International News

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - Accused Fort Hood gunman Major Nidal Hasan will ask a U.S. military court on Wednesday to rule he can represent himself at his trial this summer which could bring the death penalty on charges he killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting rampage.

Jury selection in Hasan's military trial at Fort Hood was delayed until next week after he asked the judge, Colonel Tara Osborn, to let him fire his lawyers and represent himself. The trial is scheduled to start July 1.

Hasan is accused of opening fire on a group of soldiers who were preparing to deploy to Iraq in November 2009 in the worst shooting rampage on a U.S. military post. In addition to the 13 people who died, 32 others were wounded.

Two civilian Fort Hood police officers shot Hasan, ending the rampage and leaving the Army psychiatrist paralyzed from the chest down. He faces a possible death sentence if convicted of premeditated murder.

Osborn has little choice but to grant Hasan's request to represent himself under U.S. law, which could pose problems for prosecutors and create more avenues for appeal, the military law experts said. She is likely to appoint lawyers to assist Hasan.

"It is going to prolong everything and will make everything more difficult, all throughout the process," said Victor M. Hansen, a professor at the New England School of Law in Boston and a former Army defense attorney.

Military law experts said the move could make Hasan's court martial more challenging for prosecutors and painful for witnesses who may be questioned by the man accused of wounding them, or killing their family members.

"It is hard enough for the victim of an attempted murder or the family member of someone who has been murdered, to come into a courtroom and sit across the room from a man who they are convinced did this," said Geoffrey Corn, a retired lieutenant colonel and veteran Army prosecutor.

Osborn has sought to get the trial on track after delays caused by a debate over whether Hasan, who is a Muslim, should be required to shave his beard to comply with military rules. Osborn set the issue aside and Hasan has continued to appear in court with a full beard.

Hasan has indicated a willingness to plead guilty to the charges if prosecutors drop the death penalty. Under military law, he cannot plead guilty to a death penalty case.

Hasan has said little about what motivated the shootings, but an FBI-commissioned report in 2012 said he had exchanged emails with militant Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in the year before the attack, and witnesses said they heard him shout in Arabic "God is greatest" just before opening fire at Fort Hood.

Awlaki, a U.S. citizen born in New Mexico, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

(Editing by David Bailey, Cynthia Johnston and Andrew Hay)

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) A Chechen immigrant shot to death in central Florida after an altercation with an FBI agent had several ties to that of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects who authorities were questioning him about at the time.

Ibragim Todashev's Chechen roots and mixed martial arts background mirror that of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston bombing suspect killed in a shootout with police last month. The two also had lived in the Boston area.

Todashev, a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter, was fatally shot by authorities early Wednesday at his Orlando home during a meeting with the agent and two Massachusetts state troopers, authorities said. The agent was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.

Three law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Todashev had lunged at the FBI agent with a knife. However, two of those officials said later in the day it was no longer clear what had happened. The third official had not received any new information.

The FBI gave no details on why it was interested in Todashev except to say that he was being questioned as part of the Boston investigation. However, two officials briefed on the investigation said he had implicated himself as having been involved in a 2011 triple-slaying in a Boston suburb that authorities believe may have been connected to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old Boston bombing suspect killed in a shootout with police days after the April 15 terrorist attack.

Public records show that Todashev resided in nearby Watertown, Mass. last year.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's younger brother, Dzhokhar, survived the shootout with police and is now charged with carrying out the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 in downtown Boston. He is also charged in the slaying of an MIT police officer days later.

Several of Todashev's former roommates who were questioned by the FBI said he knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an aspiring boxer, from mixed martial arts fighting in Boston and that the FBI was asking about him.

"He's a regular guy, nothing wrong," Saeed Dunkaev said of Todashev.

Todashev had lived on and off with other Chechens in the Orlando suburb of Kissimmee and had moved to Orlando more recently, friends said.

Investigators have been trying to establish the scope of the plot. In addition, authorities in Massachusetts said they would investigate whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev had any connection to the unsolved 2011 deaths in the Boston suburb of Waltham, where three men were found in an apartment, their throats slit and marijuana sprinkled over their bodies. One of the victims was a boxer and a friend of Tsarnaev's.

Two officials who were briefed on the investigation said Todashev made statements, while he was being interviewed by the FBI and Massachusetts state police, implicating himself as having been involved in the 2011 Waltham slayings. Neither of the officials, one of whom had earlier told The Associated Press there was no new information on Todashev lunging at the agent, knew whether Todashev had also implicated Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the killings. The two people, a federal law enforcement official and a Massachusetts state official, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details of the investigation.

Neither official was sure of the extent of Todashev's supposed involvement.

Police records suggest Todashev had a hot temper, with arrests in a road rage incident and, more recently, in a fight over a parking space.

Muslin Chapkhanov, another former roommate, said Todashev knew the older Tsarnaev brother. Todashev "was living in Boston and I think he trained with him," Chapkhanov said.

Former roommate Khusen Taramov said the FBI was asking questions about a conversation Todashev had with the older bombing suspect a month before the Boston Marathon attack.

The ex-roommate said Todashev shared the substance of his previous conversations with investigators with him and that he was completely forthcoming, saying that the conversation covered basic how's-your-life kinds of topics.

It's why he was surprised that Wednesday's interview ended the way it did.

"He told them everything," Taramov said. "He told everything he knew...I don't know why that (the shooting) happened. It's crazy."

Taramov said Todashev was afraid before Wednesday's interview as well.

"That's what he asked me before he pretty much died," Taramov said. "He asked me, 'If something happens can you go out and tell all the truth. What exactly happened.'"

Like Todashev, the Tsarnaev brothers have roots in the turbulent Russian regions of Dagestan and Chechnya, which have become recruiting grounds for Islamic extremists. Investigators have said the brothers carried out the Boston bombing in retaliation for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

An FBI team was dispatched from Washington to review the shooting, standard procedure in such cases.

Todashev was arrested earlier this month on a charge of aggravated battery after getting into a fight over a parking spot with two men a father and son at an Orlando shopping mall. The son was hospitalized with a split lip and several teeth knocked out, according to a sheriff's report. Todashev claimed self-defense.

"Also by his own admission Todashev was recently a former mixed martial arts fighter," the arresting deputy said in his report. "This skill puts his fighting ability way above that of a normal person."

Todashev was released on $3,500 bail after his May 4 arrest. His attorney, Alain Rivas, didn't immediately respond to a call for comment Wednesday.

Todashev was also arrested by Boston police in 2010 after a road rage incident. Witnesses told police that he argued with two other drivers and cut them off with his vehicle. According to a police report, he yelled, "You say something about my mother, I will kill you."

___

Associated Press writer Steve LeBlanc and AP Legal Affairs Writer Denise Lavoie in Boston, Pete Yost in Washington and Mike Schneider and Tony Winton in Orlando contributed to this report.

PHOENIX (AP) In a surprise jailhouse interview just hours after a jury began deliberating her fate, Jodi Arias spoke out Tuesday about her murder trial, her many fights with her legal team and her belief that she "deserves a second chance at freedom someday."

Arias spoke to The Associated Press as part of a series of interviews with media outlets. She repeated many of her claims from previous interviews, testimony on the witness stand and her statements to the jury earlier Tuesday as she pleaded for mercy.

But she provided some new information about her case and how she believed her lawyers let her down by not calling more witnesses who could have bolstered her claims that she was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of Travis Alexander.

Arias was convicted last week of first-degree murder in the June 2008 stabbing and shooting death of her one-time lover in what prosecutors described as a cold, calculated killing carried out in a jealous rage. Arias has maintained all along it was self-defense.

The jury began deliberating Tuesday as they worked to determine whether she should live or die for her crime. If the jury opts for a life sentence, the judge will have the option of determining whether she spends the rest of her days behind bars or is eligible for release after 25 years. Arias acknowledged it was unlikely she would ever be released, but believed she deserves a second chance.

Following her conviction last week, she told a local TV station that she preferred the death penalty. She said Tuesday night that she changed her mind after a tearful meeting with family members that same day, realizing that her death would only cause them more pain.

"I felt like by asking for death, it's like asking for assisted suicide and I didn't want to do that to my family," she told the AP.

Arias said she fought from the beginning to keep cameras out of the courtroom to limit the media spectacle, and believes that the jury should have been sequestered. She stated flatly that she did not receive a fair trial.

"The prosecutor has accused me of wanting to be famous, which is not true," she said.

However, Arias has sought the spotlight at every turn, providing TV interviews and even using a third-party to tweet throughout the trial.

Arias repeated her claims that she never wanted to go to trial in the first place but instead wanted to reach a deal with prosecutors on a second-degree murder count that would have carried a maximum of 22 years in prison. However, she said, "no deal was offered."

She gave the interviews Tuesday after the judge lifted an order barring jail officials from arranging any media requests. The judge did not elaborate on the reason for the ruling, but Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office quickly began making the media arrangements that lasted late into the night.

A shackled Arias wore makeup for the interviews and showed up in a jail classroom with a comb in hand as she fixed her hair for the cameras. When pressed for details on some of her conflicting stories, she was mostly evasive, citing advice from her attorneys and possible pending appeals.

She was also asked about the conflicts she had had with her two court-appointed lawyers, Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott.

Arias said she wanted at least three people called as witnesses who could have testified to having seen bruises on her neck "when I was choked out" by Alexander but she said she was rebuffed by her lawyers. The prosecutor insisted her claims of self-defense were an exaggerated attempt to avoid being convicted.

She said her lawyers "felt a little betrayed" and blindsided by her post-conviction interview but that they gave their blessings for Tuesday night's interviews, warning her to be cautious.

Arias said she sometimes wishes she'd never met Alexander, "just because of how ultimately everything ended and I say that for his sake and mine not just a selfish thing."

She said if the attack never occurred and she never crossed paths with the victim, she would likely now be a happily married 32-year-old with children, good finances and a successful wedding photography business.

Earlier Tuesday, Arias told jurors she planned to use her time in prison to bring about positive changes, including donating her hair to be made into wigs for cancer victims, helping establish prison recycling programs and designing T-shirts to raise money for domestic abuse victims.

Arias became emotional as she displayed for jurors photos of her friends, boyfriends and family members, including newborn relatives she has met only from behind bars.

She asked jurors to reject the death penalty for the sake of her family.

"I'm asking you to please, please don't do that to them. I've already hurt them so badly, along with so many other people," she said. "I want everyone's healing to begin, and I want everyone's pain to stop."

Arias stabbed and slashed Alexander nearly 30 times, shot in him in the forehead and slit his throat, nearly decapitating him, before leaving his body in his shower to be found by friends about five days later.

"To this day, I can hardly believe I was capable of such violence. But I know that I was," Arias told jurors. "And for that, I'm going to be sorry for the rest of my life."

Her speech to jurors came a day after her attorneys asked to be removed from the case, saying the five-month trial had become a witch hunt that prompted death threats against a key witness in the penalty phase. They also argued for a mistrial. The judge denied both requests.

Alexander's family showed little emotion as Arias' mother, father and sister looked on from the other side of the gallery and cried.

After Arias finished speaking, Judge Sherry Stephens explained to jurors that their finding would be final.

The jury heard closing arguments later Tuesday, with Willmott citing Arias' mental health problems and lack of a criminal record among the reasons to spare her life.

"The question now before you is: Do you kill her? Do you kill her for the one act that she did, the one horrible act, or can you see that there is a reason to let her live? Can you see that there is value in her life?" she said.

Prosecutor Juan Martinez said that despite Arias' claims, there were no factors in the case that would warrant a sentence other than death.

He implored jurors to look at the "whole panorama" of the case, not just Arias' statement Tuesday, and explained how Alexander's family will live with the pain of their loss for the rest of their lives.

"They can't forget that what happened on that afternoon, Travis Victor Alexander suffered immense physical pain," Martinez said. "They can't forget that."

By Stanley White

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan vowed on Wednesday to take necessary steps to reduce volatility in bond markets that has threatened to jeopardize the government's fight to end deflation and revive growth.

The central bank upgraded its assessment of the economy for a fifth straight month, saying it "has started picking up," as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policy prescription of aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus has boosted sentiment and a weaker yen has halted a decline in exports.

As expected, the policy board voted unanimously to stick with April's massive quantitative easing, in which it pledged to vanquish 15 years of entrenched deflation by doubling its Japanese government-bond holdings in two years as it expands the supply of money at an annual pace of 60 trillion ($583 billion) to 70 trillion yen.

While the government's aggressive policies have sent stocks soaring to 5-1/2-year highs and the yen tumbling to a 4-1/2-year low against the dollar, turmoil in the Japanese government-bond market in recent weeks has cast a cloud over the effectiveness of the BOJ's easing, a key element of "Abenomics" that is showing early signs of lifting the world's third-largest economy from a two-decade funk.

BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda vowed to take steps needed to reduce volatility in the JGB market, but he disappointed some bond investors by sticking with the strategy of leaving it to BOJ bureaucrats to address the problem by tweaking the bank's market operations.

Indeed, Kuroda played down any economic impact from the bond moves, where the benchmark yield recently had its biggest three-day spike in a decade as investors struggle to cope with the overwhelming impact of the BOJ's radical money expansion.

"I don't think the recent rise in yields is having a big impact on the economy," Kuroda told a news conference after a two-day BOJ policy meeting.

"We will continue to monitor market moves and respond with flexibility in the pace and maturities of bond purchases and in market operations."

Kuroda emphasized that these adjustments would not change the BOJ's commitment to buying about 50 trillion yen in government debt a year.

The purchases, running about 7.5 trillion yen a month, were intended to lower rates across the yield curve. But despite the BOJ buying the equivalent of 70 percent of new government-debt issuance, the policy has caused yields to rise erratically on worries that the purchases are distorting the market and sapping liquidity, according to some analysts.

Kuroda said the higher long-term interest rates are due partly to growing confidence in Japan's economy, but the volatility seen since the BOJ overhauled policy last month shows how difficult it will be for the central bank to control long-term yields.

"It seems like Kuroda is essentially leaving the market as it is," said Ayako Sera, senior market economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.

The recent surge in the 10-year JGB yield to a one-year high of 0.92 percent "does not seem to count as a leap in long-term bond yields for Kuroda," she said.

"We still need to be wary of further rise in JGBs volatility."

Last week, in the midst of the market turbulence, the BOJ sought to cap the spike in yields by offering to inject 2.8 trillion yen into the Tokyo money market, more than three times the size usually offered in a single day.

Kuroda indicated that the BOJ could use this tool in the future by offering funds for one year at a fixed rate to ease market jitters.

After he spoke, the central bank said it will meet with JGB-market participants on May 29 to discuss recent market moves and operations. The BOJ will use this meeting to help it decide its schedule for JGB purchases from June, a BOJ official said.

Bond prices turned negative after the BOJ announcement on disappointment that the bank didn't address the market turbulence. Cash-bond prices later ended the day flat, with the 10-year yield at 0.880 percent, not far from last week's high. Futures prices dipped slightly in evening trade on Kuroda's remarks.

INFLATION DOUBTS

The BOJ unleashed the world's most intense burst of stimulus last month, promising to inject $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years to meet its pledge of achieving 2 percent inflation in roughly two years.

Doubts have emerged over whether that time frame is realistic.

In the BOJ meeting, board member Takahide Kiuchi proposed loosening the commitment by making its inflation target a medium- to long-term goal, and committing to intensive easing in the next two years. His proposal was rejected in an 8-1 vote.

Indeed, the BOJ may be stuck pursuing its massive monetary easing for up to five years before it stokes enough inflation to start unwinding its aggressive stimulus, a Reuters poll of BOJ watchers suggested on Wednesday.

The prospect of a long wait before the BOJ can begin tightening stands in stark contrast to expectations in global markets that the U.S. Federal Reserve could taper off its huge bond-buying campaign as early as this year.

The BOJ, by gobbling up JGBs, hopes to nudge Japanese investors out of the safety of bonds and into riskier assets like equities, encouraging more consumption, investment and employment in a virtuous circle to revitalize growth.

But it is proving difficult to engineer a gentle rise in yields.

BOJ officials say they would accept a natural rise in long-term interest rates that reflect prospects of an economic recovery and future inflation.

Japan's economy expanded at an annualized 3.5 percent in the first quarter, the fastest in a year, offering more evidence that Abe's sweeping stimulus is beginning to work.

But the gains remain tentative. Abenomics got a reality check on Wednesday as April exports grew less than expected and imports surged on expensive energy imports, blowing out the trade deficit to the biggest April gap ever.

A sustained sharp rise in bond yields would hurt corporate capital spending, the soft spot of an otherwise more robust economy, and strain Japan's already tattered finances by boosting the cost of funding its huge debt pile. ($1 = 102.9750 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Stanley White, Leika Kihara and Hideyuki Sano; Writing by Stanley White and William Mallard; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in Britain's No.4 supermarket Wm Morrison fell 2.4 percent on Wedensday after UBS confirmed it had placed around 100 million shares in the firm at 280 pence for an institutional seller.

The sale represents 4.4 percent stake in Morrison and eight days worth of volume. The shares, which closed at 289.30 pence on Tuesday, traded at 282.40 pence at 10:49 a.m. British time.

(Reporting by David Brett and Toni Vorobyova)

NEW YORK (AP) The college student was being held in a headlock by a masked intruder with a loaded gun to her head, police said. Then the gunman took aim at an officer.

A moment later both Hofstra University junior Andrea Rebello and the intruder were dead killed after a split-second decision that is perhaps the most harrowing in law enforcement: when to pull the trigger.

"The big question is, how do you know, when someone's pointing a gun at you, whether you should keep talking to them, or shoot?" said Michele Galietta, a professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who helps train police officers. "That's what makes the job of an officer amazingly difficult."

She spoke Sunday as Hofstra University students honored Rebello, a popular 21-year-old public relations major, by wearing white ribbons at their graduation ceremony.

Rebello's funeral is scheduled for Wednesday in Sleepy Hollow, north of New York City.

The news that she died from a police bullet came as "a second shock" for the already devastated family, said Henry Santos, Rebello's godfather.

Her life ended in the seconds that forced the veteran police officer to make a fatal decision, but the questions surrounding the student's death are just beginning, along with an internal investigation by the Nassau County Police Department.

Rebello and the intruder, Dalton Smith, died early Friday when the officer fired eight shots, hitting him seven times and her once in the head, according to county homicide squad Lt. John Azzata.

With a gun pointed at her, Smith "kept saying, 'I'm going to kill her,' and then he pointed the gun at the police officer," according to Azzata.

The officer acted quickly, saying later that he believed his and Rebello's lives were in danger, according to authorities.

No doubt, he was acting to try to save lives his own and that of the young woman, Galietta said.

"What we're asking the cop to anticipate is, 'What is going on in the suspect's mind at the moment?'" she said. "We're always trying to de-escalate, to contain a situation, but the issue of safety comes in first, and that's the evaluation the officer has to make."

Eugene O'Donnell, a former New York City police officer and professor of law and police studies at John Jay College, said the crucial issue may be whether or not police had deemed it a hostage situation. If so, he said, there are protocols police follow to buy time, slow down, isolate and assess.

But O'Donnell said the officers may have had few options because of "an eyeball to eyeball confrontation between the officer and the offender."

"It may have been too fluid to deteriorate for the officers to do anything else," O'Donnell said. "It underscores that there's no two of these that are exactly alike."

Police tactical manuals are meant to assist officers in making the best decision possible, but in the end, "they're not 100 percent foolproof," Galietta said. "In a situation like that, you can follow procedure, and it doesn't mean it comes out perfectly."

Hofstra student John Kourtessis told the New York Post that he'd gone to a bar with Rebello and a few other friends to celebrate the end of school. When they got back to Rebello's house, she asked him to move his car and he went upstairs to get his keys.

When he came back down, he said, Smith was there. He said Smith kept talking about "the Russian guy," insisting the house's residents owed a Russian man money and that he was outside waiting.

"He was saying ... that he just needed us to cooperate. I said, 'Listen, we have all this money here.'"

Kourtessis said the students offered Smith computers, jewelry and other items from the house but that Smith kept demanding more money.

The officer who fired the shots is an eight-year NYPD veteran and has been with Nassau County police for 12 years.

He is now out on sick leave, Azzata said.

Procedurally, the Nassau County district attorney would determine whether an officer's use of deadly force was justified, O'Donnell said. A spokesman for the prosecutor's office said Monday it is monitoring the ongoing police investigation.

___

Associated Press writers Frank Eltman in Mineola, N.Y., and Jake Pearson in New York City contributed to this report.

RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - Suspected Sunni Muslim militants killed four state-backed Sunni fighters in Iraq on Saturday, security sources said, apparently viewing them as collaborators with the Shi'ite-led government of a nation plagued by sectarian hatred.

Sunni-Shi'ite tensions in Iraq have been amplified by the conflict between mostly Sunni rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite-dominated forces in neighboring Syria.

The four "Sahwa" militia fighters were killed in an attack on their headquarters on the outskirts of Garma, 9 km (six miles) east of Falluja, a city in the western province of Anbar.

Gunmen also ambushed and kidnapped 10 Sunni policemen near Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, a Sunni heartland bordering Syria.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but Sunni militant groups have been behind previous violence targeting security forces in a campaign to destabilize the Baghdad government, which they reject as illegitimate.

When Sunni-Shi'ite bloodshed was at its height in 2006-07, Anbar was in the grip of al Qaeda's local affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, which has regained strength in recent months.

Sahwa or "Awakening" fighters are Sunni tribesmen who helped U.S. troops subdue al Qaeda in 2006. They are now on the government payroll and are often targeted by Sunni militants.

In other violence, tribesmen clashed with security forces and set four of their vehicles ablaze after a woman and three of her young children were killed in an army raid north of Ramadi.

A car bomb parked near an entrance to the town of Latifiya, south of Baghdad, killed five people, police said.

Minority Sunnis, embittered by Shi'ite dominance since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by U.S.-led forces in 2003, have been staging street protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki since December. A bloody government raid on a Sunni protest camp in Hawija last month ignited a surge of violence.

Monthly death tolls are well below those of 2006-07, when they sometimes topped 3,000, but more than 700 were killed in April by a U.N. count, the highest figure in almost five years.

At least 72 people died in attacks on Friday, 43 of them in two bombings outside a Sunni mosque in the city of Baquba.

(Reporting by Kamal Namaa in Ramadi and Raheem Salman in Baghdad; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Alistair Lyon and Robin Pomeroy)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Two bombs hidden in a motorcycle and a car exploded inside an elite gated community linked to the family of Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday evening, killing at least nine people and wounding more than 70 near the southern city of Kandahar, an official said.

The blasts happened inside Aino Mina, a housing complex on the northern outskirts of the city that was developed in part by Mahmood Karzai, the president's younger brother.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but striking inside a powerful symbol of wealth and influence would be a publicity coup for the Taliban insurgency.

Both the car bomb and the motorcycle were remotely detonated within minutes of each other while parked next to a restaurant area where families were dining, Kandahar government spokesman Javeed Faisal said. He had earlier said there was only one blast.

Three police were among the dead, Faisal said, adding that an investigation is underway into how the explosives-laden vehicle slipped past the community's heavy security.

Many of the dozens of wounded brought to Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar were in critical condition, Dr. Samad Ahmadi said.

Aino Mina is home to thousands of Afghan government officials, businessmen and other wealthy citizens who pay some $90,000 for a three-bedroom house on grounds featuring parks, a jogging track, a football field and its own mosque.

Residents have special identification badges, and cars are typically searched before entering the gates.

Mahmood Karzai was one of the main investors into the project, promoted as a triumph of modernity in Kandahar, which is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban insurgency. The Taliban imposed a harsh interpretation of Islamic law when it led Afghanistan for five years, before they were ousted in the U.S.-led invasion that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. by al-Qaida, which was based in the country at the time.

The Karzai clan itself is from Kandahar and another brother of the president, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was a powerful political figure there before being gunned down in 2011 by a bodyguard.

President Karzai's office quickly condemned the attack, noting it was the second terrorist strike in a residential area in two days. On Thursday, a suicide car bomber hit a U.S. convoy in a residential part of eastern Kabul, killing 15 people, including nine Afghan bystanders and six Americans. That attack was claimed by another militant movement, Hizb-e-Islami.

"Terrorists, by these acts that are un-Islamic and inhumane, are not the followers of any religion," Karzai's statement said.

Attacks on both military and civilian targets have been on the rise since the Taliban launched their spring offensive late last month, aiming to weaken the Afghan government ahead of the withdrawal of most international forces by the end of next year.

PETARE, Venezuela (AP) Stern-looking soldiers clutching assault rifles wave down the beat-up Chevy Caprice entering this sprawling slum on the outskirts of Caracas.

Flashlights in his face, the driver steps out and places his hands on the roof while the soldiers frisk him for drugs and weapons.

He's clean, and a hand gesture from the commanding officer sends him off into the maze of ramshackle homes that is Petare, one of the most dangerous parts of Venezuela's notoriously crime-infested capital.

Since Monday, this scene is playing out day and night at dozens of military checkpoints set up here in the socialist government's latest attempt to control the oil-rich country's pandemic of violence.

Critics dismiss the "Secure Homeland" initiative as a political charade that risks degenerating into human rights abuses while having no lasting impact on crime. But to many residents, weary of being terrorized by armed gangs, seeing troops on the streets is a welcome projection of government power.

"You have to act forcefully so that people feel the force of the state," said 47-year-old Irving Garcia, an unemployed former Army reservist, who like many Caracas residents has firsthand experience of violent crime. Garcia said he was shot in the chest when he unknowingly walked into a restaurant robbery. The bullet shattered his sternum, he said, inviting a reporter to feel a piece of protruding bone through his shirt.

With some 15,000 killings a year, Venezuela's homicide rate is the fifth highest in the world, according to U.N. statistics. The murder rate doubled during the 14-year-rule of the late President Hugo Chavez as cheap access to guns and an ineffective justice system fed a culture of violence in slums like Petare, parts of which have become no-go zones for outsiders, including police.

Chavez banned gun sales, expanded a new national police force and stepped up policing and other programs in high-crime areas. Now, his hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, is adding military muscle by deploying 3,000 troops on the streets. The initiative started in the Caracas area on Monday and will be expanded to the states of Zulia, Lara and Carabobo next week.

Human rights activists worry that sending soldiers trained for warfare on policing missions will only make things worse for the residents they are meant to protect.

"It's going to aggravate the situation, unfortunately, because the army isn't prepared to deal with issues of public safety," said Liliana Ortega, director of the COFAVIC human rights group. "We have various emblematic cases in which the use of the armed forces resulted in disproportional force."

She said they include the 1989 street riots known as the "Caracazo," when 300 people were killed, and a 1992 prison riot in Caracas in which 63 prisoners died.

The soldiers, who work together with the National Guard and national police force, have the power to make arrests but are supposed to hand over the detainees to civilian authorities. Any human rights abuses would be tried by civilian courts, according to the constitution.

In deeply divided Venezuela, there are also concerns over the initiative's political undertones. Maduro narrowly won an April 14 presidential election that the opposition claims he stole through fraud, voter intimidation and abuse of government powers. Some of the first military units were deployed in areas under the political control of the opposition.

Petare, for example, lies in Miranda state, which is governed by Henrique Capriles, Maduro's challenger in the presidential election. The mayor overseeing Petare also is from the opposition.

On Tuesday night, the military commander in charge of the troops in Petare, Gen. Antonio Benavides, led a motorcycle-borne unit roaring up deserted, winding streets, with a gaggle of journalists in tow. They stopped for a meeting with grass-roots Chavistas in the hilltop Bombilla neighborhood.

"How often does the mayor come here? How often does the governor come here?" Benavides asked the crowd of about 40 people. "Never," they replied, unanimously.

A Capriles poster on a staircase above the outdoor gathering indicated not everyone here supports the government.

David Smilde, a Venezuela expert at the University of Georgia, said that for Maduro, the security initiative was both "an effort to fight crime and an effort to maintain or recover support in places where it has been declining because of crime and violence, among other issues."

Though the idea of using military force against criminals resonates among Venezuelans, Smilde said, it would probably amount to little more than setting up road blocks and trying to project a presence on street corners. "But of course that just means that crime takes place a block away," he said.

Some in Petare said the success of the initiative would depend not only on the soldiers' ability to hunt down criminals and delinquents, but to win the trust of its law-abiding residents.

"What matters is how they are integrating with society, what they teach our young," said Carmen Apote, 47.

At one checkpoint, on a potholed street where stray dogs rummaged through foul-smelling litter from a daytime food market, irritated taxi drivers complained that the stop-and-search was bad for business.

"They make it hard for us," said Jorge Torres, 50. "We can't stop anywhere we want to and people don't know where we can pick them up."

He conceded the area was safer, for now, but predicted the military presence would be short lived. The government has said the soldiers will stay in the streets for a few months until regular law enforcement units can be boosted by new recruits.

"Once they leave, everything changes," Torres said.

___

Associated Press video: https://vimeo.com/66289079

___

AP writer Jorge Rueda in Caracas contributed to this report.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) Bombs that exploded outside two mosques in a village in northwestern Pakistan killed at least 13 people Friday, underlining the challenge of militant violence facing a new government set to take power under the leadership of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The blasts at the two Sunni Muslim mosques also wounded 45 people, said tribal police officer Badshah Rehman. Both of the mosques were badly damaged, and the roof of one of them collapsed. The mosques were located in Baz Darrah village in the Malakand district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Rehman said.

Shahid Ali, who was in the first mosque that was attacked, said the explosion came just as worshippers were starting Friday prayers.

"I rushed out with others and saw several people bleeding and crying," Ali told The Associated Press by telephone. "There was dust and smoke around."

Ali rushed to the second mosque after it was attacked and saw that its roof had caved in and it was on fire.

"Many people are buried under the rubble," he said.

Rescue workers were trying to retrieve the dead and wounded from the debris, Rehman said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blasts, but suspicion will likely fall on the Pakistani Taliban.

The Sunni militant group has been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years that has killed thousands of civilians and security personnel. The militants have attacked Sunni mosques in the past, perhaps because the worshippers did not follow their extremist brand of Islam.

The Pakistani army has mounted multiple operations against the militants in the northwest, but they have proven resilient and continue to carry out near-daily attacks.

The Taliban recently launched a series of attacks in the run-up to national elections on May 11 in an attempt to derail the vote. Pakistanis defied the militant group by coming out in large numbers to cast their ballots.

Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N Party was the big winner in the election and appears set to form the next government. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party, led by former cricket star Imran Khan, is expected to form the provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Both politicians have called for negotiations with the Taliban, and Khan has even said that Pakistani troops should stop battling the militants and pull out of areas of the northwest. Now he will face the challenge of applying his election platform to the challenges of governing one of Pakistan's most violent areas.

Sharif's government will also face the challenge of turning around Pakistan's economy, which is hampered by power outages that last up to 18 hours a day in some parts of the country.

Pakistan has turned to neighboring Iran to help deal with the crisis. Iran provides electricity to several towns and villages in southwest Baluchistan province at cost of around $3 million a month, said Mohammad Ashraf, a spokesman for Pakistan's Ministry of Commerce.

Paying for the electricity is complicated by U.S. sanctions preventing financial transactions with many Iranian banks because of the country's suspect nuclear program. Therefore, Pakistan plans to pay for the electricity by exporting wheat to Iran.

"This food supply doesn't come under international sanctions Iran is facing," Ashraf said.

Iran sent Pakistan a bill for $53 million for electricity supplied up to mid-February, said Ashraf. Pakistan plans to pay by sending Iran 1 million tons of wheat. The Pakistani government on Thursday approved sending 100,000 tons of wheat as the first installment. The first ship carrying about 30,000 tons is expected to sail to Iran sometime next week, Ashraf said.

Pakistan also has plans to build a pipeline to import natural gas from Iran, despite the threat of U.S. sanctions.

____

Associated Press writers Zarar Khan and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Sherin Zada in Mingora, Pakistan contributed to this report.

By Laura Zuckerman

(Reuters) - An Idaho man who admitted to breaking into a Boise zoo last year and killing a monkey was sentenced to seven years in prison on Thursday, court records show.

Michael Watkins, 22, of Weiser, Idaho, in March pleaded guilty to attempted grand theft, a felony, and misdemeanor animal cruelty stemming from the break-in and beating death of the monkey at Zoo Boise in November.

The primate was one of the zoo's two Patas monkeys, ground-dwelling animals from Africa that stand more than 2 feet tall and weigh about 35 pounds. They are rare in zoos but not endangered in the wild.

The case shook officials at the zoo and triggered an outpouring of sympathy and donations from animal lovers worldwide.

Watkins scaled the security fence at Zoo Boise in the pre-dawn hours of November 17 and attempted to steal the monkey, which bit him, police said. Watkins then kicked and hit the animal, severely wounding it, according to police. The monkey later died of blunt force trauma, zoo officials said.

Zoo Boise Director Steve Burns said on Thursday the sentencing of Watkins closed a particularly devastating chapter for the facility.

"We're moving on," he said. "The court has done its job and we're continuing to do our job."

In the days after the death, zoo staff sought to boost the spirits of the companion-less Patas monkey and considered shipping it to another zoo with primates since they are exceedingly social, Burns said.

Instead, Zoo Boise in December gained two female Patas monkeys donated by the Rosamund Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York.

News about the monkey's death brought donations from across the United States and overseas, allowing the zoo to begin construction on Monday of a $250,000 exhibit for the three Patas monkeys, Burns said.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Bill Trott)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) A Philadelphia abortion doctor convicted of killing three babies born alive at his clinic will be formally sentenced in the death of one of the babies Wednesday, along with the overdose death of a patient and hundreds of abortion law violations.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell has decided not to appeal the first-degree murder conviction handed down Monday for killing three babies. Instead, the 72-year-old physician will accept several terms of life without parole and avoid a potential death sentence.

Gosnell assured a judge Tuesday that he was making the deal freely, and was then sentenced in the deaths of the first two babies. He offered the same odd, bemused smile that has become his trademark in court.

Gosnell's rogue career and ensuing murder trial has become the latest flashpoint in the nation's enduring abortion debate.

Prosecutors had argued during the two-month trial that he routinely used scissors to "snip" babies born alive, and they pursued murder convictions in seven infant deaths. But the judge dismissed three of the counts, and the jury rejected a fourth.

Former clinic employees testified that Gosnell routinely performed illegal abortions past Pennsylvania's 24-week limit, that he delivered babies who were still moving, whimpering or breathing, and that he and his assistants dispatched the newborns by "snipping" their spines, as he referred to it. Eight have pleaded guilty in the case, and a ninth was convicted at trial with Gosnell, albeit of relatively minor charges.

Prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty because Gosnell killed more than one person and his victims were especially vulnerable given their age. But Gosnell's own advanced age had made it unlikely he would ever be executed before his appeals ran out.

Gosnell's lawyer, Jack McMahon, said his client accepts the verdict and isn't sorry he went to trial. He said Gosnell gave up a somewhat better deal early on.

"He wanted this case aired out in a courtroom and it got aired out in a courtroom in a fair way. And now he's accepting what will happen. He's an intelligent guy," McMahon said Tuesday, adding that Gosnell would now plead to pending federal drug charges.

The sentencing deal, reached after hours of terse negotiations, spares Gosnell's family the task of pleading for his life in court, McMahon said. Gosnell has six children, the youngest of them a teenager born to his third wife, who has also pleaded guilty in the case.

"He's a proud man. To bring his young family into court was something he did not want to do," McMahon said.

A 2011 grand jury investigation into Gosnell's alleged prescription drug trafficking led to the gruesome findings about his abortion clinic. An FBI raid had turned up 47 aborted fetuses stored in clinic freezers, jars of tiny severed feet, bloodstained furniture and dirty medical instruments, along with cats roaming the premises.

Prosecution experts said one teen was nearly 30 weeks pregnant when Gosnell aborted her fetus, and then allegedly joked the baby was so big it could "walk to the bus." A second baby was said to be alive for about 20 minutes before a clinic worker snipped the neck. A third was born in a toilet and was moving before another clinic employee severed the spinal cord, according to testimony.

A fourth baby let out a whimper before Gosnell cut the neck, prosecutors alleged. Gosnell was acquitted in that baby's death, the only one of the four in which no one testified to seeing the baby killed.

McMahon has argued that none of the fetuses was born alive and that any movements were posthumous twitching or spasms.

The defense also contended that the 2009 death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar of Woodbridge, Va., a Bhutanese immigrant who had been given repeated doses of Demerol and other powerful drugs to sedate her and induce labor, was caused by unforeseen complications and did not amount to murder, as prosecutors charged.

"I wanted to be an effective, positive force in the minority community," Gosnell told The Philadelphia Daily News in a 2010 interview, when he predicted he would be "vindicated."

He declined to offer any remarks in court Tuesday to Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart but thanked McMahon and said he was "very satisfied" with his legal representation.

Prosecutors continued to refrain from commenting on the case, citing a gag order that is expected to be lifted Wednesday when the sentencing concludes.

Pennsylvania authorities had failed to conduct routine inspections of all its abortion clinics for 15 years by the time Gosnell's facility was raided in 2010. In the scandal's aftermath, two top state health officials were fired, and Pennsylvania imposed tougher rules for clinics.

Gosnell was also convicted of infanticide, racketeering and more than 200 counts of violating Pennsylvania's abortion laws by performing third-term abortions or failing to counsel women 24 hours in advance.