Source: www.nytimes.com --- Thursday, December 29, 2011
Some fear that American weapons will strengthen Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki?s apparent efforts to consolidate his power and establish Shiite dominance. ...
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/world/middleeast/us-military-sales-to-iraq-raise-concerns.html
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MUSCATINE, Iowa ? A lot of things stand out about Rick Santorum's dogged bid for the Republican presidential nomination, many that buck conventional political wisdom and are the hallmarks of a campaign on a shoestring budget.
With the Iowa caucuses looming Tuesday, most candidates are rumbling across the state in garishly painted buses with loudspeakers blaring campaign music to announce their presence in usually tranquil Iowa towns. Santorum's vehicle of choice: Chuck Laudner's heavy-duty pickup truck ? licensed in Floyd County ? with the GOP activist at the wheel and aide Matt Beynon working in the back seat.
"People say, `Where's my bus?' and I say this is my bus ? it's a pickup truck," Santorum chuckled during a Cedar Rapids rally.
Iowa's airwaves are filled with TV commercials in the run-up to the caucuses, some relentlessly bashing rivals for sins real or imagined. But Santorum's presence is much more restrained, largely a consequence of the fact that he couldn't afford any until recently.
"You're not hearing a lot of my ads on the air," he concedes.
And yet, his low-key, scaled-down approach appears to be working.
He's seeing a burst of momentum as Iowans give him a long-awaited look in a GOP field that has seen every other contender rise to the top of polls ? at least briefly. But his challenge is significant, and while some surveys show him moving past conservative rivals like Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, those opponents continue to command backing, effectively dividing the votes of social and religious conservatives who hold great sway in Iowa and beyond.
To some extent, Santorum's rise probably can be attributed to a relentless, face-to-face campaign schedule that included holding hundreds of usually small events where he offers his standard pitch and then hangs around to take questions for as long as folks want to pepper him.
"We've done, as of today, 357 town meetings in Iowa," Santorum crows, adding that he didn't just speak to Iowans, but courted them. "We weren't speed-dating."
At those events, he constantly refers to himself as "steady Eddie," or the reliable, solid guy who gets the girl over flashier rivals, and that's exactly the style of his campaign.
His latest town hall-style meeting in Muscatine was in a historic restored restaurant on the banks of the Mississippi River, where he spoke to about 100 people.
Santorum gazed around the room and chuckled.
"We were in this facility a while ago and there weren't this many people," he said. He gestured to a bank of television cameras recording the event and said: "More importantly, there weren't a lot of people with machinery here."
Santorum is betting that the tradition of retail politics in Iowa is still the driving force in the state's political culture, and there is clearly some interest in his campaign. His crowds generally have gotten bigger as his standing in the polls has grown. Undecided voters are turning out to learn about the candidate who all of a sudden is the buzz.
Bob Bahn, a veteran Muscatine activist, has met most of the candidates and is still studying the field. But he had praise for Santorum's commitment to grassroots politics. "Maybe it's paying off now," he said. "Maybe it's Santorum's time now."
Kevin Lilienthal lives in rural Muscatine County and says he's about "90 percent" sure he'll back Santorum, but he adds that he and all the people he knows need to have the deal closed in person.
"I want to hear what their positions are," Lilienthal said. "I want to make an educated decision."
It's far from clear whether the crowds he's drawing are a sign of support.
As Santorum held one event in a downtown Dubuque mall, Gerry Ryan stood around the edges.
"I work here and it's my lunch hour," Ryan said, adding that he had no plans to attend a caucus. "It's just curiosity."
But David Betts of Dubuque, who also hovered nearby as he weighed which candidate to caucus for, said, "I'm open to him," adding that he needed to know "why I should vote for him instead of the others."
If Santorum's campaign is close to the grass roots, it also has an occasional feel of playing it by ear.
After hearing Santorum speak at a town hall in Independence, Ben Lange, a local activist who ran for Congress, joined in and insisted on squiring the candidate around to a local business. In the middle of the day, many people were on the phone and not terribly impressed to have a presidential candidate around.
On Thursday, the campaign scheduled a photo-friendly stop at a candy store in Wilton, only to cancel it. The store, it seems, was closed.
For all the talk of strength, Santorum's campaign tacitly acknowledges a money problem. Aides issued a plea for help after polls showed him gaining ground.
Money will become increasing crucial after Iowa's precinct caucuses, where Santorum had two years to rattle around in a pickup truck and convince activists one by one. There's only a week between Iowa and the New Hampshire primary, and the race turns to South Carolina and Florida later in the January. Much of the contest will be waged on the air in those states.
Santorum is undeterred.
"I'm excited to go to New Hampshire," he told activists in Coralville. "Iowa provides the spark, but there's plenty of timber on the ground that will start burning in those other states."
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BEIRUT (Reuters) ? The anti-government Free Syrian Army has ordered its fighters to stop offensive operations pending a meeting with Arab League delegates monitoring President Bashar al-Assad's compliance with a peace plan, the rebels' commander said on Friday.
Colonel Riad al-Asaad said his forces had so far been unable to talk to the monitors, in the first week of their month-long mission, and he was still trying to contact them urgently.
"I issued an order to stop all operations from the day the committee entered Syria last Friday. All operations against the regime are to be stopped except in a situation of self defense," he told Reuters.
"We have tried to communicate with them and we requested a meeting with the team. So far there hasn't been any success. We haven't been given any of the (phone) numbers for the monitors, which we have requested. No one has contacted us either."
How widely Turkey-based al-Asaad's order is heeded by anti-government gunmen inside Syria is in question. A video shot by rebel fighters this week showed the ambush of a convoy of army buses in which, activists said, four soldiers were killed.
Assad has signed up to an Arab League plan for a verifiable withdrawal of his heavy weaponry and army from turbulent Syrian cities where more than 5,000 people have been killed since March, many shot during peaceful anti-government protests but also many killed in rebel attacks and defense actions.
The Arab League mission has met with strong skepticism from the outset, over its makeup, its small numbers, its reliance on Syrian government logistics and an initial assessment by its Sudanese chief that the situation was "reassuring."
That comment was met with disbelief in the West on Wednesday but on Friday, Syria's ally Russia accepted the judgment.
"Judging by the public statements made by the chief of the mission M. Al-Dabi, who in the first of his visits went to the city of Homs ... the situation seems to be reassuring," the Russian Foreign Ministry said on its website.
Sudan's General Mustafa al-Dabi, who some link to war crimes in Darfur in the 1990s, visited the flashpoint city of Homs briefly on Tuesday and said he saw "nothing frightening."
Activist video from Homs over the months has depicted a trail of death and destruction sowed by the military, with hundreds of killings of civilians reported.
The British Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition activist network, said protests broke out on Friday in several areas of the country, including a large gathering of 70,000 in the Damascus suburb of Douma, where monitors were present.
Pro-Assad demonstrations were also reported.
The Observatory said Syrian forces killed four people, including two defectors, in an ambush in Talkalakh near Lebanon's border.
"Unfortunately, reports show that the violence has continued in Syria over the past few days," Britain's Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, Alistair Burt, said in a statement.
"I urge the Syrian government to meet fully its obligations to the Arab League, including immediately ending the repression and withdrawing security forces from cities. The Syrian government must allow the Arab League mission independent and unrestricted access ..." Burt said.
In Brussels, a spokesperson for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the EU also "urges Syria to comply with the Action plan of the Arab league in all its components" including "an immediate end of violence, the release of political prisoners, pulling the military out of cities."
PARTNER FOR PEACE?
The FSA, formed by thousands of defectors from Assad's military and security forces and financed by expatriate Syrians, has gone on the offensive in the past three months, taking the fight to the state rather than simply trying to defend opposition strongholds.
Its decisions are potentially crucial to any peace plan.
"Some of (our) soldiers inside Syria are trying to reach out to them but so far it doesn't seem the committee members have been given enough freedom of movement so that the soldiers can meet them. The monitors are escorted by some members of Syrian security. Our defectors if found can be arrested and even executed ..." Colonel al-Asaad said.
He said about 1,500 of his men were in custody and out of reach. He wanted to know their fate.
The monitoring teams have encountered a range of problems, from hostility when they turn up under army escort, to random gunfire and communications breakdowns.
Friday could prove another testing days as opponents of Assad take to the streets following Muslim prayers, the main day of protest in the revolts that have swept the Arab world.
In the northern city of Idlib, activists said the army had moved its armor out of sight.
"Security forces have moved some of their tanks out of the neighborhood streets and have put them behind buildings further out," said Manhal of the local coordination committee. "They have also moved the tanks out of main streets. Some of them they moved into dugouts."
The Arab League mission has so far failed to end Syria's nine-month orgy of violence in response to demands for Assad to step down, although it was never advertised as a peacekeeping mission as such.
Government security forces shot dead 25 people on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. They opened fire on protests in cities around the country, also wounding about 100 people.
Activists contacted by telephone said they had little hope the Arab League monitors would protect them but they still aimed to bring people out into the streets after Friday prayers.
"We know that just because they are here, it doesn't mean the bloodshed will stop. But at least they will see it," said one activist in Hama, who was unwilling to give his name.
An Arab League member from a Gulf State played down expectations for the mission.
Even if its report turns out to be negative it would not "act as a bridge to foreign intervention" but simply indicate that "the Syrian government has not implemented the Arab initiative," the delegate told Reuters.
"The delegation is not meant to search or inspect anything other than this. It is not a fact-finding mission or an investigative committee ... The commission is meant to tell the League if Syria has committed to withdrawing its military from cities and to check if those who were detained during recent events have been released, and if Arab and international media are able to report on the situation freely or not."
Syria says it is fighting Islamist militants steered from abroad who have killed more than 2,000 of its security forces personnel. Activist sources do not dispute that there has been a significant toll among the security forces.
Most foreign journalists, including Reuters correspondents, are banned from the country, making it impossible to verify the reports on the ground.
(Additional reporting by Thomas Grove in Moscow, Ayman Samir in Cairo, Justyna Pawlak in Brussels and Stephen Addison in London. Writing by Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Giles Elgood)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111230/wl_nm/us_syria
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News For XLE From The Last 14 Days Check below for free stories on XLE the last two weeks.
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The India Meteorological Department said Friday morning that Thane is centered in the Indian Ocean, 22 miles (35 kilometers) southwest of the town of Pondicherry, also known as Pudducherry.
The weather office said it was likely the storm would weaken and move westwards.
It warns of heavy rains and winds of speeds reaching 70 miles (110 kilometers) an hour until noon Friday before slowing down.
The seas are expected to be very rough along the coast of Pondicherry and its neighboring areas of southern Andhra Pradesh and the northern coast of Tamil Nadu. Fishermen have been warned not to venture out.
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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Afghanistan's government signed a deal Wednesday with China's state-owned National Petroleum Corporation, allowing it to become the first foreign company to exploit the country's oil and natural gas reserves.
The contract, which covers the northeastern provinces of Sari Pul and Faryab, is the first of several such blocks to be put on the market in coming months, Afghan Minister of Mines Wahidullah Shahrani said during the signing ceremony.
Bidding information for blocks in neighboring Balkh province will be released at the end of February, and for the western Herat province by next summer, he said.
Afghanistan has been seeking to find ways to exploit some of its mineral wealth to offset the loss of revenues when foreign aid and spending drops when international combat troops leave by the end of 2014. The government has been keen to develop an oil-extraction and refining capability for the landlocked nation, which is entirely reliant on fuel imports from neighboring Iran and Central Asian nations.
"This will bring enormous financial benefits to the government," Shahrani said. "It will be an important step toward self-sufficiency."
The ministry listed the initial value of the project with CNPC as $700 million. But the total could be ten times greater if more reserves are found and developed, and if international oil prices remain at today's levels, Shahrani said.
The fuel pact allows the Chinese firm to research oil and natural gas blocks in Sari Pul and Faryab, an area known as the Amu Darya River Basin that was first explored by Soviet engineers in the 1960s. The Soviets estimated the reserves at about 87 million barrels, but both the Afghan and Chinese partners believe they will prove to be much larger.
CNPC will also build a refinery ? Afghanistan's first ? within the next three years, after the real size of the reserves is established with greater accuracy, said Lu Gong Xun, president of CNPC's international branch.
Shahrani said the deal calls for the Afghan government to receive 70 percent of the profits from the sale of the oil and natural gas. CNPC will also pay 15 percent in royalties, as well as corporate taxes and rent for the land used for its operations.
Afghanistan's army and police will set up special units to guard the project, Shahrani said.
The provinces of Sari Pul and Faryab are located hundreds of miles from the centers of fighting in the east and southeast and are considered relatively safe. As a result, the U.S.-led NATO force has already transferred or is turning over responsibility for security in large parts of the region to the Afghan army and police.
Surveys conducted by the Soviets have shown that Afghanistan sits on vast mineral wealth. Afghan and foreign companies already have shown interest, notably in its untapped copper, iron and oil deposits. But with poor infrastructure and security problems stemming from the 10-year war, most Western mining companies have shied away from firm commitments.
So far, companies from China ? with which Afghanistan shares a small stretch of border in its east ? have been in the forefront of investments in the nation.
Three years ago the China Metallurgical Construction Co. signed a contract to develop the Aynak copper mine in Logar province. Beijing's $3.5 billion stake in the mine is the largest foreign investment in Afghanistan so far.
The U.S. Defense Department has put a $1 trillion price tag on Afghanistan's mineral reserves. Other estimates have pegged it at $3 trillion or more.
But the potential windfall for the landlocked country will require international investment, a better transportation network and much improved security.
"This government must stand on its feet," said Mustafa Zahir, the head of the government's environment agency. "Without using our natural resources we cannot achieve this."
___
Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.
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NEW YORK ? Drug companies are working to develop a pure, more powerful version of the nation's second most-abused medicine, which has addiction experts worried that it could spur a new wave of abuse.
The new pills contain the highly addictive painkiller hydrocodone, packing up to 10 times the amount of the drug as existing medications such as Vicodin. Four companies have begun patient testing, and one of them ? Zogenix of San Diego ? plans to apply early next year to begin marketing its product, Zohydro.
If approved, it would mark the first time patients could legally buy pure hydrocodone. Existing products combine the drug with nonaddictive painkillers such as acetaminophen.
Critics say they are especially worried about Zohydro, a timed-release drug meant for managing moderate to severe pain, because abusers could crush it to release an intense, immediate high.
"I have a big concern that this could be the next OxyContin," said April Rovero, president of the National Coalition Against Prescription Drug Abuse. "We just don't need this on the market."
OxyContin, introduced in 1995 by Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., was designed to manage pain with a formula that dribbled one dose of oxycodone over many hours.
Abusers quickly discovered they could defeat the timed-release feature by crushing the pills. Purdue Pharma changed the formula to make OxyContin more tamper-resistant, but addicts have moved onto generic oxycodone and other drugs that do not have a timed-release feature.
Oxycodone is now the most-abused medicine in the United States, with hydrocodone second, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration's annual count of drug seizures sent to police drug labs for analysis.
The latest drug tests come as more pharmaceutical companies are getting into the $10 billion-a-year legal market for powerful ? and addictive ? opiate narcotics.
"It's like the wild west," said Peter Jackson, co-founder of Advocates for the Reform of Prescription Opioids. "The whole supply-side system is set up to perpetuate this massive unloading of opioid narcotics on the American public."
The pharmaceutical firms say the new hydrocodone drugs give doctors another tool to try on patients in legitimate pain, part of a constant search for better painkillers to treat the aging U.S. population.
"Sometimes you circulate a patient between various opioids, and some may have a better effect than others," said Karsten Lindhardt, chief executive of Denmark-based Egalet, which is testing its own pure hydrocodone product.
The companies say a pure hydrocodone pill would avoid liver problems linked to high doses of acetaminophen, an ingredient in products like Vicodin. They also say patients will be more closely supervised because, by law, they will have to return to their doctors each time they need more pills. Prescriptions for the weaker, hydrocodone-acetaminophen products now on the market can be refilled up to five times.
Zogenix has completed three rounds of patient testing, and last week it announced it had held a final meeting with Food and Drug Administration officials to talk about its upcoming drug application. It plans to file the application in early 2012 and have Zohydro on the market by early 2013.
Purdue Pharma and Cephalon, a Frazer, Pa.-based unit of Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals, are conducting late-stage trials of their own hydrocodone drugs, according to documents filed with federal regulators. In May, Purdue Pharma received a patent applying extended-release technology to hydrocodone. Neither company would comment on its plans.
Meanwhile, Egalet has finished the most preliminary stages of testing aimed at determining the basic safety of a drug. The firm could have a product on the market as early as 2015 but wants to see how the other companies fare with the FDA before deciding whether to move forward, Lindhardt said.
Critics say they are troubled because of the dark side that has accompanied the boom in sales of narcotic painkillers: Murders, pharmacy robberies and millions of dollars lost by hospitals that must treat overdose victims.
Thousands of legitimate pain patients are becoming addicted to powerful prescription painkillers, they say, in addition to the thousands more who abuse the drugs.
Prescription painkillers led to the deaths of almost 15,000 people in 2008, more than triple the 4,000 deaths in 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last month.
Emergency room visits related to hydrocodone abuse have shot from 19,221 in 2000 to 86,258 in 2009, according to data compiled by the Drug Enforcement Administration. In Florida alone, hydrocodone caused 910 deaths and contributed to 1,803 others between 2003 and 2007.
Hydrocodone belongs to family of drugs known as opiates or opioids because they are chemically similar to opium. They include morphine, heroin, oxycodone, codeine, methadone and hydromorphone.
Opiates block pain but also unleash intense feelings of well-being and can create physical dependence. The withdrawal symptoms are also intense, with users complaining of cramps, diarrhea, muddled thinking, nausea and vomiting.
After a while, opiates stop working, forcing users to take stronger doses or to try slightly different chemicals.
"You've got a person on your product for life, and a doctor's got a patient who's never going to miss an appointment, because if they did and they didn't get their prescription, they would feel very sick," said Andrew Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. "It's a terrific business model, and that's what these companies want to get in on."
Under pressure from the government, Purdue Pharma last year debuted a new OxyContin pill formula that "squishes" instead of crumbling when someone tries to crush it.
But Zogenix, whose drug is time-released but crushable, says there is not enough evidence to show that such tamper-resistant reformulations thwart abuse.
"Provided sufficient effort, all formulations currently available can be overcome," Zogenix said in a written response to questions by The Associated Press.
At a conference for investors New York on Nov. 29, Zogenix chief executive Roger Hawley said the FDA was not pressuring Zogenix to put an abuse deterrent in Zohydro.
"We would certainly consider later launching an abuse-deterrent form, but right now we believe the priority of safer hydrocodone ? that is, without acetaminophen ? is a key priority for the FDA," Hawley said.
FDA spokeswoman Erica Jefferson said the agency would not comment on its discussions with drug companies, citing the need to protect trade secrets.
Drug control advocates say they're worried the U.S. government is too lax about controlling addictive pain medications. The United States consumes 99 percent of the world's hydrocodone and 83 percent of its oxycodone, according to a 2008 study by the International Narcotics Control Board.
One 41-year-old loophole in particular has fed the current problem with hydrocodone abuse, critics say. The federal Controlled Substances Act, passed in 1970, puts fewer controls on combination pills containing hydrocodone and another painkiller than it does on the equivalent oxycodone products.
A Vicodin prescription can be refilled five times, for example, while a Percocet prescription can only be filled once.
The Drug Enforcement Administration and Food and Drug Administration have been studying whether to close this loophole since 1999 but have made no decision. Congress is now considering a bill that would force the agencies to tighten the controls.
"This is a problem that is fundamentally an oversupply problem," said Jackson, the drug-control advocate. "The FDA has kind of opened the floodgates, and they refuse to recognize the mistakes made in the past."
Pure hydrocodone falls into the stricter drug-control category than hydrocodone-acetaminophen medications, meaning patients would have to go to their doctors for a new prescription each time they needed more pills. But Jackson said that's no guarantee against abuse, noting that dozens of unscrupulous doctors have been caught churning out prescriptions in so-called "pill mills."
The Drug Enforcement Administration, which enforces controls on medicines along with the FDA, said it could not comment on drugs that have not yet been approved for sale.
However, Zogenix has acknowledged the abuse issue could become a liability.
"Illicit use and abuse of hydrocodone is well documented," it said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in September. "Thus, the regulatory approval process and the marketing of Zohydro may generate public controversy that may adversely affect regulatory approval and market acceptance of Zohydro."
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In a series of interviews about head injuries with The Associated Press over the last two weeks, 23 of 44 NFL players ? slightly more than half ? said they would try to conceal a possible
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Source: www.donanimhaber.com --- Saturday, December 24, 2011
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DES MOINES, Iowa ? An Iowa caucus campaign that has cycled through several Republican presidential front-runners entered its final week Monday, as unpredictable as the day conservatives began competing to emerge as Mitt Romney's chief rival.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, released a new television commercial for the state in which he cited a "moral imperative for America to stop spending more money than we take in. It's killing jobs," he said.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry countered with an advertisement that said four of his rivals combined ? none of them Romney ? have served 63 years in Congress, "leaving us with debt, earmarks and bailouts."
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who has invested more time in Iowa than any other contender, countered that "most Americans now believe that a little bit of experience going into a job like president is probably a good thing."
Santorum was the only presidential candidate in the state during the day.
That changes Tuesday, with bus tours planned by Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, all eager to energize their existing supporters and attract new ones.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul arrives Wednesday. Recent polls suggest he is peaking as caucus day approaches, a rise that has him tied with Romney or even ahead, and drawing more scrutiny for his views.
The result figures to be a short but intense stretch of campaigning through small towns and even smaller towns, the sort of one-on-one politicking that has largely vanished in the electronic age.
Failing that, it will pay tribute to the types of cuisine that prosper in early 21st century America.
The Perry bus will belly up to Doughy Joey's in Waterloo and to the Fainting Goat in Waverly, an establishment whose website says "After 10 p.m., we are the type of place your mothers warned you about." Perry also will visit a vineyard and winery in Carroll.
Bachmann will make an early-winter stop at a Dairy Queen, as well as Pizza Ranch establishments in Harlan, Red Oak and Atlantic, three localities with a combined population of 17,282.
It's not all about the food, though.
Perry has a stop arranged at the Glenn Miller Museum in Clarinda, population 5,301, where the great bandleader was born.
The Texas governor also has a distinction that none of his rivals can boast, a town that shares his name. Thus, Perry will visit Perry.
There were signs of strategic shifts as candidates struggled to stand out in advance of the straw poll next week that inaugurates the round of primaries and caucuses that will pick a nominee to oppose President Barack Obama next fall.
Perry's new ad shows images of Gingrich, Paul, Santorum and Bachmann as it criticizes Congress and renews the governor's call for halving lawmakers' pay and time spent in Washington.
Despite the commercial's implication, Gingrich and Santorum were out of Congress when the multibillion-dollar financial bailouts of 2008 occurred. Paul and Bachmann voted against the legislation.
Still, the approach taken suggests the Texas governor is more concerned with outpacing Paul, Bachmann, Santorum and Gingrich on caucus night that he is in defeating Romney.
The former Massachusetts governor, making his second try for the White House, has a well-funded and well-organized campaign nationally and in Iowa, as well as allies who are spending heavily on television advertisements through an independent organization known as a super PAC.
While others have periodically risen to challenge him, Romney has kept his support from seriously eroding in the polls, consistently remaining near the top.
A victory in Iowa does not necessarily translate into the Republican presidential nomination. Yet history suggests that contenders who finish farthest behind next week will quickly drop out, underscoring the significance of the struggle to emerge as Romney's chief rival.
The most recent presidential hopeful to surge and then falter is Gingrich. The former House speaker's campaign imploded last summer and still shows the after-effects: a shortage of funds to counter attack ads in Iowa, and failure to qualify for the primary in Virginia in March.
After insisting he would run a purely positive campaign, Gingrich let it be known he was about to attack Romney on one of his presumed areas of strength, his economic proposals.
R.C. Hammond, a spokesman for Gingrich, said the candidate would make the case that Romney has advanced "very timid ideas that will do little to get people back to work."
Gingrich favors an end to taxes on investment income and dividends, while Romney wants to end them only for individuals with incomes of $200,000 or less.
Gingrich also has proposed an optional 15 percent flat tax on income. Under the plan, taxpayers could stay in the current system, which has a top tax rate of 35 percent on taxable income above $379,150, or switch to the new flat rate, which would apply to income at all levels.
Romney favors retaining the current graduated income tax system, with lower rates than currently exist.
Gingrich is at least the fourth front-runner to falter since the campaign began in earnest in Iowa earlier this year.
Bachmann, who won a straw poll at the Iowa State Fair last summer, was briefly atop polls in the state. So, too Herman Cain, who subsequently suspended his campaign after a woman claimed she and Cain had a long-term extramarital affair.
Perry also soared to the top of the surveys when he entered the race last summer, then fell after a string of subpar debate performances.
Santorum has yet to experience the type of sudden surge that others in the race enjoyed but has doggedly campaigned in all 99 of the state's counties in hopes of rallying social conservatives to his side.
___
Associated Press writer Philip Elliott contributed to this report.
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l la VERACRUZ, Mexico ? A group of gunmen attacked three passenger buses in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Veracruz on Thursday, killing seven passengers in what authorities said appeared to be a violent robbery spree.
The Defense Department said in a statement that soldiers chased the five assailants and returned fire whey they were "attacked," killing all of the gunmen.
The army said the gunmen, who were carrying rifles, started the attacks in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, killing three people who were loading vegetables into a truck in the town of El Higo, in northern Veracruz. In the same town, they tossed a grenade that killed another person.
Later, the gunmen went to a nearby highway, stopped and robbed a bus and killed two of the passengers aboard, according to the army statement.
They later stopped another bus and sprayed it with gunfire, killing four passengers. When the driver of a third bus stopped and got off to see what was happening, they killed him too.
Veracruz state government spokeswoman Gina Dominguez said that while the gunmen's identities and cartel affiliation have not yet been established, the men killed match witness descriptions of the assailants in the bus attacks, Dominguez said.
The bloody pre-Christmas bus shootings brought up memories of the brutal murder of dozens of bus passengers whose bodies were found in mass graves in the neighboring state of Tamaulipas in April. A total of 193 bodies had been found in 26 graves, and officials say most of those were Mexican migrants heading to the United States who were kidnapped off buses and killed by the Zetas drug cartel.
In the Tamaulipas killings, the Zetas gunmen stopped and boarded buses and removed male passengers and killed them, either because they believed a rival gang was trying to send reinforcements into the region aboard buses or because they wanted to force some of the passengers to join their gang.
The buses attacked Thursday were covering local routes in northern Veracruz, though authorities did not release the names of the bus lines operating the route.
There was no immediate information on the identity of the dead bus passengers, or the four people killed in El Higo.
The area has been the scene of bloody battles between the Zetas and their former allies, the Gulf cartel.
The two gangs split in 2010.
The U.S. Consulate General in Matamoros, a Mexican border city north of where the attacks occurred, said in a statement that "several vehicles," including the buses, were attacked, but did not specify what the other vehicles were.
The consulate urged Americans to "exercise caution" when traveling in Veracruz, and "avoid intercity road travel at night."
While the specific area where the Thursday attacks occurred is not frequented by foreign travelers, it adjoins an area to the west known as The Huasteca that is popular among Mexican tourists and some foreigners.
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?AFRICA FASHION WEEK LONDON 2nd EDITION: FRIDAY 3rd & SATURDAY 4TH AUGUST 2012 AT LONDON?S OLDEST & ONE OF ITS FINEST MARKET HALLS, SPITAFIELDS.
Africa Fashion Week London (AFWL) kicked of f to a flamboyant star t for i ts debut launch in London during August 2011. With an impressive turnout of over 4,700 attendees, the 2-day extravaganza created an unprecedented plat form for over 50 international designers to showcase their collections.
Glowing press reviews and high attendance figures in 2011 have boosted AFWL?s profile and now led to captivate a wider international audience in 2012, benefiting of an estimated 7 mi l l ion London visitors set to be in the capital for the Olympics. AFWL pledges to continue offering equal opportunities & exposure to designers from all backgrounds whom are inspired by African designs, prints & textiles.
Offering cutting edge fashion, interiors, original artworks as well as food, Spital fields Market, winner of the 2007 Best New Open Space, is surrounded by independent shops, cafes, bars and awarding winning restaurants such as Canteen,Galvin La Chapel l and Giraffe to name a few. With a capacity of over 10,000 visitors, Spitafields wil l offer Africa.
Fashion Week London (AFWL) the perfect location for a 2 day display of Fashion, Art,Music & Food.?
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