No progress in “fiscal cliff” talks as new poll hits Republicans

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sharp differences remained on Wednesday between congressional Republicans and the White House in talks to avert the “fiscal cliff” of steep tax hikes and budget cuts, and negotiators warned the showdown could drag on past Christmas.

A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released late on Wednesday, however, held the potential to shake up the stalemate. Three-quarters of those surveyed, including 61 percent of Republicans, said they would accept raising taxes on the wealthy to avoid the so-called cliff, as Democratic President Barack Obama is demanding.

With Republicans in Congress already divided, that rejection by their own supporters of the core demand of Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner could further weaken his position.

Both sides refused to give any ground in public, one day after what Boehner described as a “frank” conversation with President Barack Obama about the remaining hurdles to a deal.

Boehner said Obama’s latest proposal for $ 1.4 trillion in new tax revenues did not fulfill his promise for a balanced approach to taming the federal deficit and could not pass Congress.

“I remain the most optimistic person in this town, but we’ve got some serious differences,” Boehner told reporters after a meeting with House Republicans where he warned members the negotiations could run through the holidays and up to the end-of-year deadline.

If a deal is not reached, taxes will go up for almost all working Americans at the start of the New Year and steep government spending cuts will kick in.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama would not relent on his demand that Republicans drop their opposition to raising new revenue by increasing the tax rates for the wealthiest 2 percent of all Americans.

“There is no way to do this without rates going up on the top earners,” Carney said. The Republican stance that sufficient revenue could be gained by closing tax loopholes and limiting deductions was “just not plausible economic policy,” he said.

In what has now become a daily battle of sound bites and political stagecraft, a group of Republican congressmen posed in the cold outside the Capitol with a few dozen small children to illustrate their argument that Obama’s budget proposals would bury the next generation in unsustainable debt.

“We are going to relegate these kids, our grandkids, to a lower standard of living,” Republican Representative Sean Duffy of Wisconsin said. “We are going to leave them with higher tax rates. This is unacceptable.”

Obama and Boehner each have proposed cutting deficits by more than $ 4 trillion in the next 10 years as part of a deal to avert the cliff, but they differ on how to get there. Economists have warned that failure to strike a deal could send the economy back into recession.

On Tuesday, Boehner rejected a White House proposal to shrink the amount of deficit reduction that comes from revenue to $ 1.4 trillion from $ 1.6 trillion over 10 years. Boehner has called for $ 800 billion in revenue through tax reform.

‘A PRETTY FRANK CONVERSATION’

Boehner said Obama’s plan did not do enough to reduce the federal deficit. “The president and I had a pretty frank conversation about just how far apart we are,” he said of their Tuesday phone talk.

Carney ridiculed the Republican argument that sufficient revenue could be raised by closing tax loopholes or capping deductions. “Those magic beans are just beans, and that fairy dust is just dust,” he said. “It is not serious.”

Boehner has repeatedly offered gloomy assessments of the state of the talks in public, even as signs of progress have sprouted on Capitol Hill. The pace of staff-level talks has quickened in recent days as the two sides exchanged counter-offers that neither side said was sufficiently detailed.

The stubborn differences have dampened hopes of a potential deal before the Christmas holiday. “Keep your Christmas decorations up and make no plans” to leave Washington, was Boehner’s advice in the closed-door meeting with Republicans, Representative John Shimkus of Illinois told reporters.

In exchange for more tax revenues, Republicans have demanded deep spending cuts in politically popular social entitlement programs like the government-funded Medicare and Medicaid healthcare plans.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said that House Democrats objected to Republican efforts to raise the age when seniors become eligible for Medicare, which now stands at 65, as a way to cut government spending.

“Raising the retirement age does not get you that much money, so you’re doing a bad thing when it comes to seniors, and you’re not achieving your goal,” she told CBS.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said on Wednesday that Boehner and Republicans needed to make concessions on taxes. “To this point there hasn’t been a lot of progress, and I’m very, very disappointed,” he said on the Senate floor.

Financial markets have watched the negotiations with interest. JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon said the United States could have a “booming economy” in a couple of months if lawmakers in Washington reach agreement.

A budget deal could mean 4 percent economic growth and a drop in unemployment, Dimon said at a New York Times conference in New York. A deal would need to link any tax increases with spending cuts, he said.

“The table is set very well right now,” Dimon said.

The stock market was closely following an announcement by the Federal Reserve of a new stimulus plan but the fiscal cliff was not far from investors’ minds.

“This was expected, and the market is waiting for the year-end ‘fiscal cliff’ issue to be solved, so what we have to do is have confidence our political system can actually make a functional decision,” said Troy Logan, managing director and senior economist at Warren Financial Service, in Exton, Pennsylvania.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Richard Cowan, Rachelle Younglai, Mark Felsenthal; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Alistair Bell and Christopher Wilson)

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Legendary Indian sitarist, composer Ravi Shankar dead at 92

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar, who helped introduce the sitar to the Western world through his collaborations with The Beatles, died in Southern California on Tuesday, his family said. He was 92.

Shankar, a three-time Grammy winner with legendary appearances at the 1967 Monterey Festival and at Woodstock, had been in fragile health for several years and last Thursday underwent surgery, his family said in a statement.

“Although it is a time for sorrow and sadness, it is also a time for all of us to give thanks and to be grateful that we were able to have him as a part of our lives,” the family said. “He will live forever in our hearts and in his music.”

In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh‘s office posted a Twitter message calling Shankar a “national treasure and global ambassador of India‘s cultural heritage.”

“An era has passed away with … Ravi Shankar. The nation joins me to pay tributes to his unsurpassable genius, his art and his humility,” the Indian premier added.

Shankar had suffered from upper respiratory and heart issues over the past year and underwent heart-valve replacement surgery last week at a hospital in San Diego, south of Los Angeles.

The surgery was successful but he was unable to recover.

“Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the surgeons and doctors taking care of him, his body was not able to withstand the strain of the surgery. We were at his side when he passed away,” his wife Sukanya and daughter Anoushka said.

Shankar lived in both India and the United States. He is also survived by his daughter, Grammy-winning singer Norah Jones, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Shankar performed his last concert with his daughter Anoushka on November 4 in Long Beach, California, the statement said. The night before he underwent surgery, he was nominated for a Grammy for his latest album “The Living Room Sessions, Part 1.”

‘NORWEGIAN WOOD’ TO ‘WEST MEETS EAST’

His family said that memorial plans will be announced at a later date and requested that donations be made to the Ravi Shankar Foundation.

Shankar is credited with popularizing Indian music through his work with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and The Beatles in the late 1960s, inspiring George Harrison to learn the sitar and the British band to record songs like “Norwegian Wood” (1965) and “Within You, Without You” (1967).

His friendship with Harrison led him to appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock pop festivals in the late 1960s, and the 1972 Concert for Bangladesh, becoming one of the first Indian musicians to become a household name in the West.

His influence in classical music, including on composer Philip Glass, was just as large. His work with Menuhin on their “West Meets East” albums in the 1960s and 1970s earned them a Grammy, and he wrote concertos for sitar and orchestra for both the London Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.

Shankar served as a member of the upper chamber of the Parliament of India, from 1986 to 1992, after being nominated by then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

A man of many talents, he also wrote the Oscar-nominated score for 1982 film “Gandhi,” several books, and mounted theatrical productions.

He also built an ashram-style home and music center in India where students could live and learn, and later the Ravi Shankar Center in Delhi in 2001, which hosts an annual music festival.

Yet his first brush with the arts was through dance.

Born Robindra Shankar in 1920 in India‘s holiest city, Varanasi, he spent his first few years in relative poverty before his eldest brother took the family to Paris.

For about eight years, Shankar danced in his brother’s Indian classical and folk dance troupe, which toured the world. But by the late 1930s he had turned his back on show business to learn the sitar and other classical Indian instruments.

Shankar earned multiple honors in his long career, including an Order of the British Empire (OBE) from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth for services to music, the Bharat Ratna, India‘s highest civilian award, and the French Legion d’Honneur.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Gunman kills 2, then self at Oregon mall

A masked gunman opened fire today at Clackamas Town Center, a mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two people, injuring one, and then killing himself.

"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self inflicted gunshot wound," Lt. James Rhodes of the Clackamas County, Ore., Sheriff's Department said today. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."

Police have not released the names of the deceased. Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families. The injured victim has been transported to a local hospital.

Rhodes described the shooter as an adult male.

Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man in a white hockey mask and bulletproof vest tore through the Macy's, food court, and mall hallways firing rounds at shoppers beginning around 3:30 p.m. PT today.

Hundreds of people were evacuated from the busy mall full of holiday shoppers after the shooting began.

READ: Guns in America: A Statistical Look

The gunman entered the mall through a Macy's store, ran through the upper level of Macy's and opened fire near the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after another, with what is believed to be a black, semiautomatic rifle, according to witness reports.

Amber Tate said she was in the parking lot of the mall when she saw the shooter run by, wearing a mask and carrying a machine gun, headed for the Macy's.

"He looked like a teenager wearing a gun, like a bullet-proof vest and he had a machine, like an assault rifle and a white mask and he looked at me," she said.

Witnesses described the shooter as being on a mission and determined, looking straight ahead. He then seemed to walk through the mall toward the other end of the building, shooting along the way, according to witness reports.

Those interviewed said that Macy's shoppers and store employees huddled in a dressing room to avoid being found.

"I was helping a customer in the middle of the store, her and her granddaughter and while we were looking at sweatshirts we heard five to seven shots from a machine gun fire just outside my store," Jacob Rogers, a store clerk, told ABC affiliate KATU-TV in Portland.

"We moved everyone into the back room where there's no access to outside but where there's a camera so we can monitor what's going on out front," Rogers said.

Evan Walters, an employee at a store in the mall, told ABC News Radio that he was locked in a store for his safety and he saw two people shot and heard multiple gunshots.

"It was over 20, and it was kind of surreal because we hear pops and loud noises," he said. "We're next to the food court here and we hear pops and loud noises all the time, but we don't -- nothing like that. It was very definite gunshots."

Police are tracing the weapon used in the shooting.

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Corruption probe shrouds Quebec in new darkness

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Half a century ago, a new crop of Quebec leaders sparked the so-called Quiet Revolution to eradicate the “Great Darkness” – decades of corruption that kept Canada‘s French-speaking province under the dominance of one party and the Catholic church.

The revolution’s reforms, including cleaning up the way lawmakers were elected and secularizing the education system, seemed to work, paving the way for decades of growth, progress and prominence as Canada emerged as a model of democracy.

Fifty years later, a public inquiry into corruption and government bid-rigging suggests the province’s politics are not as clean as Quebecers had hoped or believed.

Since May, when the inquiry opened in Montreal, Canadians have been getting daily doses of revelations of fraud through live broadcasts on French-language television stations. Corruption involving the Mafia, construction bosses and politicians, the inquiry has shown, drove up the average building cost of municipal contracts by more than 30 percent in Montreal, Canada’s second-largest city.

Last month, Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay resigned as did the mayor of nearby Laval, Gilles Vaillancourt. Both denied doing anything wrong, but said they could not govern amid the accusations of corruption involving rigging of municipal contracts, kickbacks from the contracts and illegal financing of elections.

Tremblay has not been charged by police. Vaillancourt’s homes and offices have been raided several times by Quebec’s anti-corruption squad, which operates independently of the inquiry, but no charges have been filed against him either. Police said the raids were part of an investigation but they would not release further details.

“Quebecers lived for several years under the impression that they had found the right formula, that their parties were clean,” said Pierre Martin, political science professor at the University of Montreal. Now, he said, “people at all levels are fed up.”

The inquiry must submit its final report to the Quebec government by next October. It has exposed practices worthy of a Hollywood noir thriller – a mob boss stuffing his socks with money, rigged construction contracts, call girls offered as gifts, and a party fundraiser with so much cash he could not close the door of his safe.

“Even though we are in the early days, what is emerging is a pretty troubling portrait of the way public contracts were awarded,” said Antonia Maioni, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada in Montreal.

Quebec’s Liberals, the force behind the Quiet Revolution, launched the inquiry as rumors of corruption swirled. The government then called an election for September, a year ahead of schedule, in what was seen as an attempt to stop damaging testimony hurting its popularity.

The tactic did not help. Jean Charest’s Liberals lost to the Parti Quebecois, whose ultimate aim is to take the French-speaking province, the size of Western Europe, out of Canada.

‘IT WASN’T COMPLICATED’

According to allegations at the inquiry, the corruption helped three main entities: the construction bosses who colluded to bid on contracts, the Montreal Mafia dons who swooped in for their share, and the municipal politicians who received kickbacks to finance campaigns.

In Quebec, the Mafia has been dominated by the Rizzuto family, with tentacles to the rest of Canada and crime families in New York and abroad. But recently the syndicate has been facing challenges from other crime groups in Montreal, according to the Toronto-based Mafia analyst and author Antonio Nicaso.

The reputed godfather of the syndicate, Vito Rizzuto, has been subpoenaed to appear before the commission, but the date for his testimony has not been set.

The hearings have zeroed in on four construction bosses and how their companies worked with the Mafia, bribed municipal engineers and provided funds for mayoralty campaigns in Montreal, the business capital for Quebec’s 8 million people.

“It’s not good for the economy,” said Martin. “It’s not good for any kind of legitimate business that tries to enter into any kind of long-term relationship with the public sector.”

Quebec’s anti-corruption squad has arrested 35 people so far this year, staging well-publicized raids on mayoral offices and on construction and engineering companies. The squad has arrested civil servants and owners of construction companies, among others.

“I now must suffer an unbearable injustice,” Tremblay said in a somber resignation speech earlier this month after a decade as mayor of Montreal, saying he could not continue in office because the allegations of corruption were causing a paralysis at City Hall.

Some of the most explosive allegations at the inquiry, headed by Quebec Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau, came from Lino Zambito, owner of a now bankrupt construction company, and from a top worker for Tremblay’s political party, Union Montreal.

Zambito, who is seen as one of the smaller players and who also faces fraud charges, described a system of collusion between organized crime, business cartels and corrupt civil servants, with payments made according to a predetermined formula.

“The entrepreneurs made money, and there was an amount that was due to the Mafia,” Zambito told the inquiry. “It wasn’t complicated.”

Zambito said the Mafia got 2.5 percent of the value of a contract, 3 percent went to Union Montreal and 1 percent to the engineer tasked with inflating contract prices.

Tremblay did not respond to emails requesting comment on the allegations of corruption at city hall.

A former party organizer, Martin Dumont, alleged the mayor was aware of double bookkeeping used to hide illegal funding during a 2004 election.

Dumont said the mayor walked out of the room during a meeting that explained the double bookkeeping system, saying he did not want to know anything about it.

Dumont also described how he was called into the office of a fundraiser for Union Montreal to help close the door of a safe because it was too full of money.

“I think it was the largest amount I’d ever seen in my life,” Dumont said at the inquiry.

GOLF, HOCKEY, ESCORTS

The inquiry also saw videos linking construction company players with Mafia bosses. In one police surveillance video, a Mafia boss was seen stuffing cash into his socks.

A retired city of Montreal engineer, Gilles Surprenant, described how he first accepted a bribe in the late 1980s after being “intimidated” by a construction company owner. Over the years he said he accepted over $ 700,000 from the owners in return for inflating the price of the contracts.

Another retired engineer, Luc Leclerc, admitted to bagging half a million dollars for the same service. He said the system was well-known to many at city hall and simply part of the “business culture” in Montreal. He also got gifts and paid golf trips to the Caribbean with other businessmen and Mafia bosses.

Gilles Vezina, who is currently suspended from his job as a city engineer, concurred.

“It was part of our business relationships to get advantages like golf, hockey, Christmas gifts” from construction bosses, he told the inquiry in mid-November.

The gifts didn’t stop there. Vezina said he was twice offered the services of prostitutes from different construction bosses in the 1980s or early 1990s, which he said he refused.

The accusations are jarring for a country that prides itself on being one of the least corrupt places in the world, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International. But experts say corruption in Montreal was something of an open secret.

“The alarm signals have been going off here for 20 years and no one has done anything,” said Andre Cedilot, a former journalist who co-wrote a book on the Canadian Mafia.

Quebec’s new government has introduced legislation tasking the province’s securities regulator with vetting businesses vying for public contracts and allowing it to block companies that do not measure up.

Anti-corruption activist Jonathan Brun was not optimistic.

“You’ve got to use modern technology,” said Brun, a co-founder of Quebec Ouvert, a group that wants to make all information about contracts freely available rather than asking regulators to oversee individual companies. “You’ve got to change the entire system if you really want to fight corruption.”

(Writing by Russ Blinch; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Mary Milliken and Prudence Crowther)

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Proper jailbreak for iOS 6 reportedly coming December 22nd

The speed at which a jailbreak for a new iOS device is released has slowed down considerably over the last few years. A tethered jailbreak  for devices running iOS 6 has been out September, but most people have been holding out for the untethered version – a hack that doesn’t erase everything upon reboot. A new jailbreak developer called “Dream JB” claims he will release a proper untethered jailbreak for devices running iOS 6 or 6.0.1 including the iPhone 5, iPad mini and iPad 4 on December 22nd. Dream JB also promises to release a video on Wednesday as proof. According to his website’s FAQ page, the jailbreak will be a one-click process and will differ from previous jailbreak methods in the past by using a prepared “Webkit exploit” and “userland exploit.” After it’s all done, Cydia, the App Store’s alternative for jailbroken smartphones, can be installed on the device. Unfortunately, the jailbreak won’t support Apple TV boxes.

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Turkish ex-leader’s body shows poison, death cause unclear: media

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The exhumed body of Turkey‘s late President Turgut Ozal, who led the country out of military rule in the 1980s, contained poison but the cause of death was unclear, local media reported an autopsy as showing on Wednesday.

There have long been rumors that Ozal, who died of heart failure in 1993 aged 65, was murdered by militants of the “deep state” – a shadowy group within the Turkish establishment of the day. Ozal had angered some with his efforts to end a Kurdish insurgency and survived an assassination bid in 1988.

Turkey’s forensic institute completed the autopsy on Tuesday and the results will be sent to prosecutors investigating suspicions of foul play, state-run Anatolian news agency said.

“Poison was detected in Ozal’s body during the analysis but experts could not agree on whether the cause of death was this poison,” broadcaster NTV reported.

Previous media reports have said Ozal’s body, dug up in October on the orders of prosecutors, revealed traces of insecticides, pesticides and radioactive elements.

“Toxic materials were found in Ozal’s body but these poisons were present in a form which could be found in any person’s body,” one official who had seen the autopsy report was quoted as saying by Hurriyet newspaper on its website.

Forensic institute officials were not available to comment.

Ozal, whose economic reforms helped shape modern Turkey, was in poor health before his death. After undergoing a triple heart bypass operation in the United States in 1987, he kept up a gruelling schedule and remained overweight until he died.

His moves to end a Kurdish insurgency and create a Turkic union with central Asian states have been cited as motives for would-be enemies in “deep state,” in which security establishment figures and criminal elements colluded.

It was Turkey’s military leaders who appointed him as a minister after a period of military rule following a 1980 coup.

He went on to dominate Turkish politics as prime minister from 1983 to 1989. Parliament then elected him president, but those close to him believe his reform efforts displeased some in the security establishment.

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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“Homeland” creator: Stop using animals in military training

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Homeland” executive producer Gideon Raff is urging a cease-fire between the U.S. military and the animal kingdom.

Joining with the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Raff has sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, asking him to halt the use of animals in medical training exercises in favor of high-tech human simulators.

In his letter, Raff – a former paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces – claims that research by the IDF Medical Corps indicates that military personnel are better prepared for battlefield medical procedures when they’re trained with human stimulators and given real-life experience with patients than when they utilize “crude animal laboratories.”

“Having served as a paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), I have the utmost concern for the health and security of the heroic service members – like those portrayed on my shows ‘Homeland’ and ‘Prisoners of War’ – who risk their lives to protect our safety and freedom,” Raff wrote in his letter to Panetta. (“Homeland” is a U.S. adaptation of his Israeli series, “Prisoners of War.”)

“But the U.S. Department of Defense is not saving soldiers’ lives by shooting, dismembering, blowing up, and killing thousands of animals each year for crude medical training drills,” he added. “I am troubled that this violence still goes on when more humane and effective ways of training medics and doctors are available, so I have joined PETA’s campaign to end this cruel practice.”

The letter concludes, “Caring for the well-being of animals and preparing the troops serving our countries are not mutually exclusive. In this case, sparing animals pain and death in training drills means that military personnel receive better medical training and ultimately better care if they are wounded on the battlefield.”

Raff, a vegan whose pro-animal crusade includes lobbying against monkey experiments in Israel, isn’t the only famous former military personnel to protest the U.S. government’s use of animals in allegedly cruel capacities. Oliver Stone and Bob Barker have also condemned the practice.

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Argentine mom rescues hundreds of sex slaves in search for daughter

LA PLATA, Argentina (AP) — Susana Trimarco was a housewife who fussed over her family and paid scant attention to the news until her daughter left for a doctor's appointment and never came back.

After getting little help from police, Trimarco launched her own investigation into a tip that the 23-year-old was abducted and forced into sex slavery. Soon, Trimarco was visiting brothels seeking clues about her daughter and the search took an additional goal: rescuing sex slaves and helping them start new lives.

What began as a one-woman campaign a decade ago developed into a movement and Trimarco today is a hero to hundreds of women she's rescued from Argentine prostitution rings. She's been honored with the "Women of Courage" award by the U.S. State Department and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on Nov. 28. Sunday night, President Cristina Fernandez gave her a human rights award before hundreds of thousands of people in the Plaza de Mayo.

But years of exploring the decadent criminal underground haven't led Trimarco to her daughter, Maria de los Angeles "Marita" Veron, who was 23 in 2002 when she disappeared from their hometown in provincial Tucuman, leaving behind her own 3-year-old daughter Micaela.

"I live for this," the 58-year-old Trimarco told The Associated Press of her ongoing quest. "I have no other life, and the truth is, it is a very sad, very grim life that I wouldn't wish on anyone."

Her painful journey has now reached a milestone.

Publicity over Trimarco's efforts prompted Argentine authorities to make a high-profile example of her daughter's case by putting 13 people on trial for allegedly kidnapping Veron and holding her as a sex slave in a family-run operation of illegal brothels. Prostitution is not illegal in Argentina, but the exploitation of women for sex is.

A verdict is expected Tuesday after a nearly yearlong trial.

The seven men and six women have pleaded innocent and their lawyers have said there's no physical proof supporting the charges against them. The alleged ringleaders denied knowing Veron and said that women who work in their brothels do so willingly. Prosecutors have asked for up to 25 years imprisonment for those convicted.

Trimarco was the primary witness during the trial, testifying for six straight days about her search for her daughter.

The road to trial was a long one.

Frustrated by seeming indifference to her daughter's disappearance, Trimarco began her own probe and found a taxi driver who told of delivering Veron to a brothel where she was beaten and forced into prostitution. The driver is among the defendants.

With her husband and granddaughter in tow, Trimarco disguised herself as a recruiter of prostitutes and entered brothel after brothel searching for clues. She soon found herself immersed in the dangerous and grim world of organized crime, gathering evidence against police, politicians and gangsters.

"For the first time, I really understood what was happening to my daughter," she said. "I was with my husband and with Micaela, asleep in the backseat of the car because she was still very small and I had no one to leave her with."

The very first woman Trimarco rescued taught her to be strong, she said.

"It stuck with me forever: She told me not to let them see me cry, because these shameless people who had my daughter would laugh at me, and at my pain," Trimarco said. "Since then I don't cry anymore. I've made myself strong, and when I feel that a tear might drop, I remember these words and I keep my composure."

Micaela, now 13, has been by her grandmother's side throughout, contributing to publicity campaigns against human trafficking and keeping her mother's memory alive.

More than 150 witnesses testified in the trial, including a dozen former sex slaves who described brutal conditions in the brothels.

Veron may have been kidnapped twice, with the complicity of the very authorities who should have protected her, according to Julio Fernandez, who now runs a Tucuman police department devoted to investigating human trafficking. He testified that witnesses reported seeing Veron at a bus station three days after she initially disappeared, and that a police officer from La Rioja, Domingo Pascual Andrada, delivered her to a brothel there. Andrada, now among the defendants, denied knowing any of the other defendants, let alone Veron.

Other Tucuman police testified that when they sought permission in 2002 to search La Rioja brothels, a judge made them wait for hours, enabling Veron's captors to move her. That version was supported by a woman who had been a prostitute at the brothel: She testified that Veron was moved just before police arrived. The judge, Daniel Moreno, is not on trial. He denied delaying the raid or having anything to do with the defendants.

Some of the former prostitutes said they had seen Veron drugged and haggard. One testified Veron felt trapped and missed her daughter. Another said she spotted Veron with dyed-blonde hair and an infant boy she was forced to conceive in a rape by a ringleader. A third thought Veron had been sold to a brothel in Spain — a lead reported to Interpol.

Trimarco's campaign to find her daughter led the State Department to provide seed money for a foundation in Veron's name. To date, it has rescued more than 900 women and girls from sex trafficking. The foundation also provides housing, medical and psychological aid, and it helps victims sue former captors.

Argentina outlawed human trafficking in 2008, thanks in large part to the foundation's work. A new force dedicated to combating human trafficking has liberated nearly 3,000 more victims in two years, said Security Minister Nilda Garre, who wrote a newspaper commentary saying the trial's verdict should set an example.

Whatever the verdict, Trimarco's lawyer, Carlos Garmendia, says the case has already made a difference.

"Human trafficking was an invisible problem until the Marita (Veron) case," Garmendia said. "The case has put it on the national agenda."

But Trimarco wants more. "I had hoped they would break down and say what they'd done with Marita," she said.

"I feel here in my breast that she is alive and I'm not going to stop until I find her," Trimarco said. "If she's no longer in this world, I want her body."

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Egypt army given temporary power to arrest civilians

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s Islamist president has given the army temporary power to arrest civilians during a constitutional referendum he is determined to push through despite the risk of bloodshed between his supporters and opponents accusing him of a power grab.

Seven people were killed and hundreds wounded last week in clashes between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and their critics besieging Mohamed Mursi’s graffiti-daubed presidential palace. Both sides plan mass rallies on Tuesday.

The elite Republican Guard has yet to use force to keep protesters away from the palace, which it ringed with tanks, barbed wire and concrete barricades after last week’s violence.

Mursi, bruised by calls for his downfall, has rescinded a November 22 decree giving him wide powers but is going ahead with a referendum on Saturday on a constitution seen by his supporters as a triumph for democracy and by many liberals as a betrayal.

A decree issued by Mursi late on Sunday gives the armed forces the power to arrest civilians and refer them to prosecutors until the announcement of the results of the referendum, which the protesters want cancelled.

Despite its limited nature, the edict will revive memories of Hosni Mubarak’s emergency law, also introduced as a temporary expedient, under which military or state security courts tried thousands of political dissidents and Islamist militants.

But a military source stressed that the measure introduced by a civilian government would have a short shelf-life.

“The latest law giving the armed forces the right to arrest anyone involved in illegal actions such as burning buildings or damaging public sites is to ensure security during the referendum only,” the military source said.

Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali said the committee overseeing the vote had requested the army’s assistance.

“The armed forces will work within a legal framework to secure the referendum and will return (to barracks) as soon as the referendum is over,” Ali said.

Protests and violence have racked Egypt since Mursi decreed himself extraordinary powers he said were needed to speed up a troubled transition since Mubarak’s fall 22 months ago.

The Muslim Brotherhood has voiced anger at the Interior Ministry’s failure to prevent protesters setting fire to its headquarters in Cairo and 28 of its offices elsewhere.

Critics say the draft law puts Egypt in a religious straitjacket. Whatever the outcome of the referendum, the crisis has polarized the country and presages more instability at a time when Mursi is trying to steady a fragile economy.

On Monday, he suspended planned tax increases only hours after the measures had been formally decreed, casting doubts on the government’s ability to push through tough economic reforms that form part of a proposed $ 4.8 billion IMF loan agreement.

“VIOLENT CONFRONTATION”

Rejecting the referendum plan, opposition groups have called for mass protests on Tuesday, saying Mursi’s eagerness to push the constitution through could lead to “violent confrontation”.

Islamists have urged their followers to turn out “in millions” the same day in a show of support for the president and for a referendum they feel sure of winning with their loyal base and perhaps with the votes of Egyptians weary of turmoil.

The opposition National Salvation Front, led by liberals such as Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa, as well as leftist firebrand Hamdeen Sabahy, has yet to call directly for a boycott of the referendum or to urge their supporters to vote “no”.

Instead it is contesting the legitimacy of the vote and of the whole process by which the constitution was drafted in an Islamist-led assembly from which their representatives withdrew.

The opposition says the document fails to embrace the diversity of 83 million Egyptians, a tenth of whom are Christians, and invites Muslim clerics to influence lawmaking.

But debate over the details has largely given way to noisy street protests and megaphone politics, keeping Egypt off balance and ill-equipped to deal with a looming economic crisis.

“Inevitability of referendum deepens divisions,” was the headline in Al-Gomhuriya newspaper on Monday. Al Ahram daily wrote: “Political forces split over referendum and new decree.”

Mursi issued another decree on Saturday to supersede his November 22 measure putting his own decisions beyond legal challenge until a new constitution and parliament are in place.

While he gave up extra powers as a sop to his opponents, the decisions already taken under them, such as the dismissal of a prosecutor-general appointed by Mubarak, remain intact.

“UNWELCOME” CHOICE

Lamia Kamel, a spokeswoman for former Arab League chief Moussa, said the opposition factions were still discussing whether to boycott the referendum or call for a “no” vote.

“Both paths are unwelcome because they really don’t want the referendum at all,” she said, but predicted a clearer opposition line if the plebiscite went ahead as planned.

A spokeswoman for ElBaradei, former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said: “We do not acknowledge the referendum. The aim is to change the decision and postpone it.”

Mahmoud Ghozlan, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman, said the opposition could stage protests, but should keep the peace.

“They are free to boycott, participate or say no, they can do what they want. The important thing is that it remains in a peaceful context to preserve the country’s safety and security.”

The army stepped into the conflict on Saturday, telling all sides to resolve their disputes via dialogue and warning that it would not allow Egypt to enter a “dark tunnel”.

A military source said the declaration read on state media did not herald a move by the army to retake control of Egypt, which it relinquished in June after managing the transition from Mubarak’s 30 years of military-backed one-man rule.

The draft constitution sets up a national defense council, in which generals will form a majority, and gives civilians some scrutiny over the army – although not enough for critics.

In August Mursi stripped the generals of sweeping powers they had grabbed when he was elected two months earlier, but has since repeatedly paid tribute to the military in public.

So far the army and police have taken a relatively passive role in the protests roiling the most populous Arab nation.

(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair and Yasmine Saleh; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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Royal phone scandal highlights new media risks

CANBERRA (Reuters) – Back in 2007, as investigations were gathering strength into the UK phone hacking scandal involving journalists working under the umbrella of the Murdoch media empire, a comedy show based around prank telephone calls made a low-key debut in Britain.

‘Fonejacker’ proved such a hit with the British public that the next year the program, in which a masked caller bamboozles hapless victims, won a coveted BAFTA award for best comedy, underscoring the attraction of the prank call amid a blurring of a ceaseless news cycle with social media and entertainment.

But just such a prank telephone call, to a London hospital where Prince William‘s pregnant wife Kate was being treated, has sparked a firestorm in traditional and social media after the apparent suicide by the nurse who put the call through.

Much of the fury has been directed at laying blame for the nurse’s death on the Australian DJs who made the prank call, or the media in general, with the most vitriolic comments appearing on the public domains of Facebook and Twitter.

The social media outrage has become a story of its own, outlasting the original news value of a prank call, and has seen advertising pulled from the program which broadcast the hoax call and the suspension of the two radio announcers.

Shares in radio station 2DayFM’s owner, Southern Cross Austero fell 5 percent on Monday as the public backlash gathered strength.

Media commentators and analysts warn the rapidly changing traditional and social media worlds may have given people greater freedom of expression, but can unleash a genie which can have destructive or negative repercussions, without responsible behavior by both mainstream and social media operators.

“It’s all changing so fast that societal norms have retreated in confusion,” said veteran newspaper columnist Jennifer Hewett in the Australian Financial Review.

“What is clear is that we will soon look back to count the mounting costs and destructive force, as well as the great benefits, of the explosion of communication in an all-media, all-in, all-the-time world,” Hewett said.

Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was found dead in staff accommodation near London’s King Edward VII hospital on Friday after putting the hoax call through to a colleague who unwittingly disclosed details of Kate’s morning sickness to 2DayFM’s presenters.

Her death, still being investigated, followed still simmering outrage in Britain over phone hacking, as well as Australian anger over the power of radio announcers to plump ratings with a diet of shock, including a 2Day announcer who sparked fury by calling a woman journalist rival a “fat slag”.

And while in Britain the popular press were quick to seize the moral high ground and point the finger “Down Under”, Australian commentators pointed blame the other way, or at confusion over the changing role of media and voracious public demand for not only information, but increasingly titillation.

Australian newspaper columnist Mike Carlton said while 2Day FM and its parent company made good money by “entertaining simple minds”, for tabloid British papers to point “Down Under” over a ‘gotcha’ news genre they created was “towering hypocrisy”.

CHANGING MEDIA ETHICS

The social media condemnation of Saldanha’s death should prompt a re-think of ethics in the era of celebrity news, said Jim Macnamara, a media analyst from Australia’s University of Technology, Sydney.

“There is a lesson in this for media organizations everywhere, and for journalists and media personalities, and that is that they need to look at community standards and better self regulate,” said Macnamara.

The tragic fallout from the radio stunt has rekindled memories of the death of William’s mother Diana in a Paris car crash in 1997 and threatens to cast a pall over the birth of his and Kate’s first child.

Public amusement at the prank started turning when British media reported the call as a major security breach of the royal family’s privacy, despite the call never reaching Kate’s room and the information revealed by a nurse was already public.

But news of Saldanha’s death is what sparked the Internet firestorm, that once unleashed could not be controlled.

Hypocritically, some of the harshest criticism was on Twitter and Facebook, where people unleashed fury on Australian and British media, after having themselves publish news of Saldanha’s error under a Twitter topic #royalprank, which was repeated more than 15,000 times.

“When the twitterverse goes into meltdown, we all react with a chain reaction any nuclear plant would be proud of. I hope, in time, the world will learn to splash cold water on itself when these stories break and cool down, before we all get dragged into the mud of our own making,” Tristan Stewart-Robertson, a Glasgow-based journalist wrote in a blog on www.firstpost.com

(Editing by Michael Perry)

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