Amnesty demands Egyptian blogger's release

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Amnesty International Thursday demanded Egypt free a blogger who completed a four-year prison sentence for insulting the country's president and Islam.

Abdel Kareem Nabil, who wrote as Kareem Amer, was not only held in an Alexandria prison after last Friday, the day he was supposed to be released, but also was allegedly beaten by State Security Intelligence officers, the London rights group said.

Egypt should "immediately release" the blogger and "investigate allegations of beatings and other ill-treatment," the non-governmental organization said.

It added the four-year sentence was itself inappropriate "for actions that amounted to no more than exercising his right to freedom of expression".

Nabil, 26, was convicted in February 2007 of "inciting strife and defaming Muslims on the Internet by describing the prophet of Islam and his comrades as murderers, which disturbs national peace," and of "insulting" President Hosni Mubarak.

His sentence was three years on charges of insulting Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, plus another year for insults to Mubarak.

Nabil, a critic of conservative Muslims, called Mohammed and his seventh-century followers "spillers of blood" for their teachings on warfare, a comment cited by the judge who sentenced him.

UPI

Chinese vase sold for unexpected millions

LONDON, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- An 18th-century Chinese vase found in a London house after its owners' death was sold for a record price by a "very typical local auction house" Thursday.

The buyer agreed to pay $83 million, with $69 million going to the owners and the rest to Bainbridge's, the auction house, the Daily Mail reported. That is believed to set a new record for a single Chinese work of art.

The price is also a record for the auctioneer, far exceeding the $161,000 paid for a piece of Ming dynasty enamel at Bainbridge's two years ago.

A brother and sister had employed Bainbridge's, an auctioneer based in western London, to clear the house in Pinner, a neighborhood in London's northern suburbs, after their parents' death. While the auction house realized the vase was exceptional, its experts estimated it would fetch between $1.3 million and $1.9 million.

"It came from an ordinary house clearance," said Helen Porter, a Bainbridge's spokeswoman. "We're just a very typical local auction house so, as you can imagine, it was something of a surprise".

Porter said the vase was made about 1740, almost certainly in the imperial kilns for the emperor's palace. An outer vase standing 16 inches tall carries pictures of fish and an inner one is visible through holes in an elaborate design.

UPI

Great Britain observes Armistice Day

LONDON, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Great Britain Thursday observed Armistice Day with a 2-minute period of silence when Big Ben, the famous London clock, struck 11 a.m.

The occasion marks the peace that came to Europe on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, marking the end of World War I, London's Guardian reported.

A service was held at London's Whitehall Palace for the 90th time since King George V announced the anniversary should be observed. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Defense Secretary Liam Fox, military groups and school children attended the ceremony, the Guardian reported.

Prime Minister David Cameron placed a wreath at the site of the army's bloodiest battle since the end of World War II, the Imjin River in South Korea, where 59 British soldiers died and 526 were captured when they were cut off by Chinese communist forces during the Korean War, the Guardian said.

UPI

Guinea election results delayed after complaints

Conakry, Guinea (CNN) -- Guinean voters have been told to wait a few more days for the first freely elected president in the country's 52-year history, amid mounting allegations of fraud from both parties.

Challenges have been leveled against results from a number of areas around the country.

The results from Sunday's runoff between former Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo and longtime opposition leader Alpha Conde were due on Wednesday. But Gen. Siaka Toumani Sangare, who heads the West African republic's Independent National Electoral Commission, announced to reporters Wednesday night that results would not be released until Saturday or Sunday to give time to consider the complaints posed by both sides.

International analysts and Guineans alike are worried that the vote challenges will revive pre-election violence that killed at least three and forced the displacement of a minimum 2,800 ethnic Peul from a pair of eastern towns.

Early results show many Guineans voted along ethnic and regional lines, with the ethnic Peul, also known as Fulani, supporting the Peul candidate, Diallo, and the Malinke strongly in favor of their candidate, Alpha Conde.

Winning the election will provide unparalleled access to lucrative mining contracts for the ruling party, a big incentive to contest the poll.

In the past, Guineans presidents have favored their own ethnic groups, which is why many worry their community will be shut out of the resources if they lose.

"I am scared for the day they announce the results," said one hotel worker who asked not to be named for security reasons.

But others were more hopeful that Guinea's democratic transition from a military junta that took power in 2008 will end peacefully.

"I think this is a process the country is going through. The Guinean population from all the regions has witnessed war in the neighboring countries and has received displaced people, and I don't think they want to be in that position," Mamadou Camara, a computer engineer in Conakry, told CNN on Thursday.

Conde's RPG party has claimed fraud in the Fouta Djallon region, a Diallo stronghold, while Diallo's UFDG party has contested the results from the two eastern towns, Siguiri and Kouroussa, saying its supporters were targeted and intimidated while the opposition stuffed the ballot boxes.

The Red Cross said last Tuesday that 2,800 ethnic Peul supporters of Diallo were displaced on October 22 and 23 alone.

But many more commercial trucks and containers full of ethnic Peul people and all their belongings left Siguiri and Kouroussa in after that, officials said.

Those displaced said that they were threatened with death by the towns' residents if they did not leave before the election. Local officials for Diallo's party claim the total number of displaced is between 15,000 to 20,000.

Six new voting stations were set up for the displaced in major cities around the country, but Diallo's party officials told CNN that most of the displaced were spread out in remote villages far from the new stations.

Partial election figures announced Wednesday put Diallo ahead of Conde, holding nearly 60 percent of the 1.2 million ballots counted.

But those votes were from regions where Diallo is considered the favorite. An estimated 3 million ballots are yet to be announced and reports that Conde has made strong gains since the first round held in June -- when he took just over 18 percent -- have swept through the seaside capital, Conakry.

Although Diallo won nearly 44 percent of the first round poll, many consider the numbers to be inaccurate because the Supreme Court annulled over 600,000 ballots.

CNN

Abbas muses petitioning U.N. for state recognition

Jerusalem (CNN) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Thursday asserted his government's right to petition the United Nations Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state if Israel refuses to halt settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

His comments were made to thousands gathered in the West Bank city of Ramallah to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

But he noted that the United States had cautioned that such an action would constitute a "unilateral move".

"(The Israelis) on a daily basis commit unilateral moves, beginning with the separation wall, settlements, checkpoints, incursions, and killings... and this all is not called a unilateral move?" Abbas asked.

Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned both sides to refrain from making moves that might undermine the stalled peace talks.

"We do not support unilateral steps by either party that would prejudge the outcome of such negotiations," Clinton said after a meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit. "There will be no progress until they actually come together and explore areas where there is agreement, and ways to narrow areas of disagreement".

The American-brokered talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have broken down over the issues of continued Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and tensions were exacerbated earlier this week when Israel announced plans to construct 1,300 new housing units in the majority Palestinian area of East Jerusalem.

As the stalemate continues, the Palestinian side has been threatening to seek international recognition of a Palestinian state based on borders from 1967, a move opposed both by Israel and the United States. Abbas said the Palestinian stance would not change and that a return to the negotiating table was not possible under the current circumstances.

CNN

Teacher charged with drug trafficking

ORLANDO, Fla., Nov. 11 (UPI) -- A Florida kindergarten teacher and her boyfriend have been arrested and charged with running a drug-trafficking and counterfeiting operation, authorities said.

Ashley Denielle Webb, 24, a teacher at Westside Elementary School in Palm Bay, Fla., was arrested after police launched an investigation of alleged illegal activity at the apartment she shared with her boyfriend Curtis Phillip Gallagher, 31, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported Wednesday.

The two have been charged with counterfeiting, trafficking controlled substance, possession of controlled substance and other drug and counterfeiting related charges, police said.

Police said the search of the apartment yielded "trafficking amounts of Oxycodone, at least $220 in counterfeit bills, mostly twenties, instruments used to produce the counterfeit money including computers, printers and copiers along with other drug related paraphernalia".

Gallagher has a "lengthy criminal history," a police statement said.

UPI

Possible break in Zahra Baker search

HICKORY, N.C., Nov. 11 (UPI) -- The biological mother of missing Zahra Baker is on her way from Australia to North Carolina as police say they may have a break in the case.

Investigators searching a creek in a rural part of Caldwell County came across some evidence Wednesday, sources told WCNC-TV in Charlotte, N.C.

Locals say possible human remains were recovered but authorities are not describing what they found.

Emily Dietrich, Zahra's mother, who has not had contact with Zahra since she was a baby, was on her way to Hickory, N.C., WCNC reported.

She told Australia's Channel 7 News she had been trying to find Zahra when she learned the 10-year-old had disappeared.

"I felt robbed before she was taken. Now I just feel broken," Dietrich told the Australian television station.

In Caldwell County Wednesday, crews were searching along a creek, both in the water and along the ground.

UPI

Women sentenced for anti-freeze killing

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Nov. 11 (UPI) -- A New York woman who poisoned her live-in boyfriend with anti-freeze-laced margarita mix was sentenced to 23 years in prison, authorities said.

Cynthia Galens, 52, was convicted of first-degree manslaughter in the death of Thomas "Kevin" Stack, 48, who died four days after drinking the toxic cocktail on Oct. 3, 2009, The (Rochester, N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle reported.

Earlier in the case Galens had been offered a sentence of 18 years if she pleaded guilty, an offer Galens turned down in favor a jury trial.

Ontario County Judge William Kocher, in sentencing Galens, said he was giving her the longer sentence because evidence presented at trial showed her actions were premeditated and she failed to do anything to help Stack, such as tell doctors the truth.

Galens had testified she did not intend to kill Stack. She said she wanted him to get sick, then go to live somewhere else because he hated her daughter, Emily, and she was scared he would hurt Emily.

Initially, Stack's death had been treated as an accident until Galens, while visiting a friend in Florida, told another friend what she had done.

That friend contacted an acquaintance, a local sheriff's deputy in Florida, which led to Galens' arrest, The Democrat and Chronicle reported.

UPI

Ten killed in South Korea nursing home fire

A blaze has swept through a nursing home for the elderly in South Korea, killing 10 people and injuring 17 others, officials say.

They say the fire in a two-storey building in the south-eastern city of Pohang broke out just before dawn.

The victims - who were reportedly in their 70s and 80s - suffocated from smoke because they were sleeping.

Some 200 firefighters were sent to tackle the fire, which was later brought under control.

An investigation into what caused the fire is now under way.

BBC News

Togo's first census in 29 years fraught with difficulties

Lome, Togo (CNN) -- Togo is conducting its first census in 29 years, and some of the trained enumerators who have fanned out across the West African nation say complacency and suspicion among the people are making the task more difficult.

"We have not been getting the right cooperation from the population," said Bernadette Dabla, one enumerator.

Another, Just-Omer Adabra, said people "seem to be cold and indifferent to the whole national exercise".

"In some cases, we have been chased away by rural folks from their homes because they do not know what the exercise is all about," Adabra said.

The census, which began Saturday, is expected to close on November 19. Togo's last census was in 1981, a lapse that violates United Nations Development Program directives for countries to hold a national count every 10 years.

In all, 7,000 trained census-takers have been going from house to house.

Togo's minister for planning, Dédé Ahoefa Ekoué, said the census will cost about 3.7 billion CFA francs ($7.4 million), with funds provided by the European Commission and the United Nations Development Program.

The enumerators' plight has spurred opposition parties -- who say unreliable population data have enabled the ruling RPT to rig elections in the past -- to appeal for the people's cooperation.

Dodzi Apevon, leader of the nation's second-largest opposition party, Action Committee for Renewal, has called upon the Togolese to receive the enumerators "warmly and cordially". He has also appealed to Togolese authorities to "intensify publicity and educate the population about the importance of the census exercise". He said the government hasn't done enough to "sensitize the public" about the relevance of the exercise.

Past presidential and parliamentary elections have featured protests from opposition leaders.

Jean-Pierre Fabre, who came in second during in the last presidential polls, said "a proper and clean census will ensure an equitable voters' list and a fair demarcation of electoral constituencies".

Fabre claimed that the ruling RPT party has "always rigged elections because we did not have a reliable knowledge about the number of people who resided in the constituencies".

Togo will be holding local elections next year, with legislative elections to follow in 2012.

CNN

Margarito says sorry for Roach video ahead of Pacquiao showdown

(CNN) -- Antonio Margarito has apologized for mocking Manny Pacquiao's Parkinson's disease-afflicted boxing trainer Freddie Roach in a video that has spread like wildfire across the Internet.

The Mexican-American boxer made a surprise appearance at Thursday's press conference for the undercard bout between Brandon Rios -- who was also in the video -- and Omri Rowther in a bid to make peace ahead of Saturday's fight in Arlington, Texas.

"I want to apologize to everyone, Freddie Roach if he will accept my apologies," said Maragarito, who was filmed shaking his hands in mock horror when a journalist told him Roach said Pacquiao would win by a knockout.

"To everyone with that disease ... I want to tell you, never, ever in my life would I make fun of anyone like that. I just want to let you know that I'm not the kind of person who would do anything like that, and make fun of anyone".

CNN

Fast-moving African polio outbreak kills 97, spurs vaccination drive

(CNN) -- World health agencies plan to launch a massive polio vaccination in three West African nations, following a fast-moving and especially virulent outbreak that has already killed 97 people.

Since the first confirmation of polio November 4 in the Republic of Congo, at least 226 people have been diagnosed with acute flaccid paralysis -- a condition commonly associated with polio -- according to the United Nations.

Of those, 97 had died as of Tuesday -- "an unusually high mortality rate," the World Health Organization and U.N. Children's Fund said in a joint press release. At least four of the 226 total cases have already been confirmed as polio, a number that is expected to rise.

In response, the United Nations said Thursday that a polio immunization campaign targeting 3 million children and adults will start Friday in the port city of Point Noire and the Koilou region inside the Republic of Congo, 16 districts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and parts of neighboring Angola.

Most of the cases thus far have involved young adults between ages 15 and 29, the United Nations and World Health Organization noted. The immunization effort, however, will be all-inclusive.

"Every man, every woman, every child will be immunized irrespective of their past immunization status," Dr. Luis Sambo, the WHO regional director for Africa, said in a press release. "This way we can be assured that everybody is reached, including young adults, whose immunity may be low".

UNICEF said that suspicious cases began to emerge in October, with 73 cases being reported in a hospital in Pointe Noire the week of October 18 alone.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday the deaths occurred in and around that coastal city. Scientists have linked the resurgence of polio in the Republic of Congo -- which hadn't seen a case since at least 2004, according to WHO -- to a virus circulating in nearby Angola.

CNN

Science figures out how cats drink

(CNN) -- While dogs slurp to alleviate thirst, cats display a mastery of physical dynamics that leaves their whiskers, chin and the counter top free of liquid, scientists found.

Researchers spent hours watching a feline consume liquids in order to understand the forces. They also made a robotic version of a cat's tongue and watched YouTube videos of big cats drinking.

Using complicated formulas, the four-member team from Virginia Tech, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University came up with their findings, detailed Thursday in the online journal Science.

Here's how a house cat, which averages about four laps her second, personifies daintiness while drinking.

Cats extend their tongues straight down with the tip curled backward like a capital "J" to form a ladle, so that the top surface of the tongue touches the liquid first.

"The speed of the tongue is quite incredible," co-author Pedro M. Reis, an assistant engineering professor at MIT, told CNN.

"The smooth tip of the tongue barely brushes the surface of the liquid before the cat rapidly draws its tongue back up," said the researchers, who had no funding for the study. "As it does so, a column of milk forms between the moving tongue and the liquid's surface. The cat then closes its mouth, pinching off the top of the column for a nice drink, while keeping its chin dry".

That column, they say, is a balance between gravity, which pulls the milk back toward the bowl, and inertia, which refers to the tendency of a liquid to continue moving in a direction unless another force interferes.

Kitty knows how quickly to lap in order to balance these forces, the study found.

CNN

China's rising status makes it potential friend or foe

Beijing, China (CNN) -- In the months leading up to the G-20 summit, China has been branded as the bogeyman -- a scapegoat for many of the intractable problems that dysfunctional economies are now facing. Prickly topics include job losses, trade imbalances and currency manipulation.

Critics in Washington accuse Beijing of keeping its currency artificially low to enjoy an unfair advantage. They say the renminbi is 20 to 40 percent undervalued. Some U.S. lawmakers have even proposed legislation threatening to impose tariffs on Chinese imports.

China-bashing reached a crescendo during the midterm elections in the U.S., when several candidates aired political ads that attacked opponents for promoting policies that boosted trade with China. The message was simple: China is a sinister rising power; U.S. jobs are being lost to the Chinese juggernaut.

"What do you say to people who blame China for lost jobs in the U.S.?" I asked China's deputy foreign minister Cui Tiankai in an interview last week.

"We're aware of the economic problems in some of the economies in the world, including some of the major economies," Cui replied. "But their problems are not caused by the value of Chinese currency. They have to look at their own economic structure, their own macroeconomic policies, to identify the real causes of their problems. If they caught a cold, they cannot ask China to take medicine because this will not cure their cold".

But China has become so big that when it figuratively sneezes the world catches cold. It has moved markets lately.

Last month, market shares dipped around the world when China announced a modest interest rate hike, the first in three years. Two days later, markets moved upwards on the news that China's economy, although slowing down, is still growing at about 10 percent.

Envy of China is now mixed with fear. There is fear, for example, that China has cornered the supply of rare earth elements essential in the manufacture of products ranging from iPads to missiles. China supplies about 95 percent of the world's market. Weeks ago, Japan, the U.S. and Europe complained that China is holding back its export of rare earth.

Will China use it as a "card" in a trade war? China says it will not, but fear remains.

Analysts blame that fear on China's recent behavior. They note China's tough words on the territorial disputes in South China Sea, elevating the disputes to the level of "core national interest". This has prompted concerns among other countries in the region that claim territorial rights in parts of the sea.

They see an angry China locked in political skirmishes with Japan over a collision of a Chinese fishing boat with two Japanese coast guard ships near disputed islands in the East China Sea. They also watched TV reports of large-scale ground, air and naval exercises by China's military.

"Dramatic military exercises and sharpened rhetoric about China's territory make for good domestic consumption but have a negative effect on foreign relations," said Drew Thompson, director of China Studies at The Nixon Center, a think tank in Washington.

But heightened tension has helped the U.S. consolidate ties with South Korea, Japan and other countries around China. When U.S. President Barack Obama visited in India this week, he even endorsed India as a future permanent member of the U.N. Security Council -- an idea that some analysts say must make China uncomfortable.

"China is probably feeling encircled, but it's their own fault," said author Gordon Chang. "They have driven India into the arms of the United States, so this U.S.-India tie-up is really a marriage made in Beijing".

China's status as a rising power makes it a potential friend and foe. To some, it is a valued trading partner. To others, it is a fierce competitor.

CNN