Thousands in Egypt defy curfews, protest Morsi

CAIRO Thousands of Egyptians marched across the country, chanting against the rule of the Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, in a fresh wave of protests Friday, even as cracks appeared in the ranks of the opposition after its political leaders met for the first time with the rival Muslim Brotherhood.

The protests continue a week of political rioting that engulfed the country and left up to 60 people dead. The violence prompted Morsi to declare a state of emergency in three restive Suez Canal cities, impose a curfew that thousands of the cities' angry residents defied in night rallies, and left him with eroding popularity in the street.

On Friday, thousands of protesters in the Mediterranean city of Port Said at the northern tip of Suez Canal, which witnessed the worst clashes and biggest number of causalities the past days, pumped their fists in the air while chanting, "Leave, leave, Morsi." They threatened to escalate pressure with civil disobedience and a work stoppage at the vital Suez Canal authority if their demand for punishment of those responsible for protester death is not met.

"The people want the Republic of Port Said," protesters chanted, voicing a wide sentiment among residents that they are fed up of negligence and mistreatment by central government and that they want to virtual independence.

"Your policy is: I don't hear, I don't talk and I don't see," read a flyer distributed by protesters.

Buses carrying protesters from two other Suez Canal cities of Suez and Ismailia carried more protesters to the Port Said rallies.

Last week's violence first erupted on the eve of the second anniversary of 2011 uprising that toppled down longtime authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak's regime. It accelerated a day later when security forces fired at protesters killing at least 11 dead, most of them in the city of Suez.

The next day, riots exploded in Port Said after a court convicted and sentenced to death 21 defendants — mostly locals — for a mass soccer riot in the city's main stadium a year ago. Residents saw the verdict as politicized. Over the next few days, around 40 people were killed in the city in unrest that saw security forces firing on a funeral.

Feb. 1 marks the first anniversary of the mass soccer riot in Port Said that left 74 people dead mostly fans of Al-Ahly, Egypt's most popular soccer team.

Egypt's main opposition political grouping, the National Salvation Front, called for Friday's protests in Cairo, demanding Morsi form a national unity government and amend the constitution, moves they say would prevent the Islamist from governing solely in the interest of his Muslim Brotherhood group.

"The policies of the president and the Muslim Brotherhood are pushing the country to the brink, but they are adopting the same language of the old regime and accusing their opposition of betrayal," the opposition said in a statement. "Instead of responding to the street demands, and working with the rest of the national forces that contributed in the revolution to rescue the nation, they are pointing their arrows to media to stifle freedoms," it added

However, the call came a day after the Front held a meeting with Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood under the aegis of Egypt's premier Islamic institution, Al-Azhar, in their first ever meeting. They and other politicians signed a joint statement denouncing violence.

The meeting appeared to have caused rifts within the opposition, with some saying the Front had handed the Brotherhood the high ground by signing a statement that seemed to focus on protester violence and made no mention of police use of excessive force or explicitly talk of political demands.

"Al-Azhar's initiative talks too broadly about violence as if it's the same to kill a person or break a window and makes no difference between defensive violence and aggressive violence, offering a political cover to expand the repression, detention, killing and torture by the hands of police for the authority's benefit," read a joint statement by 70 activists, liberal politicians, actors and writers.

"The initiative didn't represent the core of the problem and didn't offer solutions but came to give more legitimacy to the existing authority," it added.

Those who attended the Thursday's rare meeting between Egypt's rival political camps defended the anti-violence initiative.

Ahmed Maher, co-founder of April 6 group which led the anti-Mubarak uprising, said in a tweet: "I am against violence as a solution." An opposition party leader Ahmed Said said in a statement, "no one can say no to an initiative to stop violence."

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Ala. Hostage Suspect Has 'No Regard for Human Life'

A neighbor of the retired Alabama trucker who is holed up in an underground bunker with a young autistic boy as a hostage says that Jimmy Lee Dykes is menacing person who has been preparing for this standoff for a while and has threatened to shoot anyone who came near his property.

"I cannot even fathom the whys or anything like that," Ronda Wilbur told ABCNews.com today. "I know that he has totally and completely no regard for human life, or any sort of life."

Wilber, 55, lives across the dirty road from Dykes.

Dykes, 65, has been holed up in a 6 by 8 foot bunker 4 feet underground with his 5-year-old hostage named Ethan near Midland City, Ala. The standoff began when Dykes boarded a school bus and asked for two 6 to 8 year old boys. School bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was shot several times by Dykes, and died trying to protect the children.

Wilbur said she thinks his plan to hold out in his subterranean bunker has been brewing for a while.

PHOTOS: Worst Hostage Situations

"I think that he was obviously been planning something for a long time," she said. "I had always figured he was more or less a wacko survivalist, but it's obvious that he had this very well thought out and arranged, and it explains as to why he did so much work in the dark."

Wilbur said that she would often see him with a gun patrolling his property when she would return home from work. Sometimes he would be patrolling as late as midnight. She also said that within the last three months that a cargo container showed up on his property, but it soon disappeared.

Julie Bennett/al.com via AP

Alabama Hostage Standoff: Boy, 5, Held Captive in Bunker Watch Video

Alabama 5-year-old Hostage: Negotiations Continue Watch Video

Alabama Child Hostage Situation: School Bus Driver Killed Watch Video

"He's been digging. He moves dirt shovel by shovel. He made tiers. He moved cinder blocks from place to place to place, to however he wants to shape the land," she said.

Dykes' home is what Wilbur described as a travel trailer on land purchased from another neighbor approximately two years ago. She described him at 5-feet-8 and "exceedingly thin," and "unhealthy" looking. His introduction to the neighborhood came when he replaced a neighbor's mailbox with his own, she said. Soon he was threatening to shoot anyone or any animal that entered his property.

"He was very verbal that he hates all animals, and he didn't want any animals or people anywhere near his land," she said. "He told us flat out he would shoot any dogs that came onto his property."

Last year Dykes, who Wilbur refers to as "Mean Man," beat her 120-pound dog Max with a lead pipe when it entered what he perceived as "his side of the road," she said. Max died a week later.

Another neighbor, Claudia Davis, told The Associated Press that he had yelled at her and fired his gun at her, her son James Davis, Jr. and her baby grandson after he claimed their truck caused damage to a speed bump in the dirt road near his property. No one was hurt, but Davis, Jr. told the AP that he believes the shooting and kidnapping are connected to a court hearing concerning the incident.

"I believe he thought I was going to be in court and he was going to get more charges than the menacing, which he deserved, and he had a bunch of stuff to hide and that's why he did it," Davis said.

Police said that they do not think that Dykes had any connection to Ethan, and that SWAT teams and police are negotiating with Dykes.

Davis said that he has seen the bunker, which contains a television, and where Dykes has been known to hunker down for up to eight days.

"He's got steps made out of cinder blocks going down to it," Davis said. "It's lined with those red bricks all in it."

Police say Dykes may have enough supplies to last him weeks.

Midland City Mayor Virgil Skipper pleaded Thursday for Dykes to release the boy.

"That's an innocent kid. Let him go back to his parents, he's crying for his parents and his grandparents and he does not know what's going on," he told ABC News. "Let this kid go."

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Suicide bomber kills guard at U.S. embassy in Turkey

ANKARA (Reuters) - A far-leftist suicide bomber killed a Turkish security guard at the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Friday, officials said, blowing open an entrance and sending debris flying through the air.

The attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body after entering an embassy gatehouse. The blast could be heard a mile away. A lower leg and other human remains lay on the street.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the bomber was a member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), a far-left group which is virulently anti-U.S. and anti-NATO and is listed as a terrorist organization by Washington.

The White House said the suicide attack was an "act of terror" but that the motivation was unclear. U.S. officials said the DHKP-C were the main suspects but did not exclude other possibilities.

Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past. There was no claim of responsibility.

"The suicide bomber was ripped apart and one or two citizens from the special security team passed away," said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

"This event shows that we need to fight together everywhere in the world against these terrorist elements," he said.

Turkish media reports identified the bomber as DHKP-C member Ecevit Sanli, who was involved in attacks on a police station and a military staff college in Istanbul in 1997.

KEY ALLY

Turkey is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism and has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the conflict in neighboring Syria.

Around 400 U.S. soldiers have arrived in Turkey over the past few weeks to operate Patriot anti-missile batteries meant to defend against any spillover of Syria's civil war, part of a NATO deployment due to be fully operational in the coming days.

The DHKP-C was responsible for the assassination of two U.S. military contractors in the early 1990s in protest against the first Gulf War and launched rockets at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.

Deemed a terrorist organization by both the United States and Turkey, the DHKP-C has been blamed for suicide attacks in the past, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square.

The group, formed in 1978, has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months.

The attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.

"HUGE EXPLOSION"

U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone emerged through the main gate of the embassy shortly after the explosion to address reporters, flanked by a security detail as a Turkish police helicopter hovered overhead.

"We're very sad of course that we lost one of our Turkish guards at the gate," Ricciardone said, describing the victim as a "hero" and thanking Turkish authorities for a prompt response.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the attack on the checkpoint on the perimeter of the embassy and said several U.S. and Turkish staff were injured by debris.

"The level of security protection at our facility in Ankara ensured that there were not significantly more deaths and injuries than there could have been," she told reporters.

It was the second attack on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The attack in Benghazi, blamed on al Qaeda-affiliated militants, sparked a political furor in Washington over accusations that U.S. missions were not adequately safeguarded.

A well-known Turkish journalist, Didem Tuncay, who was on her way in to the embassy to meet Ricciardone when the attack took place, was in a critical condition in hospital.

"It was a huge explosion. I was sitting in my shop when it happened. I saw what looked like a body part on the ground," said travel agent Kamiyar Barnos, whose shop window was shattered around 100 meters away from the blast.

CALL FOR VIGILANCE

The U.S. consulate in Istanbul warned its citizens to be vigilant and to avoid large gatherings, while the British mission in Istanbul called on British businesses to tighten security after what it called a "suspected terrorist attack".

In 2008, Turkish gunmen with suspected links to al Qaeda, opened fire on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, killing three Turkish policemen. The gunmen died in the subsequent firefight.

The most serious bombings in Turkey occurred in November 2003, when car bombs shattered two synagogues, killing 30 people and wounding 146. Part of the HSBC Bank headquarters was destroyed and the British consulate was damaged in two more explosions that killed 32 people less than a week later. Authorities said those attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, Mohammed Arshad and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Stephen Powell)

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French air strikes hit Islamist bases in north Mali

TIMBUKTU: France said Thursday its warplanes had hit Islamist command posts near the last militant stronghold in northern Mali, as the UN mulled a peacekeeping force to take over the fast-moving French-led operation.

Ground troops gathered at the gates of Kidal, a desert outpost that is the last rebel stronghold yet to be fully recaptured, as France said its fighter jets had blasted command centres, training camps and depots run by Islamist extremists in the mountains north of the town.

Many rebels are believed to have melted away into the desert hills around Kidal since France launched air strikes on January 11 in a surprise assault to block an advance towards the capital, Bamako, by Al-Qaeda linked extremists who have occupied the north for 10 months.

The latest air strikes were carried out over the past few days in the Aguelhok region near the border with Algeria, a French military spokesman told journalists.

To back up the ground troops already in place, a column of 1,400 Chadian soldiers was heading by road towards Kidal from the Niger border, he added.

Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France's air attacks had hit the rebels hard.

"The jihadists suffered heavy losses," Le Drian said. "There were numerous strikes which hit their equipment and men.

"The French intervention has succeeded," he added, saying rebel fighters were now on the run.

But, in a sign the insurgents remain a threat, at least two Malian soldiers were killed when their vehicle drove over a landmine in central territory recaptured last week from the rebels, a security source said.

Paris has urged dialogue between "non-armed terrorist groups" and Mali's interim government for a long-term solution to the woes of the country, which straddles the Sahara desert and the region to the south known as the Sahel.

Tuareg desert nomads in the north have long felt marginalised by Bamako, and last January rebels launched the latest in a string of insurgencies, kickstarting Mali's rapid implosion.

Their National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), which had allied with the Islamist groups, rapidly overran the vast desert north.

They were soon thrust aside by the extremists, who imposed a brutal form of Islamic law on areas under their control, where offenders were punished by public whippings, amputations and executions.

Ex-UN chief Kofi Annan said Thursday there was evidence the crisis in Mali was driven by dangerous alliances between drug smugglers, criminal gangs and extremist groups operating across the region's porous borders.

"These developments threaten the stability of our region as we have witnessed so graphically in Mali in recent weeks," he said.

Interim president Dioncounda Traore said he was willing to talk to the secular Tuaregs from the MNLA, but would not meet any of the Islamist groups.

His comments came after a breakaway rebel faction, the Islamic Movement of Azawad (MIA), said it rejected "extremism and terrorism" and appealed to the international community to prevent the deployment of Malian and West African troops in its base, Kidal, 1,500 kilometres northeast of Bamako.

But Traore dismissed the apparent MIA olive branch, saying: "Because fear has now changed sides, they are looking for a way out."

And the Malian army said it already had a reconnaissance unit in the town to prepare the way for more troops.

France, Mali's former colonial ruler, is keen to hand over its military operation to nearly 8,000 African troops slowly being deployed.

UN officials said planning was at an advanced stage to gather those forces together under the umbrella of a formal UN peacekeeping operation.

France now has 3,500 troops on the ground and with support from the Mali army, has retaken several rebel strongholds, including the large regional town of Gao and the fabled desert trading post of Timbuktu, with no resistance.

French soldiers remained at Kidal's airport Thursday, after being blocked by a sandstorm. The defence ministry said they would secure the town when the weather cleared.

With the Islamists on the run, rights groups have voiced fears of widespread abuses and reprisals against Tuaregs and Arabs accused of supporting them, after reports of summary executions by Malian troops.

"All sides have committed very serious violations, and we believe that they should be investigated," said Human Rights Watch's Africa director, Tiseke Kasambala.

The European Union joined the United States and France in raising alarm over reprisal attacks against minorities.

- AFP/jc

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iOS bow mixes high and low tech for games, excercise

The Bowblade is like a real bow and arrow, except it uses a trigger hooked up to a touchscreen stylus.

(Credit:
Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Amid the sea of screen covers, phone cases, battery packs and software hawkers at Macworld's iWorld conference there was a strange sight: archery.

No, there weren't actual arrows flying around San Francisco's Moscone Center. Instead, it was people squinting down the crosshairs of a bow hooked up to an
iPod Touch, pulling back the real string in the hopes of nailing virtual targets.

The device is a $185 peripheral, designed by a chiropractor named Ron Green, is called the Bowblade. It's designed as both an exercise tool and gaming rig, though how it works as the latter is a bit questionable.

At its most basic, the device requires users to pull back as if they were using a real bow. But when playing touchscreen games on iOS, of which 35 currently work with the setup, users are actually pulling something akin to a gun trigger that's attached to a rather rudimentary capacitive stylus tip, simulating a finger touch to the screen.

What your finger ends up doing.

(Credit:
Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

With games that make use of the accelerometer and gyroscope, this can actually more closely simulate the feeling of hunting something and enhancing that feeling, though it does little to change the general dynamics of games. That could change if developers make specialty games designed just for it.

Along with the iPhones and iPods, the rig can also be adjusted to work with
Android devices and Nintendo's
Wii. The company is also working to get it on console systems like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

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3 dead in mile-long Detroit freeway pile-up

A section of multi-vehicle accident on Interstate 75 is shown in Detroit, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013. Snow squalls and slippery roads led to a series of accidents that left at least three people dead and 20 injured on a mile-long stretch of southbound I-75. More than two dozen vehicles, including tractor-trailers, were involved in the pileups. / AP Photo/Paul Sancya

DETROIT Snow squalls and slippery roads led to a series of accidents that left at least three people dead and 20 injured on a mile-long stretch of roadway in Detroit on Thursday.

More than two dozen vehicles, including tractor-trailers, were involved in the pileups on Interstate 75.

SUVs with smashed front ends and cars with doors hanging open sat scattered across the debris-littered highway between jackknifed tractor-trailers. Motorists and passengers who were able to a get out of their vehicles huddled together on the side of the road, some visibly distraught, others looking dazed.

A man and woman hugged under the gray, cloud-filled skies, a pair of suitcases next to them and what appeared to be a car bumper on the ground behind them.

Police said two people who died had been traveling in the same car. The injured, including children, were taken to local hospitals.

"We're not sure of the cause," Michigan State Police Lt. Michael Shaw told The Associated Press. "Some witnesses said there were white-out conditions."

A section of multi-vehicle accident on Interstate 75 is shown in Detroit, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013.

/

AP Photo/Paul Sancya

Shaw said many people had to be pulled out of vehicles and that scores of vehicles not involved in crashes were stuck.

Numerous fire engines and ambulances were on the scene, which included smashed and dented vehicles. Shaw said it would be hours before the freeway reopened.

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Ala. Suspect Has Stayed in Bunker for 8 Days

The 5-year-old boy being held hostage by a retired man who allegedly abducted him at gunpoint is in a 6-by-8-foot bunker, where his captor has been known to hold up for eight days, police said.

School bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, tried to prevent the kidnapping Tuesday, but was allegedly shot to death on his bus by Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old former truck driver.

Police Chief James Arrington of Pinckard, Ala., said the bunker, which Dykes built in his backyard, is 4 feet underground and has a 60-foot plastic pipe coming out of it. Dykes has been communicating with police through the pipe.

"He will have to give up sooner or later because [authorities] are not leaving," Arrington said. "It's pretty small, but he's been known to stay in there eight days."

Worst Hostage Crises: Some of the World's Worst Situations

Dykes is known to hold anti-government views, Arrington said.
"He's against the government, starting with Obama on down," he said.

Mickey Welsh/Montgomery Advertiser/AP

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Dykes' property is in Pinckard's police jurisdiction in Dale County. Arrington said that authorities have had trouble with Dykes in the past.

"I never had any problem with him before," he said."The county has, but not me."

Dykes boarded the bus Tuesday and said he wanted two boys, 6 to 8 years old. As the children piled to the back of the bus, Dykes allegedly shot Poland four times, then grabbed the child at random and fled, the AP reported.

Now all attention in the community near Midland City, Ala., is on the boy's safety. The police have not identified the boy, whom Dykes has allowed to watch TV and receive medication sent from home, according to state Rep. Steve Clouse.

The boy's mother is secluded at the scene with law enforcement, according to ABC-affiliated station WDHN-TV.

Police say Dykes likely has enough food and supplies to remain underground for weeks. It is unclear whether he has made any demands from the bunker-style shelter on his property.

The young hostage is a child with autism.

Multiple agencies have responded to the hostage situation, Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said. The FBI has assumed the lead in the investigation, and SWAT teams were surrounding the bunker as of Tuesday night.

Former FBI lead hostage negotiator Chris Voss said authorities must proceed with caution.

"You make contact as quickly as you can, but also as gently as you can," he said. "You don't try to be assertive; you don't try to be aggressive."

Voss said patience is important in delicate situations such as this.

"The more patient approach they take, the less likely they are to make mistakes," he said. "They need to move slowly to get it right, to communicate properly and slowly and gently unravel this."

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Syria protests over Israel attack, warns of "surprise"

BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - Syria protested to the United Nations on Thursday over an Israeli air strike on its territory and warned of a possible "surprise" response.

The foreign ministry summoned the head of the U.N. force in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to deliver the protest a day after Israel hit what Syria said was a military research centre and diplomats said was a weapons convoy heading for Lebanon.

"Syria holds Israel and those who protect it in the Security Council fully responsible for the results of this aggression and affirms its right to defend itself, its land and sovereignty," Syrian television quoted it as saying.

The ministry said it considered Wednesday's Israeli attack to be a violation of a 1974 military disengagement agreement which followed their last major war, and demanded the U.N. Security Council condemn it unequivocally.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "grave concern". "The Secretary-General calls on all concerned to prevent tensions or their escalation," his office said, adding that international law and sovereignty should be respected.

Israel has maintained total silence over the attack, as it did in 2007 when it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear site - an attack which passed without Syrian military retaliation.

In Beirut on Thursday Syria's ambassador said Damascus could take "a surprise decision to respond to the aggression of the Israeli warplanes". He gave no details but said Syria was "defending its sovereignty and its land".

Diplomats, Syrian rebels and security sources said Israeli jets bombed a convoy near the Lebanese border on Wednesday, apparently hitting weapons destined for Hezbollah. Syria denied the reports, saying the target was a military research centre northwest of Damascus and 8 miles from the border.

Hezbollah, which has supported Assad as he battles an armed uprising in which 60,000 people have been killed, said Israel was trying to thwart Arab military power and vowed to stand by its ally.

"Hezbollah expresses its full solidarity with Syria's leadership, army and people," said the group which fought an inconclusive 34-day war with Israel in 2006.

Russia, which has blocked Western efforts to put pressure on Syria at the United Nations, said any Israeli air strike would amount to unacceptable military interference.

"If this information is confirmed, we are dealing with unprovoked attacks on targets on the territory of a sovereign country, which blatantly violates the U.N. Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motives," Russia's foreign ministry said.

Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdullahian said the attack "demonstrates the shared goals of terrorists and the Zionist regime", Fars news agency reported. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad portrays the rebels fighting him as foreign-backed, Islamist terrorists, with the same agenda as Israel.

An aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday Iran would consider any attack on Syria as an attack on itself.

In battle-torn Damascus, residents doubted Syria would fight back. One mother of five said she had heard retaliation would come later. "They always say that. They'll retaliate, but later, not now. Always later," she said, and laughed.

"The last thing we need now is Israeli fighter jets to add to our daily routine. As if we don't have enough noise and firing keeping us awake at night."

BLASTS SHOOK DISTRICT

Details of Wednesday's strike remain sketchy and, in parts, contradictory. Syria said Israeli warplanes, flying low to avoid detection by radar, crossed into its airspace from Lebanon and struck the Jamraya military research centre.

But the diplomats and rebels said the jets hit a weapons convoy heading from Syria to Lebanon and the rebels said they - not Israel - attacked Jamraya with mortars.

One former Western envoy to Damascus said the discrepancy between the accounts might be explained by Jamraya's proximity to the border and the fact that Israeli jets hit vehicles inside the complex as well as a building.

The force of the dawn attack shook the ground, waking nearby residents from their slumber with up to a dozen blasts, two sources in the area said.

"We were sleeping. Then we started hearing rockets hitting the complex and the ground started shaking and we ran into the basement," said a woman who lives adjacent to the Jamraya site.

The resident, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity over the strike, said she could not tell whether the explosions which woke her were the result of an aerial attack.

Another source who has a relative working inside Jamraya said a building inside the complex had been cordoned off and flames were seen rising from the area after the attack.

"It appears that there were about a dozen rockets that appeared to hit one building in the complex," the source, who also asked not to be identified, told Reuters. "The facility is closed today."

Israeli newspapers quoted foreign media on Thursday for reports on the attack. Journalists in Israel are required to submit articles on security and military issues to the censor, which has the power to block any publication of material it deems could compromise state security.

Syrian state television said two people were killed in the raid on Jamraya, which lies in the 25-km (15-mile) strip between Damascus and the Lebanese border. It described it as a scientific research centre "aimed at raising the level of resistance and self-defense".

Diplomatic sources from three countries told Reuters that chemical weapons were believed to be stored at Jamraya, and that it was possible that the convoy was near the large site when it came under attack. However, there was no suggestion that the vehicles themselves had been carrying chemical weapons.

"The target was a truck loaded with weapons, heading from Syria to Lebanon," said one Western diplomat, echoing others who said the convoy's load may have included anti-aircraft missiles or long-range rockets.

The raid followed warnings from Israel that it was ready to act to prevent the revolt against Assad leading to Syria's chemical weapons and modern rockets reaching either his Hezbollah allies or his Islamist enemies.

A regional security source said Israel's target was weaponry given by Assad's military to fellow Iranian ally Hezbollah.

Such a strike or strikes would fit Israel's policy of pre-emptive covert and overt action to curb Hezbollah and does not necessarily indicate a major escalation of the war in Syria. It does, however, indicate how the erosion of the Assad family's rule after 42 years is seen by Israel as posing a threat.

Israel this week echoed concerns in the United States about Syrian chemical weapons, but its officials say a more immediate worry is that the civil war could see weapons that are capable of denting its massive superiority in airpower and tanks reaching Hezbollah; the group fought Israel in 2006 and remains a more pressing threat than its Syrian and Iranian sponsors.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny and Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow and Marcus George in Dubai; editing by David Stamp and Philippa Fletcher)

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Germany drafts law on banking separation

BERLIN: Germany aims to introduce legislation on banking separation in order to protect customers' deposits from riskier areas of business, according to a draft law seen by AFP on Wednesday.

The government wants the law to come into effect in January 2014 and banks' activities to be separated by July 2015.

It will only apply to institutions with balances sheets over 1.0 billion euros or with risky positions worth 20 pe rcent of the balance sheet value, according to the law.

The rules would affect Germany's two biggest banks, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, as well as regional banking giant Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg (LBBW).

Banking separation is an idea floated by the head of the Finnish central bank and European Central Bank governing council member Erkki Liikanen as a measure for reducing risk in the banking sector.

But one of Deutsche Bank's co-chief executives, Anshu Jain, has repeatedly slammed the idea, saying it would "greatly harm the German economy and German companies."

He argues that if Deutsche Bank can no longer use deposits to refinance its activities in investment banking, the refinancing costs would automatically rise and that would narrow the financing possibilities of major companies.

At the same time, banks with high deposits would find it difficult to find attractive investments for customers, Jain said.

- AFP/jc

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Official Stratego game debuts for iPad

Stratego for iPad lets you play against the computer or any number of online opponents, including those on the Web and Facebook.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET)

Remember Stratego? It's the classic capture-the-flag boardgame. And it's now available for iPad.

Why just
iPad? I'm not entirely sure. Granted, the board would be cramped on an iPhone or
iPod Touch screen, but I've seen plenty of other games work around that. (Monopoly, anyone?)

That curiosity aside, Stratego for iPad does a fine job recreating the original while adding some welcome digital touches. For starters, you can create and save multiple board setups (i.e., troop deployments), a huge time-saver and a great way to test how various deployments work against your opponents.

And speaking of opponents, the app lets you play against a virtually unlimited supply of other humans, be they on Facebook, the Web, or another iPad. Yep, the game supports cross-platform play, so you can tackle Facebook friends just as easily as you would your fellow iPad owners.

Of course, Web and Facebook strategists (Stratego-ists?) get to play for free. On the iPad it'll cost you $6.99 for the privilege. That strikes me as a little steep, though it's a good bet it'll be cheaper down the road. (Use an app like Appsfire Deals to track its price.) What's more, you must buy "battle coins" if you want to unlock new avatars, battlefields, and other game content. That would be fine if this were a freemium title, but here it seems a little greedy.

The iPad version requires you to create an account or sign in via Facebook (sorry -- no GameCenter support), even if you want single-player action against the computer. That's insanely annoying, but at least there's a workaround: turn off Wi-Fi (and/or 3G if you have it) before launching the game. If it doesn't detect an Internet connection, it'll let you play offline. Like I said: annoying.

Unfortunately, I saw a lot of this message during testing.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET)

I also found Stratego to be pretty buggy, alternately crashing, producing error messages, or having trouble signing into Facebook. Plus, the AI is what I'd call overly aggressive, as it never forgets the location of your pieces (once revealed) the way a human would. I won't say beating the AI is impossible, but at the very least the game should offer a choice of skill levels.

The good news is that when you're playing against another person, Stratego is just as much fun as you remember. (If you remember it being aggravating, well, it's just as aggravating as you remember. "Who puts a bomb there?!!") I'd consider waiting for the price to drop a few bucks and the bugs to get cleaned up. But if you can't wait, well, I'll see you on the battlefield.

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