Italy's real election battle is Monti vs Berlusconi

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's election campaign is shaping up as a bitter contest not between right and left but between Silvio Berlusconi and outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti to win the balance of power after the February poll.
The final lines were drawn on Monday when Berlusconi sacrificed his own candidacy for prime minister as the price for winning a crucial new alliance with his estranged allies in the devolutionist Northern League.
This alliance is aimed at blocking control of parliament by the center-left, which opinion polls show as virtually certain to win the February 24-25 elections.
But if Berlusconi succeeds, Italy is likely to face renewed instability and legislative paralysis which could make it once again the biggest concern in the euro zone.
Italy narrowly avoided a Greek-style meltdown in November 2011 when Berlusconi, weakened by a sex scandal, was forced out as prime minister and replaced by Monti.
If Berlusconi gains the balance of power he could frustrate center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani in fulfilling his promise to stick to Monti's austerity and pro-European policies, which have brought Italy relative stability in the past year.
The billionaire media owner's biggest problem in implementing his strategy is Monti, whose centrist alliance has the same aim as Berlusconi: winning enough seats in the Senate to give it influence way beyond its likely share of the poll.
While the center-left is almost certain to win the lower house, the real battleground will be in the much less certain Senate contest.
The battle for this prize explains why Berlusconi and Monti have made almost daily personal attacks on each other in a blitz of television interviews that have drawn accusations they are making unfair use of the airwaves.
Bersani has remained largely above the fray, cultivating his colorless but reassuring image of calm dependability while Monti and Berlusconi try to hurt each other.
However the launching of Monti's centrist front, the sealing of Berlusconi's broader center-right alliance and the emergence of a smaller leftist group are all bad news for Bersani because they could dilute his share of the vote.
TOO CLOSE TO CALL
A new Ipsos poll published in the financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore on Tuesday showed the Senate vote too close to call in three big regions which could be decisive in the February vote.
"In Lombardy, Campania and Sicily the outcome of the vote is absolutely unpredictable," said Roberto D'Alimonte, one of Italy's foremost experts on voting trends.
Italy's much maligned electoral law awards Senate seat bonuses to the coalition that wins in each individual region. Bersani would therefore only have to lose in populous Lombardy and Veneto to forgo a majority in the upper house, even if he won all of Italy's remaining regions, said D'Alimonte.
In another paradox caused by the law, he said Monti should hope Berlusconi robs Bersani of enough Senate votes in key regions to hand the former European Commissioner the balance of power as a buttress for the future center-left government.
Despite largely refusing to join the mudslinging, Bersani is clearly worried about the way things have panned out since Monti announced in December that he would join forces with other centrist forces in the election.
In a television interview on Monday, Bersani said Monti's candidacy was "not good news for Italy". However, he saw Berlusconi as his real enemy and Monti only as a "competitor", adding that he was open to a post-election alliance with the centrists.
This idea has been espoused for months by moderates in Bersani's Democratic Party, including his deputy Enrico Letta. They argue this would reassure European partners that the left will not throw away Monti's achievements, while still trying to stimulate economic growth and reducing the burden on pensioners and workers who have suffered most from the deficit-cutting policies of the past year.
Although Monti sharply reduced the pressure on Italy and brought down the government's borrowing costs to more affordable levels, the recession has worsened. Data on Tuesday showed youth unemployment had risen to an all time high above 37 percent in November.
D'Alimonte said that if Bersani failed to win the battleground regions in the Senate vote, he could face a situation similar to or worse than former center-left Prime Minister Romano Prodi in 2006.
NIGHTMARE FOR LEFT
In a situation which is a recurring nightmare for Italy's left, Prodi's government collapsed and was replaced by Berlusconi within two years because it lacked a viable Senate majority. That election was fought under the same electoral law as this time.
An alliance between Bersani and Monti after the election would probably produce a stable government that could last and consolidate progress in implementing economic reform. But there is one big problem. Monti insists he would enter a government only if he were prime minister, and Bersani has ruled this out.
"The idea that the one who wins less votes should be in charge is an old theory unknown in the rest of western Europe," he said in his television interview.
Analysts say that if an agreement between Monti and Bersani was impossible, then the euro zone's third largest economy would be likely to face a short-lived center-left government and a period of political turmoil dangerous for the whole region.
A Tecne opinion poll on Tuesday showed the center-left comfortably ahead at nearly 40 percent, with Berlusconi's center-right on 24.6 and Monti's centrists on just over 15 percent. However the numbers that count will be in regional votes for the Senate and voter intentions are not known in all of those.
The poll in Il Sole 24 Ore, however, showed a surge in the region of Campania - which returns the second largest number of senators after Lombardy - of a new leftist grouping led by anti-mafia magistrate Antonio Ingroia. This group was polling at more than 11 percent and could gift a regional victory to Berlusconi rather than Bersani if the trends do not change.

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APNewsBreak: $5M paid to Iraqis over Abu Ghraib

WASHINGTON (AP) — A defense contractor whose subsidiary was accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to torture detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has paid $5.28 million to 71 former inmates held there and at other U.S.-run detention sites between 2003 and 2007.
The settlement in the case involving Engility Holdings Inc. of Chantilly, Va., marks the first successful effort by lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers to collect money from a U.S. defense contractor in lawsuits alleging torture. Another contractor, CACI, is expected to go to trial over similar allegations this summer.
The payments were disclosed in a document that Engility filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission two months ago but which has gone essentially unnoticed.
The defendant in the lawsuit, L-3 Services Inc., now an Engility subsidiary, provided translators to the U.S. military in Iraq. In 2006, L-3 Services had more than 6,000 translators in Iraq under a $450 million-a-year contract, an L-3 executive told an investors conference at the time.
On Tuesday, a lawyer for the ex-detainees, Baher Azmy, said that each of the 71 Iraqis received a portion of the settlement. Azmy declined to say how the money was distributed among them. He said there was an agreement to keep details of the settlement confidential.
"Private military contractors played a serious but often under-reported role in the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib," said Azmy, the legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. "We are pleased that this settlement provides some accountability for one of those contractors and offers some measure of justice for the victims."
Jennifer Barton, a spokeswoman for L-3 Communications, the former parent company of L-3 Services, said the company does not comment on legal matters.
Eric Ruff, Engility's director of corporate communications, said the company does not comment on matters involving litigation.
The ex-detainees filed the lawsuit in federal court in Greenbelt, Md., in 2008.
L-3 Services "permitted scores of its employees to participate in torturing and abusing prisoners over an extended period of time throughout Iraq," the lawsuit stated. The company "willfully failed to report L-3 employees' repeated assaults and other criminal conduct by its employees to the United States or Iraq authorities."
One inmate alleged he was subjected to mock executions by having a gun aimed at his head and the trigger pulled. Another inmate said he was slammed into a wall until he became unconscious. A third was allegedly stripped naked and threatened with rape while his hands and legs were chained and a hood was placed on his head. Another said he was forced to consume so much water that he began to vomit blood. Several of the inmates said they were raped and many of the inmates said they were beaten and kept naked for extended periods of time.
In its defense four years ago against the lawsuit, L-3 Services said lawyers for the Iraqis alleged no facts to support the conspiracy accusation. Sixty-eight of the Iraqis "do not even attempt to allege the identity of their alleged abuser" and two others provide only "vague assertions," the company said then.
A military investigation in 2004 identified 44 alleged incidents of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. No employee from L-3 Services was charged with a crime in investigations by the U.S. Justice Department. Nor did the U.S. military stop the company from working for the government.
Fifty-two of the 71 Iraqis alleged that they were imprisoned at Abu Ghraib and at other detention facilities. The other 19 Iraqis allege they were detained at detention facilities other than Abu Ghraib.
The Abu Ghraib prison scandal erupted during President George W. Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 when graphic photographs taken by soldiers at the scene were leaked to the news media. They showed naked inmates piled on top of each other in a prison cell block, inmates handcuffed to their cell bars and hooded and wired for electric shock, among other shocking scenes.
In the ensuing international uproar, Bush said the practices that had taken place at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 were "abhorrent." Some Democrats demanded that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld resign. Eventually, 11 U.S. soldiers were convicted of crimes including aggravated assault and taking pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated.
Rumsfeld told Congress in 2004 that he had found a way to compensate Iraqi detainees who suffered "grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the United States armed forces." But the U.S. Army subsequently has been unable to document a single U.S. government payment for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
This week, the U.S. Army Claims Service said it has 36 claims from former detainees in Iraq, none of them related to alleged physical abuse. From the budget years 2003 to 2006, the Defense Department paid $30.9 million to Iraqi and Afghan civilians who were killed, injured, or incurred property damage due to U.S. or coalition forces' actions during combat.
In the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, lawyers for the Iraqis filed a number of lawsuits against L-3 Services and another company, CACI International Inc. of Arlington, Va., but the cases were quickly hung up on an underlying question: whether defense contractors working side by side with the U.S. military can be sued for claims arising in a war zone. The U.S. government is immune from suits stemming from combatant activities of the military in time of war.
Courts are still sorting out whether contractors in a war zone should be accorded legal immunity from being sued, just as the government is immune.
But a turning point in the cases involving L-3 and CACI came last May. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., ruled 11-3 that more facts must be developed before the appeals court could consider the defense contractor's request to dismiss the lawsuit.
In the case against CACI, four Iraqis who say they were tortured are seeking compensation from the company, which provided interrogators to the U.S. military during the war. CACI has chosen to continue its fight against the lawsuit. Azmy said a trial is expected this summer.
In its defense four years ago against the lawsuit, L-3 said the fact that the claims in the case "cannot be brought against the government means that they also cannot be brought against L-3."
"No court in the United States has allowed aliens — detained on the battlefield or in the course of postwar occupation and military operations by the U.S. military — to seek damages for their detention," the company told the federal court four years ago. "Yet these plaintiffs bring claims seeking money damages for their detention and treatment while in the custody of the U.S. military in the midst of a belligerent occupation in Iraq."
Allowing the case to proceed "would require a wholly unprecedented injection of the judiciary into wartime military operations and occupation conduct against the local population, in particular the conditions of confinement and interrogation for intelligence gathering," L-3 added.

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Supreme Court narrows avenue for death row appeals

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two death row inmates were not entitled to a delay of their federal appeals on the grounds that they were incompetent to assist their lawyers, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday.
In a unanimous ruling against inmates Ernest Valencia Gonzales and Sean Carter, the court also said federal judges cannot indefinitely delay appeals of state criminal convictions in the hope that the defendants might eventually become competent enough to help out.
Justice Clarence Thomas said defense lawyers are "quite capable" of reviewing cases without their clients' help and can identify arguments or state court errors that can be raised on appeal.
He said a district judge who believes an incompetent defendant could substantially aid in his defense should examine the likelihood that the defendant will regain competence.
In contrast, "where there is no reasonable hope of competence, a stay merely frustrates the state's attempts to defend its presumptively valid judgment," Thomas wrote.
Gonzales was convicted by an Arizona jury in the stabbings of two people in front of their seven-year-old son during a burglary. One of the victims died.
Carter was found guilty by an Ohio jury of the rape and stabbing death of his adoptive grandmother.
Dale Baich, who works in the federal public defender's office that represented Gonzales, noted that Supreme Court decision left room for federal courts to put some appeals on hold. A prisoner's competency to assist counsel is an issue in roughly one dozen capital cases pending nationwide, he said.
A lawyer for Carter was not immediately available to comment.
Thomas said the federal appeals courts that put both cases on hold erred in relying on two federal statutes to find that defendants must be competent.
A requirement of competency also does not flow from a defendant's right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, he wrote.
The court also said it was "unwarranted" to extrapolate a definitive rule based on a 1960s case involving an incompetent death row inmate that it put on hold for nearly three decades. That case ended when the prisoner died.
The cases are Ryan v. Gonzales, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 10-930; and Tibbals v. Carter, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 11-218.

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Wall Street edges off five-year high, awaits earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks lost ground on Monday, as investors drew back from recent gains that lifted the S&P 500 to a five-year high, in anticipation of sluggish growth in corporate profits.
Shares of financial companies dipped after a group of major U.S. banks agreed to pay a total of $8.5 billion to end a government inquiry into faulty mortgage foreclosures. The KBW bank index <.bkx>, a gauge of U.S. bank stocks, was down 0.3 percent.
Other sectors were hit as well, most notably energy and utilities. The S&P 500 energy sector index <.gspe> fell 0.8 percent and the utilities sector <.gspu> was off 1.1 percent.
The day's decline came a session after the S&P 500 finished at a five-year high, boosted by a budget deal and strong economic data. The S&P 500 rose 4.6 percent last week, the best weekly gain in more than a year.
"It's a little bit of taking some risk off the table ahead of profit season, you're not going to see anything all that great" on earnings, said Larry Peruzzi, senior equity trader at Cabrera Capital Markets Inc in Boston.
Earnings are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results, and analysts' current estimates are down sharply from where they were in October. Fourth-quarter earnings growth is expected to come in at 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Aluminum company Alcoa Inc begins the reporting season by announcing its results after Tuesday's market close. Alcoa shares fell 1.7 percent at $9.10.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 50.92 points, or 0.38 percent, to 13,384.29. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> fell 4.58 points, or 0.31 percent, to 1,461.89. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 2.84 points, or 0.09 percent, to 3,098.81.
Ten mortgage servicers - including Bank of America , Citigroup , JPMorgan , and Wells Fargo - agreed on Monday to pay $8.5 billion to end a case-by-case review of foreclosures required by U.S. regulators.
In a separate case, Bank of America also announced roughly $11.6 billion of settlements with mortgage finance company Fannie Mae and a $1.8 billion sale of collection rights on home loans.
The bank also entered into agreements with Nationstar Mortgage Holdings and Walter Investment Management to sell about $306 billion of residential mortgage servicing rights.
Bank of America shares lost 0.2 percent at $12.09 while Nationstar Mortgage Holdings jumped 16.8 percent to $38.83.
Citigroup shares were up 0.09 percent to $42.47, and Wells Fargo shares fell 0.5 percent to $34.77.
"The financials probably have the wind behind them now with a lot of the regulations coming out ... the market has to absorb a lot of the gains, and for that reason there's a pullback from this level," said Warren West, principal at Greentree Brokerage Services in Philadelphia.
Shares of U.S. jet maker Boeing Co dropped 2 percent after a Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft with no passengers on board caught fire at Boston's Logan International Airport on Monday morning.
Amazon.com shares hit their highest price ever at $269.22 after Morgan Stanley raised is rating on the stock. Shares were up 3.6 percent at $268.46.
Video-streaming service Netflix Inc shares gained 3.4 percent to $99.20 after it said it will carry previous seasons of some popular shows produced by Time Warner's Warner Bros Television.
Walt Disney Co stock fell 2.3 percent to $50.97. The company started an internal cost-cutting review several weeks ago that may include layoffs at its studio and other units, three people with knowledge of the effort told Reuters.
Volume was lower than average, as 4.78 billion shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq. This is well below the 2012 average of 6.42 billion per session.
Declining stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,629 to 1,363, while on the Nasdaq decliners beat advancers 1,438 to 1,066.

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Libyan cop in Benghazi kidnapped

Abdelsalam al-Mahdawi, the head of Benghazi's criminal investigation department, was kidnapped on his way to work today by gunmen at an intersection in Libya's second largest city.
Benghazi was the heart of the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and since then it has failed to bring the militias that fought on the side of the revolution – some Islamist, some not – under any kind of government control. They remain armed and often a law unto themselves in the city. Criminal gangs, spawned from militias, are also at work.
The list of potential suspects is long, particularly since Mr. Mahdawi's personal background isn't immediately clear. Was he someone who served Mr. Qaddafi's regime at one point, and is being targeted for revenge? Could it be a personal or family dispute? Could his investigations of militias and/or criminals be the reason for his kidnapping? A simple matter of kidnap-for-ransom? All are possible.
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But what's likely is that sorting out what's happened to him will be confusing, subject to completing claims, and difficult for any neutral observer trying to get at the truth to figure out. That's been the pattern in violent incidents in Benghazi not just since the war ended, but before.
The attack on the US facility in Benghazi in September that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead is still not fully understood. Meanwhile, today's assault is the second attack on a senior police official in Benghazi since November, when Benghazi police chief Farraj al-Dursi was assassinated outside his house. Mr. Dursi, who served under Qaddafi's government, was appointed police chief during a shuffle of security in the city after the attack on the Americans in September.
One long-standing murder in Benghazi is taking a troubling turn.
Abdel Fateh Younes, a commander of rebel forces, was abducted and murdered in the city in July 2011. Gen. Younes defected from his long-standing stalwart support of Qaddafi that February and was abducted after being called back from the front of that civil war. What happened next remains uncertain.
Shortly after his murder, Mustapha Abdel Jalil, then head of Libya's Transitional National Council and himself a former minister in Qaddafi's government, insisted Younes was killed by agents of Qaddafi. Others in the rebel government in Benghazi said Younes' arrest had been sought on suspicion he was working as a double agent for Qaddafi. In the immediate aftermath, a civil war within a civil war in Benghazi looked possible, with angry loyalists of Younes demanding justice.
Mr. Jalil was a hero of the revolution for being one of the earliest defectors from Qaddafi's regime and for successfully navigating international intrigue and competing agendas domestically in winning NATO support for the rebellion. In December, he was threatened with a military trial for allegedly ordering the murder of Younes. Among the charges against Jalil were "undermining national unity."
Is there good reason to suspect him? It's unclear, as with so much else in Libya these days. The proposal to try Jalil in a military court, however, was clearly worrying. On Dec. 19, the military tribunal organized to try Jalil resigned and the case was thrown back to prosecutors. To top it all, one of the judges investigating Jalil was murdered in Benghazi last year.
What does all this mean? Hard to say. But the ongoing chaos and bloodshed, at high political levels in Libya, is not a positive sign.

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Amid bloodshed and chaos, Syrian wages a war for neutral reporting

While Syria's state-run news outlets run a steady stream of reports about "terrorists" and international conspiracies against President Bashar al-Assad, opposition activists roll out their own endless barrage of footage highlighting atrocities and destruction by regime forces, with little in the way of context.
With media access difficult or impossible in most of the country and no tradition of balanced journalism, reliable, objective coverage of Syria is scarce. Cairo-based Syrian activist and media entrepreneur Rami Jarrah, on the cusp of launching a radio station inside Syria, is trying to fix that – but he is starting from scratch. By providing Syrians with rational, fair reporting, he hopes to help them avoid the worst of the uncertainty in the aftermath of this conflict – now in its 22nd month – when it ends.
"When someone comes in and wants to work with us, and wants to do it to help Syria, you have to convince them that the way you do that is by being neutral," says Mr. Jarrah during an interview at the Cairo headquarters of New Media Association (ANA), which he co-directs.
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One of the major problems with Syrian troops, he insists, is not that most of them are "criminals," but that they simply "don’t know what’s going on" – and the same could be said of many of those in the extreme opposition.
Meanwhile, the international community is foundering amid attempts to understand what is happening on the ground. Because reporters have an easier time accessing opposition sources and visiting opposition-controlled areas, international coverage of Syria has been skewed, Jarrah argues.
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"You aren’t seeing any media coverage of Damascus and Latakia," where the government is still strong, both because reporters are not granted access and because "those who support Assad think they should not speak to journalists, that the media is trying to weaken the country," he says.
And coverage of the opposition isn't very fair either, he says, claiming that Western reporters "are only going in with the extreme opposition," such as Al Qaeda-linked groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, which the US recently designated a terrorist organization. Jarrah says reports about the prevalence of such groups are "over-exaggerated" because they sell more copy.
PRISON, PSEUDONYMS, AND FLIGHT
Born in Cyprus to Syrian dissident parents and raised in London, Jarrah was working toward a degree in journalism in Dubai when he visited Syria for the first time in 2004. He was arrested upon landing, accused of espionage, slapped with a three-year travel ban, and forced to remain in a country where he was initially unable even to read the language, although he spoke it fluently.
During the initial protests in early 2011, he was beaten, tortured, and released only after admitting to being a "terrorist." Left jobless after refusing to attend a pro-government rally, he became well known in the dissident community under the pseudonym Alexander Page for getting information to Western media outlets through his blog. His fluent English, training in journalism, anti-regime stance, and contacts all led to frequent requests for interviews in Western media. He granted them, but never revealed his real name.
In October 2011, Jarrah was tipped off that the pseudonym had been traced to him and fled the country with his wife and young daughter through Jordan to Cairo, where he has been since, working to get media equipment into Syria and get reliable information out. Last month, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression awarded him the 2012 International Press Freedom Award for his work supporting a network of independent journalists in Syria.
Now he is in Cairo, getting a media organization off the ground that he hopes will serve as a source for balanced reporting by Syrians and for Syrians. Much bloodshed could have been avoided, but much can still be saved, if appeals are made to Syrians’ critical thinking abilities, not their fears or sectarian and religious affiliations, he says – and objective reporting can do that.
NO AGENDA OTHER THAN OBJECTIVITY
Jarrah has high hopes for Radio ANA. A trial version is already available online and it will be available on satellite in late January, although the official launch isn't until June 10. The station will broadcast out of Aleppo’s Bustan Al Qasr district and eastern Damascus.
Radio ANA has 16 reporters inside Syria, all of whom his organization has worked with over the past year and trained in technical skills – six in Damascus and one or more in other major cities. It also has a wider network of hundreds of citizen journalists it can tap for further information and on-the-ground coverage of events in cities other than those where staff reporters live.
The Cairo staff of the organization, who come from all across Syria, make every possible effort to verify the information from the citizen journalists by cross-checking information and paying close attention to location identifiers like dialects and landmarks spotted in videos, Jarrah says.
Although ANA intends to continue providing reporting on Syria to the international community, Radio ANA is setting out to be the first Syrian non-regime radio station broadcasting from within Syria without a particular agenda – other than objectivity. The ultimate aim, as Jattah stressed throughout the interview, is to produce an informed Syrian population, necessary if the country is to be rebuilt with the freedoms for which the opposition is fighting.

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Good Taliban, Bad Taliban? Pakistani commander's killing exposes blurry lines

The US drone killing of Pakistani Taliban commander Maulvi Nazir threatens to unleash new anti-government violence against the country’s weak government or civilian targets, and expose fractures in the country’s military and security forces, analysts say.
Mr. Nazir was traveling in a car in troubled South Waziristan, bordering Afghanistan, Thursday, when his vehicle was hit by a missile, according to media reports. He and six other Pakistanis believed to be militants were killed.
The attacks highlight the convoluted interconnections among insurgent factions in Pakistan, some of whom are focused on fighting US forces in Afghanistan, others of whom seek to topple Pakistan’s government. Still other groups target Indian forces. Many of the factions are backed or financed by military and intelligence agencies in Pakistan, who have differing agendas themselves.
The killing was confirmed by Pakistani intelligence officials in the nearby city of Peshawar who spoke on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Mr. Nazir, who survived a suicide attack in November reputedly organized by rival Taliban commanders, was considered to be pro-government, a rare stance among Pakistani Taliban. He had agreed in the past to restrain his fighters from targeting Pakistani government forces, instead focusing efforts on the Taliban-led anti-US insurgency in Afghanistan. That had led some to label him a “good" Taliban.
With his killing, however, some analysts say his successor and followers may now turn their guns on civilian and military targets within Pakistan.
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“Such [drone] attacks are not the first ones to have occurred and they have definitely created rifts between the Pakistani military and the likes of Maulvi Nazir-led Taliban,” says Mehreen Zahra Malik, an Islamabad-based columnist who recently visited Wana, the town in South Waziristan where Nazir was based.
Adding to the problem is widespread outrage among most Pakistanis toward US drone strikes. The government and military have harnessed that anger to pressure Washington. The “Good Taliban” forces increasingly suspect these attacks are being carried out with the consent of the Pakistani security establishment, Ms. Malik says.
“There is nothing to say the 'Good Taliban' won't also turn their guns on the Pakistani state in the coming days, which is definitely something the Pakistan Army would like to avoid,” Malik adds.
Other experts believe targeting Nazir could be part of a larger strategic alliance between Pakistan and the US, a relationship that has been strained by the 2011 secret US raid that killed Osama bin Laden without the knowledge of the government. The 2011 “Salala Incident” in which NATO aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a post on the Afghan border also prompted anger toward Washington.
“By taking out the leadership of those Taliban based in Pakistan and fighting in Afghanistan like Maulvi Nazir, both countries can increase the pressure on the Taliban for talks because they will be in a stronger position,” says Ayesha Siddiqa, a defense analyst who has authored two books on the Pakistani military.
Some fear the drone attacks may end up backfiring.
“This drone attack belies the conventional wisdom... Why will the US target a militant close to the Afghan Taliban and antagonize those it wants to bring on the table for peace talks in?” says Fahd Husain, a noted columnist for the several leading Islamabad newspapers.

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Judge asks Hostess to mediate with union

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- Twinkies won't die that easily after all.
Hostess Brands Inc. and its second largest union will go into mediation to try and resolve their differences, meaning the company won't go out of business just yet. The news came Monday after Hostess moved to liquidate and sell off its assets in bankruptcy court citing a crippling strike last week.
The bankruptcy judge hearing the case said Monday that the parties haven't gone through the critical step of mediation and asked the lawyer for the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, which has been on strike since Nov. 9, to ask his client, who wasn't present, if the union would agree to participate. The judge noted that the bakery union, which represents about 30 percent of Hostess workers, went on strike after rejecting the company's latest contract offer, even though it never filed an objection to it.
"Many people, myself included, have serious questions as to the logic behind this strike," said Judge Robert Drain, who heard the case in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York in White Plains, N.Y. "Not to have gone through that step leaves a huge question mark in this case."
Hostess and the union agreed to mediation talks, which are expected to begin the process on Tuesday.
In an interview after the hearing on Monday, CEO Gregory Rayburn said that the two parties will have to agree to contract terms within 24 hours of the Tuesday since it is costing $1 million a day in overhead costs to wind down operations. But even if a contract agreement is reached, it is not clear if all 33 Hostess plants will go back to being operational.
"We didn't think we had a runway, but the judge just created a 24-hour runway," for the two parties to come to an agreement, Rayburn said.
Hostess, weighed down by debt, management turmoil, rising labor costs and the changing tastes of America, decided on Friday that it no longer could make it through a conventional Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring. Instead, the company, which is based in Irving, Texas, asked the court for permission to sell assets and go out of business.
It's not the sequence of events that the maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Ho's envisioned when it filed for bankruptcy in January, its second Chapter 11 filing in less than a decade. The company, who said that it was saddled with costs related to its unionized workforce, had hoped to emerge with stronger financials. It brought on Rayburn as a restructuring expert and was working to renegotiate its contract with labor unions.
But Rayburn wasn't able to reach a deal with the bakery union. The company, which had been contributing $100 million a year in pension costs for workers, offered workers a new contract that would've slashed that to $25 million a year, in addition to wage cuts and a 17 percent reduction in health benefits. But the bakery union decided to strike.
By that time, the company had reached a contract agreement with its largest union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which urged the bakery union to hold a secret ballot on whether to continue striking. Although many bakery workers decided to cross picket lines this week, Hostess said it wasn't enough to keep operations at normal levels.
Rayburn said that Hostess was already operating on razor thin margins and that the strike was the final blow. The company's announcement on Friday that it would move to liquidate prompted people across the country to rush to stores and stock up on their favorite Hostess treats. Many businesses reported selling out of Twinkies within hours and the spongy yellow cakes turned up for sale online for hundreds of dollars.
Even if Hostess goes out of business, its popular brands will likely find a second life after being snapped up by buyers. The company says several potential buyers have expressed interest in the brands. Although Hostess' sales have been declining in recent years, the company still does about $2.5 billion in business each year. Twinkies along brought in $68 million so far this year.

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Just Explain It: What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

Eliminating America's dependency on foreign oil has been a policy goal for at least the last two U.S. Presidents.  According to the International Energy Agency, by 2020,  the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's number one oil producer.
However, there's still some work to do.  The United States Energy Information Administration reported that 45% of the petroleum consumed by the U.S. in 2011 was from foreign countries.   Even though the country is well on its way to becoming self reliant, there's always a chance we could hit a major bump in the road.  The good thing is we have protection.  It's called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or S.P.R.
So here's how the S.P.R. works:
The reserve was created after the 1973 energy crisis when an Arab oil embargo halted exports to the United States.  As a result, fuel shortages caused disruptions in the U.S. economy.
The reserves are located underground in four man-made salt domes in Texas and Louisiana.  All four locations combined hold a total of 727 million barrels of oil.  The inventory is currently at 695 million barrels.  That's around 80 days of import protection.  It's the largest emergency oil supply in the world -- it's worth about $63 billion.
Only the President has the ability to tap the reserves in case of severe energy supply interruption.  It's happened three times.  Twice within the last decade.  In 2005, President Bush ordered the emergency sale of 11 million barrels when Hurricane Katrina shutdown 25 percent of domestic production.  In 2011, President Obama ordered the release of 30 million barrels to help offset disruptions caused by political upheaval in the Middle East.
Following the release order, the reserve issues a notice of sale to solicit competitive offers.  In the most recent sale involving the Obama administration, the offers resulted in contracts with 15 companies for delivery of 30.6 million barrels of oil.  To put that in context, last year the U.S. consumed almost seven billion barrels of oil — that's 19 million per day -- or about 22% of the world's consumption.
Related Link: Using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Like a Spigot
The release in 2011 had little effect on the price of gas at the pump.  Consumers paid about 2% less for a week before the prices began to climb again.
Related link: Just Explain It: Why Social Security is Running Out of Money
Did you learn something? Do you have a topic you'd like explained?  Give us your feedback in the comments below or on Twitter using #justexplainit.

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Apple to produce line of Macs in the US next year

NEW YORK (AP) -- Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will move production of one of its existing lines of Mac computers from China to the United States next year.
Industry watchers said the announcement is both a cunning public-relations move and a harbinger of more manufacturing jobs moving back to the U.S. as wages rise in China.
Cook made the comments in part of an interview taped for NBC's "Rock Center," but aired Thursday morning on "Today" and posted on the network's website.
In a separate interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, he said that the company will spend $100 million in 2013 to move production of the line to the U.S. from China.
"This doesn't mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we'll be working with people and we'll be investing our money," Cook told Bloomberg.
That suggests the company could be helping one of its Taiwanese manufacturing partners, which run factories in China, to set up production lines in the U.S. devoted to Apple products. Research firm IHS iSuppli noted that both Foxconn Technology Group, which assembles iPhones, and Quanta Computer Inc., which does the same for MacBooks, already have small operations in the U.S.
Apple representatives had no comment Thursday beyond Cook's remarks.
Like most consumer electronics companies, Apple forges agreements with contract manufacturers to assemble its products overseas. However, the assembly accounts for a fraction of the cost of making a PC or smartphone. Most of the cost lies in buying chips, and many of those are made in the U.S., Cook noted in his interview with NBC.
The company and Foxconn have faced significant criticism this year over working conditions at the Chinese facilities where Apple products are assembled. The attention prompted Foxconn to raise salaries.
Cook didn't say which line of computers would be produced in the U.S. or where in the country they would be made. But he told Bloomberg that the production would include more than just final assembly. That suggests that machining of cases and printing of circuit boards could take place in the U.S.
The simplest Macs to assemble are the Mac Pro and Mac Mini desktop computers. Since they lack the built-in screens of the MacBooks and iMacs, they would likely be easier to separate from the Asian display supply chain.
Analyst Jeffrey Wu at IHS iSuppli said it's not uncommon for PC makers to build their bulkier products close to their customers to cut down on delivery times and shipping costs.
Regardless, the U.S. manufacturing line is expected to represent just a tiny piece of Apple's overall production, with sales of iPhones and iPads now dwarfing those of its computers.
Apple is latching on to a trend that could see many jobs move back to the U.S., said Hal Sirkin, a partner with The Boston Consulting Group. He noted that Lenovo Group, the Chinese company that's neck-and-neck with Hewlett-Packard Co. for the title of world's largest PC maker, announced in October that it will start making PCs and tablets in the U.S.
Chinese wages are raising 15 to 20 percent per year, Sirkin said. U.S. wages are rising much more slowly, and the country is a cheap place to hire compared to other developed countries like Germany, France and Japan, he said.
"Across a lot of industries, companies are rethinking their strategy of where the manufacturing takes place," Sirkin said.
Carl Howe, an analyst with Yankee Group, likened Apple's move to Henry Ford's famous 1914 decision to double his workers' pay, helping to build a middle class that could afford to buy cars. But Cook's goal is probably more limited: to buy goodwill from U.S. consumers, Howe said.
"Say it's State of the Union 2014. President Obama wants to talk about manufacturing. Who is he going to point to in the audience? Tim Cook, the guy who brought manufacturing back from China. And that scene is going replay over and over," Howe said. "And yeah, it may be only (public relations), but it's a lot of high-value PR."
Cook said in his interview with NBC that companies like Apple chose to produce their products in places like China, not because of the lower costs associated with it, but because the manufacturing skills required just aren't present in the U.S. anymore.
He added that the consumer electronics world has never really had a big production presence in the U.S. As a result, it's really more about starting production in the U.S. than bringing it back, he said.
But for nearly three decades Apple made its computers in the U.S. It started outsourcing production in the mid-90s, first by selling some plants to contract manufacturers, then by hiring manufacturers overseas. It assembled iMacs in Elk Grove, Calif., until 2004.
Some Macs already say they're "Assembled in USA." That's because Apple has for years performed final assembly of some units in the U.S. Those machines are usually the product of special orders placed at its online store. The last step of production may consist of mounting hard drives, memory chips and graphics cards into computer cases that are manufactured elsewhere. With Cook's announcement Thursday, the company is set to go much further in the amount of work done in the U.S.
The news comes a day after Apple posted its worst stock drop in four years, erasing $35 billion in market capitalization. Apple's stock rose $8.45, or 1.6 percent, to close at $547.24 Thursday.

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