World

<VIDEO> Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader who became South Africa's first black president, has been hit by a lung infection again and is in a hospital, the presidency said Thursday. 

<VIDEO> Banks in Cyprus reopened to customers for the first time in nearly two weeks Thursday with strict restrictions on transactions to stop people from withdrawing all their savings and triggering further chaos in the country's financial system.

<VIDEO> Cyprus is reopening its banks on Thursday. The banks were closed on March 16th, as the country worked on a new bailout deal.

<VIDEO> Dramatic video out of eastern China shows a lamppost smashing the windshield of a bus filled with passengers. The driver, who suffered a damaged spleen in the accident, steered the bus to the roadside where he led passengers to safety.

<VIDEO> Construction crews in Berlin continued to remove sections of one of the few remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall to make way for an apartment block early on Wednesday morning. 

<VIDEO> A strong earthquake struck rural central Taiwan on Wednesday, swaying buildings, sending school children to seek cover and injuring at least 20 people. The magnitude-6.1 earthquake was felt throughout the island.

<VIDEO> One of Britain's youngest Internet entrepreneurs has hit the jackpot after selling his content-shrinking application Summly to search giant Yahoo. For 17-year-old Nick d'Aloisio, the deal means a payday in the millions of dollars.

  BRUSSELS (AP) - Europe's leading institutions clashed in a rare sign of public discord Tuesday over what shape future financial rescues will take following the bailout for Cyprus, creating further uncertainty and concern about the safety of keeping large deposits in European banks.

 

     In a 10 billion euro bailout deal clinched in the early hours of Monday morning, Cyprus agreed to dissolve the country's second-largest bank, inflicting significant losses - possibly up to 40 percent - on all deposits larger than 100,000 euros ($130,000).

 

     That step, agreed with the other 16 European Union countries that use the euro and the International Monetary Fund, marks the first time in Europe's 3-year-old debt crisis that large deposit holders - wealthy savers, businesspeople or institutions - will be forced to take losses as part of a eurozone rescue.

 

     The move was hailed later that day by Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the Eurogroup of euro finance ministers, who said that forcing losses on banks' shareholders, bondholders and even large depositors could become the template for future rescues. 

 

     However by Tuesday, Benoit Coeure, a member of the executive board of the European Central Bank, bluntly dismissed Dijsselbloem's idea. 

 

     Coeure told France's Europe 1 radio that Dijsselbloem (die-SELL-bloom) was "wrong" to say that because the solution agreed on for Cyprus cannot be a model for the eurozone. Cyprus's situation is unique because of the island nation's outsized financial sector, including large deposits from foreigners, added Coeure, who sits on the ECB's six-member executive board. 

 

     French President Francois Hollande insisted that the Cyprus solution is one of a kind. "What is really important regarding Cyprus ... was the exceptional, specific, unique treatment and which, nevertheless, had to be done," Hollande said at a news conference in Paris, with visiting Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. 

 

     Rajoy said he believes banking recapitalization should be done through the European Stability Mechanism, not through the deposits of savers.  "I am not in agreement with that, and I will defend my position," he said.

 

     Also Tuesday a leading European Parliament lawmaker further muddied the waters by calling for the enforcement of losses on big savers to be enshrined in in law in cases of bank failures. Deposits of up to 100,000 euros are guaranteed by a state-backed deposit insurance scheme. In the U.S., deposits are generally insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation up to $250,000. 

 

     "When a bank is in crisis, deposits below 100,000 euros shall be protected, but once the shareholders have lost value, the investors have lost money, then large deposits are in the last row of the pecking hierarchy," said Gunnar Hokmark, an influential Swedish member of the European Parliament who is leading negotiations on finalizing a set of laws for winding up problem banks. 

 

     "Deposits will not be bailed-in until nearly all others tools are exhausted," he told the Associated Press. "But above the 100,000 euros level, there must be some risk, otherwise we wouldn't have the deposit insurance guarantee."

 

     The draft laws under negotiation, proposed by the European Commission, explicitly foresee the possibility to bail-in deposit holders above the guaranteed level from 2015 onward. Hokmark, who hails from Parliament's center-right majority caucus, was confident that the law will find wide support among lawmakers. 

 

     EU officials had previously stressed the so-called bail-in was a "unique step" in Cyprus, but Dijsselbloem's remarks in an interview Monday clearly raised the specter for that solution to be applied elsewhere in Europe too. His comments suggesting that the approach taken in Cyprus was a model solution spooked markets and sent the euro to its lowest value against the dollar since November. 

 

     "Anxiety spreads when key European leaders make such statements," said Erik Nielsen, an economist with Unicredit bank. 

 

     Investors are concerned that if holders of large deposits in weaker southern European countries were to start fearing for their money, they could move it away from their domestic banks. While there is an ECB stopgap to help cover a run on a bank, a steady outflow of funds would further expose a lender's capital reserves, possibly pushing them to seek support from their governments. 

 

     But nations such as Portugal, Spain, Italy or Greece already have huge public debt loads, which would make it difficult for them to recapitalize their banks. Spain, unable to shoulder the burden of its ailing lenders, has already applied for a bailout from its European partners to shore up its banks.

 

     Dijsselbloem ln Tuesday defended his comments, saying it is logical to hold banks' owners and bondholders to account.

 

     "Our approach to saving troubled banks is that it's no longer going to be directly for the account of the taxpayer and the government, but that we're trying to push the risks back to the banks and the ones who have invested riskily," he told Dutch broadcaster RTL. 

 

     But the ECB's Coeure rejected the idea of making the course taken in Cyprus a template for the bloc. 

 

     "The experience in Cyprus is not a model," Coeure said. "I think Mr. Dijsselbloem was wrong to say what he said."

 

     "Cyprus was bankrupt. That's a situation you don't have anywhere else in the eurozone," Coeure insisted. "The situation was so special that it required a special solution. There is no reason to use the same methods elsewhere," he said.

 

     The European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, was also at pains to dispel fears ignited by Dijsselbloem's comments. 

 

     Spokeswoman Chantal Hughes said "we want a solution where the taxpayer stops paying for the banks' errors" but added that Cyprus was a unique situation and wasn't a "perfect model or a model that should be used again in the same way."

 

 

<VIDEO> Italy's highest criminal court on Tuesday overturned Amanda Knox's acquittal in the slaying of her British roommate and ordered a new trial, prolonging a case that has become a cause celebre in the United States.

<VIDEO> A deal was reached in Brussels today that would prevent Cyprus' bankruptcy by securing a last-minute $13 billion bailout on the condition that the country cut back its banking sector and force large losses on big deposits to help foot the bill. 

<VIDEO> Just days after the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State John Kerry confronted Iraq for continuing to grant Iran access to its airspace, saying it was raising questions about Iraq's reliability as a partner.

<VIDEO> After two years in power, the civilian government in Myanmar wants to wipe away the country's as one of the world's biggest drug producers. Police have been going village to village, but it doesn't appear to be working. 

<VIDEO> Two pandas left China on Sunday bound for Canada. The pandas will stay in Toronto and Calgary zoos for five years in a visit that's believed to be the first one of the species to Canada since the 1980s.

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<VIDEO> Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced trip to Iraq Sunday. He met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, saying Iraq shouldn't allow Iran to use its airspace to ship weapons and fighters to Syria.

<VIDEO> Pope Francis has celebrated Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square before thousands of people waving olive branches and palm fronds.

<VIDEO> President Obama toured the Yad VaShem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem on Friday. The President is finishing his visit to Israel before going to Jordan.

   PARIS (AP) - A lawyer says preliminary charges have been filed against former President Nicolas Sarkozy in connection with allegations he illegally took donations from France's richest woman for his 2007 election campaign.

 

     Lawyer Antoine Gillot told French TV i-Tele that Judge Jean-Michel Gentil in the southwestern city of Bordeaux placed Sarkozy under investigation - a step short of formal charges - after hours of questioning Thursday.

 

     Sarkozy in November was named a key and potentially indictable witness in an investigation involving 90-year-old L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.

 

     Gillot represents Bettencourt's former butler, who was also questioned Thursday along with Sarkozy.

 

<VIDEO> The European Central Bark is warning Cyprus that is has only four days to agree on a new plan to raise funds to avoid bankruptcy. Otherwise it will pull the plug on the country's banks at the start of next week if no bailout solution is found.

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<VIDEO> President Barack Obama says Palestinians deserve an independent and sovereign state and an end to occupation by Israel. Obama spoke at a news conference in the West Bank with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

<VIDEO> President Obama arrived in the West Bank Thursday, where he was greeted by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

<VIDEO> Palestinian militants in Gaza fired two rockets into Southern Israel on Thursday. The rockets hit far from Jerusalem, where President Obama was at the time. 

<VIDEO> The head of the International Monetary Fund offered no comment as she returned to Washington Wednesday. Investigators have searched her Paris home as part of an inquiry into her role in a $400 million arbitration deal in favor of a tycoon.

<VIDEO> Renewing U.S. support for the difficult "work of generations," President Barack Obama assured Israel that his administration would pursue a Mideast peace that would allow residents of the Jewish state to live free from the threat of terror. 

<VIDEO> President Obama began his visit to Israel by praising Israel as a free and independent state, and reaffirming the US alliance with Israel.

<VIDEO> Hackers are suspected of launching a massive computer attack in South Korea, after the computer systems of the country's top three broadcasters and two major banks crashed on Wednesday afternoon.

<VIDEO> President Obama arrived in Israel on Wednesday, for his first visit as President. His agenda is focused on Israeli-Palestinian relations, Iran's nuclear program and the violence in Syria. 

<VIDEO> Iraqi officials say a wave of bombings has rumbled across Baghdad and nearby towns, killing at least 56 people and wounding more than 200. The attacks, mostly car bombings, came on the eve of the anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.

<VIDEO> Pope Francis urged the massive crowds gathered for his installation Mass to protect the environment, as well as the weakest and poorest people of the earth.

<VIDEO> The installation mass of Pope Francis is being celebrated in Vatican City. The pope received a gold-plated silver fisherman's ring as part of the ceremony.

<VIDEO> Pope Francis I rode to St. Peters Square for his installation Mass in a white open-air vehicle. Francis also exited the vehicle to greet a man in the crowd.

<VIDEO> Two Norweigian daredevils in wingsuits flew through the narrow gap between two towers of a skyscraper before parachuting down for a perfect landing. Anthony Mason reports

<VIDEO> After an extended court case, Hu Zhicheng is still living in limbo in China -- free to go about his business in Shanghai, but not allowed to return to his family in the U.S. Meanwhile in California, his wife despairs of ever seeing him again. 

<VIDEO> Dozens of people were arrested on Sunday, after clashes erupted between Egypt's security forces and protesters outside the Muslim Brotherhood's headquarters in Cairo. 

  NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - A new study has found that human-induced climate change contributed to low rain levels in East Africa in 2011, making global warming one of the causes of Somalia's famine and tens of thousands of deaths. 

 

     Climate scientists with Britain's national weather service studied weather patterns in Somalia in 2010 and 2011 and found that yearly precipitation known as the short rains failed in late 2010 because of the natural effects of La Nina. 

 

     But Peter Scott, one of the study's authors, said the lack of long rains in 2011 was a result of climate change. 

 

     Britain has said up to 100,000 people died from the famine. But global warming wasn't the only cause. Al-Shabab Islamic extremists stopped aid groups from distributing food in its territory, contribut

 JERUSALEM (AP) - A parliamentary official says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will sign a formal deal Friday with two leading parties to form a new coalition government.

 

     Noga Katz, a spokeswoman for Netanyahu's Likud-Yisrael Beitenu faction, says leaders of the Yesh Atid and Jewish Home parties have given up last-minute demands to be named deputy prime ministers. Those last-minute demands delayed the deal from being formalized.

 

     An official with the Yesh Atid party, Netanyahu's leading partner, said that the matter was resolved, and new coalition partners would sign a coalition agreement Friday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not yet been formalized.

 

     The new government is expected to curb preferential treatment for Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority and may push for renewed Mideast peace efforts.

 

 JERUSALEM (AP) - President Barack Obama says it would currently "take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon."

 

     In a Thursday interview with Israel's Channel 2 TV ahead of his upcoming visit to the country, Obama says he doesn't want to "cut it too close" and therefore all options remain on the table in countering the Iranian nuclear program. The issue has been one of the most fraught between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

     Israel has repeatedly threatened to act militarily should Iran appear to be on the verge of obtaining a bomb, while the U.S. has pushed for more time to allow diplomacy and economic sanctions to run their course. In the interview, aired Thursday, Obama says he still favors diplomacy over force.

 

  VATICAN CITY (AP) - In his first Mass as pontiff, Pope Francis has displayed his informal style as a pastor. He delivered an off-the-cuff homily in the Sistine Chapel today about the need to walk with God, build up his church and confess. He referred at one point to children building sand castles on the beach. 

 

     It was a far simpler message than the three-page discourse delivered in Latin by his predecessor, Pope Benedict, during his first Mass as pope in 2005. 

 

     At the start of today's Mass, Francis spoke with the Vatican's master of liturgical ceremonies, Monsignor Guido Marini. Under Pope Benedict, Marini ushered in a far more traditional style of liturgy. Vatican officials confirm that Marini was somewhat put off by Francis' refusal last night to wear the formal papal red cape when he emerged on the balcony over St. Peter's Square. 

 

     The new pope's authorized biographer says the difference in style between Francis and his predecessor reflects his belief that the Catholic Church needs to be at one with the people it serves -- rather than imposing its message on a society that often doesn't want to hear it. 

 

<VIDEO> Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was not considered one of the frontrunners to be pope. Allen Pizzey tells us more about the new pope.

<VIDEO> Pope Francis prayed privately at Rome's St. Mary Major basilica on Thursday. The Vatican also said Pope Francis will not visit his predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict on Thursday. A visit is expected soon.

<VIDEO> China's national legislature formally gave Xi Jinping the title of President on Thursday. It's the last of three titles that were previously held by his predecessor, Hu Jintao.

<VIDEO> A woman from Qatar who received five organ transplants has now become a mother. Fatema Al Ansari is the first person known to give birth after having this many organs transplanted. 

<VIDEO> Tears and cheers erupted across Argentina on Wednesday as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first pope from the hemisphere.

<VIDEO> Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope Wednesday, becoming the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.

<VIDEO> Black smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican on Wednesday, indicating that the 115 Cardinals inside have not yet chosen a new pope. 

<VIDEO> Catholic faithful are gathered in St. Peter's Square, waiting to see the white smoke that will announce to the world when a new pope has been selected.

     VATICAN CITY (AP) - Cardinals have set Tuesday as the start date for the conclave to elect the next pope.

 

     The Vatican press office said the decision was taken during a vote Friday afternoon of the College of Cardinals.

 

     Tuesday will begin with a Mass in the morning, followed by the first balloting in the afternoon.

 DORAL, Fla. (AP) - Venezuelans living in the United States are reacting with cautious optimism that there will be change in their homeland following President Hugo Chavez's death.

 

     In the Miami suburb of Doral, Venezuelans watched on television as the country's vice president, Nicolas Maduro, announced Chavez had died Tuesday. At a popular restaurant, one person cheered at the news, but the rest watched quietly and refrained from any celebration.

 

     Doral has the largest concentration of Venezuelans in the U.S. Dora's mayor and police chief prepared a security and contingency plan in the event of Chavez's death. Many Venezuelans are expected to gather at restaurants and meeting spots in Miami, though few people immediately showed up.

 

     There are nearly 190,000 Venezuelans in the United States. Many are strongly anti-Chavez.

 

 LONDON (AP) - Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable. 

 

     In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk. 

 

     "The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima." 

 

     The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region. 

 

     On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo. 

 

     In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

 

     Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident. 

 

     In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there. 

 

     The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.  

 

     Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

 

     For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."  

 

     David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said. 

 

     Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report. 

 

     Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted. 

 

     "On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

 

     WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

 

     Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk. 

 

     "It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said. 

 

     Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.  

 

     "This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness. 

 

     In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical." 

 

     Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food. 

 

     Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

 

     Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents. 

 

     "I'm enraged," he said.