World Briefing | Europe: Demjanjuk Taken to Nursing Home

MUNICH — John Demjanjuk was released from a Munich prison on Friday, the day after he was convicted of taking part in the murder of 28,000 Jews during World War II. He was taken to a nursing care facility to await the outcome of appeals of his conviction and five-year prison sentence.

Mr. Demjanjuk, 91, left Stadelheim prison, where he has been held for two years, at about 4:30 p.m. local time Friday according to Michael Stumpf, the prison director. Mr. Stumpf declined to disclose the name of the nursing facility, saying that Mr. Demjanjuk had requested that he not do so.

The prosecution of Mr. Demjanjuk may be one of the last major Nazi war crimes trials. A panel of judges found that, contrary to his denials, Mr. Demjanjuk, Ukrainian by birth, had worked as a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. The court found that there was no way that any guard at the death camp could not have participated in the extermination of prisoners there.

The court found that, considering his age, his infirmity and the fact the he is now a stateless person, there was little chance that he would try to flee while his appeals progress. But the order to release him Thursday presented authorities with a conundrum, because it was unclear where he would go.

The release Friday followed an intensive search by prison authorities for a facility that would accept Mr. Demjanjuk. “It was very difficult,” Mr. Stumpf said.

Mr. Demjanjuk will remain free at least until the appeals process runs its course. Margarete N?tzel, a judge who is spokesman for the Munich courts, estimated that the appeals would take a year and a half, but she said two years was also plausible. Just compiling documents and transcripts from the trial could take six months, she said. Mr. Demjanjuk spent much of the trial in a bed set up in the courtroom or in a wheelchair. Mr. Demjanjuk’s son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said in an e-mail Friday that his father requires weekly medical treatment for a bone marrow and blood disorder, chronic kidney disease and severe degeneration of the spine.

However, Cornelius Nestler, a law professor who acted on behalf of a dozen Holocaust victims during the trial, accused the elder Mr. Demjanjuk of “exorbitantly” exaggerating the seriousness of his ailments. During final arguments last month, Mr. Nestler noted that while Mr. Demjanjuk lay almost lifeless in the courtroom he would joke with reporters outside.

On Thursday, relatives of Sobibor victims, who were recognized as co-complainants for the trial, said they were more concerned with raising awareness of what happened at Sobibor than exacting revenge on Mr. Demjanjuk, whose two years in pretrial detention will count toward his sentence, leaving him about three years left to serve if his appeals fail.

Rudie S. Cortissos, who lost his mother in Sobibor and survived the war by hiding in Amsterdam, said on Friday that he regretted that Mr. Demjanjuk will be able to live in peace during the appeals. But Mr. Cortissos also said in an e-mail message: “It does not upset me. A decision made by judges in a democratic country like Germany should be accepted.”

Under German law, defendants should not be held unless they are considered likely to flee. Still, the decision to let Mr. Demjanjuk out of jail angered some. “We feel that this is an insult to his victims and to the survivors,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, a founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Los Angeles, said in a statement Thursday.

The verdict comes after decades of legal proceedings in three countries involving Mr. Demjanjuk, who emigrated to the United States after the war and became an auto worker in Ohio. After losing his American citizenship in 1985 for lying about his past, Mr. Demjanjuk was deported to Israel and accused of being a particularly brutal guard known as Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka camp in occupied Poland.

But an Israeli high court overturned his conviction and death sentence in that case in 1993, ruling that Mr. Demjanjuk was not Ivan even though it appeared he had been a guard at a different camp, Sobibor.

Mr. Demjanjuk returned to the United States, but after more years of legal proceedings he was deported to Germany in 2009 to face trial.

The long legal battle made Mr. Demjanjuk one of the most well-known war crimes suspects, even though he was said to have ranked low in the camp hierarchy.

Mr. Demjanjuk’s defense lawyers argued that an SS identity card and other documents were falsified by the Soviets. But Judge Alt said there was a clear trail of documents and testimony that demonstrated Mr. Demjanjuk’s path from Soviet prisoner of war to Sobibor guard.

Jack Ewing reported from Munich, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Stefan Pauly contributed reporting from Berlin.

 

Business Briefing | Acquisitions: U.S. Fast-Food Giant Yum Bids for Chinese Chain

HONG KONG — Yum Brands, the company behind KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, is planning to add another name to its list of restaurant chains: Little Sheep, which operates hundreds of colorful hot pot restaurants throughout China.

Based in Louisville, Ky., Yum has been betting on China’s giant population and rising affluence levels since 1987, when it first introduced the KFC brand in China. Last year alone, it opened more than 500 restaurants in mainland China and now generates more than one-third of its annual revenue in the country.

On Friday, Yum stepped up its expansion drive with a bid for Little Sheep, which is based in the Inner Mongolian city of Baotou and operates what is a well recognized brand within the highly fragmented Chinese restaurant market.

Yum, which already owns 27.2 percent of the Hong Kong-listed Little Sheep, offered to pay 6.50 Hong Kong dollars, or 84 U.S. cents, each for most of the shares it does not already own, with the aim of raising its stake to 93.2 percent. The offer, which had been signaled in late April, values the company at $682 million.

The founders of Little Sheep -- Zhang Gang, who is also chairman of the company, and Chen Hongkai -- would retain the remaining 6.8 percent.

“The restaurant industry in China is highly competitive, but we are optimistic about the outlook and the opportunities,” Sam Su, chairman and chief executive of Yum’s China division, said in a statement Friday announcing the planned transaction. “We are confident we can further strengthen Little Sheep’s brand, business model and market position in the industry.”

The transaction, which remains subject to regulatory approval, underlines the eagerness of many Western retailers and consumer goods companies to expand into China.

Disposable incomes have risen rapidly in China and in many other developing Asian nations over the past two decades, prompting an influx of companies wishing to sell products as diverse as luxury handbags and cars, chicken drumsticks and laundry detergent.

Yum was a relatively early entrant to the Chinese market, and KFC has become one of the most dominant and visible fast-food chains in China — more so than rivals like McDonald’s.

There are now more than 3,200 KFC outlets in more than 700 mainland Chinese cities, according to Yum. The Pizza Hut brand, which was introduced in China in 1990, now counts 520 restaurants and 120 home delivery outlets across this market of 1.3 billion people.

Yum also pledged to help Little Sheep, which listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2008, to introduce the hot pot concept — customers dip vegetables or meat into boiling broth at their tables — and the Little Sheep brand “to a wider global audience.”

“I believe that the strong capability and expertise Yum possesses in managing world-class brands and growing restaurant networks will significantly further Little Sheep’s development in China and overseas,” Mr. Zhang of Little Sheep said in the statement Friday, “and should leave us well positioned to develop into an internationally recognized restaurant chain.”

 

World Briefing | Asia: Terrorism Suspect Is Captured in a Raid in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — A man believed to be a senior leader of the terrorist group the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was captured in Afghanistan this week during a joint Afghan and coalition operation in Kunduz Province, NATO officials said Friday.

The raid was the latest in a series conducted by coalition forces against the movement’s leaders in Afghanistan. The group, which is closely tied to Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, has played a role in the revitalized insurgency in northern Afghanistan, where it is believed to be responsible for multiple attacks on Afghan and coalition forces.

NATO does not release the names of captured insurgents. But in a statement, the alliance described the man as the movement’s top leader in Afghanistan. He was taken during a raid on Wednesday along with two associates in the Khanabad district of Kunduz Province. No shots were fired in the operation, NATO said.

Military officials called the man a central conduit between the movement and senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They said he assisted both groups by coordinating suicide and mortar attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout northern Afghanistan and helped coordinate insurgent training in both countries. He escaped from a Pakistani prison in 2010, officials said, and he is believed to have paid bribes to secure the release of other prisoners.

The group is estimated to have 2,500 to 4,000 fighters in Pakistan’s tribal regions and in Afghanistan, according to The Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks the conflicts there. In the past two months, coalition forces have killed more than 20 insurgents within the group, including Bilal Konduzi, its top leader in Afghanistan. Mr. Konduzi and another of the movement’s leaders, Shad Mohammad, were killed in an airstrike in Samangan Province on March 10.

News of the capture came as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, was meeting with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, during a brief visit to Kabul on Friday. The trip came as tensions between Pakistan and the United States worsened over Pakistan’s demands that Americans end drone strikes in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border, and the American insistence that Pakistan do more to deal with insurgents in the areas. Competing aims for the future of Afghanistan have added to the tensions.

Before arriving in Kabul, Admiral Mullen met with the Pakistani Army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in Islamabad. Mr. Karzai had also recently met with a senior Pakistani delegation, including Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who visited Kabul last Saturday.

It is not clear, however, if Admiral Mullen and Mr. Karzai discussed relations among the three countries in any detail on Friday. Waheed Omar, Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, said that while both men discussed their recent conversations with Pakistan officials, that was only one of a wide variety of issues touched on in the hourlong meeting.

“There was not a central focus,” Mr. Omar said. “It was really a general discussion about a range of issues.”

Also on Friday, Afghan officials said that NATO helicopters killed four security guards at a road construction site in an airstrike at 4 a.m. in the Sperra district of Khost Province, near the Pakistan border. A NATO spokesman said the helicopters came under attack from armed men and in the exchange of fire, four people were killed. NATO is investigating the episode.

Insurgents killed a coalition soldier in an attack in eastern Afghanistan on Friday. And five Afghan policeman were killed Thursday when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Spinbaldak in Kandahar Province. Three police trainees were also killed on Thursday in Nangarhar Province when their vehicle struck a bomb.

And in the eastern province of Paktika, a combined Afghan and American force killed several insurgents after coming under fire in the Yahya Khel district, NATO officials said. Mukhles Afghan, spokesman for the governor of Paktika, said 12 insurgents were killed. The district has been one of the most volatile in the province. No civilians or Afghan or coalition forces were killed in the attack, Mr. Mukhles said.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and an employee of The New York Times from Nangarhar Province.

 

Sports Briefing | Golf: McIlroy Rebounds to Lead a Rainy Malaysian Open

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
How spending and tax expenditures can be reduced if Washington fails to bring the debt under control.

How a man with a gun convinced Virginia to leave the Union.

View the original article here