Gingerly, Medvedev Seeks a Little Distance From Putin

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — With the country’s next presidential election scheduled for March, the incumbent, Dmitri A. Medvedev, complicated the riddle at the center of Russian politics by delivering a speech on Friday that implied criticism of his predecessor and presumed rival for the job, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.

In the speech, an address to foreign investors and heads of state at an economic forum here, Mr. Medvedev warned of a new era of stagnation if the state continued to control the Russian economy. And he spoke, as he has before, of the inherent risks in a political system built around one man’s personality.

“We should say goodbye to bad habits,” Mr. Medvedev said after describing government meddling in the economy when Mr. Putin was president from 2000 until 2008. He did not, however, mention Mr. Putin by name.

Throughout the speech, Mr. Medvedev veered repeatedly toward staking out an independent position, but would pull back before making explicit any substantive disagreement with Mr. Putin.

Investors like those in attendance on Friday carefully parse Mr. Medvedev’s public comments for just this type of delicate positioning, because he is seen as occupying a politically precarious spot this summer.

To emerge from Mr. Putin’s shadow and become a credible candidate in the eyes of urban middle-class voters, his core constituency, Mr. Medvedev needs to demonstrate his independence. But he must take care not to appear openly disloyal to the man who is considered the most powerful in Russia.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev have said that they will reach an agreement privately on which of them will run for president next year, and Kremlin officials say the announcement will come in September or October.

Mr. Medvedev used the occasion of the economic forum to highlight his credentials as a liberal reformer.

“If everything starts to work on a signal from the Kremlin — we have all been there, and I know from personal experience — it means the system is unsustainable and must be organized around an individual,” he said. “This is bad. It means the system should be changed.”

Remarking on the practice of state companies bulking up on assets, which was common during Mr. Putin’s presidency, Mr. Medvedev said, “There could be another stagnation hiding behind the so-called stability.”

“Private entrepreneurs should rule the Russian economy,” he said, adding, “Economies are like parachutes: they only work when they are open.”

Internal Kremlin politics have seeped into the public sphere several times this year, often in the form of Mr. Medvedev responding to comments by Mr. Putin with a retort so mild that it might go unnoticed in other countries, but is seized on here as important.

Daniel Treisman, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, described Mr. Medvedev’s maneuverings as “a passive-aggressive verbal strategy” for expressing his political views.

The divergence in their public positions also suggests that they are trying to appeal to different audiences, Mr. Treisman said. Mr. Medvedev is more popular with Western leaders and foreign investors of the type attending the economic forum, where the president traditionally delivers an economic policy speech.

This year, the message seemed mostly that Mr. Medvedev disagreed with Mr. Putin on economic policy. “Medvedev hints he is very upset about something, but nothing ever comes of it,” Mr. Treisman said.

There are occasional hints of a more substantive breach. This week, the newspaper Vedemosti reported that Mr. Medvedev had fired Aleksei Anichin, a deputy interior minister and one of Russia’s most senior police officials. Mr. Anichin was a classmate of Mr. Putin’s.

The Russian government is trying to sell $30 billion worth of shares in state companies that it intends to privatize. The chief executives of Citigroup and Bank of America, Vikram S. Pandit and Brian T. Moynihan, were among those in St. Petersburg this week to discuss the opportunities. Speaking of his economic agenda, Mr. Medvedev said, “This project should be realized regardless of who occupies which job in our country for the next few years.”

He then offered this riddle: “I will guarantee this personally, as the president of the state, together with my colleagues.” It was hard to see how he could do that without winning another term in office.

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Russia Seeks Pledge From NATO on Missile Defense

“We do not want any missiles aimed at Russia,” the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said after talks in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad with his counterparts from Germany, Guido Westerwelle, and Poland, Radek Sikorski.

The meeting in Kaliningrad was part of an effort by the three countries to work together over political, security, energy and visa issues.

“This is about cooperation, not confrontation, about discussing concrete projects,” Mr. Westerwelle told hundreds of students at Kant University who had gathered to question the three officials.

Mr. Lavrov said Russia wanted “some kind of written guarantees from NATO that the missiles will not threaten Russia.”

Russia has in the past threatened to place missiles in Kaliningrad — a small area with a population of nearly one million that is sandwiched between two European Union countries, Poland and Lithuania — in response to NATO’s plans to deploy part of its missile shield in Eastern Europe.

President Obama, who is to visit Poland next week, intends to deploy Patriot missiles there, but not the original missile shield system that the administration of President George W. Bush had promised to do. The Bush administration’s plans to place parts of the missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, which were once part of the Soviet military alliance, led to a sharp deterioration of relations between Washington and Moscow. The Russian prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, has said that the deployments would undermine Russia’s security.

Mr. Obama’s decision to shift strategy was not only because of the costs and the need to modify the scope of any missile defense system that would provide a much broader security umbrella over Europe. The administration said it also wanted to “reset” its relations with Russia.

During Saturday’s discussions, the ministers agreed that their meeting could evolve into something more permanent — like the Weimar Triangle, which the French, German and Polish foreign ministers set up 20 years ago after the reunification of Germany. The Weimar Triangle helped to lead to reconciliation between Poland and Germany, ending decades of enmity and distrust.

Mr. Lavrov acknowledged that Russia could not ignore Poland’s new role on the Continent, now that it is a member of the European Union and it is scheduled to take over the rotating presidency on July 1.

The three officials also discussed Belarus on Saturday. Poland and Germany, with support from France, want European foreign ministers to impose more sanctions against Belarus. The sanctions, already imposed on the top leadership, could be extended to some enterprise managers. At the same time, Poland and Germany intend to strengthen their ties to civil society and the democratic opposition.

Russia, however, said it opposed more sanctions. “This will only lead to further isolation,” Mr. Lavrov said. “That will do nothing to help the way towards direction.”

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Meeting With Pakistani Leaders, Kerry Seeks to Ease Anger Over Bin Laden Raid

Mr. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has argued that it would be foolhardy for the United States to cut assistance to Pakistan. He said Monday that Pakistan had agreed to take “several immediate steps” to show its seriousness about the importance of relations with America. They included returning the tail of the helicopter that crashed on the night of the Bin Laden raid, he said.

But on the major differences at hand, Mr. Kerry declined to specify what, if any, progress had been made.

Mr. Kerry’s visit — and the postponement of Mrs. Clinton’s — reflected the strained ties between the two nations, but also the efforts by the administration to repair them.

Within the last 24 hours, a spokesman said Monday, Mrs. Clinton spoke with senior Pakistani leaders, including President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, about the tensions caused by Bin Laden’s killing. The State Department announced that it was dispatching the administration’s special envoy to the region, Marc Grossman, who only recently returned from Pakistan, where he was the first American diplomat to confront the country’s leaders in the hours after Bin Laden’s killing two weeks ago.

“We’re trying to move, to move on to address those questions as well as move forward with the relationship,” the spokesman, Mark Toner, said, referring to the questions raised by the raid, “because we feel it’s in both our countries’ interests.”

Mr. Kerry shed little light on the crucial issue of whether Pakistan would stop assisting the Haqqani network, whose forces keep sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal areas and cross into Afghanistan to kill American and NATO soldiers.

The senator, who came to Pakistan with the backing of the White House, said he had discussed the presence of the Haqqani forces in Pakistan, as well as Pakistan’s support for the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and for Mullah Muhammad Omar, the spiritual leader of the Afghan Taliban, with the head of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha.

“We discussed every single one of them,” Mr. Kerry said, adding that Pakistani action against them would help the United States end the war in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Mr. Kerry visited Khost Province in Afghanistan, where American commanders briefed him on the Pakistani insurgents coming across the border. It appeared that Mr. Kerry planned to use that information in his discussions with the Pakistani leadership.

In an unusual joint Pakistani-American statement negotiated Monday at a meeting attended by President Zardari and General Kayani, the main demand of the Pakistanis appeared to be a pledge that the United States had “no designs against Pakistan’s nuclear and strategic assets.”

“Senator Kerry stated that he was prepared to personally affirm such a guarantee,” the statement said.

Members of the Pakistani military have complained bitterly that the United States did not inform them in advance of the Bin Laden raid, and part of Mr. Kerry’s mission involved soothing wounded feelings and papering over American officials’ statements that Pakistan could not be trusted with advance knowledge.

Pakistani officials have said that they had no idea that Bin Laden was living in a compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, where Navy Seal commandos killed him in a raid on May 2. “Even in the U.S. government, very few people knew about it,” the joint statement said of the Bin Laden operation.

Mr. Kerry, an author of a major $7.5 billion package of civilian aid to Pakistan, said he had warned the Pakistani leadership of the “grave” worry in Congress about the presence of Bin Laden in Pakistan. Those concerns had put future aid in peril, he said.

Mr. Kerry’s calming tone was apparently echoed Monday when editors of some of Pakistan’s newspapers met with General Kayani.

In contrast to the strong anti-American speech General Pasha delivered at a closed-door session of Parliament on Friday, General Kayani said that Pakistan would continue a relationship with the United States because otherwise the country risked becoming isolated, according to an editor who attended the meeting but declined to be named because the matter was politically delicate.

The editor said that General Kayani’s basic message was that “Pakistan understood the limits of its own reach.”

Moreover, according to the editor, General Kayani said that Pakistan needed to remain on good terms with the United States in order to have its say in the settlement of the nearly 10-year-old war in Afghanistan.

Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Washington.

 

Thailand’s Premier Seeks to Dissolve Parliament and Call Election

 

The step would be the next stage in a long political struggle in Thailand that has included a coup, violent demonstrations and a military assault in the heart of the commercial center here in Thailand’s capital. The election, which will take place 45 to 60 days after it is approved by King Bhumibol Adulyadej, has been a key demand of the political opposition since the mass demonstrations a year ago that ended in bloodshed, deepening the country’s political crisis.

“I am confident that this is the way to make the country move forward,” the prime minister said as he announced his call to dissolve Parliament seven months ahead of the end of his term. “While the process is under way, I’d like to insist that there’s no necessity to criticize this matter.”

Mr. Abhisit said he would hold a news conference when he returned on Monday from a meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Thailand has been unstable since a military coup in 2006, with protests and violence on both sides of a deep political and social divide. Political analysts said that a new election was unlikely to resolve the conflicts, warning that it could touch off more unrest.

The main contest will pit Mr. Abhisit’s governing Democratic Party against the Pheu Thai Party, which is backed by Thaksin Shinawatra, who was prime minister before the 2006 coup. Mr. Thaksin remains a political force in Thailand even though he fled the country to avoid prison after being convicted for corruption, and has taken refuge in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Mr. Thaksin enjoys the loyalty of many people in the poor but populous north and northeast of the country, the home of many of the “red-shirt” protesters who besieged Bangkok in April and May 2010 and who form the largest regional bloc of voters.

Clashes between troops and protesters paralyzed parts of Bangkok and led to the deaths of about 90 people.

If neither of the major parties wins a majority in the election, the outcome will depend on a competition for coalition partners from smaller parties whose allegiances are driven by political calculation and personal ambition rather than policy.

Mr. Abhisit’s Democratic Party now holds office in a coalition with smaller parties, and analysts say that it will need a coalition if it is to retain power. Mr. Thaksin’s allies dominate the red-shirt regions and in the past have won the most votes.

Many analysts expect instability after the new election, with renewed demonstrations by the red shirts if they are excluded from the government. If they win, the military and the establishment could act to overturn the result with a coup or an intervention by the courts, experts say.

“If we are talking free and fair elections, I think the pro-Thaksin red-shirts party has a chance to win,” said Pavin Chachavalpongpun of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

But, he said, “I think the Democrats will work with other smaller parties to form a coalition, with again the help of the military and influential figures.”

Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting.

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U.S. Seeks to Aid Libyan Rebels With Seized Assets

And for the first time, Qatar put the question of supplying arms to the rebels on the table, but no agreement was reached.

The developments came at a meeting in Rome that appeared to bolster the NATO-led military intervention. Hosted by Italy and Qatar, it brought together officials representing two dozen NATO nations, Arab countries and international organizations.

The meeting was aimed at intensifying diplomatic and financial pressure on Colonel Qaddafi’s government. The military operation, which to critics seems stalled, has largely succeeded in its stated mission of stopping the advance of his forces but has not done enough to stop indiscriminate shelling in cities like Misurata and Zintan or to force Colonel Qaddafi to step down.

“We shall not leave a divided and insecure Libya as a playground for Qaddafi’s mercenaries,” said Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini. “Our message must be that we shall keep up the pressure, using all legitimate means and with the aim also of convincing Qaddafi’s entourage to join the many who have already defected.”

Above all, the international officials said they would create a special fund of hundreds of millions of dollars to allow humanitarian and other financial assistance to flow into rebel-controlled parts of Libya despite United Nations sanctions that apply to Colonel Qaddafi’s government.

Libya’s opposition has asked for billions of dollars’ worth of help, including cash to pay salaries and provide services in the parts of the country under the control of the rebels, led by a group called the Transitional National Council.

On Thursday, Qatar’s prime minister, Sheik Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, said that the country would put $400 million to $500 million into the fund, and that Kuwait had put in $180 million. “I don’t think we have shortage of money, we had shortage of mechanism,” Mr. Thani said. “Now, we agreed on the mechanism, that’s what was important.”

Mr. Frattini and Mr. Thani said the fund would be managed by a five-member steering board composed of three Libyans chosen by the Transitional National Council; a representative of Qatar; and a representative from either Italy or France on a six-month rotating basis.

A senior opposition official, Mahmoud Jibril, also attended the meeting in Rome and met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “We are more than content and satisfied with the results,” he said after the meeting.

The meeting appeared to represent a turning point in the debate over arming the rebels, which hinges on the interpretation of a United Nations resolution allowing for the self-defense of the Libyan people.

“A few weeks ago, nobody was talking about defending the Libyans or giving the means to defend themselves, but now I think that it’s more accepted,” Mr. Thani said. “Some of the countries already started this, and we support this idea that we let the Libyan people defend themselves on the ground because we cannot help them from the air.”

It is widely believed that Qatar has already supplied the rebels in eastern Libya with rifles and other light weapons.

The difficulty in providing concrete support outside of NATO air power reflects the diplomatic and legal complications and confusion that have dogged the international intervention in Libya since it began with a barrage of missile strikes on March 18.

“Clearly on our agenda is looking for the most effective way to deliver financial assets and other means of supporting and helping” the opposition’s loosely organized political and military forces, Mrs. Clinton said.

When the United Nations Security Council first imposed sanctions on Colonel Qaddafi in February, the Treasury Department seized $33 billion in assets belonging to him, his family or his aides from American financial institutions. It was the largest American seizure of foreign assets in history.

American laws, like those in Europe, prohibit simply unfreezing such assets. Mrs. Clinton said that the administration was asking Congress for legislation that would allow some of the frozen assets to help the Libyan people.

The Libyan government dismissed as illegal any American effort to give the frozen assets to the rebels, Reuters reported. “Any use of the frozen assets is like piracy on the high seas,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim. The rebels are not a legal entity, he said, adding, “They are not a country.”

Several countries have pledged humanitarian aid to the provisional rebel leaders, but only France, Italy and Qatar have officially recognized them as Libya’s legitimate government. That complicates financial support to a country that remains under the United Nations sanctions, which are intended to restrict the flow of money, oil and weapons to Colonel Qaddafi.

The new fund announced here in Rome was intended to circumvent the sanctions, but the officials who gathered did not specify exactly how the fund would work. Mrs. Clinton noted that the United States had authorized $25 million in nonlethal military surplus, including uniforms, binoculars and boots, and $66 million more in humanitarian aid.

There is also the possibility that Libya will need far more aid in the near future. The World Food Program said Thursday that the country could run out of food in six to eight weeks, as the government-run distribution system crumbles. The situation could be particularly acute in the rebel-held east, the group’s executive director, Josette Sheeran, told Reuters.

Last week, a NATO strike on a military compound in Tripoli killed one of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons. Asked Thursday whether the United States would consider an operation against Colonel Qaddafi, along the lines of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Mrs. Clinton said no.

“The best way to protect civilians is for Qaddafi to cease his ruthless, brutal attacks on the cities, to withdraw from the cities that he is attacking and leave power,” she said.

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U.S. Seeks to Aid Libyan Rebels With Seized Assets

And for the first time, Qatar put the question of supplying arms to the rebels on the table, but no agreement was reached.

The developments came at a meeting in Rome that appeared to bolster the NATO-led military intervention. Hosted by Italy and Qatar, it brought together officials representing two dozen NATO nations, Arab countries and international organizations.

The meeting was aimed at intensifying diplomatic and financial pressure on Colonel Qaddafi’s government. The military operation, which to critics seems stalled, has largely succeeded in its stated mission of stopping the advance of his forces but has not done enough to stop indiscriminate shelling in cities like Misurata and Zintan or to force Colonel Qaddafi to step down.

“We shall not leave a divided and insecure Libya as a playground for Qaddafi’s mercenaries,” said Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini. “Our message must be that we shall keep up the pressure, using all legitimate means and with the aim also of convincing Qaddafi’s entourage to join the many who have already defected.”

Above all, the international officials said they would create a special fund of hundreds of millions of dollars to allow humanitarian and other financial assistance to flow into rebel-controlled parts of Libya despite United Nations sanctions that apply to Colonel Qaddafi’s government.

Libya’s opposition has asked for billions of dollars’ worth of help, including cash to pay salaries and provide services in the parts of the country under the control of the rebels, led by a group called the Transitional National Council.

On Thursday, Qatar’s prime minister, Sheik Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, said that the country would put $400 million to $500 million into the fund, and that Kuwait had put in $180 million. “I don’t think we have shortage of money, we had shortage of mechanism,” Mr. Thani said. “Now, we agreed on the mechanism, that’s what was important.”

Mr. Frattini and Mr. Thani said the fund would be managed by a five-member steering board composed of three Libyans chosen by the Transitional National Council; a representative of Qatar; and a representative from either Italy or France on a six-month rotating basis.

A senior opposition official, Mahmoud Jibril, also attended the meeting in Rome and met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “We are more than content and satisfied with the results,” he said after the meeting.

The meeting appeared to represent a turning point in the debate over arming the rebels, which hinges on the interpretation of a United Nations resolution allowing for the self-defense of the Libyan people.

“A few weeks ago, nobody was talking about defending the Libyans or giving the means to defend themselves, but now I think that it’s more accepted,” Mr. Thani said. “Some of the countries already started this, and we support this idea that we let the Libyan people defend themselves on the ground because we cannot help them from the air.”

It is widely believed that Qatar has already supplied the rebels in eastern Libya with rifles and other light weapons.

The difficulty in providing concrete support outside of NATO air power reflects the diplomatic and legal complications and confusion that have dogged the international intervention in Libya since it began with a barrage of missile strikes on March 18.

“Clearly on our agenda is looking for the most effective way to deliver financial assets and other means of supporting and helping” the opposition’s loosely organized political and military forces, Mrs. Clinton said.

When the United Nations Security Council first imposed sanctions on Colonel Qaddafi in February, the Treasury Department seized $33 billion in assets belonging to him, his family or his aides from American financial institutions. It was the largest American seizure of foreign assets in history.

American laws, like those in Europe, prohibit simply unfreezing such assets. Mrs. Clinton said that the administration was asking Congress for legislation that would allow some of the frozen assets to help the Libyan people.

The Libyan government dismissed as illegal any American effort to give the frozen assets to the rebels, Reuters reported. “Any use of the frozen assets is like piracy on the high seas,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim. The rebels are not a legal entity, he said, adding, “They are not a country.”

Several countries have pledged humanitarian aid to the provisional rebel leaders, but only France, Italy and Qatar have officially recognized them as Libya’s legitimate government. That complicates financial support to a country that remains under the United Nations sanctions, which are intended to restrict the flow of money, oil and weapons to Colonel Qaddafi.

The new fund announced here in Rome was intended to circumvent the sanctions, but the officials who gathered did not specify exactly how the fund would work. Mrs. Clinton noted that the United States had authorized $25 million in nonlethal military surplus, including uniforms, binoculars and boots, and $66 million more in humanitarian aid.

There is also the possibility that Libya will need far more aid in the near future. The World Food Program said Thursday that the country could run out of food in six to eight weeks, as the government-run distribution system crumbles. The situation could be particularly acute in the rebel-held east, the group’s executive director, Josette Sheeran, told Reuters.

Last week, a NATO strike on a military compound in Tripoli killed one of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons. Asked Thursday whether the United States would consider an operation against Colonel Qaddafi, along the lines of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Mrs. Clinton said no.

“The best way to protect civilians is for Qaddafi to cease his ruthless, brutal attacks on the cities, to withdraw from the cities that he is attacking and leave power,” she said.

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Hague Court Seeks Warrants for Libyan Officials

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor, appeared in a briefing before the United Nations Security Council, which had unanimously called for a criminal investigation of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s use of force against civilians. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said the evidence supporting charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity included the shooting of peaceful protesters, followed by weeks of systematic persecution, including murder, imprisonment and torture.

“War crimes are apparently committed as a matter of policy,” the prosecutor said. He went on: “The evidence shows that events in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia prompted Libyan security forces to begin preparations for the possibility of demonstrations in Libya. As early as January, mercenaries were being hired and brought into Libya.” Other violations, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said, included preventing the wounded from receiving medical care; arresting, torturing and raping perceived opponents of the Qaddafi government; and the use of cluster bombs, mortars and other heavy weapons in crowded urban areas.

The prosecutor said that “efforts to cover up the crimes” — removing bodies from hospitals and preventing doctors from documenting the dead and wounded — had made it difficult to establish the number of victims. But he said 500 to 700 died from shootings in February, before full-fledged fighting broke out between the government and hastily assembled rebel forces.

“Shooting at protesters was systematic,” he said.

Lawyers familiar with the investigation said that the first arrest warrants were likely to focus on the initial violent clampdown on protesters. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo would not comment on whether the indictments involved Colonel Qaddafi or any of his sons, at least three of whom hold military positions.

The prosecutor said the Libyans had raised the issue of the killing of civilians by NATO air strikes since NATO began bombing in March. But he said he was still waiting for more information, including the results of a fact-finding mission by the Human Rights Council, before deciding whether to include NATO actions in the scope of his inquiry.

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said his office was also looking into violence on the insurgent side, including the killing of prisoners. He cited violence by mobs in Benghazi and other rebel-held cities against sub-Saharan Africans, seen as pro-Qaddafi mercenaries, who had been “unlawfully arrested, mistreated and killed.” Some of them, he said, were said to have been arrested by “the new authorities in Benghazi,” and their fates were unclear.

Fearful of being attacked, many migrants from nations like Chad, Niger and Sudan made a panicked exodus toward the Egyptian border. Angry crowds attacked housing complexes where sub-Saharan Africans lived, though other Libyans stepped in to shield the migrants from abuse.

At the Security Council on Wednesday, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said Moscow was concerned by the mounting toll of civilians, which he described as the responsibility of all parties involved, including NATO. “Actions by NATO-led coalition forces also lead to civilian casualties,” he said. “It is clear that violence can only be halted through an immediate cease-fire and political settlement.”

Other ambassadors said prosecuting war crimes in Libya would send a message to the rest of the region, particularly Syria, that attacks on civilians were unacceptable. Western diplomats have said it could lead to defections of Qaddafi officials and military personnel.

In Misurata, Libya, the coastal city besieged by Qaddafi forces, an international aid ship risked attack by entering the port and evacuating migrant workers who had been trying to leave Libya. Colonel Qaddafi’s military has vowed to prevent ships from entering the port, and tried mining the harbor and shelling the port with artillery and ground-to-ground rocket barrages.

As the ship arrived, more rockets struck near the port, hitting migrant workers waiting to board. The barrage killed a man, a woman, a small boy and a girl.

Dr. Hassan Malitan, who worked at a clinic, vented his anger. The neighborhood has been struck repeatedly by rocket fire, and civilians have been killed. “This is the real Qaddafi,” he said.

The ship departed quickly, taking hundreds of frightened workers out of the city on the beginning of the passage to the rebel capital, Benghazi.

A chief opposition spokesman there, Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, said a large explosion on Wednesday night near the courthouse had been an accident, not a deliberate act, as previously suspected.?Mr. Ghoga said a car owner had left a gelatin explosive in the vehicle, which detonated.?

The explosive is widely used for fishing and, increasingly, for the city’s frequent parades and celebrations.?Ten people were wounded in the blast.?

Marlise Simons reported from Paris, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations. C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from Misurata, Libya, and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya.

 

U.S. Seeks New Limits on Food Ads for Children

The federal government proposed sweeping new guidelines on Thursday that could push the food industry to overhaul how it advertises cereal, soda pop, snacks, restaurant meals and other foods to children.

Citing an epidemic of childhood obesity, regulators are taking aim at a range of tactics used to market foods high in sugar, fat or salt to children, including the use of cartoon characters like Toucan Sam, the brightly colored Froot Loops pitchman, who appears in television commercials and online games as well as on cereal boxes.

Regulators are asking food makers and restaurant companies to make a choice: make your products healthier or stop advertising them to youngsters.

“Toucan Sam can sell healthy food or junk food,” said Dale Kunkel, a communications professor at the University of Arizona who studies the marketing of children’s food. “This forces Toucan Sam to be associated with healthier products.”

The guidelines, released by the Federal Trade Commission, encompass a broad range of marketing efforts, including television and print ads, Web sites, online games that act as camouflaged advertisements, social media, product placements in movies, the use of movie characters in cross-promotions and fast-food children’s meals. The inclusion of digital media, such as product-based games, represents one of the government’s strongest efforts so far to address the extension of children’s advertising into the online world, which children’s health advocates say is a growing problem.

The guidelines are meant to be voluntary, but companies are likely to face heavy pressure to adopt them. Companies that choose to take part would have five to 10 years to bring their products and marketing into compliance.

“There’s clearly a demand hidden behind the velvet glove of the voluntary language,” said Dan Jaffe, an executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, a trade group that represents marketers like Kraft Foods and Campbell Soup.

By explicitly tying advertising to childhood obesity, the government is suggesting there is a darker side to cuddly figures like Cap’n Crunch, the Keebler elves, Ronald McDonald and the movie and television characters used to promote food. It also raises the question of whether they might ultimately share the fate of Joe Camel, the cartoon figure used to promote Camel cigarettes that was phased out amid allegations that it was meant to entice children to smoke.

“Our proposal really covers all forms of marketing to kids, and the product packaging and the images and themes on the cereal boxes have tremendous appeal to kids,” said Michelle K. Rusk, a lawyer with the trade commission. “The goal is to encourage children to eat more healthy foods because obesity is a huge health crisis.”

The F.T.C. said that in 2006, food companies spent nearly $2.3 billion to advertise to children.

The food industry immediately criticized the proposal, saying that it had already taken significant steps to improve recipes and change the way it advertises to children.

Kellogg, the company that makes Froot Loops, said in a statement that it would review the proposal and that it was committed to improving “the nutrition credentials” of its products. “We have very specific criteria, based on a broad review of scientific reports, that determine how and what products we market to children,” the company said. The company has already reduced sugar and added whole grains in many cereals.

Scott Faber, a vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a group that represents food makers, said that ads for packaged foods on television shows aimed at children 2 to 11 had dropped significantly since 2004, and that the ads more often showed healthier types of foods. He said companies had also changed many recipes to reduce salt, sugar and fat and add healthful ingredients like whole grains. “The rate of reformulation is going to increase, not as a result of the principles that were announced today but because consumers are demanding changes in the marketplace,” Mr. Faber said.

Many food companies participate in an industry-led effort, the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, to restrict some marketing activities. But each company that takes part is allowed to set its own nutritional criteria, which critics say undermine the program’s effectiveness.

Regulators said it was important for the entire industry to adhere to a uniform set of standards.

The guidelines were created at the request of Congress and written by the commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture Department and the Centers for Disease Control. Regulators said they would take comments and consider changes before submitting a final report to Congress.

The guidelines call for foods that are advertised to children to meet two basic requirements. They would have to include certain healthful ingredients, like whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, or low-fat milk. And they could not contain unhealthful amounts of sugar, saturated fat, trans fat and salt.

The sugar requirement would limit cereals to eight grams of added sugar a serving, far less than many popular cereals have today. Froot Loops and Cap’n Crunch, for example, contain 12 grams of sugar a serving.

The salt restrictions are particularly stringent, and many packaged foods on the shelves today would have a hard time meeting them. In an initial phase-in period, the guidelines call for many foods to have no more than 210 milligrams of sodium a serving, while main dishes and meals, including both restaurant food and packaged food, could have no more than 450 milligrams. Today, a 15-ounce can of Chef Boyardee beef ravioli has two servings, with 750 milligrams of sodium per serving. The sodium restrictions would get tougher over time.

The federal agencies acknowledged that a “large percentage of food products currently in the marketplace would not meet the principles.”

The guidelines would apply to both young children and teenagers. The industry has said it should have greater leeway for teenagers, and Ms. Rusk said the agencies would consider those arguments.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, predicted that the guidelines would force many companies to accept great restrictions and improve recipes.

“With all the concern about childhood obesity, I think there’s a lot of pressure on companies to do the right thing and follow these standards,” she said.

Jeffrey Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy, a group that focuses on Internet marketing to children, said the F.T.C. proposal had broader implications. “The youth obesity issue has placed all digital marketing in the regulatory cross hairs,” Mr. Chester said.

Matt Richtel contributed reporting.

 

In Search for F.B.I. Director, Administration Seeks a Shared Philosophy

Robert S. Mueller III, who became the F.B.I. director just a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, will complete his 10-year term on Sept. 4, having led the in-progress effort to transform the bureau into a domestic intelligence agency.

A small team led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been evaluating potential successors and, according to officials familiar with the deliberations, has reached certain views about the ideal candidate.

In particular, officials said, the administration wants someone who shares the philosophy and has the management abilities to press forward with changing the bureau’s culture, so that agents focus less on solving already-completed crimes and more on uncovering potential threats — even at the expense of accumulating arrests and convictions.

Possible contenders include James B. Comey, a former deputy attorney general; Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago; Raymond W. Kelly, the New York City police commissioner; Ronald K. Noble, a former enforcement head at the Treasury Department who now leads Interpol; and Kenneth L. Wainstein, a former assistant attorney general for national security.

Officials say the administration is also looking for someone who will be easily confirmed and who will be respected both inside the bureau and elsewhere in the intelligence community.

Finally, they say, they want someone with the character to be a strong leader during a crisis and to maintain an appropriate level of independence, but who would keep a low political profile and focus on operational matters while deferring to the White House and the Justice Department on policy issues.

In many ways the administration appears to be looking for a clone of Mr. Mueller, who worked relatively smoothly with four attorneys general of widely divergent personalities and political views, under both a Republican and a Democratic president.

“Bob is a hard person to replace,” Mr. Holder told reporters last week. “He has done a really excellent job in transforming the F.B.I. He is a person who has the confidence of the people in the F.B.I. and people in the intelligence community. He’s a person I’ve worked with for a number of years — he’s a friend. He has the president’s confidence as well. So we want to make sure the person picked to be his successor will be able to fill those really large shoes that he leaves.”

Mr. Holder said the administration wanted to have the next director in place by the time Mr. Mueller is required to step down. He hinted that a nomination could come as early as May, though other officials said that later was more likely. The Senate has been slow to vote on Justice Department nominees lately; by contrast, in 2001, the Senate confirmed Mr. Mueller less than a month after his nomination.

It is not clear whether there is a front-runner for the job.

Most of the high-profile potential nominees come with advantages and disadvantages.

Mr. Comey, a career prosecutor who was the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York before his elevation to deputy attorney general, earned a reputation for independence by leading — with Mr. Mueller at his side — an internal Bush administration revolt in March 2004 over the legality of the program of surveillance without warrants, forcing the White House to modify the program.

Mr. Comey is now identified as a Republican political appointee, which could make it easier for him to win confirmation, but the Obama administration might also be reluctant to signal that it could not find a Democrat for the job. Mr. Comey also now has a well-paying job at Lockheed Martin and may be reluctant to leave it.

Mr. Fitzgerald, a longtime prosecutor and a holdover United States attorney from the Bush administration, also has a strong reputation for independence, as leader of the investigation into the leak of the name of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, Valerie Plame Wilson.

Like Mr. Comey, Mr. Fitzgerald now has the public identity of a Republican political appointee. Moreover, his demonstrated willingness to challenge the Bush White House could give its current occupants pause, though they would never say so in public.

Mr. Kelly, by contrast, is a Democrat with a strong law enforcement résumé. Before becoming commissioner of the New York Police Department, he was a Treasury Department official during the Clinton administration and supervised the United States Customs Service, the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has endorsed him for the F.B.I. position.

But Mr. Kelly would be 70 at the start of his 10-year term. In addition, his efforts to expand the Police Department’s counterterrorism intelligence-gathering capabilities have led to turf-war friction with F.B.I. officials. He also helped scuttle Mr. Holder’s signature plan to prosecute the Sept. 11 defendants in Manhattan.

Mr. Noble, too, is a Democrat who oversaw the Treasury Department’s enforcement arm for a period during the Clinton administration. He has global stature as the first American to be elected to lead Interpol, developing ties that would resonate with the F.B.I.’s increasing presence overseas. But he has less operational experience than other candidates and is somewhat less well-known in Washington.

Mr. Wainstein is the candidate most closely associated with Mr. Mueller, whom he worked with first as the F.B.I. general counsel and then as his chief of staff. Later, Mr. Wainstein became the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, then led the Justice Department’s national security division. Since leaving the department, he has frequently testified before Congress about national security legal policy issues. Like Mr. Comey and Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Wainstein is now identified as a Republican appointee — though he, too, was a longtime federal prosecutor and is generally respected on both sides of the aisle.

At least two prominent figures are said to have made it clear that they do not want to be considered for the job, including Merrick B. Garland, a federal appeals court judge, and Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general and a member of the Sept. 11 commission.

 

Massachusetts House Seeks to Limit Collective Bargaining

The bill, passed late Tuesday night in advance of planned labor protests, would let local officials unilaterally set health insurance co-payments and deductibles for their employees after a monthlong discussion period with unions. Leaders of the House said it would save cities and towns $100 million in the budget year that starts in July.

While Republican-controlled legislatures in Wisconsin and Ohio this year have weakened the ability of public-sector unions to bargain collectively, and Republicans in other states have pushed for a variety of curbs on unions, Massachusetts is the first state where a Democratic-led chamber has voted to limit bargaining rights.

“Everybody’s pretty upset,” said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts A.F.L.-C.I.O. “It’s hard for me to understand how my good friends in the Massachusetts House, that have told me they support collective bargaining, could do this.”

But the bill faces uncertain prospects in the Senate, which is also controlled by Democrats. Senate President Therese Murray said Wednesday that she was pleased the House had “moved the needle” on the contentious issue of health care costs, but she has not endorsed the plan.

Dave Falcone, a Senate spokesman, said Friday that Ms. Murray “has been consistent in her message that something has to be done, that there has to be savings, and that everyone should have a seat at the table.”

While Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, has not pledged to sign the bill if it reaches his desk, he proposed a similar plan early this year and praised the House this week for its “important” vote. He also raised concerns about a provision of the House plan allowing towns and cities to opt out of it and said unions must not have veto power over municipal health plans.

On Friday, Mr. Patrick said through a spokesman that labor must have “a meaningful role” in determining how to control health care costs, though he did not elaborate.

The House voted 111-42 in favor of the plan, with 81 Democrats approving it.

Representative Brian Dempsey, the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he supported it — and in fact helped create it — after seeing no other way of avoiding disastrous cuts to local public safety and education budgets. The legislature had urged municipalities and their unions to curb rising health costs for several years, he said, but with no success.

“We have to get a handle on this,” he said. “The fact of the matter is costs are going up and the money is not going to the areas we desperately need it to.”

He acknowledged, though, that it was “certainly difficult” to hear labor’s angry response.

Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group that supported the plan, said the health care costs for cities and towns had been growing by about 11 percent a year and “cannibalizing” local budgets.

“Yes, it’s a small curtailment of their collective bargaining powers,” Mr. Widmer said of municipal unions, “but with the corollary that it will save lots of their members’ jobs.”

Under the House plan, co-payments and deductibles for municipal workers would have to be at least equal to those of state employees. And unions would retain the right to negotiate what portion of premiums their members paid.

Mr. Patrick and House leaders have sought to head off comparisons with the legislation that Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed earlier this year, saying the Massachusetts plan does not go nearly as far. That did not stop the Republican Party of Wisconsin from proclaiming Mr. Patrick “an ally” on Friday and congratulating him on the bill. Mr. Patrick is to speak at a Democratic Party dinner in Wisconsin on Saturday.

“It’s refreshing to see that even a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts recognizes the importance of collective bargaining reform,” Mark Jefferson, the Wisconsin Republican Party’s executive director, said in a statement.

 

Google, a Giant in Mobile Search, Seeks New Ways to Make It Pay

But there was a problem: searching on a phone was less than ideal. It was hard to type on small screens. And most irritating for Google, which brags about its speed on every page of search results, was that Web pages were slow to load on phones.

So Google started a project it code-named Grand Prix. In six weeks, engineers revamped mobile searching and hatched plans for new ways to search on the go, by talking or taking photos instead of typing.

The stakes were high. Mobile phones could be a huge new market for Google. Or they could provide an opening for a competitor to pounce, or obviate the need for a search engine altogether. If people on phones could go straight to apps for information, why Google anything?

Today, Google says mobile searches are growing as quickly as Web searches were at the same stage in the company’s early days, and they are up sixfold in the last two years. Google has a market share of 97 percent for mobile searches, according to StatCounter, which tracks Web use.

Now that it dominates the field, Google is throwing its burly computing power and heaps of data at new problems specific to mobile phones — like translating phone calls on the fly and recognizing photos of things like plants and items of clothing.

“I feel like a parent the second time around feels,” said Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who works on search. “You saw your first child grow at an amazing pace, and here we are with our second child, mobile, growing at the same pace and showing the same signs.”

Google has been slow to seize some newer Web business opportunities, most notably social networking. Investors have criticized the company for dragging its feet when it comes to figuring out how to make money in new fields.

But mobile is an exception. Last year, Eric E. Schmidt, then the company’s chief executive, said Google’s philosophy was “mobile first,” meaning it would build products for phones at the same time as versions for PCs.

“This is the place that Google is essentially betting its future on,” said Karim Temsamani, Google’s head of mobile advertising, a role created in September.

Still, Google has not consistently followed the mobile-first mantra, and some analysts, including Colin W. Gillis of BGC Partners, say it has not moved quickly enough to create new mobile products or ads.

“They’ve done a really good job of positioning themselves so they can’t get boxed out of the market,” Mr. Gillis said. “Now they just need to deliver some innovation. Let’s wring some revenue out of this platform.”

Google said in October that mobile ads were on track to generate $1 billion in revenue in the coming year. Mobile users can call a business from within a Google ad or receive coupons for nearby stores. They can take cellphone photos of movie posters to pull up a trailer. With new technologies like near-field communication, advertisers could reward customers with loyalty gifts for walking into stores, Mr. Temsamani said.

But because mobile ads generally sell for less than half the price of Web ads, Mr. Gillis said, “there’s just not a lot of profit left over.” Though Google makes Android software for phones, it does not make money from it directly because it gives it away to phone makers. Meanwhile, Apple makes money from its devices and from what appears on their screens, including its own ad network.

Still, the company’s approach to the mobile market is classic Google: take problems that computer scientists have been working on for decades, throw huge amounts of data and computing power at them and assume that if the resulting product is useful to people, it will eventually make money.

People can now snap photos of landmarks or wine labels to search for them using Google Goggles, speak to their phones using voice search and, on Android phones, translate spoken conversations between English and Spanish.

“We as an academic community would have figured this out, but we wouldn’t have been able to set it up on this kind of scale,” said Alexei A. Efros, an associate professor in computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon, referring to these kinds of technological feats. “That’s really the great thing about Google, the fact that it can do it on such a humongous scale and actually make it useful to the general public.”

Google trained its computers to learn spoken language based on troves of voice recordings. “Even if you’re from Brooklyn and you drop all your R’s when you park your car, it’s heard plenty of people from Brooklyn and it can do well,” said Mike Cohen, head of Google’s speech technology team.

At first, Google engineers thought people would talk to its voice search service as if they were talking to a person — “you know, it’s my anniversary, and I’d love to take my wife somewhere really romantic to eat, do you have any ideas?” — so it taught the service to filter out unnecessary words. But it turned out that Google had already trained people into thinking in keywords, so they knew to search “romantic restaurants” even when speaking instead of typing.

Goggles, the visual search tool, recognizes things that have strong visual textures, like a bar code, book cover or landmark. But it often can’t distinguish between a black cat and a black chair, for instance, or recognize food or plants, though Google is working with botanists to teach its machines the secrets of leaf-spotting. Google already has the capability to recognize faces, so people could theoretically snap a photo of a blind date and pull up an online profile, but it is not yet using that technology because it is still working out the privacy implications.

People can also snap a photo to translate a menu in a foreign country, and speak English to hear the Spanish translation. Someday Google hopes to be able to translate both sides of a phone conversation as it happens, said Franz Och, head of Google’s machine translation group.

Though the search results Google spits out might seem the same on phones as on computers, there are some behind-the-scenes differences.

For example, certain search results are ranked differently, with location factored in. Search for Wal-Mart on a computer and Google suspects you are probably looking for the e-commerce site or job openings. Search on a phone and Google assumes you are looking for the nearest store. Other search tools were built specifically for phones. Search for weather or stock prices and Google shows a scale, movable with a finger, to see results for different times.

Google says mobile search is not stealing time from computer searches. Instead, mobile searches spike during the lunch hour and evenings, when people are away from their computers. And while mobile users do search for simple things like weather and train times, engineers have been surprised at how many people also ask more complicated questions about business and politics.

“Mobile search is definitely going to surpass desktop search,” said Scott B. Huffman, who works on mobile search at Google and leads its search evaluation team. “The lines will pass, and I think they’ll pass before anyone thought they would.”

 

Google, a Giant in Mobile Search, Seeks New Ways to Make It Pay

But there was a problem: searching on a phone was less than ideal. It was hard to type on small screens. And most irritating for Google, which brags about its speed on every page of search results, was that Web pages were slow to load on phones.

So Google started a project it code-named Grand Prix. In six weeks, engineers revamped mobile searching and hatched plans for new ways to search on the go, by talking or taking photos instead of typing.

The stakes were high. Mobile phones could be a huge new market for Google. Or they could provide an opening for a competitor to pounce, or obviate the need for a search engine altogether. If people on phones could go straight to apps for information, why Google anything?

Today, Google says mobile searches are growing as quickly as Web searches were at the same stage in the company’s early days, and they are up sixfold in the last two years. Google has a market share of 97 percent for mobile searches, according to StatCounter, which tracks Web use.

Now that it dominates the field, Google is throwing its burly computing power and heaps of data at new problems specific to mobile phones — like translating phone calls on the fly and recognizing photos of things like plants and items of clothing.

“I feel like a parent the second time around feels,” said Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who works on search. “You saw your first child grow at an amazing pace, and here we are with our second child, mobile, growing at the same pace and showing the same signs.”

Google has been slow to seize some newer Web business opportunities, most notably social networking. Investors have criticized the company for dragging its feet when it comes to figuring out how to make money in new fields.

But mobile is an exception. Last year, Eric E. Schmidt, then the company’s chief executive, said Google’s philosophy was “mobile first,” meaning it would build products for phones at the same time as versions for PCs.

“This is the place that Google is essentially betting its future on,” said Karim Temsamani, Google’s head of mobile advertising, a role created in September.

Still, Google has not consistently followed the mobile-first mantra, and some analysts, including Colin W. Gillis of BGC Partners, say it has not moved quickly enough to create new mobile products or ads.

“They’ve done a really good job of positioning themselves so they can’t get boxed out of the market,” Mr. Gillis said. “Now they just need to deliver some innovation. Let’s wring some revenue out of this platform.”

Google said in October that mobile ads were on track to generate $1 billion in revenue in the coming year. Mobile users can call a business from within a Google ad or receive coupons for nearby stores. They can take cellphone photos of movie posters to pull up a trailer. With new technologies like near-field communication, advertisers could reward customers with loyalty gifts for walking into stores, Mr. Temsamani said.

But because mobile ads generally sell for less than half the price of Web ads, Mr. Gillis said, “there’s just not a lot of profit left over.” Though Google makes Android software for phones, it does not make money from it directly because it gives it away to phone makers. Meanwhile, Apple makes money from its devices and from what appears on their screens, including its own ad network.

Still, the company’s approach to the mobile market is classic Google: take problems that computer scientists have been working on for decades, throw huge amounts of data and computing power at them and assume that if the resulting product is useful to people, it will eventually make money.

People can now snap photos of landmarks or wine labels to search for them using Google Goggles, speak to their phones using voice search and, on Android phones, translate spoken conversations between English and Spanish.

“We as an academic community would have figured this out, but we wouldn’t have been able to set it up on this kind of scale,” said Alexei A. Efros, an associate professor in computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon, referring to these kinds of technological feats. “That’s really the great thing about Google, the fact that it can do it on such a humongous scale and actually make it useful to the general public.”

Google trained its computers to learn spoken language based on troves of voice recordings. “Even if you’re from Brooklyn and you drop all your R’s when you park your car, it’s heard plenty of people from Brooklyn and it can do well,” said Mike Cohen, head of Google’s speech technology team.

At first, Google engineers thought people would talk to its voice search service as if they were talking to a person — “you know, it’s my anniversary, and I’d love to take my wife somewhere really romantic to eat, do you have any ideas?” — so it taught the service to filter out unnecessary words. But it turned out that Google had already trained people into thinking in keywords, so they knew to search “romantic restaurants” even when speaking instead of typing.

Goggles, the visual search tool, recognizes things that have strong visual textures, like a bar code, book cover or landmark. But it often can’t distinguish between a black cat and a black chair, for instance, or recognize food or plants, though Google is working with botanists to teach its machines the secrets of leaf-spotting. Google already has the capability to recognize faces, so people could theoretically snap a photo of a blind date and pull up an online profile, but it is not yet using that technology because it is still working out the privacy implications.

People can also snap a photo to translate a menu in a foreign country, and speak English to hear the Spanish translation. Someday Google hopes to be able to translate both sides of a phone conversation as it happens, said Franz Och, head of Google’s machine translation group.

Though the search results Google spits out might seem the same on phones as on computers, there are some behind-the-scenes differences.

For example, certain search results are ranked differently, with location factored in. Search for Wal-Mart on a computer and Google suspects you are probably looking for the e-commerce site or job openings. Search on a phone and Google assumes you are looking for the nearest store. Other search tools were built specifically for phones. Search for weather or stock prices and Google shows a scale, movable with a finger, to see results for different times.

Google says mobile search is not stealing time from computer searches. Instead, mobile searches spike during the lunch hour and evenings, when people are away from their computers. And while mobile users do search for simple things like weather and train times, engineers have been surprised at how many people also ask more complicated questions about business and politics.

“Mobile search is definitely going to surpass desktop search,” said Scott B. Huffman, who works on mobile search at Google and leads its search evaluation team. “The lines will pass, and I think they’ll pass before anyone thought they would.”

 

Clinton Says Iran Seeks to 'Hijack' Mideast Protests

 David Gollust | State Department ?April 15, 2011

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, during a press conference at the US Embassy in Berlin, Germany, April 15, 2011

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Friday accused Iran of trying to exploit and hijack democracy protests in the Middle East and North Africa. Clinton spoke at the end of a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Berlin focusing on Libya and regional unrest.

In her strongest comments on the subject to date, Clinton is accusing Iran of hypocritically trying to align itself with popular uprisings in some North African and Middle Eastern states, while trying to thwart democracy movements at home and in its key ally Syria.

Speaking in Berlin a day after the State Department said Iran was materially aiding political repression by Syria, Clinton said there is no evidence Iran has instigated Middle East protests, but said Iran is trying to "take advantage" of the turmoil.

"They are trying to exploit unrest. They are trying to advance their agenda in neighboring countries. They continue to try to undermine peace and stability to provoke further conflict," said Clinton. "And we want people in the region to understand that the Iranian government’s motive here is to destabilize countries, not to assist them in their democratic transitions."

Clinton said Iran’s silence on anti-government? protests in Syria is a further example of "hypocrisy" by Tehran and said in an era of instant communication, no one is fooled by Iranian tactics.

The Wall Street Journal? Thursday quoted U.S. officials as saying Iran is sending Syria crowd-control gear along with help in blocking and monitoring Syrian protestors' use of the Internet, cell phones and text-messaging.

The State Department declined detailed comment on the report, but said there is "credible evidence" of material Iranian assistance for the government in Damascus.

On Syria, Clinton called on the government of President Bashar al-Assad to refrain from further violence and to, in her words, "stop repressing their citizens" and to allow in human rights monitors and journalists to verify what is happening on the ground.

Syria, controlled by President al-Assad and his late father since 1970, has been hit by unprecedented unrest since mid-March with demonstrators demanding reform and an end to emergency rule.

The monitoring group Human Rights Watch said Friday that Syrian security and intelligence services have arbitrarily detained hundreds of protestors across the country, subjecting them to torture and other ill treatment.

The New York-based group said security agents also have arrested lawyers, journalists and others who have endorsed the protests.

It said Assad, who has spoken of the need for reforms, should rein in security forces and hold them accountable for abuses and that there can be no real reform while protestors are abused with impunity.

Follow our Middle East reports on Twitter
and discuss them on our Facebook page. 16-04-2011 hamad part 2 of 3 (Oman)

whereas their alliance do not allowed their nations to exert real democracy . This double-stranded poses critical question about the real role of UN and US which give us bad impression about democracy and freedom . The problem is that Iran exploit fair issues as Palestinians rights to sustain its attitude in region whereas the US under the pressure of Zionists is disable to give Palestinians their rights .

16-04-2011 hamad part 3 of 3+extra (Oman)

This contradictions will give Iran advantage to impose its agenda and strengthen its theory . So what is the best solution to get out of this plight ? Regain trust of Arab world and fulfilling their demands are an important element to change this formula and maintain stability and peace which will amend the image of the US and could lead to real pace . Human right watch can not built its report on allegations of witnesses

16-04-2011

Interesting change USA for Iran and Bahrain for Syria.

16-04-2011

Why is that American don't help Iranian green movement,and still american allowing so called Islamic Refoemers, who are using all the american air time and hindering movement from day one and creating division among people. what is with German and other EU that ignoring human rights and business as usual, shame on western countries that dealing with monster Regime that killing own people and supporting all terorist groups world wide.

16-04-2011 Lola (nigeria)

I wonder what's the difference betwEen protest in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. Why has American supported the Bahraini govt and not Yemen, Syria or Libya. The answer to this is the hypocritical nature of the American policy where only her interests are right and others are wrong. Long live middle East.

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