LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“There is no such agreement, we are not even thinking about this matter.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov,
saying the notion that his country might grant Syrian
President Bashar Assad asylum was a rumor started to make Russia look bad Article, 1A
India pledges to aid survivors of riots
GAUHATI, India - India’s prime minister promised Saturday to help hundreds of thousands of survivors of ethnic rioting in the country’s remote northeast that killed at least 53 people.
Manmohan Singh flew to Kokrajhar district, one of the worst affected by the clashes between ethnic Bodos and Muslim settlers in Assam state, and met with people in two relief camps in the area’s main city.
Singh called the fighting “a blot” on the country and promised the families of those killed $3,600 in compensation.
The recent killing of four Bodo men recently sparked the violence. While the rioting is now mostly under control, thousands of troops continue to patrol the districts of Kokrajhar, Dibrugarh and Chirang. Night curfews are also in place in several areas.
The fighting forced about 400,000 people to flee their homes in western Assam. Thousands of wood and thatch houses have been razed.
The government has set up about 270 camps to house the survivors.
The clashes between Bodos and the Muslim settlers, who mostly came from the former East Pakistan before it became Bangladesh in 1971, mainly involve land rights. The two groups have clashed repeatedly over the years but the recent violence is the worst since the mid-1990s.
Bodies of 2 missing U.S. climbers found
LIMA, Peru - Searchers have found the bodies of two U.S. mountaineers who died on their way down from a glacier-capped Peruvian peak in mid-July.
Rescue coordinator Ted Alexander said a three-man team found the bodies of Gil Weiss, 29, and Ben Horne, 32, on Palcaraju in the Cordillera Blanca range on Saturday.
He said they died in a fall off a ridge after summiting the 20,000-foot west peak.
Alexander estimated that the men fell 1,000 feet.
He said it should not be too difficult to remove the bodies of Weiss, of Queens, N.Y., and Horne, of Annandale, Va., and that can hopefully be done today.
Berlin cool to talk of Spain aid request
BERLIN - Germany’s finance minister is rejecting talk of a possible application from Spain for the eurozone’s bailout fund to buy the struggling country’s bonds, a newspaper reported Saturday.
Last week, European Central Bank head Mario Draghi promised to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro. The German and French leaders then said that they were “determined to do everything to protect the eurozone.”
Neither mentioned any specific action. But those comments raised expectations that the European Central Bank - or the eurozone’s temporary rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility - might step in to buy Spanish government bonds and lower the country’s borrowing costs, which have been at worrisome high levels in recent weeks.
Still, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was quoted as telling the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that Spain’s short-term financing needs are “not so big.”
Asked about talk that Spain could soon make an application for the eurozone rescue fund to buy bonds, he replied: “There is nothing to this speculation.”
Spanish officials have been adamant that the country, the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy, will not seek a full-scale bailout along the lines of those given to Portugal and Ireland as it battles a persistent recession.
Troubled U.S. F-22 jets arrive in Japan
TOKYO - A group of U.S. F-22 stealth fighters arrived in Japan on Saturday in what the Air Force hopes will be a step toward proving that its prized aircraft are safe after a mysterious oxygen problem that was making pilots sick.
The F-22s arrived at Kadena Air Base from the United States and were expected to remain on the base, on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa, for several months. Japanese media said eight of the aircraft had arrived by Saturday evening. Another four were expected to arrive later. Base officials were not immediately available for comment.
The F-22, manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp., is the Air Force’s most advanced stealth fighter. It was built to evade radar and is capable of flying at faster-than-sound speeds without using afterburners.
But the fleet has been under tight flight restrictions since mid-May because pilots were reporting dizziness and other symptoms of hypoxia.
The Air Force says the deployment to Japan is a first step toward returning to normal. Before they left, the Air Force said the aircraft would take a special route to ensure they had possible landing sites along the way and would fly at lower altitudes, where the cockpit oxygen issue is less problematic.
Front Section, Pages 10 on 07/29/2012