NYC mosque debate will shape American Islam

NYC mosque debate will shape American Islam

Imam Abdallah Adhani, center, leaves a proposed site for an Islamic cultural center to speak to reporters after a Friday prayer service followed by his media adviser Tara Bohen, right, Friday, Aug. 27, 2010 in New York. The NYPD set up barrier tape in front of the building to contain members of the media.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Adnan Zulfiqar, a graduate student, former U.S. Senate aide and American-born son of Pakistani immigrants, will soon give the first khutbah, or sermon, of the fall semester at the University of Pennsylvania. His topic has presented itself in the daily headlines and blog posts over the disputed mosque near ground zero.

What else could he choose, he says, after a summer remembered not for its reasoned debate, but for epithets, smears, even violence?

As he writes, Zulfiqar frets over the potential fallout and what he and other Muslim leaders can do about it. Will young Muslims conclude they are second-class citizens in the U.S. now and always?

"They're already struggling to balance, `I'm American, I'm Muslim,' and their ethnic heritage. It's very disconcerting," said Zulfiqar, 32, who worked for former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat, and now serves Penn's campus ministry. "A controversy like this can make them radical or become more conservative in how they look at things or how they fit into the American picture."

Whatever the outcome, the uproar over a planned Islamic center near the World Trade Center site is shaping up as a signal event in the story of American Islam.

Strong voices have emerged from outside the Muslim community. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been steadfast in his support for the project. Jon Stewart nightly mocks the bigotry that the protest unleashed.

"The sentiment, say, five years ago among many Muslims, especially among many young Muslims, was that, `We're in this all by ourselves,'" said Omer Mozaffar, a university lecturer in Chicago who leads Quran study groups as a buffer between young people and the extremist preachers on YouTube. `That has changed significantly. There have been a lot of people speaking out on behalf of Muslims."

Eboo Patel, an American Muslim leader and founder of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago nonprofit that promotes community service and religious pluralism, said Muslims are unfortunately experiencing what all immigrant groups endured in the U.S. before they were fully accepted as American. Brandeis University historian Jonathan D. Sarna has noted that Jews faced a similar backlash into the 1800s when they tried to build synagogues, which were once banned in New York.

Patel believes American Muslims are on the same difficult but inevitable path toward integration.

"I'm not saying this is going to be happy," Patel said. "But I'm extremely optimistic."

Yet, the overwhelming feeling is that the controversy has caused widespread damage that will linger for years.

American Muslim leaders say the furor has emboldened opposition groups to resist new mosques around the country, at a time when there aren't enough mosques or Islamic schools to serve the community.

Rhetoric from some politicians that lumps all Muslims with terrorists will depress the Muslim vote, analysts say.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, said in opposing the Islamic center that, "America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization."

U.S. Muslims who have championed democracy and religious tolerance question what they've accomplished. If the "extremist" label can be hung on someone as apparently liberal as the imam at the center of the outcry, Feisal Abdul Rauf, then any Muslim could come under attack. Feisal supports women's rights, human rights and interfaith outreach.

"The joke is on moderate Muslims," said Muqtedar Khan, a University of Delaware political scientist and author of "American Muslims, Bridging Faith and Freedom." "What's the point if you're going to be treated the same way as a radical? If I get into trouble are they going to treat me like I'm a supporter of al-Qaeda?"

U.S. Muslims are themselves divided over the proposed mosque.

Feisal and his wife, Daisy Khan (no relation to Muqtedar Khan), want to build a 13-story, $100 million community center called Park51 two blocks from the World Trade Center site. It would be modeled on the YMCA or Jewish Community Center, with programming for the entire city, and would include a mosque.

Some Muslims felt from the start that the plan was misguided, given the wounds of the Sept. 11 attacks and widespread misunderstanding about Islam. Yet they felt compelled to defend the proposal when the discussion over religious freedom and cultural sensitivity turned ugly.

Days ago, a brick nearly smashed a window at the Madera Islamic Center in central California, where signs were left behind that read, "Wake up America, the enemy is here," and "No temple for the god of terrorism." This past week in New York, a Muslim cab driver had his face and throat slashed in a suspected hate crime.

The poisonous atmosphere comes at a still fragile time in the development of Muslim communal life.

Leaders have spent years trying to persuade Muslim immigrants to come out of their enclaves and fully embrace being American. The task became that much more difficult in the aftermath of 9/11. Many Muslims pulled back, convinced that if another terrorist attack occurs, the U.S. government will put them in internment camps, like the Japanese in World War II. Their American-born children, meanwhile, have felt rejected by their own country.

David Ramadan, a Muslim and vice chair of ethnic coalitions for Republican Party in Virginia, predicts that comments from political figures in both major parties will depress Muslim voting in years to come.

Ramadan and other Muslim Republicans have been pressing GOP leaders not to support a particular mosque, but to acknowledge that American Muslims have equal rights under the Constitution.

"Who wants to come into the fold of the Republican Party today, or even the fold of the Democratic Party?" Ramadan asked. "They just increased the number of independents in America."

Memories of chaos, rebirth 5 years after Katrina

Memories of chaos, rebirth 5 years after Katrina

Meredith Guy,5, of Metairie, looks into a "Katrina casket ," where people placed notes and items, after an Ecumenical "funeral service" for Hurricane Katrina at Our Lady of Prompt Succor Catholic Church in Chalmette, La., one day before the fifth anniversary of the storm, which took over 1,000 lives and devastated the region, Saturday,

SHELL BEACH, La. (AP) -- Two strangers shared an umbrella and a somber embrace Sunday as they scanned 163 names on a marble wall honoring those who died in Louisiana's coastal St. Bernard Parish when Hurricane Katrina wracked the region.

Gladys Nunez and Linda Wells didn't know each other before a service at the site - but both knew too many of the names etched onto the memorial, friends and neighbors who perished in the storm's chaos five years ago. Nunez wrapped her arm around Wells, who was visiting the site for the first time.

"I had to come see for myself and try to put this behind me," said Wells, 50, of Chalmette.

Nunez, 68, of Toca, said: "It's something we'll live with for the rest of our life. It never goes away. Katrina showed no mercy."

Memorials were planned across the Gulf Coast from New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward to Biloxi, Miss., to mourn the hundreds who died when Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. For many, though, it also was a time to reflect on how far the region has come since then, everything that's been restored.

More than 100 people braved Sunday's soggy weather for the memorial service in Shell Beach, where parish officials read aloud all 163 names on the memorial. After a moment of silence, Diane Phillips, 51, of Hopedale, volunteered to lay a wreath in the bayou. Some wiped away tears as the wreath floated away. Phillips had two cousins and several close friends who died in the storm.

"I didn't think of one person when we did the wreath," she said. "You think of the whole entire parish and everything that we lost that day and everything that we've brought back since then."

Indeed, for many on the Gulf Coast - still reeling from the massive BP oil spill - the mood is still one of mourning. In New Orleans, the bells will toll at St. Louis Cathedral in honor of the dead.

Other ceremonies were to focus on rebuilding and moving on. A "healing ceremony" and march were planned in the Lower 9th Ward - where only about a quarter of the 5,400 homes that stood in the area before the storm have been rebuilt. Many still bear a constant reminder of Katrina, spray-painted circles indicating they had been searched and whether bodies were inside.

"I'm tired of the anniversaries," Barbara Washington, 77, said Saturday at a symbolic funeral and burial for the storm in Chalmette, La. She lost her home in New Orleans and is now living in a suburb. "I miss my home every day. I feel lost. But I also know we are getting back. We're survivors."

In the afternoon, President Barack Obama will speak at Xavier University - which, like 80 percent of New Orleans, was flooded when the levees failed. He will recall those who died and reassure those who have returned that he is committed to rebuilding.

Other events were planned throughout the region, including a reunion of those who evacuated to the Superdome and memorials in coastal St. Tammany and Plaquemines parishes.

At the symbolic burial Saturday in Chalmette, mourners filled a steel-gray casket with notes, cards and letters.

One, written by a child in red crayon, said: "Go away from us."

Beck says US has `wandered in darkness' too long

Beck says US has `wandered in darkness' too long

Glenn Beck speaks at his 'Restoring Honor' rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck told the tens of thousands of activists he drew from around the nation Saturday that the U.S. has too long "wandered in darkness."

At an event billed as nonpolitical but reflecting the mood of a sizable number in the country, the rally's marquee speaker, Sarah Palin, praised "patriots" in the audience for "knowing never to retreat."

The two champions of the tea party movement spoke from the very spot where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech 47 years ago. Some civil rights leaders who have denounced Beck's choice of a venue staged a rival rally to honor King.

Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee who may make a White House run in 2012, said activists must honor King's legacy by paying tribute to the men and women who protect the United States in uniform.

Beck, pacing back and forth on the marble steps, said he was humbled by the size of the crowd, which stretched along the Washington Mall's long reflecting pool nearly all the way to the Washington Monument.

"Something beyond imagination is happening," he said. "America today begins to turn back to God."

"For too long, this country has wandered in darkness," said Beck, a Fox News host. He said it was now time to "concentrate on the good things in America, the things we have accomplished and the things we can do tomorrow."

Neither Beck nor Palin made overtly political comments.

Palin, greeted by chants of "USA, USA, USA" from many in the crowd, told the gathering, "It is so humbling to get to be here with you today, patriots. You who are motivated and engaged ... and knowing never to retreat."

"We must restore America and restore her honor," said the former Alaska governor, echoing the name of the rally, "Restoring Honor."

Palin told the crowd she wasn't speaking as a politician. "No, something more, something much more. I've been asked to speak as the mother of a soldier and I am proud of that distinction. Say what you want to say about me, but I raised a combat vet and you can't take that away from me." It was a reference to her son, Track, 20, who served a yearlong deployment in Iraq.

Palin honored military members in her speech. She likened the rally participants to the civil rights activists who came to the National Mall to hear King's historic speech. She said the same spirit that helped civil rights activists overcome oppression, discrimination and violence would help this group as well.

"We are worried about what we face. Sometimes, our challenges seem insurmountable," Palin said.

"Look around you. You're not alone," Palin told participants.

The crowd - organizers had a permit for 300,000 - was vast, with people standing shoulder to shoulder across large expanses of the Mall. The National Park Service stopped doing crowd counts in 1997 after the agency was accused of underestimating numbers for the 1995 Million Man March.

Civil rights leaders protested the event and scheduled a 3-mile plus march from a high school to the site of a planned King memorial near the Tidal Basin and not far from Beck's gathering.

Karen Watts, 57, of Mount Vernon, N.Y., was among those attending the King rally and march. "The dream is not forgotten," she said. "I live my life honoring Dr. King to make sure I'm part of that dream, by serving my community."

Of Beck's rally, she said, "They're American citizens. So long as they don't infringe upon my rights ... let them do what they do."

Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington's delegate to Congress, said she remembers being at King's march on Washington, which she said prompted change and ended segregation in public places. "Glenn Beck's march will change nothing. But you can't blame Glenn Beck for his March-on-Washington envy," she said.

Beck has said he did not intend to choose the King anniversary for his rally but had since decided it was "divine providence."

Beck, in a taped presentation mixed in with his live remarks, invoked King's message and said "the fight for freedom was not easy." He repeatedly injected religion into the event and urged rally participants to rely on faith to help the U.S. recover from an economic recession that has given the country stubbornly high unemployment.

"Faith is in short supply," Beck said. "To restore America, we must restore ourselves."

Organizers said their aim was to honor military personnel and others "who embody our nation's founding principles of integrity, truth and honor."

Many in the crowd watched the proceedings on large television screens. On the edges of the Mall, vendors sold "Don't Tread on Me" flags, popular with tea party activists. Other activists distributed fliers urging voters "dump Obama." The pamphlet included a picture of the president with a Hitler-style mustache.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, leading the civil rights march and rally, mocked the Beck production. "The folks who used to criticize us for marching are trying to have a march themselves," he said. "We come because the dream has not been achieved. We've made a lot of progress. But we still have a long way to go."

He said he wasn't seeking a confrontation with those at the Beck rally.

"We wouldn't disgrace today by allowing you to provoke us," he said in remarks directed at the Beck followers. "If peopple start heckling, smile at them," he told fellow marchers.

People began filling up the space between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument early in the day, many waving American flags. Wasington's subway system was extremely crowded with long lines of people trying to get to the rally. Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said that there was crowding at least a dozen stations.

Ricky Thomas, 43, a SWAT team police officer from Chesapeake Beach, Md., brought his 10-year old son Chase to the Beck rally. "I wanted my son to see democracy in action," Thomas said.

He said he wants government to stay out of people's lives. He acknowledged that he works for government, but said it's "a part of government that helps people when they are in trouble."

Beck has given voice to those angry and frustrated with President Barack Obama and other Democrats this election year, especially members of the tea party movement.

Economy slows to 1.6 percent as trade gap widens

Economy slows to 1.6 percent as trade gap widens

In this photo taken July 14, 2010, construction workers break ground on an industrial park complex in Springfield, Ill. The economy grew at a much slower pace this spring than previously estimated, mostly due to the largest surge in imports in 26 years and a slower buildup in inventories.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy grew at a much slower pace this spring than previously estimated, mostly due to the largest surge in imports in 26 years and a slower buildup in inventories.

The nation's gross domestic product - the broadest measure of the economy's output - grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate in the April-to-June period, the Commerce Department said Friday. That's down from an initial estimate of 2.4 percent last month and much slower than the first quarter's 3.7 percent pace. Many economists had expected a sharper drop.

The widening trade deficit subtracted nearly 3.4 percentage points from second quarter growth, the largest hit from a trade imbalance since 1947, the government said.

The report confirms the economy has lost significant momentum in recent months. Most analysts expect the nation's GDP will continue to grow at a similarly weak pace in the current July-to-September quarter and for the rest of this year.

The economy has grown for four straight quarters, but that growth has averaged only 2.9 percent, a weak pace after such a steep recession. The economy needs to expand at about 3 percent just to keep the unemployment rate, currently 9.5 percent, from rising.

Business investment in new machinery, computers and software drove much of the growth last quarter, increasing nearly 25 percent.

But much of that spending involved the purchase of imported goods. Imports surged 32.4 percent, the most since 1984. That overwhelmed a 9.1 percent increase in exports.

Consumers spent a bit more in the second quarter than previously estimated. Their spending rose at a 2 percent annual rate, slightly higher than the first quarter's 1.9 percent.

Economists expect many other supports for economic growth to fade. Federal government spending and the housing sector bolstered the economy last quarter, but housing has slumped again and will likely drag growth down in the third quarter. The impact of the federal government's $862 billion stimulus package is also projected to taper off this year.

There are few other signs of strength. Even business investment is expected to drop, as a report earlier this week showed that business orders for capital goods fell in July.

The government's GDP report measures the economy's output of goods and services and covers everything from autos to haircuts. Friday's report is the second of three estimates the government makes each quarter.

New jobless claims drop for first time in 4 weeks

New jobless claims drop for first time in 4 weeks

In this Aug. 23, 2010 photograph, Latasha Phillips, 33, left, feeds her son Ahmad, right, while eating breakfast in the communal dining room at the Community Partnership for Homeless in Miami. Phillips worked as a certified nurse's assistant before losing her job two months ago. She now lives at the homeless center with her four children and is looking for work as a nurse's assistant or a security guard.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- New requests for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week, the first decline in a month and a hopeful sign after a raft of negative economic reports.

New claims for jobless aid dropped by 31,000 to a seasonally adjusted 473,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Still, claims remain much higher than they would be in a healthy economy. Employers are reluctant to hire as economic growth appears to be slowing.

The drop comes after a steep rise the previous three weeks that sent claims to their highest level in nine months. Those increases raised fears that businesses were starting to layoff more workers.

Even with last week's decline, the four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose to 486,750, the most since November 2009.

The report is "mildly encouraging" but should be treated with caution, said Doug Porter, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, because the weekly claims report is highly volatile.

Separately, the Mortgage Bankers Association said that one in 10 American households with a mortgage was at risk of foreclosure this summer.

The number of Americans missing mortgage payments and falling into foreclosure has followed the upward trend in unemployment, which has been near double digits all year and has shown no sign of dropping soon.

Also, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said the average rate for a 30-year fixed loan fell to 4.36 percent this week. That's the ninth time in 10 weeks that the average rate has dropped to the lowest level since Freddie Mac began tracking rates in 1971.

Rates have fallen since the spring as investors, spooked by a slowing economy, shifted money into the safety of Treasury bonds. That has lowered the yield on Treasurys and mortgage rates tend to track those yields.

The jobless claims report helped send stocks up slightly in morning trading. The Dow Jones industrial average rose almost 34 points. Broader indexes also edged up.

The Labor Department, meanwhile, also said the total unemployment benefit rolls climbed steeply, as more people join extended unemployment aid programs that were renewed last month by Congress. During the recession, Congress added up to 73 weeks of emergency aid on top of the 26 weeks typically provided by the states.

All told, about 10.1 million people were receiving unemployment checks in the week ended Aug. 7, the latest data available. That's up about 260,000 from the previous week.

The extended program lapsed in June, throwing nearly 2 million people off the rolls. But since Congress renewed the program, the total benefit rolls have increased by 2.2 million, according to Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak.

That suggests "that there is little if any meaningful hiring throughout the economy," Greenhaus wrote in a note to clients.

The economy has grown for four straight quarters. But the pace has slowed from a 5 percent annual rate in last year's fourth quarter to 3.7 percent in the January-to-March period. It has weakened even further in the past several months.

Many economists expect the government Friday to revise lower its growth estimate for the April-June quarter to below 2 percent. That's weak in normal times and even worse after such a steep recession.

The housing sector, which usually helps power economic recoveries, is now acting as a drag. New home sales fell 12.4 percent in July to the lowest level in nearly a half-century, the government reported Wednesday. And another report this week showed that sales of previously occupied homes fell to their lowest level in 15 years. Sales are plummeting after a popular homebuyer's tax credit expired April 30.

Jobless claims fell steadily last year as the economy began expanding, dropping from a peak of 651,000 in March 2009 to about 460,000 at the beginning of this year. After fluctuating around that level for most of this year, claims started climbing again last month.

In a healthy economy, claims generally fall below 400,000.

Some companies are still cutting workers. Northrop Grumman Corp. said Wednesday that it will lay off 642 workers at its shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., by the end of the year. The shipyard currently has 11,000 employees.

And in late July, a NASA private contractor, the United Space Alliance, began telling 1,400 employees that they would be laid off in the fall as the U.S. space agency ends the space shuttle program.

Rallies over mosque near ground zero get heated

Rallies over mosque near ground zero get heated

People participate in a rally against a proposed mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero in New York, Sunday, Aug. 22, 2010.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The proposed mosque near ground zero drew hundreds of fever-pitch demonstrators Sunday, with opponents carrying signs associating Islam with blood, supporters shouting, "Say no to racist fear!" and American flags waving on both sides.

Police separated the two groups but there were some nose-to-nose confrontations, including a man and a woman screaming at each other across a barricade under a steady rain.

Opponents of the plan to build a $100 million, 13-story Islamic center and mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center site appeared to outnumber supporters. Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" blared over loudspeakers as mosque opponents chanted, "No mosque, no way!"

Signs hoisted by hundreds of protesters standing behind police barricades read "SHARIA" - using dripping, blood-red letters to describe Islam's Shariah law. Around the corner, NYPD officers guarded a cordoned-off stretch of Park Place occupied by the old building that is to become the Islamic center.

Steve Ayling, a 40-year-old Brooklyn plumber who took his "SHARIA" sign to a dry spot by an office building, said the people behind the mosque project are "the same people who took down the twin towers."

Opponents demand that the mosque be moved farther from the site where nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001. Ayling said, "They should put it in the Middle East," and added that he still vividly remembers watching television on 9/11 "and seeing people jumping from the towers, and ashes falling on my house."

On a nearby sidewalk, police chased away a group that unfurled a banner with images of beating, stoning and other torture they said was committed by those who followed Islamic law.

The mosque project is being led by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, who insist the center will promote moderate Islam. The dispute has sparked a national debate on religious freedom and American values and is becoming an issue on the campaign trail ahead of the midterm elections. Republicans have been critical of President Barack Obama's stance: He has said the Muslims have the right to build the center at the site but has not commented on whether he thinks they should.

At a pro-mosque rally staged a block away from opponents' demonstration, several hundred people chanted, "Muslims are welcome here! We say no to racist fear!"

Dr. Ali Akram, a Brooklyn physician, came with his three sons and an 11-year-old nephew waving an American flag in his hand. He noted that scores of Muslims were among those who died in the towers, and he called those who oppose the mosque "un-American."

"They teach their children about the freedom of religion in America - but they don't practice what they preach," Akram said.

Gila Barzvi, whose son, Guy Barzvi, was killed in the towers, stood with mosque opponents, clutching a large photo of her son with both hands.

"This is sacred ground and it's where my son was buried," the native Israeli from Queens said. She said the mosque would be "like a knife in our hearts."

She was joined by a close friend, Kobi Mor, who flew from San Francisco to participate in the rally.

If the mosque gets built, "we will bombard it," Mor said. He would not elaborate but added that he believes the project "will never happen."

The Sunday rallies coincided with an annual motorcycle ride by a group that raises money for Sept. 11 first responders.

Bikers rolled in from the two other Sept. 11 attack sites, Washington and Shanksville, Pa.

The imam behind the project is in the middle of a Mideast trip funded by the U.S. State Department that is intended to promote religious tolerance. He has discussed efforts to combat extremism, but has avoided any comments on the rancor over the planned Islamic center.

Rauf told the Al Wasat newspaper in Bahrain that the freedoms enshrined by the U.S. Constitution also reflect true Muslim values. A portion of the interview - to be published Monday - was seen Sunday by The Associated Press.

Calif. gays must wait to wed during Prop 8 appeal

Calif. gays must wait to wed during Prop 8 appeal

In this photo taken Aug. 4, 2010, same-sex marriage supporters gather outside a federal building and wait for a judge's decision overturning California's same-sex marriage ban in San Francisco. A federal appeals court put same-sex weddings in California on hold indefinitely Monday, Aug. 16, 2010, while it considers the constitutionality of the state's gay marriage ban.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Gay couples who had been gearing up to get married in California this week had to put their wedding plans on hold once again after a federal appeals court said it first wanted to consider the constitutionality of the state's same-sex marriage ban.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals imposed an emergency stay Monday on a trial court judge's ruling overturning the ban, known as Proposition 8. Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker had ordered state officials to stop enforcing the measure starting Wednesday, clearing the way for county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

"It's saddening just to know that we still have to keep waiting for this basic human right," Marcia Davalos, of Los Angeles, a health care advocate who had planned to marry her partner, Laurette Healey, said when the stay was issued Monday. "We were getting excited and then all of a sudden it's like, 'Ugh.' It's a roller-coaster."

Lawyers for the two gay couples who challenged the ban said Monday they would not appeal the panel's decision on the stay to the U.S. Supreme Court. They said they were satisfied the appeals court had agreed to fast-track its consideration of the Proposition 8 case by scheduling oral arguments for the week of Dec. 6.

"Today's order from the 9th Circuit for an expedited hearing schedule ensures that we will triumph over Prop. 8 as quickly as possible," said Chad Griffin, president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, a group funding the effort to get the voter-approved gay marriage ban permanently overturned. "Our attorneys are ready to take this case all the way through the appeals court and to the United States Supreme Court."

Attorneys for backers of the voter-approved measure applauded the decision. In seeking the emergency stay, they had argued that sanctioning same-sex unions while the case was on appeal would create legal chaos if the ban is eventually upheld.

"Invalidating the people's vote based on just one judge's opinion would not have been appropriate, and would have shaken the people's confidence in our elections and the right to vote itself," said Andy Pugno, general counsel for the coalition of religious and conservative groups that sponsored Proposition 8.

Under the timetable laid out Monday, it was doubtful a decision would come down from the 9th Circuit before next year.

A different three-judge panel than the one that issued Monday's decision will be assigned to decide the constitutional question that many believe will eventually end up before the Supreme Court.

County clerks throughout the state had been preparing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples for the first time since Proposition 8 passed in November 2008. The measure amended the California Constitution to overrule a state Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex unions earlier that year.

"I'm sad, but I'm also glad that I didn't pay the $100 to reserve an appointment at the clerk's office," said Thea Lavin, 31, of San Francisco, who had planned to wed her partner, Jess Gabbert, 30, if the stay were denied. "This has happened so many times before where we take two steps forward, one step back."

Walker ruled on Aug. 4 that Proposition 8 violated the equal protection and due process rights of gays and lesbians guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

The ban's sponsors appealed that ruling and also asked the 9th Circuit to block same-sex weddings in the meantime. They claimed in papers filed with the 9th Circuit that gay marriages would harm the state's interest in promoting responsible procreation through heterosexual marriage.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown had joined lawyers for the plaintiffs in urging the appeals court to allow the weddings this week, arguing that keeping the ban in place any longer would harm the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

In a two-page order granting the stay, the appeals court panel did not indicate why it was keeping Proposition 8 in effect until it could consider the appeal of Walker's verdict.

But it ordered Proposition 8 sponsors to address in their opening brief due Sept. 17 whether they even have the legal right to try to have the trial judge's ruling overturned. Both Brown and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the original defendants in the case, have said they support same-sex marriage and refused to defend Proposition 8 in court.

"The delay is excruciating and heartbreaking I know for the couples, but the ruling did include a significant victory by expediting the case and by highlighting that the proponents have a heavy lift to show they even have the right to bring an appeal," said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. "So those aspects of today's ruling do go some way legally to counterbalance the disappointment."

Currently, same-sex couples can legally wed only in Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.

Jury Deliberations Resume in Liczbinski Murder Trial

Jury deliberations resume Monday morning in the penalty
phase of the trial for two men convicted of the murder of
Philadelphia police sargeant Stephen Liczbinski.

Jurors are considering the penalty — life in prison or death — for co-defendants Eric Floyd and Levon Warner. Floyd, Warner and a third man, Howard Cain robbed a bank inside a supermarket and sargeant Stephen Liczbinski pursued them during the getaway.

For full story go to: http://kyw.cbslocal.com/

Oil, price worries as La. shrimpers start season

Oil, price worries as La. shrimpers start season

In this photo provided by P.J. Hahn, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Paul Zukunft, right, inspects shrimp while on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico Saturday, Aug. 14, 2010. Plaquemines Parish government on Saturday received special permission from Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries to troll for shrimp and inspect the catch.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Shrimpers returned to Louisiana waters Monday for the first commercial season since the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, uncertain what crude may still be in the water and what price they'll get for the catch if consumers worry about possible lingering effects from the massive BP spill.

The spill has put a crimp in the fishing industry in a state that ranks first in the nation in producing shrimp, blue crab, crawfish and oysters, a $318-million-a year business in Louisiana. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke planned to visit the state Monday to lunch with fishermen and talk to seafood industry representatives.

Perhaps the biggest fear is that some fisherman might try to sell oil-contaminated shrimp and scare consumers away again after prices crashed once already this summer.

"If you see oily shrimp, you got to throw them back over. Go somewhere else. It's all you can do. And you hope everyone else does the same," said Dewayne Baham, 49, a shrimper from Buras.

Louisiana shrimp prices rose soon after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the spill that eventually spewed 206 million gallons of oil from BP's blown-out well. The price spike was fed by fears that the shrimp would soon be unavailable.

However, despite state and federal assurances that seafood reaching the market was safe, demand dropped and prices crashed a month ago, said Harlon Pearce, a seafood dealer and head of the state's seafood promotion board.

Ravin Lacoste of Theriot, said he believes his fellow shrimpers know better than to turn in a bad catch.

"If you put bad shrimp on the market - we in enough trouble now with our shrimp," Lacoste said. "You might can go in the closed waters and catch more shrimp. But it ain't worth it."

Pearce did what he could over the weekend to allay fears over safety. On Friday, he was in a group that set out with several fishermen on a test run around Grand Isle and Barataria Bay.

They trawled several areas, pulling up nets that held shrimp, mud, jellyfish or driftwood - all without the signs or telltale smell of oil.

Seafood testing begins when there's no longer visible oil in a particular area. First, inspectors smell samples for oil. Then comes testing at federal or state laboratories. To reopen seafood harvesting, the samples must test below Food and Drug Administration-set levels of concern for 12 different potential cancer-causing substances. BP also used chemical dispersants to break up the crude, but the government has not yet developed a test for the materials in seafood.

Shrimpers also are concerned about how much they'll be able to make on their product.

"I don't think people are worried so much about the resource, but the price," said Rusty Gaude, fishery agent for LSU Sea Grant Program.

And fishermen need to know what waters are open.

Slowly, more and more waters closed because of the spill are reopening. However, shrimping remains forbidden in federal waters off Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and most of the catches have come off Texas and Florida, said Roy Crabtree, the regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service's southeast region.

Commercial shrimpers are heading out as the drilling of a relief well meant to plug BP's runaway well permanently nears completion.

Once the relief well is complete, a so-called bottom kill procedure can begin, in which mud and cement would plug the well from below the seafloor.

Engineer John Wright has never missed his target over the years, successfully drilling 40 relief wells that were used to plug leaks around the world. People along the Gulf Coast and others are hoping he can make it 41-for-41.

"Anyone who has ever worked extremely hard on a long project wants to see it successfully finished, as long as it serves its intended purpose," Wright, 56, who is leading the team drilling the primary relief well, said in a lengthy e-mail exchange with The Associated Press.

BP began work on its primary relief well in early May. But about two weeks ago, around the time the company had done a successful static kill pumping mud and cement into the top of the well, executives and the government began signaling that the bottom kill procedure might not be needed.

But retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the spill, said the relief well would be finished so the well could be killed. The bottom kill won't be started until at least next weekend.

Despite the waters reopening, many fishermen distrust state wildlife officials and may be reluctant to head out right away, said Patrick Hue, 49, a shrimper out of Buras.

"Nobody wants to rush into this and then someone gets sick on the seafood and the first thing you know, no one wants to buy our seafood," he said.

Seafood dealer Pearce, however, said many shrimpers will be unable to resist.

"Opening day is like a religion to these people," he said. "It's a way of life down here."

Obama makes clear support for ground zero mosque

Obama makes clear support for ground zero mosque

President Barack Obama hosts an iftar dinner, the meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast for Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan, in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, Friday, Aug. 13, 2010. For over a billion Muslims, Ramadan is a time of intense devotion and reflection. Obama emphasized the American tenet of religious freedom just as New York City is immersed in a deeply sensitive debate about whether a mosque should be built near the site of the World Trade Center that was destroyed during the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- After skirting the controversy for weeks, President Barack Obama is weighing in forcefully on the mosque near ground zero, saying a nation built on religious freedom must allow it.

"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country," Obama told an intently listening crowd gathered at the White House Friday evening to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," he said. "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."

The White House had not previously taken a stand on the mosque, which would be part of a $100 million Islamic community center two blocks from where nearly 3,000 people perished when hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Press secretary Robert Gibbs had insisted it was a local matter.

It was already much more than that, sparking debate around the country as top Republicans including Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich announced their opposition. So did the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group.

Obama elevated it to a presidential issue Friday without equivocation.

While insisting that the place where the twin towers once stood was indeed "hallowed ground," Obama said that the proper way to honor it was to apply American values.

Harkening back to earlier times when the building of synagogues or Catholic churches also met with opposition, Obama said: "Time and again, the American people have demonstrated that we can work through these issues, and stay true to our core values and emerge stronger for it. So it must be and will be today."

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent who has been a strong supporter of the mosque, welcomed Obama's words as a "clarion defense of the freedom of religion."

But some victims' advocates and Republicans were quick to pounce.

"Barack Obama has abandoned America at the place where America's heart was broken nine years ago, and where her true values were on display for all to see," said Debra Burlingame, a spokeswoman for some Sept. 11 victims' families and the sister of one of the pilots killed in the attacks.

Building the mosque at ground zero, she said, "is a deliberately provocative act that will precipitate more bloodshed in the name of Allah."

Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was killed at the World Trade Center, said the president had failed to understand the issue. "As an Obama supporter, I really feel that he's lost sight of the germane issue, which is not about freedom of religion," she said. "It's about a gross lack of sensitivity to the 9/11 families and to the people who were lost."

Added Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.: "President Obama is wrong. It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero."

Entering the highly charged election-year debate, Obama surely knew that his words would not only make headlines in the U.S. but be heard by Muslims worldwide. The president has made it a point to reach out to the global Muslim community, and the over 100 guests at Friday's dinner in the State Dining Room included ambassadors and officials from numerous nations where Islam is observed, including Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.

While his pronouncement concerning the mosque might find favor in the Muslim world, Obama's stance runs counter to the opinions of the majority of Americans, according to polls.

Opponents, including some Sept. 11 victims' relatives, see the prospect of a mosque so near the destroyed trade center as an insult to the memory of those killed by Islamic terrorists in the 2001 attacks.

Decision expected on plug for BP's broken oil well

Decision expected on plug for BP's broken oil well

In this Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2010 photo, a pelican flies over new marsh grass in an area that had been impacted by the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill near East Grand Terre Island, where the Gulf of Mexico meets Barataria Bay along the Louisiana coast. In the background is a dredging project initiated by the State of Louisiana.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Officials could know by early Friday if BP's broken oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has been sealed for good.

BP PLC said Friday that tests on the well were being analyzed after being finished the night before. The tests will let the federal government and BP know if work last month that was meant to be temporary had the unexpected effect of permanently plugging the gusher.

BP said in a news release that officials would soon make a recommendation to retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration's point man on the oil spill. Allen scheduled a news conference for 12:45 p.m. CDT in Louisiana to give an update on the operation.

On Thursday, Allen said it's possible that the long-discussed final fix, known as a "bottom kill," won't be necessary. After a temporary cap was placed on top of the well last month, heavy drilling mud and cement were pumped in from above in what's called a "static kill."

Some of the cement may have gone down into the reservoir, come back up and plugged the space between the inner piping and the outer casing - which is what engineers were hoping to do with the bottom kill, Allen said.

"A bottom kill finishes this well. The question is whether it's already been done with the static kill," he said.

However, he cautioned it's more likely that drilling will continue on two relief wells, which have long been said to be the only way to ensure the blown-out well doesn't leak again. That work has been delayed because of bad weather and wouldn't resume for about another four days, if testing shows it's needed.

Calling off the drilling may be justified by the testing, but it would be a hard sell to a public that's heard for weeks that the bottom kill is the only way to ensure the well is no longer a danger to the region.

"That's been the mantra all along, that they wanted to do the bottom kill," said Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute.

But work on the bottom kill would be largely pointless if the well is already sealed, he said.

"It doesn't make much sense to drill a hole into cement to pump more cement into it. But it's a public relations nightmare to explain that," Smith said.

On Thursday, officials tested pressure levels in the space between the inner piping and outer casing. Rising pressure means the bottom kill still needs to be done, Allen said. Steady pressure may mean cement already has plugged that space.

However, Allen said tests won't show how much cement is in the space, making the original plan for a bottom kill a better way to ensure the well is permanently plugged.

"What we hope we'll find is an immediate rise in pressure," he said. "It would be more problematic and quizzical if there were no immediate change in pressure."

A decision not to proceed with the relief well would bring an unexpected conclusion to the phase of the disaster that began on April 20 with an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The federal government estimates that 206 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf, the worst offshore spill in U.S. history.

Drilling of the first relief well began in early May. Since then, the drill has been guided some three miles from the surface and two miles beneath the sea floor to within 30 to 50 feet of the target. The drill is about as wide as a grapefruit, its target less than half the size of a dartboard.

If drilling resumes, it's unclear when it could be finished. Officials had projected as early as Friday before the nasty weather forced the operation to a halt. Drilling that final stretch is a time-consuming and careful process as engineers work to make sure they don't miss.

Crews dig about 20 to 30 feet at a time, then run electric current through the relief well. The current creates a magnetic field in the pipe of the blown-out well, allowing engineers to calculate exactly where and how far they need to drill.

Judge keeps gay marriage on hold _ for now

Judge keeps gay marriage on hold _ for now

A man who identified himself as Richard prepares a sign in opposition to gay marriage Thursday, Aug. 12, 2010, outside City Hall in San Francisco. A federal judge put gay marriages on hold for at least another six days in California, disappointing dozens of gay couples who lined up outside City Hall hoping to tie the knot Thursday. Judge Vaughn Walker gave opponents of same-sex weddings until Aug. 18 at 5 p.m. to get a ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on whether gay marriage should resume. Gay marriages could happen at that point or be put off indefinitely depending on how the court rules.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The federal judge who struck down California's gay marriage ban said Thursday that same-sex weddings can resume next week unless an appeals court intervenes before then.

The news raised hopes among gay couples that they soon could tie the knot after years of agonizing delays.

"We just want equal rights. We're tired of being second-class citizens," said Amber Fox, 35, who went to the Beverly Hills Municipal Courthouse on Thursday morning in hopes of marrying her partner. The couple wed in Massachusetts in June but wanted to make it official in their home state.

The Foxes left the courthouse without exchanging vows after the ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in a case many believe is destined for the Supreme Court.

Walker decided to give gay marriage opponents until next Wednesday to ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to block same-sex weddings while it decides their appeal. If the appeals court chooses not to get involved, Walker said county clerks may begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

Walker last week struck down the state's gay marriage ban, known as Proposition 8, saying that the voter-approved law is unconstitutional.

Lawyers for gay marriage opponents filed their request with the 9th Circuit late Thursday, asking the court to block gay marriages from going forward. They argued the appeals court should grant the stay "to avoid the confusion and irreparable injury that would flow from the creation of a class of purported same-sex marriages."

The delay disappointed dozens of same-sex couples around the state who had hoped to marry immediately.

"It's sad that we have to wait a little longer, but it's been six years," said Teresa Rowe, 31, of Suisun City who went to San Francisco's City Hall on Thursday morning with her partner to fill out a marriage license application.

Scott Campbell, 41, and Scott Hall, 35, had to tell family members en route to the Beverly Hills courthouse for the ceremony to turn back. They vowed to return next week.

"We're both very traditional. Our parents both gave their blessings," Campbell said.

California voters passed Proposition 8 as a state constitutional amendment in November 2008, five months after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions and an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples already had tied the knot.

"It's a really sad day for Californians, for families, for our future and for voters that a federal judge has trampled on the civil rights of voters," said Luke Otterstad, 24, of Sacramento, who stood among dozens of gay marriage supporters outside San Francisco's City Hall to protest the judge's ruling.

Lawyers for gay couples, California Gov. Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown filed legal motions Friday asking that same-sex marriages be allowed to resume immediately.

Walker said on Thursday that ban proponents didn't convince him that anyone would be harmed by allowing same-sex marriages to resume. Gay and lesbian couples, however, would be harmed if the ban continued, according to the judge, who previously ruled that the ban violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.

Walker also turned aside arguments that marriages performed now could be thrown into legal chaos if Proposition 8 is later upheld by an appeals court. He pointed to the 18,000 same-sex couples who remain legally wed after marrying during the five-month window in which gay marriage was legal in California before voters passed the ban in 2008.

Finally, Walker said it also appeared doubtful that the opponents of the ban have any right to appeal his decision striking down a state law that he said should have been defended by either Schwarzenegger and Brown, who both refused to do so.

Schwarzenegger and Brown each last week urged Walker to allow same-sex marriages to resume immediately and it's unlikely they would join the appeal of Proposition 8.

"I am pleased to see Judge Walker lift his stay and provide all Californians the liberties I believe everyone deserves," Schwarzenegger said after the ruling.

The case now goes before a special "motions panel" of three judges at the appeals court, the largest and busiest federal appeals court in the nation with jurisdiction over nine western states.

The panel consists of two judges appointed by Democrats and a third by a Republican.

President Ronald Reagan appointed Judge Edward Leavy to the appeals court in 1987. Leavy, who is semiretired, has served as judge in the state and federal courts in Oregon since 1957.

President Bill Clinton nominated Judge Michael Daly Hawkins to the court in 1994 and Judge Sidney Thomas in 1995.

Hawkins, based in Phoenix, served as Arizona's U.S. Attorney under President Jimmy Carter and also worked as a special prosecutor for the Navajo Nation from 1985 to 1989.

Thomas, who keeps his chambers in Bozeman, Mont., made President Obama's short list to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy that was filled last week by Elena Kagan.

A new three-judge panel will be chosen sometime next year to decide the appeal. Lawyers for both sides have been ordered to file their legal arguments by the end of the year.

1,100 missing in China as Asian flood misery rises

1,100 missing in China as Asian flood misery rises

Residents walk past a street covered by mud after the mudslide-hit town of Zhouqu in Gannan prefecture of northwestern China's Gansu province on Monday, Aug. 9, 2010. Rescuers dug through mud and wreckage Monday searching for 1,300 people missing after flash floods and landslides struck northwestern China.

ZHOUQU, China (AP) -- Rescuers lifted muddy bodies into trucks, and aid convoys choked the road into the remote Chinese town where hundreds died and more than 1,100 were missing Monday from landslides caused by heavy rain that has flooded swaths of Asia and spread misery to millions.

In Pakistan, the United Nations said the government's estimate of 13.8 million people affected by the country's worst-ever floods exceeded the combined total of three recent megadisasters - the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Rescuers in mountainous Indian-controlled Kashmir raced to rescue dozens of stranded foreign trekkers and find 500 people still missing in flash floods that have killed 140.

In China, the death toll jumped to 337 late Monday after Sunday's landslides in the northwestern province of Gansu - the deadliest incident so far in the country's worst flooding in a decade. A debris-blocked swollen river burst, swamping entire mountain villages in the county seat of Zhouqu and ripping homes from their foundations.

"There were some, but very few, survivors. Most of them are dead, crushed into the earth," said survivor Guo Wentao. Associated Press Television News showed the bodies of his younger brother and sister, wrapped in quilts, being carried away on a stretcher as crying relatives followed.

The government said 1,148 were missing Monday night. About 45,000 were evacuated. It was not known how many of the missing were in danger or simply out of contact as workers rushed to restore communications in the area, where one-third of residents are ethnic Tibetan.

More rain is expected in the region over the next three days, the China Meteorological Administration said. On Monday evening, clouds were building ominously over the mountains where the mud started flowing.

"We were dumbfounded by the enormity of the flood situation when we got to the scene," said Chen Junfeng, a disinfection specialist whose army battalion was the first on the scene Sunday.

Photos showed wrapped bodies tied to sticks or placed on planks and left on the shattered streets for pickup. APTN footage showed workers lifting an empty coffin. In many parts of rural China, coffins are bought as insurance for old age.

"We're saving you!" Premier Wen Jiabao shouted into the wreckage, as shown on state broadcaster China Central Television. "Is a child still down there? Take good care of the child!"

Hoping to prevent further disasters, demolitions experts set off charges to clear debris blocking the Bailong River upstream from the ravaged Zhouqu. The blockage had formed a 2-mile (3-kilometer)-long artificial lake on the river that overflowed before dawn Sunday, sending deadly torrents crashing down onto the town.

Flooding in China has killed more than 1,100 people this year and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage across 28 provinces and regions.

In Pakistan, two weeks of flooding have killed 1,500.

"It looks like the number of people affected in this crisis is higher than the Haiti earthquake, the tsunami or the Pakistan earthquake, and if the toll is as high as the one given by the government, it's higher than the three of them combined," Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told The Associated Press.

The U.N. estimates that 13.8 million people have been affected by the Pakistan flooding - over 2 million more than the other disasters combined. The figures include people who need short-term or long-term aid.

Rescue workers have been unable to reach up to 600,000 people marooned in the northwestern Swat Valley, where many residents were still trying to recover from an intense battle between the army and the Taliban last spring, Giuliano said.

"The magnitude of the tragedy is so immense that it is hard to assess," said Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani during a visit to the central Pakistani city of Multan.

Heavy rains continued. Rising national anger has been directed at an already unpopular government that has deployed thousands of soldiers for aid but has been overwhelmed itself.

Manzoor Ahmed, 25, was one of thousands of people who fled their homes in Sindh province in the south.

"It would have been better if we had died in the floods as our current miserable life is much more painful," said Ahmed, who spent the night shivering in the rain.

Thousands of Pakistanis in the neighboring districts of Shikarpur and Sukkur camped out on roads, bridges and railway tracks - any dry ground they could find.

"I have no utensils. I have no food for my children. I have no money," said Hora Mai, 40, sitting on a rain-soaked road in Sukkur along with hundreds of other people. "We were able to escape the floodwaters, but hunger may kill us."

A senior government official in Sukkur, Inamullah Dhareejo, said authorities were working to set up relief camps.

But an Associated Press reporter who traveled widely through the worst-hit areas in Sindh over the past three days saw no sign of relief camps or government assistance.

Meanwhile, the death toll from flash floods in the remote desert mountainsides in Indian-controlled Kashmir rose to 140 with the recovery of eight more bodies overnight, police said Monday. The dead included five foreigners, but their nationalities were not immediately known. An estimated 500 more people were missing.

Further east, thousands of army, police and paramilitary soldiers continued clearing roads to reach isolated villages in the Ladakh region cut off by Friday's powerful thunderstorms.

By late afternoon on Monday, the roads leading to the worst affected village, Choglamsar, had been cleared and rescue teams looked for survivors among the flattened buildings, army spokesman Lt. Col. J.S. Brar said.

On Monday, Indian air force helicopters evacuated 80 stranded foreign tourists from Zanaskar, a popular trekking area. Those rescued included British, French, Dutch and Germans, an army statement said.

At least 33 of the missing include Indian army soldiers from a remote base who may have been washed into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in the fast flowing Indus river, said Brig. S. Chawla, a senior official in Indian Kashmir.

He said Indian officials had informed their Pakistani counterparts to help verify those reports.

In North Korea, some 10,000 people were sheltering in public buildings in the border city of Sinuiju near China due to flooding, the Red Cross said Monday. Flash floods destroyed thousands of homes across the impoverished country, and the Amnok River had recorded its highest water level in 15 years, Red Cross said.

Asia flooding plunges millions into misery

Asia flooding plunges millions into misery

In this photo released by China's Xinhua news agency, buildings, vehicles and roads are hit by mudslides in Zhouqu county, in northwest China's Gansu Province on Sunday Aug. 8, 2010. Rubble-strewn floodwaters tore through a remote corner of northwestern China on Sunday, smashing buildings, overturning cars and killing at least 127 people.

BEIJING (AP) -- Floods and landslides across Asia plunged millions into misery Sunday as rubble-strewn waters killed at least 127 in northwestern China and 4 million Pakistanis faced food shortages amid their country's worst-ever flooding.

In Indian-controlled Kashmir, rescuers raced to find 500 people still missing in flash floods that have already killed 132, while North Korea's state media said high waters had destroyed thousands of homes and damaged crops.

Terrified residents fled to high ground or upper stories of apartment buildings in China's Gansu province after a debris-blocked river overflowed during the night, smashing buildings and overturning cars.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Sunday that authorities were seeking to locate an estimated 1,300 people still missing in the latest deluge in a summer that has seen China's worst seasonal flooding in a decade. That figure was down from 2,000 earlier in the day.

Worst hit was the county seat of Zhouqu in the province's Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, where houses buckled and streets were filled with more than a yard (meter) of mud and water.

The landslides struck after heavy rains lashed China late Saturday, causing the Bailong River to burst its banks, Xinhua quoted the head of Zhouqu county, Diemujiangteng, as saying.

The devastation was worsened by flotsam that blocked the river upstream, creating a 2-mile (3-kilometer) -long lake that overflowed and sent waves of mud, rocks and water crashing down on the town, ripping houses from their foundations and tearing six-story apartment buildings in half.

Explosives experts were flying to the scene by helicopter to demolish the blockage and safely release potential flood waters ahead of more rain forecast through Wednesday.

China Central Television said 45,000 people had been evacuated, but the region's remote, mountainous location was hampering the emergency response. Narrow roads prevented the movement of heavy equipment, forcing rescuers to rely on shovels, picks and buckets.

Firefighters rescued 28 people on Sunday and the government had allocated 500 million yuan ($73 million) for recovery efforts, Xinhua said.

Around China, the country's worst flooding in a decade has killed more than 1,100 people this year, with more than 600 still missing. The floods have caused tens of billions of dollars in damage across 28 provinces and regions.

In Pakistan, more than 1,500 people have been killed and millions more left begging for help following the worst floods in the country's history. Prices of fruit and vegetable skyrocketed Sunday, with more than 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) of crops destroyed and at least 4 million people in need of food assistance in the coming months.

The latest deaths included at least 53 people killed on Saturday when landslides buried two villages in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan, senior government official Ali Mohamamd Sikandar said.

Pakistan has worked with international partners to rescue more than 100,000 people and provide food and shelter to thousands more. But the government has struggled to cope with the scale of a disaster that it estimates has affected 13 million people and could get worse as heavy rains lashed Pakistan again on Sunday.

At least 1.4 million acres (570,000 hectares) of crops were destroyed in the central province of Punjab, the breadbasket for the rest of Pakistan, the United Nations reported. Many more crops were devastated in the northwest, where destruction from the floods has been most severe and many residents are still trying to recover from intense battles between the Taliban and the army last year.

Many flood victims have complained they have not received aid quickly enough or at all. The number of people needing assistance could increase as heavy rains continued to hit many areas of the country. The swollen Indus River overflowed near the city of Sukkur in southern Sindh province on Sunday, submerging the nearby village of Mor Khan Jatoi with chest-high water and destroying many of its 1,500 mud homes.

"We are sitting on the bank with nothing in our hands; no shelter, no food," said a flood victim in Sukkur, Allah Bux. "We are helpless and in pain."

The U.N. special envoy for the disaster, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said billions of dollars would be needed to help Pakistan recover, but funds could be difficult to procure amid the global financial crisis.

In neighboring India, rescuers dug through crushed homes and piles of mud searching for 500 people still missing after flash floods sent massive mudslides down remote desert mountainsides in Indian-administered Kashmir, officials said. The death toll rose to 132 with about 500 others injured.

The dead included at least five foreign tourists whose nationalities were not immediately known.

Thousands of army, police and paramilitary soldiers were also clearing roads to reach isolated villages in the Ladakh region cut off by Friday's powerful thunderstorms, state police Chief Kuldeep Khoda said.

About 2,000 foreign tourists were in the area, a popular destination for adventure sports enthusiasts, when the storm hit, burying homes and toppling power and telecommunication towers.

North Korea's state media said 36,700 acres (14,850 hectares) of farmland were submerged and 5,500 homes destroyed or flooded after recent heavy rains.

However, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said the damage did not appear to be serious compared to previous years. Flooding in North Korea in 2007 killed about 600 people, left another 100,000 homeless, and destroyed more than 11 percent of the country's crops.

Floods this year in the neighboring Chinese province of Jilin have left 85 people dead and caused an estimated 45 billion yuan ($6.6 billion) in economic losses.

Spill investigators want to find undersea evidence

Spill investigators want to find undersea evidence

FILE - In this April 21, 2010 file aerial photo taken in the Gulf of Mexico more than 50 miles southeast of Venice, La., the Deepwater Horizon oil rig is seen burning. Now that BP appears to have vanquished its ruptured well, authorities are turning their attention to gathering evidence from what resembles a crime scene at the bottom of the sea. The wreckage _ including the failed blowout preventer and the blackened, twisted remnants of the drilling platform _ may be Exhibit A in the effort to understand who is responsible for one of the biggest oil spills in history.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Now that BP appears to have vanquished its ruptured well, authorities are turning their attention to gathering evidence from what could amount to a crime scene at the bottom of the sea.

The wreckage - including the failed blowout preventer and the blackened, twisted remnants of the drilling platform - may be Exhibit A in the effort to establish who is responsible for the biggest peacetime oil spill in history. And the very companies under investigation will be in charge of recovering the evidence.

Hundreds of investigators can't wait to get their hands on evidence. The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation, the Coast Guard is seeking the cause of the blast, and lawyers are pursuing millions of dollars in damages for the families of the 11 workers killed, the dozens injured and the thousands whose livelihoods have been damaged.

"The items at the bottom of the sea are a big deal for everybody," said Stephen Herman, a New Orleans lawyer for injured rig workers and others.

BP will surely want a look at the items, particularly if it tries to shift responsibility for the disaster onto other companies, such as Transocean, which owned the oil platform, Halliburton, which supplied the crew that was cementing the well, and Cameron International, maker of the blowout preventer.

BP and Transocean - which could face heavy penalties if found to be at fault - have said they will raise some of the wreckage if it can be done without doing more damage to the oil well. That would give the two companies responsibility for gathering up the very evidence that could be used against them.

But the federal government has said it simply doesn't have the know-how and the deep-sea equipment that the drilling industry has. And it said the operation will be closely supervised by the Coast Guard.

Lawyers will be watching, too, to make sure the companies don't do anything untoward, said Brent Coon, an attorney for one of the thousands of plaintiffs seeking damages.

"I think they would do something in front of their own mother if they could," Coon said. "But the reality is there are a lot of eyes watching them and a lot of smart scientists who would know if they did anything they weren't supposed to."

The crisis in the Gulf appeared to be drawing to a close this week when BP plugged up the top of the blown-out well with mud and then sealed it with cement. BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said crews plan to resume drilling Sunday night on a relief well more than two miles below the seafloor that will be used to inject mud and cement just above the source of the oil, thereby sealing off the well from the bottom, too. The two wells should hook up between Aug. 13 and Aug. 15, Wells said.

In other developments Friday, BP said it might drill again someday into the same undersea reservoir of oil, which is still believed to hold nearly $4 billion worth of crude. That prospect is unlikely to sit well with Gulf Coast residents furious at the oil giant.

"There's lots of oil and gas here," Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said. "We're going to have to think about what to do with that at some point."

Also Friday, BP said Suttles - who has spent more than three months managing BP's response efforts on the Gulf - is returning to his day job in Houston. Mike Utsler, a vice president who has been running BP's command post in Houma, La., since April, will replace him.

Willie Davis, a 41-year-old harbormaster in Pass Christian, Miss., said he fears his area will be forgotten if BP pulls out too soon. "I'm losing trust in the whole system," he said. "If they don't get up off their behinds and do something now, it's going to be years before we're back whole again."

Utsler told Gulf residents not to worry, saying the spill's effects are "a challenge that we continue to recognize with more than 20,000-plus people continuing to work."

Investigations of the disaster began immediately after the rig blew up on April 20. The government alone is conducting about a dozen, including several congressional investigations, criminal and civil probes by the Justice Department, and an examination by an expert panel convened by President Barack Obama.

Officials want to find out not only the cause of the explosion, but also how oil drilling a mile or more below the surface can be made safer.

A final outcome could be years away, particularly if someone is charged with a crime, said David Uhlmann, former chief of the Justice Department's environmental crimes team.

"Normally an investigation of a case this complicated would take two to three years. This is not a normal case," he said. "This is the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history."

Any items brought up from the seafloor will be photographed and preserved. Investigators for the government, BP and others who have a stake in the case will try to come up with testing procedures acceptable to all sides.

The blowout preventer will probably make it to the surface. The 300-ton mechanism is designed to be placed on a well and brought back to the surface for reuse. It was supposed to be the final line of defense against a catastrophic spill, but BP documents obtained by a congressional committee showed the device had a significant hydraulic leak and a dead or low battery.

"That piece of equipment will tell us whether the blowout preventer had a design defect or whether it was mechanical or human error that caused this disaster," Herman said.

The blowout preventer is still attached to the broken wellhead but will be replaced as part of the effort to permanently secure the well, said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the spill response for the government.

"In some ways it's the smoking gun," said Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute. "It's rich evidence. It still won't tell you exactly what happened at the bottom of the well ... but the fact is it didn't work - and everybody wants to know why."

Coon said the rig might contain "black boxes" that recorded critical data and control panels that could be removed to re-create conditions before the explosion.

Transocean has asked the government for permission to test the blowout preventer and hopes to see it raised it in September, company President Steven Newman said.

Getting to the exploded rig itself might be harder. It would be impractical to raise the entire structure because of its immensity, twice the size of a football field, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft said. He would not say whether it would be possible to cut off vital pieces of the structure.

Lebanon, Israel clash near border; at least 3 dead

Lebanon, Israel clash near border; at least 3 dead

Israeli soldiers use a crane as they appear to cut a tree on the Lebanese side of the border in the southern village of Adaisseh, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010. Lebanese and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border Tuesday in the most serious clashes since a fierce war four years ago, authorities said. A Lebanese officer spoke on condition of anonymity under military guidelines, said the clash occurred as Israeli troops tried to remove a tree from the Lebanese side of the border.

KFAR KILA, Lebanon (AP) -- Lebanese and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border Tuesday in the most serious clashes since a fierce war four years ago, and Lebanon said at least two of its soldiers and a journalist were killed in shelling.

The U.N. urged "maximum restraint" and said it was working with both sides to restore calm, but witnesses in Lebanon reported intermittent Israeli shelling in the area hours after the clashes broke out.

There were conflicting accounts of what sparked the gunfire.

Israel's military said its soldiers came under fire inside Israeli territory during a routine patrol and retaliated with artillery fire. A Lebanese army officer said the clash started when Israeli troops tried to remove a tree from the Lebanese side of the border.

An Associated Press photo shows an Israeli standing on a crane reaching over the fence that separates the two sides on the Lebanese side of the border.

The Lebanese officer said one of the Israeli shells hit a house in the Lebanese border town of Adaisseh. One civilian was wounded in the shelling, he said. A security official also said a Lebanese journalist working for the daily Al-Akhbar newspaper, Assaf Abu Rahhal, was killed when an Israeli shell landed next to him in Adaisseh.

The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity under military guidelines.

The border has been relatively quiet since the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war that left 1,200 Lebanese and about 160 Israelis dead. Tuesday's fighting did not appear to involve Hezbollah fighters.

After the 2006 war, the U.N. deployed 12,000-member peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, in the area.

Tensions along the border have risen in recent months. Israel claims that Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas have significantly expanded and improved their arsenal of rockets since 2006. Among other things, Israeli officials have accused Syria and Iran of supplying Hezbollah with Scud missiles capable of hitting anywhere in Israel, a claim Hezbollah has refused to confirm or deny.

But friction extends beyond. More than 70 people in Lebanon have been arrested since last year on suspicion of collaborating with Israel.

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman denounced the fighting and urged the army commander to "confront any Israeli aggression whatever the sacrifices."

Suleiman said the shelling was a violation of the U.N. resolution that ended fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, saying Israeli troops had crossed the U.N.-drawn Blue Line boundary separating the two countries and fired on a Lebanese army checkpoint in Adeisseh.

Hezbollah officials were not immediately available for comment. The group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, was scheduled to address supporters via satellite at a huge rally south of Beirut later Tuesday marking Hezbollah's "divine victory" over Israel in the 2006 war.

UNIFIL confirmed that the Lebanese and Israeli armies exchanged fire and urged "maximum restraint."

"UNIFIL peacekeepers are in the area and are trying to ascertain the circumstances of the incident and any possible casualties," said UNIFIL spokesman Neeraj Singh. "Our immediate priority at this time is to restore calm in the area."

On Gulf, crews hope kill attempt will do the trick

On Gulf, crews hope kill attempt will do the trick

Two men fish from a boat amidst oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off East Grand Terre Island, where the Gulf of Mexico meets Barataria Bay, on the Louisiana coast, Saturday, July 31, 2010.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Crews hoped to begin pumping mud and perhaps cement down the throat of the blown-out oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday in what BP officials said could be the method of attack that finally snuffs the spill.

Engineers planned to probe the busted blowout preventer with an oil-like liquid to determine whether it could handle the static kill. If the test is successful, they plan to spend Tuesday through Thursday pumping the heavy mud down the well.

The so-called "static kill" is meant as insurance for the crews who have spent months fighting the oil spill. The only thing keeping oil from blowing into the Gulf at the moment is an experimental cap that has held for more than two weeks but was never meant to be permanent.

BP officials had insisted for months that a pair of costly relief wells were the only surefire way to kill the oil leak but said Monday that the static kill alone - involving lines running from a ship to the blown-out well a mile below - might do the trick.

BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said that if the static kill is successful, the relief wells may not be needed to do the same thing weeks later, but from the bottom. The primary relief well, near completion, will still be finished and could be used simply to ensure the leak is plugged, he said.

"Even if we were to pump the cement from the top, we will still continue on with the relief well and confirm that the well is dead," he said. Either way, "we want to end up with cement in the bottom of the hole."

Government officials and company executives have long said the wells, which can cost about $100 million each, might be the only way to make certain the oil is contained to its vast undersea reservoir. A federal task force said about 172 million gallons of oil made it into the Gulf between April and mid-July, when a temporary cap bottled up all the oil.

The task force said actually about 206 million gallons total gushed out of the mile-deep well but a fleet of boats and other efforts were able to contain more than 33 million gallons.

The 172 million gallons is on the high end of recent estimates that anywhere from 92 million to 184 million gallons had gushed into the sea.

The company began drilling the primary, 18,000-foot relief well May 2, 12 days after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and killed 11 workers, and a second backup well May 16. The first well is now only about 100 feet from the target, and Wells said it could reach it as early as Aug. 11.

Retired Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the spill response, said Monday that the focus now is on making sure the static kill is successful. But he cautioned that federal officials don't see it as "the end all, be all until we get the relief well done."

Before the effort can begin, engineers must probe the broken blowout preventer with an oil-like liquid to decide whether it can handle the static kill process. They had hoped to begin the hours-long test Monday but delayed it until Tuesday after a small leak was discovered in the hydraulic control system.

One of the biggest variables on the static kill's finality is whether the area called the annulus, which is between the inner piping and the outer casing, has sprung an oil leak. Engineers probably won't be able to answer that question until they drill in from the bottom, he said.

"Everyone would like to have this thing over as soon as possible," Allen said, adding: "We don't know the condition of the well until we start pushing mud into it."

The company's statements Monday might signal that it is more concerned than it has acknowledged about debris found in the relief well after it was briefly capped as Tropical Storm Bonnie passed last week, said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University environmental sciences professor.

Plus, trying to seal the well from the top gives BP two shots at ending the disaster, Overton said.

"Frankly, if they can shut it off from the top and it's a good, permanent seal, I'll take it," Overton said. "A bird in the hand at this point is a good thing with this deal."

BP and federal officials have managed to contain large parts of the spill through skimmers, oil-absorbant boom and chemical dispersants meant to break up the oil.

Federal regulators have come under fire from critics who say that BP was allowed to use excessive amounts of the dispersants, but government officials counter that they have helped dramatically cut the use of the chemicals since late May.

The Environmental Protection Agency released a study Monday concluding that when mixed with oil, chemical dispersants used to break up the crude in the Gulf are no more toxic to aquatic life than oil alone.