Schalke visits Cologne, while Moenchengladbach travels to Stuttgart on Sunday.
Bayern lost its opening game of the season 1-0 to Moenchengladbach and responded by winning its next 10 games in all competitions, scoring 28 goals and conceding none.
"There was a real song and dance (after the first loss to Moenchengladbach) and it'll happen again this time," director of sports Christian Nerlinger said. "Once we're out on the field, we'll give the same answer as last summer."
Jerome Boateng is likely to start in central defense for Bayern after Daniel van Buyten broke a metatarsal in the loss to Moenchengladbach. The Belgian defender will be out for two months.
"We have enough quality in defense," said Boateng, who has mostly featured at right back. "I'm always delighted when I get to play in the center. Every player has a favored position, and mine's center back."
Boateng knows that Bayern will have to quickly recover its early season form to keep its rivals at bay.
"As we saw back then, we're capable of playing better football than now," Boateng said. "We have to watch ourselves and turn the corner."
Bayern will be able to count on French winger Franck Ribery, who returns from suspension and is likely to start despite a minor back problem.
Bastian Schweinsteiger should also play after shaking off a knee problem. The Germany midfielder has only recently returned from a broken collarbone.
"If we show what we can do we should take the three points," Schweinsteiger said Thursday.
Wolfsburg has only claimed one point from 14 Bundesliga games in Munich, but welcomes back top scorer Mario Mandzukic from injury. The Croatian is keen to add to his eight goals.
"We needn't be afraid. These days we can beat anyone, even Bayern," Mandzukic said. "I'm fired up for this game."
Poland captain Jakub Blaszczykowski, who scored twice in Dortmund's 5-1 rout of Hamburg, will start again in place of the injured Mario Goetze, who has been ruled out for two months because of a pubic bone injury.
"For Mario and for us it's a big blow," said Dortmund sports director Michael Zorc. "We have to try and compensate for his absence as well as possible."
Schalke also has its injury concerns, with captain Benedikt Hoewedes ruled out for two weeks after breaking his cheekbone in the 3-1 win over Stuttgart.
Spanish striker Raul Gonzalez has been unable to train since Tuesday due to a calf problem.
"Raul is being looked after. We'll have to see how it looks for him on Saturday," Schalke coach Huub Stevens said.
Stuttgart has reinforced its forward line with the signing of Vedad Ibisevic from Hoffenheim, and the Bosnian is likely to start against Moenchengladbach, which hasn't won in Stuttgart since December 1994.
Also Sunday, Mainz hosts Freiburg.
In the rest of Saturday's games, Werder Bremen hosts Bayer Leverkusen, Hamburger SV visits Hertha Berlin, and Augsburg hosts Kaiserslautern in a relegation battle.
Nuremberg gets the weekend's action under way at Hannover on Friday.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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More newsAFP - Getty ImagesPedro Rodriguez and Daniel Alves scored first-half goals, and Barcelona held off a spirited Real Madrid comeback attempt to eliminate the defending Copa del Rey champion with a 2-2 tie Wednesday night.
The U.S. women's soccer team was still on the field, having dispatched rival Mexico, when Abby Wambach gathered her teammates for a little speech.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/44000621/ns/sports-soccer/
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama was set on Thursday to promote a plan for greater use of natural gas and open up more land for offshore drilling during a campaign-style tour aimed at shoring up confidence in his economic stewardship.
At a stop in Las Vegas, Nevada, Obama will seek to counter Republican criticisms of his energy policies by rolling out a proposal to offer tax incentives for companies to buy natural gas trucks, which would help build demand for abundant supplies of the fuel.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Obama acknowledged the nation's booming natural gas sector, which has grown dramatically in recent years as advances in technology have unlocked vast new reserves.
Obama will talk up the idea during a visit to a UPS facility in Las Vegas, which received stimulus funding to invest in liquefied natural gas vehicles and construct a public LNG refueling station.
"We think that we're going to be looking at 600,000 jobs in natural gas extraction here in the United States and all the industries that come with it," Obama said in an interview with Univision on Wednesday in Arizona.
The president was also to visit Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, where the Air Force was installing a one-megawatt solar panel system, and where last year it test-piloted jets that run on advanced biofuels.
Obama, seeing some improvement in his poll numbers, is touring five states after his combative State of the Union address in which he took aim at income inequality and also announced new proposals on manufacturing, student loans and energy.
But his effort to keep a spotlight on his policy prescriptions suffered a setback on Wednesday when a tense encounter in Arizona with Republican Governor Jan Brewer grabbed headlines and dented his hopes of portraying himself as above the partisan fray.
A CLEAN ALTERNATIVE?
Using domestic natural gas as a "clean" alternative to importing foreign oil has been heavily promoted by Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens and has attracted support from both sides of the aisle in Congress.
Still, Obama's proposal, which would need Congressional approval, could face an uphill battle to make it into law, with Republicans offering more resistance to costly energy subsidies.
Similar measures aimed at expanding tax breaks for natural gas vehicles have failed to break through partisan gridlock, and conservative groups have opposed such legislation on the grounds that government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers in the energy sector.
Republicans have hammered Obama on his energy policies, and were enraged over his decision to block the Keystone pipeline, which they say would have created jobs and reduced dependence on oil from the Middle East.
Increasing domestic natural gas consumption would benefit drillers, as U.S. natural gas prices have fallen sharply because of the growing glut and the relatively warm winter.
Producers such as Chesapeake Energy are cutting output in the face of the weakest gas prices in 10 years.
Obama was also expected to announce that the Interior Department will hold the last scheduled offshore lease sale of the government's current five-year drilling plan in June, offering 38 million acres for development in central Gulf of Mexico.
The department held its first offshore lease sale since the massive BP oil spill in December, with companies successfully bidding more than $337 million for rights to drill in the Gulf.
Analysts said those results were a sign that drilling is rebounding in the Gulf after the administration temporarily shut down deepwater exploration after the BP disaster.
Still, oil and gas industry backers have complained that the administration has hindered drilling through slow permitting and a raft of new rules implemented since the 2010 oil spill.
(Editing by Gary Hill and Sandra Maler)
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MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) ? Republican Newt Gingrich, cranking up the campaign rhetoric, mocked White House rival Mitt Romney's plan for self-deportation of illegal immigrants as a "fantasy" on Wednesday and assailed President Barack Obama's tax ideas as "stupid."
Gingrich, who has surged in recent polls to pull into a virtual tie with Romney in Florida after beating him last week in South Carolina, poked fun at Romney during a forum sponsored by the Spanish-language network Univision.
He ridiculed Romney's statement on Monday that he would support "self-deportation" of illegal immigrants rather than force the government to round them up and send them home, a stance that has drawn criticism as unworkable.
"You have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and automatic, you know, $20 million a year income with no work to have some fantasy this far from reality," Gingrich said in a reference to Romney's fortune, revealed when he released his tax records earlier this week.
Romney has taken a tougher position on illegal immigration than Gingrich, including threatening to veto the Dream Act, a proposal that would allow some children of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
Momentum from a big win at the South Carolina primary election last week has propelled Gingrich into Florida, which holds its primary vote on January 21.
At an earlier campaign stop, Gingrich also criticized Obama's proposal in Tuesday's State of the Union speech to make those who earn at least $1 million a year pay a marginal tax rate of at least 30 percent.
Gingrich said in Coral Springs that he was expecting clarification from the White House because the proposal was "so stupid even they couldn't defend it."
Romney also attacked Obama's proposal during a campaign event in Orlando, saying the president seemed "detached from reality" during his address.
LATINO VOTE
Immigration is a big issue in Florida, where 11 percent of registered Republican voters are Hispanic and many are of Cuban descent. The state's primary on Tuesday is the next battleground in the Republican race to pick a challenger to Obama and will be a crucial swing state in November's general election.
Gingrich, the former House speaker, has said he would work to pass a version of the Dream Act that would allow children of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship if they join the military.
"I am not for the whole Dream Act, but I am for the part that says if you are in the United States, even if your parents brought you illegally, if you are here, you have the same right to sign up in the military and earn citizenship," Gingrich said.
"This is not an issue that I took up on Tuesday," he said, adding he supported a "practical, honest, conversation about a series of steps that get us to legality."
In a separate appearance at the Univision forum, Romney was told Gingrich had called him anti-immigration.
"It is very sad for a candidate to resort to that kind of epithet. It is just inappropriate," he said. "There are differences between candidates on important issues but we don't attack each other with those kind of terrible terms. I am not anti-immigrant. I am pro-immigrant."
Romney's campaign sent reporters a compilation of past statements by Gingrich and his spokesman supporting self-deportation. "This is who Newt Gingrich is: an unreliable leader who undermines conservatives, hurts our party and emboldens President Obama and his liberal allies," said Romney spokesman Albert Martinez.
"There were times when the president said if you send me this legislation, I will sign it. And I thought, well, aren't you the leader of the free world? Why don't you draft some legislation?" Romney said.
"Why don't you go out and say here's what I want, here's what needs to happen, come to the White House, let's sit down and hammer this out together," he said.
Both Romney and Gingrich courted Hispanics with their appearances at the Univision forum. Gingrich took a tough stance against Cuba, proposing a range of steps including covert operations and psychological warfare to end the Castro government.
DENIES HYPOCRISY OVER INFIDELITY
Gingrich said he would use the same tools against Cuba that were used against the former Soviet Union by former President Ronald Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
"They went at it psychologically, they went at it economically, they went at it diplomatically, they went at it with covert operations," he said. "You want to say to the entire younger generation of the dictatorship 'You have no future propping up the dictatorship. You have a wonderful future if you are willing to become a democracy.'"
Gingrich was asked at the forum about his marital troubles and whether it was hypocritical of him to lead the impeachment effort against President Bill Clinton in 1998 when Gingrich also was being unfaithful to his second wife.
"I didn't do the same thing. I have never lied under oath. I have never committed perjury. I have never been involved in a felony. He was," Gingrich said.
(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Sam Youngman, Deborah Charles; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Eric Walsh)
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WASHINGTON ? A GOP-led House committee is challenging the Obama administration's investigation into Chevy Volt batteries that caught fire last year, raising questions about whether the government's partial ownership of General Motors Co. created a conflict of interest.
The report by the Republican staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said it was "deeply troubling" that safety regulators waited several months before telling the public that a Volt battery caught fire three weeks after a government crash test. The fire happened in June but was not made public until November ? "a period of time that also coincides with the negotiation over the 2017-2025 fuel economy standards," the report states, adding that it was possible that those negotiations "incentivized NHTSA to remain silent on the issue."
But in a recent letter to committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Administrator David Strickland said that the agency's investigation into the Chevy Volt "is completely unrelated to the fuel economy standards rulemaking."
The committee was set to hold a subcommittee hearing on the issue Wednesday. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report ahead of its official release.
In an email Tuesday, NHTSA spokeswoman Lynda Tran said that following the June fire, the agency needed to determine through careful forensic analysis whether the Volt was the actual cause ? and if so, what the implications were for safety ? and that took time.
"If at any time during this process we had reason to believe that vehicle owners faced any imminent safety risk we would have made that point known to the public right away," she said.
NHTSA began studying the Volt last June after a fire broke out in one of the cars three weeks after it was crashed as part of safety testing. Two other fires related to separate safety tests occurred later, and NHTSA opened an official investigation into the vehicle on Nov. 25. The government ended its investigation last week, concluding that the Volt and other electric cars don't pose a greater fire risk than gasoline-powered cars. The agency and General Motors Co. know of no fires in real-world crashes.
But some critics have criticized the government's response, accusing it of having a conflict of interest because the government still owns 26.5 percent of the company's shares, and because the administration has touted electric cars. Wednesday's subcommittee hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform was titled, "Volt Vehicle Fire: What Did NHTSA Know and When Did They Know It?"
"Questions have been raised as to whether or not GM receives special deference from the administration because of its status as a ward of the state," the committee report states, adding, "the Obama administration has tied the political reputation of the president closely to the success of GM generally, and to the Chevy Volt specifically." The report also accuses NHTSA officials of not cooperating with its investigation, and of being unprepared to respond to car battery risks.
Both Strickland and GM chairman and CEO Daniel F. Akerson were scheduled to testify at Wednesday's hearing.
In written testimony, Akerson said that testing by government regulators resulted in fires "after putting the battery through lab conditions that no driver would experience in the real world."
The company advised Volt owners to return their cars to dealers for repairs that will lower the risk of battery fires. GM hopes that, by adding steel to the plates protecting the batteries, it will ease worries about the car's safety. The cars are covered by a "customer satisfaction program" run by GM, which is similar to a safety recall but allows the carmaker to avoid the bad publicity and federal monitoring that come with a recall.
"The Volt is safe," Akerson said.
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Sunspots are the main sources for solar flares ? brief pulses of intense radiation created when the Sun?s magnetic loops spontaneously snap and rearrange themselves. Sometimes, a spate of solar flares will spur an even more violent phenomenon, a billion-ton belch of magnetized plasma that explodes out from our star at millions of miles per hour, plowing into anything in its path. Scientists call these solar belches "coronal mass ejections," or CMEs.
By October 28, the Sun?s rotation had brought the sunspot region into direct alignment with Earth. And then it happened. Around 7 am Eastern time, the region released a pulse of high-energy photons in one of the strongest solar flares ever recorded. Eight minutes later, satellites detected the photons arriving at Earth, followed some minutes later by a shower of slower-moving, high-energy subatomic particles. The particles accumulated in the Earth?s upper atmosphere, where they dramatically interfered with high-frequency radio communications and slightly increased radiation exposures for airplane crews and passengers. At a fuel cost of several tens of thousands of dollars per flight, commercial airlines began rerouting many of their planes on longer, safer routes that did not take them near the Earth?s polar regions, where our planet?s magnetic field caused most of the particles to linger. The flurry of particles also degraded GPS satellite signals, causing ground-based receivers to temporarily lose service or receive flawed navigation data.
As disruptive as the particle shower was, it was only the beginning. At 7:30 am, just after sunrise on the east coast of the United States, a satellite stationed directly between the Sun and the Earth observed our star gain an ominous glowing halo, the telltale sign of a CME aimed directly at our planet. All along the eastern seaboard, millions of people awoke to a seemingly normal, sunny day, unaware that they and our entire planet lay directly in the path of a vicious solar storm.
Shortly after 2 am Eastern time on October 29, the CME arrived at Earth, and the storm?s major effects began. A magnetized plasma front slammed into our planet?s magnetic field, pumping it full of energy to create a "geomagnetic storm" that sent powerful electric currents reverberating in and around the Earth. Vivid displays of auroral lights, normally restricted to higher latitudes, painted the night sky red and green in Florida and Australia.
A geomagnetic storm produces dangerous electrical currents in a manner analogous to a moving bar magnet raising currents in a coil of wire. When a CME hits the Earth?s magnetic field and sends it oscillating, those undulating magnetic fields raise currents in conductive material within and on the Earth itself. The currents that ripple through our planet can easily enter transformers that serve as nodes in regional, national, and global power grids. They can also seep into and corrode the steel in lengthy stretches of oil and gas pipeline.
On October 29, power grids around the world felt the strain from the geomagnetic currents. In North America, utility companies scaled back electricity generation to protect the grid. In Sweden, a fraction of a CME-induced electric current overloaded a high-voltage transformer, and blacked out the city of Malmo for almost an hour. The CME dumped an even larger mass of energetic particles into Earth?s upper atmosphere and orbital environment, where satellites began to fail because of cascading electronics glitches and anomalies. Most were recovered, but not all. Astronauts in low-Earth orbit inside the International Space Station retreated to the Station?s shielded core to wait out the space-weather storm. Even there, the astronauts received elevated doses of radiation, and occasionally saw brief flashes of brilliant white and blue?bursts of secondary radiation caused when a stray particle passed directly through the vitreous humor of the astronauts? eyes at nearly light-speed.
Flares and CMEs from the Sun continued to bombard the Earth until early November of that year, when at last our star?s most active surface regions rotated out of alignment with our planet. No lives were lost, but many hundreds of millions of dollars in damages had been sustained.
The event, now known as the Halloween Storm of 2003, deeply worried John Kappenman, an engineer and expert in geomagnetic storm effects. The Sun had fired a clear warning shot. Its activity roughly follows an 11-year cycle, and severe space weather tends to cluster around each cycle?s peak. The Sun?s next activity peak is expected to occur this year or next, and the chance of more disruptive geomagnetic storms will consequently increase.
Kappenman was particularly frightened by the blackout in Malmo. Subsequent investigations of the CME revealed that it had only struck a glancing blow ? its magnetic field was aligned so that much of the potential impact was dampened, rather than enhanced, by the Earth?s own. If, by chance, the alignment had been different, and our planet had absorbed the full brunt of the CME, who knew how large the blackout would have been, or how long it would have lasted?
Considering the possibility of a long blackout, stretching over weeks, months, even years, Kappenman suddenly saw a foreboding societal reliance on electricity everywhere he looked. Perishable foods and medicines would spoil or freeze in warehouses suddenly stripped of climate control. Municipal stores of fuel and potable water relying on electric pumps would be rendered all but inaccessible. Telecommunications would crash, preventing the general dissemination of information and large-scale coordination between emergency responders. The twin specters of social collapse and mass starvation would stalk entire continents.
"If you lose electricity, within a matter of days you essentially lose almost everything else," Kappenman says. "After the initial blackout, we wouldn?t really understand the seriousness of the situation until several days went by without having things restored. We?d rapidly lose the ability to provide the necessities for modern society."
All this may seem like doomsaying, but the historic record suggests otherwise: The Halloween Storm, in fact, pales in comparison to several earlier events. In 1989, ground currents from a less intense geomagnetic storm knocked out a high-voltage transformer at a hydroelectric power plant Quebec, plunging the Canadian province into a prolonged 9-hour blackout on an icy winter night. A far more extreme geomagnetic storm washed over the Earth in May of 1921, its magnitude illustrated in world-girdling aurorae and in fires that broke out in telegraph offices, telephone stations, and railroad routing terminals ? sites that sucked up geomagnetic currents traveling through nascent power grids. An even more extreme storm in September 1859 caused geomagnetic currents so strong that for days telegraph operators could disconnect their equipment from battery power and send messages solely via the "auroral current" induced in their transmission lines. The 1859 storm is known as the "Carrington Event," after a British astronomer who witnessed an associated solar flare and connected it with the subsequent earthbound disturbances.
"The physics of the Sun and of Earth?s magnetic field have not fundamentally changed, but we have," Kappenman says. "We decided to build the power grids, and we?ve progressively made them more vulnerable as we?ve connected them to every aspect of our lives. Another Carrington Event is going to occur someday." But unlike in 1859, when the telegraph network was the sole technology endangered by space weather, or in 1921, when electrification was in its infancy, today?s vulnerable systems are legion.
Over the past 50 years, global power-grid infrastructure has grown by about a factor of ten. That growth has been accompanied by a shift to higher operating voltages, which increase the efficiency of electricity transmission but make the grid less resistant to exterior impinging currents. As the grid has grown, so too has the practice of importing and exporting electricity between regions, across interstate and international lines. The electricity to power a street light in upstate New York may sometimes come from a hydroelectric plant in Quebec; a neon sign outside a nightclub in Tijuana sometimes gets its juice from a natural-gas power plant in Southern California. This interdependency of nodes in the grid means a power outage in one region can more easily cascade into others, increasing the risk of widespread collapse. We have created a continent-sized antennae?one exquisitely tuned to soak up ground currents caused by space weather, yet poorly equipped to counter their negative influence.
Kappenman has made a career of understanding how a geomagnetic storm as powerful as 1859?s Carrington Event could affect modern infrastructures, and has undertaken a series of studies on the topic underwritten by various branches of the U.S. federal government. He has consistently found that in a worst-case scenario where a great geomagnetic storm strikes with little forewarning, the excess current in the U.S. power grid could overheat hundreds or thousands of high-voltage transformers, melting crucial components and effectively crippling much of the nation?s generation capacity. Based on current production rates, building replacement transformers would take as long as 4 to 10 years, during which more than a hundred million people would be without centrally provided power, causing an estimated economic impact in the U.S. of $1 to $2 trillion in the first year alone.
In direct response to Kappenman?s work, last year the Department of Homeland Security asked an independent group of elite scientists, the JASON Defense Advisory Panel, to investigate his claims. In their report, issued in November 2011, the JASONs expressed skepticism that Kappenman?s worst-case scenario could occur, pointing out that his analyses used proprietary techniques that prevented their full vetting and replication by other researchers. Nonetheless, they sided with Kappenman in stating that in its current form, the U.S. power grid was vulnerable to severe damage from space weather. Like Kappenman, the JASONs called for more space-weather safeguards, recommending that the U.S. grid be hardened against geomagnetic currents and that the nation?s aging network of sun-observing satellites be bolstered.
Not everyone is optimistic that our modern society will successfully address the problem?including physicist Avi Schnurr, who is also the president of the Electric Infrastructure Security Council, a non-governmental organization advocating space-weather resilience. "If a Carrington Event happened right now it probably wouldn?t be a wake-up alarm?it would be a goodnight call," he says. "This is a case where we have to do something that is not often successfully achieved by governments, and certainly not by democracies: We have to take concerted action against a predicted threatening event without having actually experienced the event itself in modern times."
Protecting the power grid on Earth is, in principle, relatively straightforward. (Countries such as Finland and Canada have already begun to take action, with promising results.) Most high-voltage transformers are directly connected to the ground to neutralize power surges from lightning strikes and other transient phenomena. They?re vulnerable to space weather because geomagnetic currents flow upward through these ground connections.
By placing arrays of electrical resistors or capacitors as intermediaries between the ground and critical transformers, like those serving nuclear power plants and major metropolitan areas, that connection would be severed?and the space-weather threat greatly reduced if not entirely eliminated. Experts estimate this could be accomplished within a few years, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars per transformer. In practice, however, it?s not so easy. So far, U.S. power companies have balked at voluntary installation of such devices, and current government regulations don?t require such protections.
In 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed the GRID Act, which would grant the federal government authority to take action to protect the national power grid in the event of an emergency, but the bill floundered in the Senate. Undaunted, in February of 2011 Congressional proponents introduced a new, nearly identical bill, the SHIELD Act, which as of this writing has still not come to a floor vote in the House or the Senate. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a self-regulatory body for North American electric utilities, formed a Geomagnetic Disturbance Task Force in 2010 to craft new standards and regulations to protect the grid from cataclysmic space-weather-induced failures, but the Task Force?s reports are still forthcoming.
"The real danger here isn?t astrophysical, it?s institutional. The threat to everyone belongs to no one," says Peter Pry, a former official in the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. House Armed Services Committee who has tried to spur legislative action on the threat of space weather. After watching year after year in frustration as bills mandating protection of the grid repeatedly floundered in Congress, Pry helped form EMPACT America, a non-profit group chartered to raise public and governmental awareness of electromagnetic threats to the nation?s infrastructure. Pry currently serves as EMPACT?s president, and says the group is devoted to "ramrodding" the necessary legislation through Congress.
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KANO, Nigeria ? Nigerian security forces killed a man and a pregnant woman early Tuesday morning in an assault on a neighborhood in this northern city where at least 185 people died in a recent terror attack by a radical Islamist sect, witnesses said.
Assault rifle rounds left bullet holes in the cement walls of the home in the sprawling city of Kano. Its interior metal doors were peppered with holes as well. Inside a living room, blood pooled around beige sofas, with a single rifle cartridge left behind. A man in traditional robes sobbed as he stood in the puddle.
Witnesses said security forces surrounded the home early Tuesday morning and started a gun battle that lasted hours. Relative Musa Ibrahim Fate said the dead man was a retired worker from the country's education ministry. A sedan inside the compound, also riddled with bullet holes, bore federal government license plates.
Fate said the man, who he declined to name, was not a member of the sect known as Boko Haram, which claimed responsibility for the coordinated attack Friday in Kano that left so many dead. Security forces took the two dead bodies away, with family members still trying to figure out how to claim them for burial before sundown as is Islamic tradition.
"He didn't belong to any religious group. Is it because of his beard?" Fate asked. "That means you cannot dress the way you are. Is it good? Is this how government is going to treat us?"
Kano state police spokesman Magaji Musa Majiya declined to immediately comment, saying the local commissioner of police would brief journalists later Tuesday. However, the scene around the house remained tense as locals pressed against the front gate Tuesday morning. A military attack helicopter circled overhead.
Friday's attack in Kano killed at least 150 civilians, 29 police officers, three secret police officers, two immigration officers and one customs official, police now say, bringing the toll to 185 dead. Medical workers and emergency officials say they still expect the death toll to rise.
Police also say they have discovered 10 unexploded car bombs in the city, as well as about 300 bombs made from aluminum cans and other explosives. That has raised fears that Boko Haram could strike again in this city of more than 9 million people that carries religious and political importance across Nigeria's Muslim north.
Friday's coordinated attack in Kano represents Boko Haram's deadliest assault since beginning a campaign of terror last year. Boko Haram has now killed 262 people in 2012, more than half of the 510 people the sect killed in all of 2011, according to an Associated Press count.
Nigeria's weak central government has been unable to stop the killings, and its heavy-handed military response has been criticized by civilians who live in fear of sect attacks and government reprisals.
Boko Haram wants to implement strict Shariah law and avenge the deaths of Muslims in communal violence across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people split largely into a Christian south and Muslim north.
While the sect has begun targeting Christians in the north, the majority of those killed Friday appeared to be Muslim, officials said.
___
Associated Press writer Salisu Rabiu contributed to this report.
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Jon Gambrell can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
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BEIJING (Reuters) ? Chinese troops fired on thousands of Tibetans protesting in southwestern Sichuan province Monday, killing at least one and wounding more, two overseas advocacy groups said.
Free Tibet, a London-based group that campaigns for Tibetan self-determination, said the protesting Tibetans gathered at an intersection in Luhuo, about 590 km (370 miles) west of Sichuan's capital of Chengdu, and marched on government offices, where security forces opened fire about midday.
The Tibetans were protesting about arrests earlier in the day in connection with the distribution of pamphlets carrying the slogan "Tibet Needs Freedom" and declaring that more Tibetans were ready to stage self-immolations to challenge Chinese rule, the group said in an emailed statement.
One resident -- a 49-year-old Tibetan man called Yonten -- was shot dead by government forces and another 30 or so residents were injured, said Free Tibet.
Another advocacy group, the International Campaign for Tibet, said three people were killed and about nine injured when police fired into the crowd in Luhuo, which is called Drango or Draggo by Tibetans.
"Others were injured in the crackdown, including through beatings by police, following the dissemination of leaflets in Drango saying that Tibetans should not celebrate New Year due to the self-immolations and situation in Tibet," Kate Saunders, the London-based communications director for the International Campaign, said in an emailed statement that cited several unnamed sources.
This year the main Tibetan traditional new year celebrations begin on February 22.
"Due to fears for their safety, Tibetans who were injured are unable to seek treatment at the local government-run hospital," said the International Campaign for Tibet.
Chinese security forces have been on edge after 16 incidents of self-immolation by ethnic Tibetans over the last year in response to growing resentment of Beijing's controls on religion. Some have called for the return of the Dalai Lama, their exiled Buddhist leader.
The mountainous western part of Sichuan province where the recent unrest has been concentrated is dominated by ethnic Tibetans and lies next to the official Tibetan Autonomous Region.
The reports could not be immediately verified. A staff member of the county public security bureau said he was not aware of any incident.
"There's nothing happening. I don't know about anything," he said, before hanging up.
The two advocacy groups said Tibetans from nearby areas were continuing to converge on Luhuo Monday.
China's Foreign Ministry has branded the self-immolators "terrorists" and has said the Dalai Lama, whom it condemns as a supporter of violent separatism, should take the blame.
(Reporting by Ken Wills and Chris Buckley; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Robert Woodward)
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Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich laughs while speaking during a?South Carolina Republican presidential primary night rally, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, in Columbia, S.C. Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary.(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich laughs while speaking during a?South Carolina Republican presidential primary night rally, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, in Columbia, S.C. Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary.(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich waves to the crowd with his wife Callista during a?South Carolina Republican presidential primary night rally, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, in Columbia, S.C. Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during a?South Carolina Republican presidential primary night rally, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, greets supporters at his South Carolina primary election night reception at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds in Columbia, S.C., Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won the Republican primary Saturday night. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) ? To say Newt Gingrich capped an extraordinary comeback with a South Carolina victory doesn't quite capture what happened.
It was more like vindication.
The former House speaker came from behind to overtake Mitt Romney on Saturday in a state that for decades has chosen the eventual Republican nominee. On the way there, Gingrich triumphed over months of campaign turmoil and at least two political near-death experiences as well as millions of dollars of attack advertisements and potentially damning personal allegations.
He did it by finding his voice and rallying conservatives with a populist defiance.
"The American people feel that they have elites who have been trying to force us to stop being Americans," Gingrich told cheering supporters in Columbia after he was declared the victor. "It's not that I am a good debater. It's that I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people."
It was on the debate stage that the pugnacious Gingrich arguably revived his presidential campaign, not once but twice in the past year, by giving a tea party-infused GOP exactly what it's hungering for ? a no-holds-barred attack dog willing to go after President Barack Obama with abandon. If Gingrich wins the nomination, his confrontational attitude against all things Obama likely will be a big reason Republicans choose him over chief rival Romney.
Gingrich, a political strategist in his own right who has a knack for understanding precisely what the GOP electorate wants, has aggressively taken it to Obama since the moment he entered the race last spring determined to turn his nationwide grass-roots network of support that he's cultivated for a decade into a front-running White House campaign.
But he stumbled early, including by disparaging the House Republicans' Medicare proposal as "right-wing social engineering" and was all but forced to apologize after the conservative outcry. His campaign nearly imploded over strategy squabbles, with virtually his entire senior staff abandoning him before the summer even began. And he was broke after spending lavishly.
Gingrich spent the next six months running his own campaign on a shoestring. The former college professor used a series of debates in the fall ? and the free media they afforded him ? to show Republican voters his political and oratory skills. Their adoration ended up catapulting him back into contention in Iowa. He vowed to stay positive and focus on Obama ? even as his rivals, sensing a very real threat, went on the attack with a barrage of negative TV advertising.
His rivals and allied groups ? primarily the pro-Romney Restore Our Future political action committee and Texas Rep. Ron Paul ? castigated him for a tumultuous speakership and career in Washington after Congress, knocking him way off course and nearly bludgeoning him to political death.
It turned out Gingrich didn't have the money to respond on TV. And his standing slid as the new year began, and he ended up coming in a distant fourth place in the leadoff caucuses on Jan. 3.
He was but an afterthought in the next state to vote, New Hampshire, where he spent a full week on the attack against Romney while complaining about the beating he took in Iowa on the air. But the cash-strapped Gingrich didn't have money to take his criticism of Romney to the TV airwaves. He seemed completely off his game, losing big in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
Then came Sheldon Adelson to the rescue.
The billionaire casino magnate and longtime Gingrich backer ponied up at least $5 million for an outside group ? made up of former Gingrich aides ? to help put his buddy back in the game. It wasn't long before the group ? Winning Our Future ? was exacting payback on Romney for his allies pummeling Gingrich in Iowa. And the group started raising questions about Romney's time at the helm of a private equity firm, Bain Capital, putting Romney on the defensive for the first time during the campaign.
When the race turned to South Carolina, it didn't take long for Gingrich? a former Georgia congressman ? to hit his stride. The state had always been a campaign firewall for him. He had visited often, built his biggest staff of any of the first three early-voting states and spent $2.5 million on advertising.
Over the past 10 days, he raised questions about Romney's private business experience while Winning Our Future reinforced the message by financing millions of dollars in South Carolina advertising characterizing Romney as a corporate predator who dismantled companies while running Bain Capital. Gingrich also started working to undercut Romney's strength ? the notion that the former Massachusetts governor was the Republicans' best chance to beat Obama in the fall.
"What you are seeing him doing is convincing people first that he can win," senior Gingrich adviser David Winston explained at one point. "He's in the process of crossing that threshold."
It was his performance in two debates last week that may have helped him seal the deal with undecided Republicans who were questioning his viability as a candidate.
He turned his vulnerabilities ? a comment some interpreted as racist and an allegation by an ex-wife that he had wanted an "open marriage" ? into moments of strength by answering questions about those issues with nothing short of a character assassination on the national media. In both instances, he clearly tickled his conservative audience ? many of whom are skeptical of a media industry they view as left-leaning.
In Myrtle Beach last Monday, Gingrich lashed out when FOX News Juan Williams had asked him if comments he made urging poor minority children to work as janitors were racially insensitive.
"The fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history," Gingrich retorted ? and then turned up the intensity.
His voice rose and he jabbed a finger into the podium as he said: "I believe every American of every background has been endowed by their creator with the right to pursue happiness. And if that makes liberals unhappy, I'm going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job, and learn some day to own the job."
The clip became the heart of Gingrich's final television ad in South Carolina, and won high praise from supporters at the barbecue joints and sportsmen's clubs he visited in the campaign's closing days.
But three days later, Gingrich had what seemed like a problem on his hands.
An ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich, did an interview with ABC News in which she said Gingrich had asked her to allow him to have a mistress while they were married. It was unclear how the allegation would play in a Baptist state where many in the GOP electorate call themselves evangelical.
Gingrich ended up using the allegation to his advantage on a debate stage in Charleston, when CNN moderator John King opened the candidate face-off by asking Gingrich about his ex-wife's claim.
"Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things," an indigent Gingrich said. "To take an ex-wife and make it, two days before the primary, a significant question for a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine."
The audience roared and rose to its feet.
Several things also fell Gingrich's way.
Romney's personal wealth was thrust into the spotlight as he stumbled over whether ? and then eventually when ? he would release his tax returns. Gingrich pounced, suggesting Romney may have something to hide that could pose a liability against Obama. Romney also took a hit when the Iowa GOP declared that Rick Santorum, not Romney had won the leadoff caucuses.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry also quit the race two days before the primary and endorsed Gingrich. And evangelical conservatives in the state largely ignored the pleas of national Christian leaders who had voted to endorse Santorum and started coalescing behind Gingrich, the only other candidate in the race fighting over the support of the right flank.
In the end, South Carolina Republican strategist Chip Felkel said: "His supporters were fired up, and it's contagious, especially given Romney's failure to generate that kind of enthusiasm."
The coming weeks will determine whether Gingrich can stay on top this time.
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