New Orleans fearing return to crime-ridden past Yahoo! NEWS
Recent killings on the streets of New Orleans have some in the hurricane-ravaged city fearing one revival they had hoped to avoid -- its distinction as one of America's most crime-ridden cities. Months after floodwaters that submerged 80 percent of New Orleans subsided, residents enjoyed an unfamiliar respite from the gang- and drug-related crime that gripped the city for years. Now, as evacuees trickle back from Houston, Atlanta and elsewhere to rebuild in the birthplace of jazz, so are some violent criminals, police and a community activist said. "Crime today is not as bad as it was before August 29, which is before (Hurricane) Katrina. But I think it's also safe to say that crime has been escalating in this city, particularly since it has begun to repopulate," said Raphael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a police watchdog group. "That's what I think the public is concerned about, they're seeing some upticks, some escalation since January, and particularly since Mardi Gras, and they're concerned we may be returning to pre-Katrina." During Mardi Gras in February, 22-year-old Jermaine Wise was shot and killed. In March, police arrested Ivory "B-Stupid" Harris, 20, in connection with the killing. On March 19, musician Michael Frey, 28, was walking home in the Faubourg Marigny area near the French Quarter when a robber killed him with a shotgun blast to the chest. The same day, a gunman opened fire on one of the famous music processions that are part of New Orleans funerals and killed Christopher Smith, 19, and injured another man.

POLICE SAY CRIME IS DOWN
Despite the brazen acts, police contend crime is down by a wide margin, even accounting for the evacuation. The current population, about 200,000, is less than half the pre-storm number. "Everybody talks about crime, but the reality is we've got less crime now that we've had in decades. Overall, our crime figures seem to be down around 70 percent," New Orleans Police Department spokesman Juan Quentin said. There have been 18 homicides this year, down from 68 by April 2005, he said. Part of it is because the department's 1,400 officers have the resources to follow cases and make arrests under Chief Warren Riley, Quentin said. In 2004, there were 264 murders, or 56 per 100,000 people, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That compares to seven per 100,000 in New York and a national average of 5.5 per 100,000. Quentin said some troublemakers are among those returning to the city, but he characterized them as "gang wannabes." He also dismissed reports that gangs were setting up shop in abandoned homes around town. Jeweler Janet Bruno-Small said prior to the hurricane, "there was just something in the environment that was very dangerous and very volatile. However, since the storm, I've felt pretty safe. Although recently people have been warning me to be more cautious." Before Katrina struck, the majority of the crime in New Orleans was linked to drug trafficking and an overtaxed court system that gave criminals light sentences, Goyeneche said. One prescription for keeping crime down after the country's worst natural disaster is demanding professionalism from a police force that had a reputation for corruption and poor relations with the public, he said. The police department is struggling to rebuild credibility after dozens of its officers abandoned duties or looted stores in the chaos after the storm.
By Jeffrey Jones

Italians deliver verdict on five years of Berlusconi government Euronews.net
After an acrimonious campaign, Italians have been voting in a two-day parliamentary election that could go down to the wire. For many the contest is a referendum on the record of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who trailed his centre-left rival Romano Prodi by up to five percentage points in the last opinion poll published two weeks ago. Berlusconi voted in Milan, accompanied by his 95-year-old mother. After voting he said, "I'm off to the restaurant now with mamma, just like young sweethearts." Analysts say a large turnout on Sunday and Monday would offer the greatest chance of survival for what is already Italy's longest-serving post-war government. Romano Prodi beat Berlusconi in the 1996 election and was premier for two years. If elected again, he would need to manage a disparate coalition, ranging from die-hard communists to centrist Roman Catholics. Whatever the result, political analysts expect it to take at least a month until a new government can be formed. Prodi, known as the "professor", was refusing to make any predictions about the elections. After voting with his wife in Bologna, he simply stated: "They're very important because Italy's an important country." Prodi's supporters accuse Berlusconi of economic mismanagement and embarrassing Italy with a constant stream of gaffes. The prime minister has battled to fend off prosecution for alleged corruption and conflict of interest over his media empire. But he has made that fight part of his election campaign, claiming the judiciary and the press are out to get him. He also used an unusually vulgar term, roughly equivalent to "pricks", for anyone thinking of voting for the left. The verdict of the electorate is due late on Monday evening.
Berlusconi Battles to Stay in Power Forbes
Berlusconi battles to stay in power Aljazeera.net
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Disney to make TV shows available free on Web Yahoo! NEWS
Walt Disney Co.'s ABC television network will offer some of its most popular shows, such as "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," for free on the Internet in a two-month trial, the company said on Monday. The move was the latest effort by leading U.S. media companies to experiment with the delivery of programs through new technologies and still maintain revenue as viewership for prime-time television schedules slowly erodes. ABC already sells digital downloads of its highest-rated TV shows for the popular iPod music and video player, while other networks have been testing online and video-on-demand formats for airing shows soon after they first appear on broadcast TV. "It's really an opportunity for us to learn about a different model," Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC television group, said at an annual cable industry convention in Atlanta on Monday. "It's more importantly recognizing that none of us can live in a world of just one business model." Top ABC shows such as "Commander in Chief" and "Alias," along with "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," will be available on the Web at ABC.com in May and June, starting the day after they are first broadcast, the network said. Viewers will be able to pause and move between "chapters" in an episode, but not skip ads that are technically embedded. Advertising revenue will support the trial run on ABC.com, with 10 advertisers, including AT&T Inc., Ford Motor Co., Procter & Gamble Co. and Universal Pictures already signed up. Some will insert video ads into the content while others will sponsor shows, with the idea of tailoring commercials to the Internet experience. Disney is also launching a high-speed Internet channel for soap opera fans, called Soapnetic, on April 17 for subscribers to Verizon Communications Corp.'s Internet services. Sweeney said the network was keen on bringing in more viewers under the age of 27. These are what some marketers have dubbed the "millennial" generation of consumers, who are at ease with technology and often use several media outlets at the same time. ABC said it would also explore ways to bring its local broadcast affiliates into online offerings. Participants at the convention, sponsored by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, asked whether ABC's trial would threaten U.S. cable operators that have linked up with the networks to charge for on-demand viewing of such shows. But cable executives said they viewed it as part of the entire industry's effort to capture new audiences amid fiercer competition with the Internet, video games and digital downloads. "The idea is to find a way to make the pie bigger," said Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast Corp., the top U.S. cable operator. Disney shares rose 44 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $27.97 in midday
New York Stock Exchange trading.
By Michele Gershberg and Kenneth Li

Time Warner Cable mulls TV ad auctioning system Yahoo! NEWS
Time Warner Cable is in early discussions to create an auction place for advertising spots on video-on-demand channels, modeled after Google's AdSense system on the Internet, the company's top executive said. The cable services division of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. is considering a plan much like that of Google Inc., which allows advertisers to bid to display ads in front of viewers with specific viewing habits. For instance, automobile manufacturers or car dealerships could bid to put their ads on the television screens of viewers who spend a lot of time watching the Speed Channel. The move is another sign of how the television industry is borrowing and improving upon some of the most lucrative practices of the Internet. Last year, Comcast Corp. told Reuters it was looking at how to create a search engine-like on-screen guide to navigate the vast number of channels and videos on demand that could some day be made available. "We can start doing what Google does -- auctioning off spots," Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Glenn Britt told Reuters in an interview at the cable industry's annual convention in Atlanta. "We have the ability, using our set tops and new software we're putting in, to begin targeting advertising," Britt said at the show sponsored by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. "We're actively looking at this." The discussions are still in the early stages, but indicate how Time Warner, which plans to spin off 16 percent of its cable division, will compete amid the looming threat of competition from the telephone industry. The spinoff is expected to occur after Time Warner completes its purchase of bankrupt cable operator Adelphia Communications Corp., which Britt said would happen at the end of the second quarter. Britt said Time Warner Cable would be able to create such an advertising system because it possessed highly detailed usage information on some of its customers. The company would not identify individual users to advertisers, adhering to strict privacy laws, he said. Craig Moffett, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said cable's biggest asset is its storehouse of customer information. "Google and Yahoo have made fortunes out of very good information about what consumers do, but virtually no information about who is doing it," he said. "Cable operators have the potential to do that one better." While Internet media companies track mouse clicks reliably, the users themselves are largely anonymous, analysts said. But in homes with cable set top boxes, cable operators can easily track the name, number of children and other data, combined with a household's viewing habits, Moffett said. "You can pair that data with whether they watch home improvement shows, and if they're interested (in an ad) from something like Home Depot," he added.

BACK TO THE FUTURE
Time Warner, the second-largest U.S. cable operator, has deployed a feature in limited markets that lets viewers start some shows from the beginning if it is still airing. The company said about 70 percent of its customers in its test market in Columbia, South Carolina, used the "Start Over" service an average of about seven times per month. It plans to deploy the feature, available on networks including General Electric Co.'s NBC Cable channels, Turner, News Corp.'s Fox Cable channels and HBO, in seven to eight additional markets this year. By 2007, the company expects to offer a more ambitious extension of the idea it has dubbed "Look Back," which will let viewers watch shows on participating networks from a day or several days ago, Peter Stern, executive vice president of product management at Time Warner Cable, told Reuters. "TV is more powerful than the Internet at the end of the day," Britt said.
By Kenneth Li

Comcast, Sony to launch on-demand horror network Yahoo! NEWS
Comcast Corp. and Sony Corp. will launch a horror films on-demand cable, Internet and wireless network on Halloween this year, an executive at the top U.S. cable operator said on Sunday. Movies for the yet-to-be named network, which will debut on October 31 and expand Comcast's programing lineup, come from more than a thousand horror titles in the Sony and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer libraries. The Japanese electronics giant and investors, including Comcast, purchased the legendary Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studio a year ago. At the time, the parties said they planned to troll through the libraries, which include the Pink Panther and James Bond series, to create new cable and Internet networks. Starting with horror films was a "no-brainer" because of the "emotional connection" of such films, said Diane Robina, president of Comcast's emerging networks, in an interview. "It's about scaring the heck out of you," Robina said. About 40 hours of recent and classic movies, including "Night of the Living Dead," "The Grudge" and "Resident Evil," will be available per month at launch. About 70 hours will be made available in the future. Comcast is expected to announce details of the horror films network on Monday at the annual cable industry convention, the National Show sponsored by industry lobby National Cable & Telecommunications Association. In some respects, the strategy for the new network follows those Comcast employed in its kids programing network, Sprout, which was launched last year at the cable convention. Like Sprout, the horror network will also be advertising supported and available on-demand. Comcast has no plans to launch a traditional, linear cable channel, the company said. Eventually, Comcast aims to offer movies for download on its Web site, although business models have yet to be worked out, Robina said. For now, the site will consist of movie clips, clips from DVD supplements, blogs and community sites. Robina also aimed to elicit user generated programing, such as videos of elaborate Halloween home decorations.

Prodi leads Italian vote: exit polls Yahoo! NEWS
Center-left leader Romano Prodi looked on course to beat Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Italy's general election, exit polls showed on Monday, as voters punished the government for failing to revive the economy. Prodi's alliance was set to win between 50 and 54 percent of the vote in both the lower and upper houses of parliament, giving it a working majority in the two chambers, a poll by the Nexus research institute said. Berlusconi's center-right bloc was shown winning 45 to 49 percent of the vote according to the poll, broadcast by state television RAI after voting ended in the two-day election. "This is a result of historic proportions," said Massimo D'Alema, a former prime minister who is president of the largest center-left party, the Democrats of the Left. Under the terms of Italy's electoral system, the coalition which emerges ahead in the 630-seat lower chamber is automatically assigned a winner's majority of 340 seats. In the 315-seat Senate, the winner's majority is assigned on a region-by-region basis. Official results are due by the end of Monday. Prodi's center-left alliance, which stretches from Roman Catholic centrists to communists, had led in opinion polls for the past two years, benefiting from widespread voter discontent over the stagnant economy and rising cost of living. Berlusconi, Italy's richest man who created the country's biggest media empire, dominated the often ill-tempered election campaign with a string of outbursts, gaffes and last-minute promises to cut taxes. Center-right leaders reacted cautiously to the exit polls, but one veteran politician from Berlusconi's bloc said they had no chance of regaining power. "Undeniably the center left has won and I think that it was the left part that won, more than the center," said Francesco D'Onofrio, a senator from the centrist UDC party.

FAILED PROMISES
Pollsters said Berlusconi's House of Freedoms coalition always faced an uphill battle to win over voters who felt the ever-optimistic premier had failed to deliver on pledges to revolutionize hidebound Italy and revive the economy. A poll by the Piepoli organization suggested the prime minister's own Forza Italia (Go Italy) party had suffered a beating, with support dropping to 20-23 percent from 29.4 percent in 2001. Prodi, 66, beat Berlusconi in a 1996 general election, but his government lasted only two years before it was brought down by disgruntled communist allies. Critics say any new government headed by the occasionally prickly Prodi will suffer a similar fate because of the gaping ideological divide within his multi-party alliance. Prodi will certainly have a smaller parliamentary majority than Berlusconi due to a change in the electoral system that was rushed into law late last year in a move critics said was designed to hobble any centre-left administration. But Prodi insisted throughout the campaign that his coalition could survive a full five-year term, noting that unlike in 1996 his allies had signed up to a 289-page manifesto that will serve as a road map for any center-left government. The manifesto pledges to cut labor taxes, provide bigger handouts for families with children, reintroduce an inheritance tax, scrap plans to raise the age of retirement to 60 and launch a crackdown on tax evasion. On foreign policy, Prodi has vowed a swift withdrawal of Italian troops sent to Iraq by Berlusconi, who is one of U.S. President George W. Bush's closest allies in Europe. Analysts say Prodi is bound to alter Italy's diplomatic priorities, putting Europe rather than the United States first. If Prodi's victory is confirmed, he will inherit the unenviable task of cutting the world's third-largest national debt while trying to breathe life into an economy that grew an average of just 0.6 percent a year under Berlusconi. Standard and Poor's ratings agency urged the next government to move swiftly to reform Italy's finances. "It will become increasingly urgent for the new government to announce concrete measures to deal effectively with Italy's fiscal crisis," it said in a statement after the exit polls. The next government is not expected to take office for at least a month, with Berlusconi set to stay on in a caretaker capacity until parliament nominates a successor to President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, whose mandate expires in May. The president must name the new prime minister and Ciampi says he wants to leave the task to his successor.
By Crispian Balmer

Bush acknowledges declassifying Iraq intelligence Yahoo! NEWS
President George W. Bush acknowledged on Monday he ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq to respond to critics who alleged he manipulated intelligence to justify the war. Bush offered his first comment on a prosecutor's disclosure last week that he authorized Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to declassify Iraq intelligence. The disclosure prompted a firestorm of criticism from Democrats who charged Bush was a hypocrite who denounces leaks of information while becoming the "leaker-in-chief." A Republican ally, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, urged Bush on Sunday to "tell the American people exactly what happened." At issue is the administration's release in July 2003 of parts of an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that alleged Iraq under Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and was trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Bush said he declassified parts of the document to answer questions raised about why the United States invaded Iraq. "I wanted people to see what some of those statements were based on. I wanted people to see the truth. I thought it made sense for people to see the truth. That's why I declassified the document," he said. Bush, answering questions from an audience after a speech in Washington, would not comment on the allegation that he authorized Libby to release the information to reporters. But a senior administration official said Bush did not designate Libby or anyone else to release the information, trying to distance Bush from any tactical decisions made on how to release the information. The White House release of the parts of the National Intelligence Estimate came in response to charges from former ambassador Joe Wilson that Bush had manipulated intelligence to justify the war. Wilson later accused the White House of leaking the identity of his wife, who was then a CIA officer, Valerie Plame, to retaliate against him. Libby is accused of obstruction of justice and perjury in an investigation designed to discover who leaked Plame's name. White House officials have stressed that Bush was well within his legal authority to declassify the document. The new controversy erupted as Bush seeks to rebound from weak poll numbers and tries to bolster sagging American support for the Iraq war. Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday" that Bush owed "a specific explanation to the American people" of what happened. "The president has the authority to declassify information. So in a technical sense, if he looked at it, he could say this is declassified, and make a disclosure of it," he said. Wilson, speaking on ABC's "This Week," called on Bush to release transcripts of his and Cheney's testimony to the prosecutor. "It seems to me it is long past time for the White House to come clean on all of this," he said.
By Steve Holland

Chirac scraps youth job law Yahoo! NEWS
French President Jacques Chirac bowed to weeks of angry protests on Monday and scrapped a youth job law in a climb-down that undermined his prime minister and handed victory to opponents of the law. Chirac's decision was a personal blow to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who had championed the First Job Contract (CPE) as a vital job-creating reform of the French economy but who had seen his popularity slump as mass opposition grew. The government U-turn over the CPE makes it unlikely France will attempt broader reform of its highly regulated labor market before 2007, economists said. Villepin said in a television address he regretted that the strikes and street protests showed the CPE could not be applied but gave no hints about his own political future, on the line over his handling of the dispute. "The necessary conditions of confidence and calm are not there, either among young people, or companies, to allow the application of the First Job Contract," Villepin said, adding he would open talks with unions on youth employment. A protest march in Paris planned for Tuesday should show whether student anger over the contract has abated. "Today is a defining victory but there are still many issues outstanding," said Bruno Julliard, who heads the UNEF student union. He was referring to other parts of the government's employment policies but did not spell out future student action. Villepin had said the CPE would reduce youth unemployment of 22 percent. Lack of jobs is the country's number one political issue and a major reason for weeks of rioting in poor suburbs late last year. The "easy hire, easy fire" CPE would have allowed firms to sack workers under 26 without giving a reason during a two-year trial period. The prime minister's poll ratings plunged as opposition to the measure mounted, damaging his chances of becoming the ruling UMP party's candidate for president in elections in 2007. "The president ... has decided to replace article eight of the equal opportunities law with measures to help disadvantaged young people find work," the presidency said in a statement.

A DROP OF CHAMPAGNE
Chirac and Villepin were careful to say that the CPE, part of a wider law on equal opportunities, was being "replaced" rather than repealed. Unions who opposed the measure, arguing it would create insecurity for young workers, declared victory. "Perhaps we will drink a drop of champagne. This is an undeniable victory for a social movement," said Gerard Aschieri, secretary of the FSU union. The new measures include increased financial incentives to employers to hire people under 26 who face the most difficulties in getting access to the labor market, Employment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said in an interview with Le Monde newspaper. That would apply to approximately 159,000 young people currently hired under government-subsidized job contracts and the cost to the government would be around 150 million euros ($180 million) in the second half of 2006, Borloo said. The measures, financed by an increase in tax on tobacco, could be introduced in parliament as early as Tuesday, said a senior UMP deputy but there were doubts over further reform. "The question is whether this has signed away the possibility of reform in the longer term," said David Naude, economist at Deutsche Bank. Marchers vilified the prime minister and his rival for the UMP presidential candidacy, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, but analysts said Monday's decision was especially damaging for Villepin. Chirac is not expected to run in the 2007 election. "The presidential hopeful Villepin is practically dead, the prime minister Villepin is in big difficulty," said Christophe Barbier of the L'Express magazine.
By Matthew Bigg

Immigration Advocates Rally Around U.S. Yahoo! NEWS
Tens of thousands of immigrants spilled into the streets of Atlanta and other cities Monday in a national day of action billed as a "campaign for immigrants' dignity." In North Carolina and Dallas, immigrant groups called for an economic boycott to show their financial impact. In Pittsburgh and other cities, protesters gathered at lawmakers' offices to make their voices heard as Congress considers immigration reforms. "We all know pay is not the same everywhere and lot of people won't work for the minimum here, so if they won't take the job, what's the problem?" said 47-year-old Jose Salazar, who joined about 100 people outside Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record)'s Pittsburgh office. In Atlanta, police estimated at least 50,000 people, many in white T-shirts and waving signs and American flags, joined a two-mile march from a largely immigrant neighborhood. The Georgia protesters had two targets: the congress members weighing immigration reform and state legislation now awaiting Gov. Sonny Perdue's signature that would require adults seeking many state-administered benefits to prove they are in the U.S. legally. Nineth Castillo, a 26-year-old waitress from Guatemala who joined the Atlanta march, said she has lived in the United States for 11 years "without a scrap of paper." Asked whether she was afraid to parade her undocumented status in front of a massive police presence, she laughed and said: "Why? They kick us out, we're coming back tomorrow." Elsa Rodriguez, 25, talked about the baby girl she expected to give birth to in about three months. "This is why I had to be here," she said. "She's going to be a U.S. citizen and I'm here illegal?" Hundreds of Latinos in North Carolina prepared to skip work or boycott all purchases on Monday to demonstrate the financial impact of the Latino community on area businesses. In Charlotte, some employees planned to skip work, including some with the blessing of their Latino bosses. "We're hoping that employers stop to consider what this is all about," organizer Adriana Galvez said. "That if you need people here to do the work, to buy, then give them a legal channel to get here." In Dallas, where a march Sunday drew between 350,000 and 500,000 people, activists also were urging immigrants to showcase their spending power by not buying anything during an economic boycott. Rallies also were planned Monday in Houston, El Paso and Austin. Several thousand people gathered in Philadelphia, including Inocente Gonzalez, 19, an illegal immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico, who is living and attending high school in Vineland N.J. and wants to become a doctor. "I want to stay here to continue with my studies," said Gonzalez, who was wearing a sombrero and a Mexican flag. "We have a voice. We have to stay here because this country needs us." An estimated 3,000 people demonstrated in Garden City, Kan., a farming community in the southwest corner of the state that counts fewer than 30,000 residents. Several hundred turned out in South Bend, Ind., and in Lexington, Ky., where they waved signs that read: "We were all immigrants once," and "We are not terrorists." The demonstrations followed a day of rallies in 10 states, including up to 500,000 people in Dallas, 50,000 in San Diego, and 20,000 in Salt Lake City. Dozens of rallies and student walkouts, many of them organized by spanish-language radio DJ's over the past few weeks, have been held in cities around the country, from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York. With an overhaul of immigration law stalled in Congress, the demonstrators have been urging lawmakers to help an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants settle legally in the United States. The rallies have also drawn counter-demonstrations. In Salt Lake City, Jerry Owens, 59, a Navy veteran from Midway wearing a blue Minuteman T-shirt and camouflage pants, held a yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flag. "I think it's real sad because these people are really saying it's OK to be illegal aliens," Owens said. "What Americans are saying is 'Yes, come here. But come here legally.' And I think that's the big problem."
By GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO, Associated Press Writer

Skilling Says He's 'Absolutely Innocent' Yahoo! NEWS
Former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling declared he was "absolutely innocent" Monday as he began to testify in his own defense in his fraud and conspiracy trial. The 52-year-old one-time corporate celebrity whose reputation as a business wunderkind shattered along with the company he once ran also said he "never ... not once" considered making a deal with prosecutors the way more than a dozen other Enron executives did. "I will fight those charges until the day I die," Skilling said. Skilling, known for his plainspoken manner and bravado as he led Enron's transformation from a staid pipeline company into an energy trading giant, addressed jurors directly, his eyebrows raised slightly, looking earnest and alert. He acknowledged being nervous as his lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, began his questioning. "I guess in some ways my life is on the line, so I'm a little nervous," Skilling said. Although he has faced harsh questioning from investigators before, this is the first time federal prosecutors who have pursued him for years will have an opportunity to grill him. But the cross examination likely won't come until midweek or later. Petrocelli noted that among the Enron executives who pleaded guilty to crimes and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors were Skilling's friends and co-workers. The defense has maintained throughout the 11-week trial that most of them did so in response to government pressure to avoid trials or lengthy prison terms and were actually innocent. Petrocelli asked Skilling if he thought his former co-workers were guilty. "I would say the vast majority who testified here are in my opinion not guilty," Skilling said without naming names. Skilling described how Enron consumed his life and how, as it grew into a successful company, he decided to find some personal balance. "I guess you could say I was obsessed with Enron," he said. "Every day was intense, and I had not spent the time I should have spent with my family. ... As time went on, and the company became more successful, that was something that mattered more to me." But he also said he told Lay on "that fateful day, Friday, the 13th of July," that he wanted to resign after 11 years with the company because he was bothered by Enron's falling stock. He also said he told Lay that he believed he had lost credibility with Wall Street after calling a hedge-fund worker an obscene name during a conference call when the worker questioned Enron's financial figures. "The now-infamous ... quote was used as an example of, I don't know, arrogance or something. It wasn't meant that way," said the former CEO, who has a reputation for arrogance. Skilling repeated his twice-made assertion that Enron was in "very good condition" when he left the company in August 2001 and that he never would have jumped ship if he'd known it was going to collapse into bankruptcy proceedings less than four months later. "It's almost inconceivable now what happened," he said. Earlier, prosecutor John Hueston continued pressing former general counsel Jim Derrick on Monday to highlight Enron's cursory response to August 2001 memos from Sherron Watkins, then an Enron vice president, who warned Lay about possibly shady accounting related to financial structures backed by the company's stock. The note, which won Watkins fame when released by Congress the next year, came days after Skilling unexpectedly resigned as chief executive officer. The crumbling structures were unwound in the third quarter, forcing Enron to report hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Last week, Derrick in part served as a lead-in to Skilling. Through him, Skilling's lawyers sought to counter prosecution testimony that he failed to approve deals Enron conducted with partnerships run by former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, as required. Derrick testified that Enron's board approved procedures that required the review and approval of former Chief Accounting Officer Richard Causey and former Chief Risk Officer Rick Buy, but not Skilling. Fastow testified earlier in the trial that he used the partnerships, with Skilling's knowledge, in part to help Enron manufacture earnings. Lay and Skilling are accused of repeatedly lying to investors and employees about Enron's financial health when they allegedly knew fraudulent accounting propped up weak business ventures. The two men say there was no fraud at Enron other than that committed by Fastow and a few others, who skimmed millions from secret schemes, and that bad publicity coupled with lost market confidence drove the company to seek bankruptcy protection in December 2001. Skilling is charged with 28 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors, while Lay faces six counts of fraud and conspiracy. Skilling, 52, has maintained his innocence of any wrongdoing since the initial, explosive aftermath of Enron's swift flameout. In lengthy testimony with Securities and Exchange Commission shortly after the bankruptcy filing, and two contentious appearances at congressional hearings in February 2002, Skilling said he knew of no accounting tricks to hide debt or inflate profits. He also insisted he believed Enron was financially strong when he abruptly resigned in mid-August 2001, citing personal reasons. But then, investigators had just begun Enron probes. In court, Skilling — and later, Lay — will face prosecutors who have investigated him and the company for years.
By KRISTEN HAYS, AP Business Writer

Chirac Reversal on Law a Defeat for PM Yahoo! NEWS
President Jacques Chirac on Monday threw out part of a youth labor law that triggered massive protests and strikes, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions and dealing a blow to his loyal premier in a bid to end the crisis. Unions celebrated what they called "a great victory," and also were deciding whether to keep up the protests. The top two student union UNEF and FIDL said they would press on with demonstrations Tuesday across France. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who devised the law, had faced down protesters for weeks, insisting that its most divisive provision — a so-called "first job contract" — was necessary to reduce high unemployment rates among French youths by making it easier for companies to hire and fire young workers. But acting on advice from Villepin, his longtime protege, Chirac "decided to replace" the provision with one aimed at "youths in difficulty," the president's office said. Top lawmakers from Chirac's ruling conservative party presented a new plan to parliament Monday. The proposal emerged after legislative talks last week with unions and student groups to find ways to end the crisis. A somber Villepin, in a TV appearance, said his original legislation was designed to curb "despair of many youths" and strike a "better balance ... between more flexibility for the employer and more security for workers." "This was not understood by everyone, I'm sorry to say," Villepin said. The crisis has discredited Chirac and devastated Villepin and his presidential ambitions — and thrown into question the government's ability to push through painful reforms to help France compete in the global economy. The new measures increase the government's role in the workplace instead of decreasing them, as Villepin had sought. Students and other opponents had feared the previous measure would erode coveted job security — and some unions trumpeted the retreat by Chirac and his prime minister. The labor law "is dead and buried," said Jean-Claude Mailly of the Workers Force union. "The goal has been achieved." Alain Olive, secretary-general of the UNSA union, said, "After more than two weeks of intense mobilization, the 12 syndicated groups of workers, university and high school students have won a great victory." UNEF leader Bruno Julliard told AP Television News that the students "want to see how we can take advantage of this power struggle that is now in our favor to garner new victories." The new four-point plan sent to parliament would bolster existing job contracts, rather than enact new ones. The government would offer more state support for companies that hire young workers. Other provisions would increase internships in areas where jobs are relatively plentiful — such as in restaurants, hotels and nursing — or guide jobseekers in their careers. Some 160,000 youths would be affected by the new measures this year, at a cost of some $180 million to the state. The "first job contract" would have allowed employers to fire workers aged under 26 at any time during a two-year trial period without giving a reason. Chirac enacted the law earlier this month, but immediately suspended it to give ruling conservative lawmakers a chance to meet with unions and look for a way out of the turmoil. Villepin drew up the labor legislation as part of his response to last fall's rioting in France's impoverished suburbs, where many immigrants and their French-born children live. The unemployment rate for youths under 26 is a staggering 22 percent nationwide, but soars to nearly 50 percent in some of those troubled areas. The plan sparked weeks of protests and strikes that shut down dozens of universities, prompted clashes between youths and police, and tangled road, train and air travel. At least five demonstrations since early March drew more than 100,000 people, culminating in two that each brought at least 1 million to the streets across France in the past two weeks. Many ended in violence as youths threw stones, bottles and other projectiles at riot police, who responded by firing tear gas and swinging batons. Unions had been threatening more demonstrations and walkouts just hours before the announcement from Chirac — and some students appeared unwilling to abandon their protest right away. "We must go forward carefully," said Lise Prunier, an 18-year-old biology student at the University of Paris-Jussieu. "For the moment, our movement will continue." Villepin, widely seen as a potential candidate for next year's presidential elections, has suffered heavy blows to his popularity over the crisis. A new poll showed that 85 percent of French people think the crisis has also weakened the 73-year-old Chirac, in power for 11 years. The poll was conducted by the CSA polling agency last week among 1,005 respondents and gave no margin of error.
By CHRISTINE OLLIVIER, Associated Press Writer

Early New Orleans Voting Begins Around La. Yahoo! NEWS
Voters lined up in New Orleans and other Louisiana towns Monday for the start of early balloting in the city's primary election, delayed by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Fewer than half New Orleans' residents have been able to return since the Aug. 29 hurricane flooded their city. Many are now living in Texas and Georgia, but they still plan to vote on the leadership that will heavily influence how New Orleans is rebuilt. "The future of the city depends upon it," said Jerome Steib, a 40-year-old offshore petroleum platform designer who stood in line Monday to cast an early vote. From Texas, hundreds of people were scheduled to take buses to New Orleans and to satellite voting centers elsewhere in the state this week to cast early ballots. The busing is both practical and symbolic, said Kevin Whelan, spokesman for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The city had nearly a half-million people, about 70 percent of them black, before Hurricane Katrina. Those who have returned number fewer than 200,000, and most are white. "Although typically 80,000 New Orleanians vote in the mayoral election, ACORN is very concerned that the lack of contact with the displaced electorate, both about news concerning the election as well as voting information," said Beaulah Labostrie, president of Louisiana ACORN. Twenty-two candidates, most of them white, are challenging the re-election bid by Mayor Ray Nagin, who has been criticized in some quarters for his response to the hurricane. Challengers include Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Audubon Institute chief executive Ron Forman. If no mayoral candidate gets a majority of the votes in the nonpartisan primary election April 22, the top two finishers will compete in a May 20 runoff election. Displaced residents can vote Monday through Thursday and Saturday at early voting stations in Lake Charles, Shreveport, New Orleans and seven other Louisiana cities. The offices will be closed for the Good Friday holiday. Besides mayor, New Orleans voters will also be deciding seven City Council seats, seven assessors, a criminal sheriff, a civil sheriff, a civil court clerk, a criminal court clerk and a coroner. Seven mayoral candidates fielded questions from displaced voters during a forum Saturday that was broadcast to evacuees in Texas communities of Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, as well as Shreveport and Baton Rouge. "Do you want experienced leadership that is tried and tested? Or do you want to experiment at this important time in our city's history?" Nagin asked. Evacuees pushed the candidates for answers to questions about restoring basic services, such as electricity and trash pickup. "I cannot lie to you and tell you every single service in every single neighborhood is going to come back immediately," said Forman, an executive credited with turning New Orleans' zoo into a national showcase.
On the Net: Louisiana Secretary of State: http://www.sos.louisiana.gov/elections/elections-index.htm
By ALAN SAYRE, Associated Press Writer

Historic New Orleans Church Gets Reprieve Yahoo! NEWS
The ancient cypress doors were propped wide in the bright sunshine, palm fronds stacked high, pews filled and joyous music poured from St. Augustine as the historically black Catholic church celebrated Palm Sunday. The service came two weeks after the church was closed amid protests over post-Hurricane Katrina budget cutbacks that would have merged it with a larger neighboring parish. "What a historic morning for us to gather," said Archbishop Alfred Hughes, who originally ordered the church shut down, but returned to celebrate Mass on Sunday. The church was full for the first service, but unless the support continues, the reprieve for the church will not last. When Hughes re-consecrated St. Augustine on Saturday he said he would examine the parish's progress after 18 months to determine if it could avoid consolidation with a neighboring parish. Hughes agreed to reopen St. Augustine after negotiating with parishioners who had protested the church's closing. St. Augustine, founded in 1841 by slaves and free people of color, is one of the nation's oldest black parishes. The archdiocese sought to consolidate St. Augustine as it tries to deal with $84 million in uninsured losses from Hurricane Katrina, which slammed into the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. "I intend to be a regular now and support the church here," said Gordon Cagnolitti, a New Orleans firefighter who described himself as multi-denominational. "I go to several churches, but my son and grandchildren go here and I will, too, from now on." St. Augustine had failed to add many new members or carry on other pastoral functions required of a functioning parish, Hughes said when closing it. Under the plans announced earlier this year, the church building would still be used for services, but parish functions were to be consolidated with neighboring St. Peter Claver. But the church had not reckoned with the deep feeling of the parishioners. Protest sprang up, and a small group of protesters shuttered themselves in the church rectory three weeks ago. Demonstrators interrupted Mass on March 26 — a desecration, Hughes said the next day, when he announced that the church building would be closed. The parishioners have set 12 goals to meet during the next 18 months, Hughes said. Among other things, they require the addition of from 300 to 400 families, the institution of religious education and a balanced budget by Oct. 1. If the parish does not meet the goals, it will be closed, Hughes said. But on Sunday the possible problems seemed far from anyone's mind. When a lay reader opened the service by welcoming those in attendance to St. Augustine Church, the crowd cheered and clapped. then people waved palm fronds and clapped to the hymn "Oh, Happy Day." "It's a joyous day, a great celebration," said Leola Brown, 77. "It shows the Lord answers prayers. This is my church. I want to attend it while I'm living and be buried from it when I die."
By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer

New Orleans R&B star begins posthumous mayoral bid Yahoo! NEWS
Ernie K-Doe has some big hurdles to overcome to win his bid for mayor of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans: he lacks the political experience and financial clout of many of his rivals. He's also been dead for almost five years. No matter, said the widow of the flamboyant rhythm-and-blues singer and one of the city's most enduring characters as she launched his tongue-in-cheek campaign for the April 22 vote. "He's the only one qualified -- that's my opinion," Antoinette K-Doe said on Saturday at a rally outside the Mother-in-Law Lounge, the nightclub that bears the name of K-Doe's biggest hit song. "He gets the job done. The guy has soul," she said as supporters enjoyed live music, beer and heaping helpings of red beans and rice. "And I'm speaking like he's still here because in memories he is still here with us. He gets along with everybody and he makes things happen." K-Doe's not actually on the ballot but his campaign provides some rare levity in an election widely viewed as the most crucial in the city's nearly three-century history. Mayor Ray Nagin faces 23 challengers with a spectrum of views on how to rebuild from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina seven months ago. The campaign is vintage K-Doe, the self-proclaimed "Emperor of the World" who died in July 2001 at 65 after a colorful music career. His campaign T-shirts feature him grinning with his trademark long hair cascading over his shoulders, decked out as Uncle Sam. "Vote K-Doe Vote," they blare. Funds raised from the sale of T-shirts and bumper stickers will go to rebuilding the Mother-in-Law Lounge, which remains a shrine to the man and his music despite being damaged in the floods after Hurricane Katrina, as well as the New Orleans Musicians Clinic. Born Ernest Kador Jr., K-Doe's major triumph was the chart-topper "Mother-in-Law" in 1961, when he was in league with such R&B stars as James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John and Joe Tex. He never matched the success of "Mother-in-Law" but became a staple on the rich New Orleans music scene. In the 1990s K-Doe opened the lounge on the edge of the city's Treme neighborhood and it became a favorite of local musicians. It still houses a massive bust of his head even though the interior is gutted to the studs. Antoinette, 63, said she aims to reopen the lounge for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which starts at the end of this month, regardless of how far along the renovation is. "Ernie K-Doe was an icon, a legend of New Orleans -- national and international," she said. "His music is great and it still lives on. "And this lounge is a haven for our musicians, man. They can eat, they can put their music together and they can get in touch with each other."
By Jeffrey Jones

Best, worst places to live? Yahoo! NEWS
Zurich is the city with the highest quality of life in 2006, while Baghdad, for the third year running, has the lowest, a survey published Monday shows. Geneva and Vancouver made the top three in the list compiled by human resource company Mercer while Bangui in the Central African Republic and Brazzaville, the capital of Congo Republic, joined Baghdad in the bottom three. The top three cities in the list are all unchanged from last year. Chicago is one of the biggest climbers in the rankings since 2005, rising to 41st from 52nd due to reduced crime rates, while Cairo is one of the biggest fallers, sliding nine places to 131st out of 215 cities. "(This was) due to political turmoil and terrorist attacks in the city and surrounding area," Mercer said. Mercer bases its annual survey on 39 quality-of-life factors, from political stability to schools, bars, restaurants and the environment. The full list is available at http://www.imercer.com/qol

Ice Age sequel passes $100m mark BBC NEWS
Animated sequel Ice Age 2: The Meltdown has become the first film of the year to pass the $100m (£57.3m) mark at the US box office, early figures show. The film, which features the voice of Ray Romano, maintained its position at number one, with total takings since it release of $116.4m (£66.7m) In second spot was baseball comedy The Benchwarmers, starring David Spade and Rob Schneider. Antonio Banderas' ballroom dancing film Take the Lead made its debut at three. There was also a new entry at number five for Lucky Number Slevin, which has already opened in the UK. The film, starring Josh Hartnett, Lucy Liu and Sir Ben Kingsley, took $7.1 (£4m) in its opening three days. Sharon Stone's comeback in Basic Instinct 2 disappeared out of the top 10 after just one week. The film managed to make it to number 10 in its first week but found an even smaller audience during its second. 'Guilty-pleasure'
The Benchwarmers, which sees a group of grown men taking on Little League teams, was not given preview screenings ahead of release, which is usually a sign that producers anticipate bad reviews. But that did not stop it taking $20.5m (£11.7m) over the three-day weekend period. "It's kind of a guilty-pleasure movie. It's a lot of fun, and I don't know if the audience would pay attention to what critics might say," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony. As well as heading the US chart, Ice Age 2 is also winning audiences around the world, topping the international box office. It has taken $93m (£53.3m) at cinemas outside of the US over the weekend, according to Screen International.

Podcast numbers cut through hype BBC NEWS
People downloading to podcasts are still in a minority, despite the hype surrounding them, research suggests. The number of US households listening to podcasts will increase to just 12 million by 2010, a Forrester Research report has found. Tech savvy, young males are most likely to listen to take away audio it said. But a survey by research firm BMRB found that nearly eight million Britons will go in search of a podcast in the next six months. The different numbers could suggest that UK consumers are a bunch of technophiles, much happier to dip their toe into the water than their US counterparts, or that coming up with these numbers is an imprecise science. Charlene Li, one of the authors of the Forrester report admitted on her blog that "measurement is still really hard to do". In particular she said that "counting podcast downloads is a dubious way to measure usage."

Difficult numbers
Podcasts seem to have had a meteoric rise, moving from the preserve of a few interested techies to the technology of choice for any company trying to appeal to the digital generation. It is like a radio broadcast, but one that you can download from the internet to any MP3 player, not just an iPod as the name suggests.

You can use pieces of software to automatically gather the podcasts and pop them straight on to your player, meaning that you always have the latest programme in your pocket. The technology has got traditional broadcasters excited and worried at the same time. The technology gives them a new opportunity to distribute their programmes and potentially a whole new audience. But podcasting is cheap. All you need is a laptop, a microphone and a bit of a flair for technology and you can create your own programmes. As a result broadcasters are worried that their market share will be washed away over night by a torrent of amateur broadcasters and companies that look on podcasts as a useful way to get their message out. Hence, broadcasters, advertising companies and financial institutions are all clamouring to work out who is online, where they're downloading and what they're listening to.

Tiny audience
The survey of 5,000 US consumers by Forrester found that 3% had tried listening to a podcast. Of them, 2% had experimented with audio downloads but did not listen on a regular basis.

Fewer women download and listen to podcasts
There will be just 700,000 diehard downloaders in the US this year; a tiny audience compared to the 25 million people who tune into stations run by traditional broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) every week. The report says that it will take a long time for people to ditch their transistors and join this small group of breakaways because downloading programmes is complicated and content is sparse. However, the good news for broadcasters is that the people who persevere gravitate towards audio from established radio stations rather than relative newbies.

Rough guess
The Forrester survey backs up some of the findings in a report from another research firm, BMRB. Its survey looked at digital consumption in the UK. It also found that podcasts are the preserve of young males. But it predicts a much quicker uptake of podcasts in UK households, with around eight million adults logging on and walking away with their favourite radio programmes in their pocket by September this year. The huge discrepancy between the figures for the US and the UK could point to relative differences in listening habits, online dexterity or even national character. It could also reflect just how difficult it is to make these predictions.

Digital listeners
Even broadcasters can only take a rough guess at many people are actually listening to their podcasts.

Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles tops the BBC downloads
"One of challenges with podcasting is that there are no audited or reliable reporting mechanisms," said Sarah Prag, a senior project manager responsible for the BBC podcast trial. From next week, the BBC will offer 50 different podcasts. In February, the latest month for which statistics are available, 1.7 million people downloaded BBC content. The Chris Moyles show on BBC Radio 1 is the most popular. But according to Ms Prag that only tells the BBC how many files are downloaded. It does not say anything about the number of individuals or whether people are even listening to the files. However the kinds of programmes people are listening to does give a hint about digital demographics. Programmes like In Our Time and From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4 are not the kinds of programmes people normally associated with the MP3 generation, said Ms Prag. "You would expect Chris Moyles to do well but what this tells us is that Radio 4 is doing extraordinarily well," she told the BBC News website. "It's knocked some of our assumptions on the head."
By Jonathan Fildes, BBC News science and technology reporter

Weak brain links 'explain autism' BBC NEWS
The difficulties people with autism have in relating to others could be due to poor communication between brain areas, scientists suggest. It may explain why they do not interact well, as the weak links mean they benefit less from social situations. It had been thought that their lack of social skills was due to abnormalities in particular brain areas. The study in Neuroimage, carried out by University of London researchers, compared brain scans of 32 people.The researchers took brain scans of 16 people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and above-average IQs, as well as those of 16 unaffected volunteers. They were shown four images on the screen - two of houses and two of faces. They were then asked to concentrate on either the faces or houses and decide if they were identical. Scans showed there were marked differences in the brain activity of the two groups. In the control group, paying attention to pictures of faces caused a significant increase in brain activity. But for people with ASD, paying attention to faces made no impact at all on the brain, explaining their lack of interest in faces. Both groups had the same reaction to houses. Dr Geoff Bird, at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, who led the research, said: "The standard view of social problems in ASD is that there is a problem in the part of the brain that processes faces. "Our research suggests that this is not the real problem - it seems to be that paying attention to faces doesn't lead to the normal increase in brain activity. "This is because the face-processing areas of the brain are not well connected to those parts of the brain that control attention - such as the frontal and parietal regions. "We all know that it is harder to pick a face out of a busy crowd, for instance, but when we do find the right face and pay attention to it, we are easily able to tune-out all the other distractions and focus on that one face. "It seems that, for people with ASD, paying attention to a face is much harder to do and doesn't have the same effect." Richard Mills, director of research for the National Autistic Society, said: "We welcome this research, which examines the underlying mechanisms related to complex 'instinctive' social responses. "We know that many people with ASD have particular difficulties in this area and we are hopeful that an improved understanding of these processes will enable people to receive appropriate and helpful support."

I'm innocent says ex-Enron chief BBC NEWS
Former Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling has said he is "absolutely innocent" of any charges linked to the firm's collapse. He made the comments as he began what is viewed by experts as his "make or break" testimony against charges of fraud and conspiracy. Along with Enron founder Kenneth Lay, he is charged with hiding billions of dollars of losses and of lying about the state of the energy-trading firm. Both Mr Skilling and Mr Lay have denied the charges. Enron collapsed in 2001 with debts of $31.8bn (£18bn).

Vow to fight
"I'm absolutely innocent," Mr Skilling said as he began his testimony at the federal court in Houston. "The charges against me are wrong. I will fight those charges till the day I die." During questioning by his defence lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, Mr Skilling also admitted he was nervous as "I guess in some ways my life is on the line". As he began the questioning Mr Petrocelli noted that many of Mr Skilling's former colleagues had pleaded guilty to crimes associated with Enron's collapse, and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.

Plea concerns
During the trial, the defence has consistently argued that they were actually innocent and had been pushed into making guilty pleas to avoid trials or long prison sentences. When asked whether he believed any of his former colleagues were guilty, Mr Skilling said he believed the "vast majority" who had testified were innocent. He added that when he decided to resign from the firm after 11 years, he had done so to spend more time with his family. However, he also admitted he had told Mr Lay he wanted to quit as he was concerned about Enron's falling stock price. At its height, Enron was the seventh-biggest US firm and Mr Skilling had played a key role in building up the firm. He is now charged with 28 counts of conspiracy and fraud related to the company's collapse. Mr Skilling has argued that he is innocent and claimed that Enron collapsed because of a lack of market confidence and a "run on the bank" situation when creditors called in loans and the firm did not have enough money to finance itself.

More to come
Both he and Mr Lay have laid the blame for the accounting problems at the door of Enron's former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow. Mr Fastow has already pleaded guilty to fraud charges and is a prosecution witness. Mr Lay, 63, is due to testify later this month. He faces six charges of fraud and conspiracy. Analysts said that Mr Skilling's time on the stand could make or break his defence. "His testimony may be his only opportunity to save himself," said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor. "But at the same time, he runs the risk of sealing his fate and almost guaranteeing his conviction if jurors find his testimony incredible."

Overseas Ballots Counted in Italy Election Houston Chronicle
Italy's parliamentary election hung in the balance Tuesday as the country counted ballots cast by Italians living abroad, including in the United States, for six new Senate seats. Near final returns showed opposition leader Romano Prodi's center-left coalition winning the lower house, while conservatives led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi held a one-seat lead in the Senate, with results for six seats elected by Italians abroad still yet to be counted. A jubilant Prodi declared victory in a speech to supporters early Tuesday. "Until the very end we were left in suspense, but in the end victory has arrived," he said. Berlusconi's spokesman contested the victory claim, and a top official in his Forza Italia party indicated the conservatives would request a recount "in order to have a result that we really can consider certain and final." Prodi's allies conceded after his announcement that results in the Senate were still not complete. The election marks the first time Italian citizens living abroad had the right to vote by mail in a parliamentary election, thanks to a 2001 law sponsored by Berlusconi's conservative government soon after it came to power. The law created four huge electoral districts to represent Italians who live overseas. Eighteen lawmakers will be chosen to represent this new constituency, 12 in the Chamber of Deputies and six in the Senate. Politicians crisscrossed continents and flew across oceans in a scramble to win over the 2.6 million voters abroad. Politicians particularly focused on Argentina, home to hundreds of thousands of Italians. There were about 400,000 eligible Italian voters in the North and Central America expatriate district. At the close of the deadline for submitting ballots on Thursday, the Italian Consulate in New York, where the highest number of Italian citizens in the United States are concentrated, said it had received more than 18,000 ballots. During his tenure as premier, Berlusconi, a flamboyant billionaire, had strongly supported President Bush over Iraq despite fierce Italian opposition to the war. Prodi, an economist, said he would bring troops home as soon as possible, security conditions permitting. But the issue was largely deflated before the campaign began, when Berlusconi announced that Italy's troops there would be withdrawn by year's end. For hours after the vote ended Monday, projections and returns swung dramatically back and forth between the two sides, and without the vote from abroad, the election's outcome was still unclear. Voter turnout was about 84 percent. The Senate and lower chamber of parliament have equal powers, and any coalition would have to control both in order to form a government. Some center-left and center-right leaders have said if neither side controls both houses, new elections should be called. Final results in the lower house showed Prodi's coalition winning 49.8 percent of the vote compared to 49.7 percent for Berlusconi's conservatives. The winning coalition is automatically awarded 340 seats, 55 percent of the total. The Senate is made up of 315 elected lawmakers. There are also seven senators appointed for life, but by tradition they do not take sides. If parliament is split between the two coalitions, President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi could try to name a government of technocrats at least until another election. He could also seek to fashion a coalition of left and right, but considering the bitter divisions among Italy's political parties, that seemed unlikely. There is no clear provision in the Italian constitution to deal with a split parliament, and there are no precedents. Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione and several other politicians said early Tuesday that both sides must pull together, if only to handle urgent economic matters and the election of a new president after Ciampi's mandate expires in May. "We have to immediately send a message to the markets, to whomever wants to invest in Italy that the country is not going to fall apart," he said. Berlusconi, a 69-year-old media mogul and Italy's longest-serving premier since World War II, was battling to capture his third term with an often squabbling coalition of his Forza Italia party, the former neo-fascist National Alliance, pro-Vatican forces and the anti-immigrant Northern League. The 66-year-old Prodi, a former premier, was making his comeback bid with a potentially unwieldy coalition of moderate Christian Democrats, Greens, liberals, former Communists and Communists. Italians were mainly preoccupied by economic worries. Berlusconi failed to jump-start a flat economy during his tenure, but promised to abolish a homeowner's property tax. Prodi said he would revive an inheritance tax abolished by Berlusconi, but only for the richest; he also promised to cut payroll taxes to try to spur hiring.
Italy faces paralysis after election Toronto Star
Italy heads toward split in Parliament CTV.ca
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Users urged to fix browser flaw BBC NEWS
PC users are being urged to apply software patches that close "critical" vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. Since coming to light in late March, the flaws have proved very popular with malicious hackers keen to steal confidential data from PCs. Hackers have created hundreds of web pages that use the bug to take over vulnerable computers. Microsoft resisted calls to release patches early but other security firms produced software to protect users.

Malicious websites
The most serious of the four loopholes being closed by the Microsoft patches is known as the CreateTextRange bug and is one that has been labelled "critical", the highest level. The vulnerabilities addressed in Tuesday's security update for Windows came to light in quick succession towards the end of March. The CreateTextRange bug occurs in Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser and potentially hands over control of a vulnerable computer to an attacker if a specially crafted web page is visited. Criminals typically try to trick people into visiting such sites by sending out spam or phishing e-mail messages. Sometimes the sites that these messages contain links to closely resemble bank websites, others look benign but behind the scenes are installing backdoors that malicious hackers can use. Microsoft played down the threat posed by the crop of vulnerabilities and said it could find little evidence that they were being widely exploited. On the Microsoft Security Response Center blog it said there was only evidence of "limited attacks". The software giant said this was why the patches were provided as part of its monthly security updates, rather than straight away. However, soon after the bugs came to light security firm Websense said it had found more than 200 web pages created specifically to exploit the CreateTextRange vulnerability. More recently, other security experts reported a significant increase in the amount of data that phishing gangs were harvesting thanks to the bug. In response two security firms, eEye and Determina, produced independent patches that could help to keep organisations safe before the official fix was made available.

Telescope looks to go to the edge BBC NEWS
The Swift telescope is about to break the boundaries of our cosmic vision, to see the most distant objects ever recorded, its chief scientist believes. The Nasa space observatory has already looked nearly 13 billion light-years across the Universe to record the light from a cataclysmic star explosion. But Dr Neil Gehrels expects Swift to see even more distant events. The investigator says the telescope has the ability to observe perhaps the very first stars to shine in the cosmos. "That's the great hope," he told the UK's National Astronomy Meeting (Nam), hosted this year at Leicester University. Leicester is a major partner in the Swift mission - it helped to build one of its key instruments - and Dr Gehrels came to the Nam to review the satellite's first full year of observations.

Too young?
The spacecraft is set up to catch gamma-ray bursts - the intensely bright but fleeting flashes of very high-energy radiation that signal some of the Universe's most violent happenings. Once detected, the observatory swings itself to look directly into a flash with X-ray and ultraviolet/visible telescopes. It will also call up other space and ground-based facilities to join the fray. On 12 September last year, Swift caught the gamma-ray burst (GRB) from what was probably the death throes of a massive star and the birth of a black hole. It had a redshift of 6.3. Redshift is a measure of the degree to which light has been "stretched" by the expansion of the Universe. The greater the redshift, the more distant the object and the earlier it is being seen in cosmic history. Redshift 6.3 takes you 12.8 billion light-years across the Universe, to a time that is a little under a billion years after the Big Bang. "This very high redshift burst - we may only see one of those every three years or so," Dr Gehrels told the BBC News website. "This would be in the really early star-formation time in the Universe; and I'm very hopeful that if we can keep going for a few years, we can push that back. Once you get to redshift eight or 10, you really will be looking at the first stars."

'Alarm clock'
This is now one of the great quests in astrophysics: to tie down the timings of key events in the early Universe. Scientists would like to see evidence of the first generation of stars. These hot, blue giants would have grown out of the cold neutral gas that pervaded the young cosmos just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. It is believed that when these blue stars switched on, they brought to an end a period of darkness; and also "fried" the neutral gas to produce the diffuse intergalactic plasma we detect between nearby stars today. The caveat for Swift is that it sees stars at the ends of their lives, and there has to be a question mark over whether the redshift 8-10 era would be sufficiently mature to produce GRBs. "For a long time, there was a worry that there was a time delay; that you needed some time to form a hypernova, perhaps up to a billion years, which meant, if correct, you wouldn't expect to see any GRBs beyond redshift 6," commented Exeter University's Dr Andy Bunker, who studies high redshift galaxies. "Swift has now seen a redshift 6.3, which is very encouraging because it shows that any time delay is of the order of a few hundred million years rather than a billion years." So, watch this space as Swift probes out further than any telescope has gone before. It will still need, though, the support of other specialist observatories, operating at a range of different wavelengths, to study these far-distant locations in detail and make sense of them. "Swift is like an 'alarm clock'," says Dr Bunker. "When it goes off, it tells you there's an interesting place to go and have look."
By Jonathan Amos, BBC News science reporter, in Leicester

Oil tops $69 amid Iran tensions BBC NEWS
Crude oil prices have hit record levels in London amid heightening concerns of a conflict between the US and Iran. A barrel of London's benchmark Brent crude climbed to $69.06, while in New York, light sweet crude was at $69.11. Analysts have warned that prices could climb higher as geopolitical tensions increase worries that oil supplies will not be able to keep up with demand. Prices are close to the $70.85 record reached in the US in August following the impact of Hurricane Katrina.

'Mere mention'
The current round of price surges has been sparked by speculation that the US may attack Iran over its plans to develop nuclear capabilities. Both the US and key ally the UK have denied the claims, though that has done little to calm fears. However, the European Union is considering what measures to take against Iran, including sanctions, should Iran continue with its nuclear policy. Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, says it needs nuclear power to generate electricity, but the US and EU are concerned it wants to develop atomic weapons. Although the US reiterated on Monday that it was a seeking a diplomatic solution to the row, some investors fear Washington may be running out of patience with Tehran. "Concern about Iran never ceases to push prices," said Gerard Burg of National Australia Bank. "The mere mention of it sends prices higher."

Sailors killed in Sri Lanka blast BBC NEWS
At least 12 sailors have been killed and another eight wounded when a bus blew up in Sri Lanka, police say. The bus was carrying soldiers from north-eastern port town of Trincomalee, when a mine exploded, officials said. It comes a day after five soldiers and two civilians were killed in an attack in the northern Jaffna peninsula. The army blames the Tamil rebels for the latest attack. The rebels have not commented yet on the incident but denied involved in Monday's attack. The latest violence comes as a top truce monitor, Ulf Henricsson is meeting rebel leaders - including SP Thamilselvan, the leader of its political wing - to discuss Monday's mine attack, a truce monitor spokesperson said. "Two attacks within days it is very worrying," the spokesperson Helen Olafsdottir said. The government and the rebels are due to meet in Geneva later this month for the second round of peace talks. Security has been stepped up in the country following Monday's incident, a government spokesman said.

Charges filed after Indian fire BBC NEWS
Police in the north Indian city of Meerut have filed charges against the organisers of a trade fair after a devastating fire on Monday. Angry residents have accused them of negligence and are demanding action against local officials for their response to the fire. Some 45 people died in the blaze which swept through three tents. There are fears that the toll could rise with at least 80 people taken to hospital, some with serious injuries. Many anxious relatives have gathered outside hospitals, seeking information on their loved ones. "We've checked all hospitals and the mortuary," Manu Sharma, who is looking for his friend's wife, told the Reuters news agency. "We have not found her."

'Poor response'
Many blame the local administration for being slow to react to the fire.