South Korea says 2 Koreas to hold military talks (AP)

SEOUL, South Korea � North and South Korea have agreed to hold their first working-level military talks in two years, Seoul's Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

Officers from the two sides were to meet Thursday in the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula, the ministry said. They last held such talks in October 2008.

North Korea had earlier this month proposed the meeting to discuss the western maritime border and anti-North Korean leaflets spread by South Koreans. The ministry would not confirm Wednesday what would be on the upcoming meeting's agenda.

The poorly marked western sea border, drawn by the United Nations at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, is a constant source of tension between the two Koreas.

Seoul has repeatedly rejected the North's long-standing demands that the sea border be changed. The navies of the two Koreas engaged in three bloody skirmishes near the area in 1999, 2002 and 2009.

Military tensions have been high since a South Korean patrol ship sank in March, killing 46 sailors. South Korea and the United States say the vessel was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, a claim Pyongyang denies.

The talks also come as South Korea and the U.S. are holding naval drills in the Yellow Sea off the west coast of the Korean peninsula, near where the South Korean ship sank.

The exercises are the second in a series of joint maneuvers focusing on anti-submarine warfare tactics, techniques, and procedures, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry.

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North Korea leader's son promoted, seen as heir (AP)

SEOUL, South Korea � The ascension of Kim Jong Il's little-known, 20-something son to a prominent ruling party post put him well on the path Wednesday to succeed the supreme leader at the helm of nuclear-armed North Korea and carry the family dynasty into a third generation.

Kim's Swiss-educated, youngest son was made a four-star general in his first mention in North Korea's state media on Tuesday. In the early hours of Wednesday, the communist nation announced that Kim Jong Un was appointed to the Workers' Party Central Committee.

Kim Jong Il has led the nation with absolute authority since taking over in 1994 upon the death of his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, in the communist world's first father-to-son transfer of power.

Many are predicting another hereditary succession since the 68-year-old reportedly suffered a stroke in August 2008. There are concerns that his sudden death without a leadership plan in place could spark chaos in the nation of 24 million that he rules under a "military-first" policy.

Noticeably thinner and grayer, Kim Jong Il has resumed touring factories and farms but is said to be suffering from diabetes and kidney trouble.

However, none of his sons appears ready to step into the limelight. The eldest, Jong Nam, spends much of his time outside the country and may have thwarted his chances by getting caught trying to sneak into Japan on a fake passport in the 1990s. The father thinks the middle son, Jong Chol, is too girlish, according to a 2003 memoir by a former sushi chef for the leader.

Kim Jong Un is believed to be only 27 and until this week held no known political or military positions. However, he was always his father's favorite, and the most like him in looks and ambition, the chef wrote in "I Was Kim Jong Il's Cook" under the pen name Kenji Fujimoto.

The son has been kept well under wraps since childhood, and the mere mention of Kim Jong Un's name in state media caused ripples among North Korea watchers looking for confirmation that Kim Jong Il had anointed the young man as his successor.

"It's clearly the biggest news we've had from North Korea since the death of Kim Il Sung," said Peter Beck, a Council on Foreign Relations-Hitachi research fellow at Keio University in Tokyo.

The secrecy is reminiscent of Kim Jong Il's own ascent in the 1970s, when his status as the nation's future leader was confirmed in an appearance at the last major Workers' Party gathering: a party congress in 1980.

However, L. Gordon Flake, executive director at the Mansfield Foundation, said speculation about power hand-offs in the North is premature.

"There is no succession as long as Kim Jong Il is alive," Flake said. "What we are witnessing here is the early indication of the beginning steps of the process of succession. ... Kim Jong Il is still in power."

But, he said, it is clear that Kim Jong Un is being thrust into positions of power earlier than Kim Jong Il was. "Clearly, the process is being rushed," he said, adding: "It's a pretty big jump up to a four-star general in a day."

Kim Jong Un was named a vice chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, which formulates the party's military policies, directs the country's 1.2 million-member army and oversees military projects, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry.

He also won a spot on the party's Central Committee, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch from Pyongyang. The Central Committee oversees the powerful Political Bureau and Secretariat, and functions as the party's top decision-making body when national congresses are not convened.

Kim Jong Il was named to the committee in 1972, two years before he was tapped as the country's next ruler, the Unification Ministry said.

Kim also appeared to be tightening the circle of power around the Kim family by elevating his sister and her husband.

Sister Kim Kyong Hui, 64, retained her position as a department director on the Central Committee and gained a new post as a member of the Central Committee's Political Bureau.

"There is a possibility that she could play the role of a coordinator to make sure the power succession goes smoothly," said analyst Cheong Seong-chang, of the Sejong Institute think tank.

Her husband, Jang Song Thaek, built on his nomination in June to the No. 2 position on the National Defense Commission with three posts: alternate member of the Political Bureau, department director for the Central Committee and a spot on the military commission, according to KCNA.

The moves come at a time of tension on the Korean peninsula. Seoul and Washington blame Pyongyang for the sinking of a South Korean naval warship. The North denies responsibility.

North Korea also remains at odds with international powers over its nuclear program, and was slapped with widespread U.N. sanctions last year.

But Wednesday brought a sign of a possible easing of tensions between the North and South. The two rivals agreed to hold their first working-level military talks in two years, according to Seoul's Defense Ministry.

Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, said the U.S. is monitoring events in the North and looking for details, "just like just about everyone else."

Campbell suggested the U.S. wouldn't jump to conclusions about events in Pyongyang.

"It is interesting and cautionary to see how wrong we've been in the past," he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

___

Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul and Foster Klug in Washington contributed to this report.

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Mexico: No confirmed landslide deaths, 11 missing (AP)

OAXACA, Mexico � A huge mudslide first thought to have buried hundreds of people has left only 11 missing and there are no confirmed dead, authorities said Tuesday night, backing off earlier predictions of a catastrophe in Mexico's rain-soaked southern state of Oaxaca.

Federal Interior Minister Francisco Blake and Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz both confirmed the drastically reduced toll from the slide that hit the town of Santa Maria de Tlahuitoltepec early Tuesday.

"So far no one is confirmed dead, only 11 missing who we hope ... will be found," Ruiz told The Associated Press.

Initial reports from Santa Maria de Tlahuitoltepec, a rural mountain town 373 miles (600 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City, said a hillside collapsed on hundreds of sleeping residents after several days of heavy rains in the aftermath of a hurricane and tropical storm that hit Mexico and Central America.

Civil protection authorities first reported seven people killed and at least 100 missing, but Ruiz later reported casualties as four dead and 12 missing.

Jose Alfredo Garcia, spokesman for the Interior Department, told the AP that the initial reports were based on the number of homes hit by the mudslide, but at the time no federal or state officials had reached the site to check the estimates.

Communications with the town were difficult after the pre-dawn slide. Soldiers and civil protection and Red Cross workers couldn't reach the area for nearly 10 hours because mud and rocks blocked roads and a bridge was damaged, while bad weather prevented helicopters from being used.

President Felipe Calderon reported on his Twitter account Tuesday afternoon that an army commander and 30 soldiers had reached the town by foot and that there was a lot of damage, but "perhaps not of the magnitude initially reported."

Donato Vargas, an official in Santa Maria de Tlahuitoltepec reached by a satellite telephone, had said as many as 300 homes were believed to buried, and residents who made it out early in the morning said they had no success digging out neighbors.

"We have been using a backhoe but there is a lot of mud. We can't even see the homes, we can't hear shouts, we can't hear anything," Vargas said.

Vargas said the slide dragged houses packed with sleeping families some 1,300 feet (400 meters) down the hillside along with cars, livestock and light poles.

"We were all sleeping and all I heard was a loud noise and when I left the house I saw that the hill had fallen," Vargas said. "We were left without electricity, without telephone and we couldn't help them. There was no way to move the mud."

One person was reported killed in a mudslide in another Oaxaca community, Villa Hidalgo, and 30 people were killed Monday in a slide in Colombia. Heavy rains, including some delivered by the remnants of Hurricane Karl and then Tropical Storm Matthew, also have produced deadly floods in southern Mexico and Central America.

Oaxaca Civil Protection operations coordinator Luis Marin said the state had seen three days straight of intense rain. The state government warned residents south of the city of Oaxaca of flooding from overflowing rivers and opened shelters in other parts of the state.

Santa Maria de Tlahuitoltepec, which had 9,000 residents in 2005 according to Mexican census data, is a community high in the Sierra Norte mountains known for maintaining its indigenous culture, especially its music. Residents speak the native language, Mixe, and its youth orchestra plays throughout Mexico.

Vargas said a second hill threatened to give way in another part of town.

"We are in a serious risk situation," he said. "In all of our neighborhoods there are houses and roads cracked and about to fall."

Huge swaths of riverside communities in southern Mexico were still under water Tuesday � flooding exacerbated by the passage of Karl and Matthew. Before Tuesday's landslides, at least 15 deaths in Mexico were blamed on the hurricane.

In Honduras, authorities said four people, including a child, drowned in rivers and creeks swollen by Tropical Storm Matthew. The National Emergencies Commission said Tuesday that three adults died in the town of El Oregano and a 10-year-old child in the Caribbean coast town of La Lima.

In Colombia, about 30 people were killed Monday by a landslide northwest of Bogota, the capital. Many were changing from one bus to another because a mountain road was blocked, but the residents of five houses also were buried, rescue officials said.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos visited the scene Tuesday between the towns of Giraldo and Canasgordas in Antioquia state, northwest of Bogota. "The situation is very difficult," he told reporters as rescue teams with sniffer dogs probed tons of earth.

Witnesses described a roar as first rocks and then earth swept over the road Monday afternoon. Amateur video shows the slide bearing down and scouring away the houses.

Heavy rains in recent weeks across Colombia have triggered flooding that has claimed at least 74 lives.

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North Korea leader's son promoted, seen as heir (AP)

SEOUL, South Korea � The ascension of Kim Jong Il's little-known, 20-something son to a prominent ruling party post put him well on the path Wednesday to succeed the supreme leader at the helm of nuclear-armed North Korea and carry the family dynasty into a third generation.

Kim's Swiss-educated, youngest son was made a four-star general in his first mention in North Korea's state media on Tuesday. In the early hours of Wednesday, the communist nation announced that Kim Jong Un was appointed to the Workers' Party Central Committee.

Kim Jong Il has led the nation with absolute authority since taking over in 1994 upon the death of his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, in the communist world's first father-to-son transfer of power.

Many are predicting another hereditary succession since the 68-year-old reportedly suffered a stroke in August 2008. There are concerns that his sudden death without a leadership plan in place could spark chaos in the nation of 24 million that he rules under a "military-first" policy.

Noticeably thinner and grayer, Kim Jong Il has resumed touring factories and farms but is said to be suffering from diabetes and kidney trouble.

However, none of his sons appears ready to step into the limelight. The eldest, Jong Nam, spends much of his time outside the country and may have thwarted his chances by getting caught trying to sneak into Japan on a fake passport in the 1990s. The father thinks the middle son, Jong Chol, is too girlish, according to a 2003 memoir by a former sushi chef for the leader.

Kim Jong Un is believed to be only 27 and until this week held no known political or military positions. However, he was always his father's favorite, and the most like him in looks and ambition, the chef wrote in "I Was Kim Jong Il's Cook" under the pen name Kenji Fujimoto.

The son has been kept well under wraps since childhood, and the mere mention of Kim Jong Un's name in state media caused ripples among North Korea watchers looking for confirmation that Kim Jong Il had anointed the young man as his successor.

"It's clearly the biggest news we've had from North Korea since the death of Kim Il Sung," said Peter Beck, a Council on Foreign Relations-Hitachi research fellow at Keio University in Tokyo.

The secrecy is reminiscent of Kim Jong Il's own ascent in the 1970s, when his status as the nation's future leader was confirmed in an appearance at the last major Workers' Party gathering: a party congress in 1980.

However, L. Gordon Flake, executive director at the Mansfield Foundation, said speculation about power hand-offs in the North is premature.

"There is no succession as long as Kim Jong Il is alive," Flake said. "What we are witnessing here is the early indication of the beginning steps of the process of succession. ... Kim Jong Il is still in power."

But, he said, it is clear that Kim Jong Un is being thrust into positions of power earlier than Kim Jong Il was. "Clearly, the process is being rushed," he said, adding: "It's a pretty big jump up to a four-star general in a day."

Kim Jong Un was named a vice chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, which formulates the party's military policies, directs the country's 1.2 million-member army and oversees military projects, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry.

He also won a spot on the party's Central Committee, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch from Pyongyang. The Central Committee oversees the powerful Political Bureau and Secretariat, and functions as the party's top decision-making body when national congresses are not convened.

Kim Jong Il was named to the committee in 1972, two years before he was tapped as the country's next ruler, the Unification Ministry said.

Kim also appeared to be tightening the circle of power around the Kim family by elevating his sister and her husband.

Sister Kim Kyong Hui, 64, retained her position as a department director on the Central Committee and gained a new post as a member of the Central Committee's Political Bureau.

"There is a possibility that she could play the role of a coordinator to make sure the power succession goes smoothly," said analyst Cheong Seong-chang, of the Sejong Institute think tank.

Her husband, Jang Song Thaek, built on his nomination in June to the No. 2 position on the National Defense Commission with three posts: alternate member of the Political Bureau, department director for the Central Committee and a spot on the military commission, according to KCNA.

The moves come at a time of tension on the Korean peninsula. Seoul and Washington blame Pyongyang for the sinking of a South Korean naval warship. The North denies responsibility.

North Korea also remains at odds with international powers over its nuclear program, and was slapped with widespread U.N. sanctions last year.

But Wednesday brought a sign of a possible easing of tensions between the North and South. The two rivals agreed to hold their first working-level military talks in two years, according to Seoul's Defense Ministry.

Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, said the U.S. is monitoring events in the North and looking for details, "just like just about everyone else."

Campbell suggested the U.S. wouldn't jump to conclusions about events in Pyongyang.

"It is interesting and cautionary to see how wrong we've been in the past," he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

___

Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul and Foster Klug in Washington contributed to this report.

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Obama both rallies, scolds Dems in campaign trip (AP)

MADISON, Wis. � Buck up. Stop whining. And get to work.

Clearly frustrated by Republicans' energy � and his own party's lack of enthusiasm � President Barack Obama scolded fellow Democrats even as he rallied them Tuesday in an effort to save the party from big GOP gains in the crucial midterm elections. In the final month of campaigning, he's trying to re-energize young voters, despondent liberals and other Democrats whose excitement over his election has dissipated.

"It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines," the president declared in a Rolling Stone magazine interview. He said that supposed supporters who are "sitting on their hands complaining" are irresponsible because the consequences of Republican congressional victories could be dashed Democratic plans.

He gave an example during a backyard conversation with New Mexico voters, arguing that Republicans would reverse the progress he's made on education reform and student aid. "That's the choice that we've got in this election," Obama said, underscoring the stakes of Nov. 2.

Later, at an outdoor rally at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the president urged thousands of students to stay as inspired and involved in this election as they were two years ago.

"We can't let this country fall backwards because the rest of us didn't care enough to fight," he said to loud applause.

It was the first of four large rallies planned for the campaign homestretch as the president tries to rekindle some of his 2008 campaign magic and fire up young supporters and others who helped elect Obama but who Democrats fear may stay home this fall. Top lieutenants Vice President Joe Biden, Democratic Party Chairman Tim Kaine and Cabinet members also fanned out on other college campuses to call party foot soldiers to action.

At Penn State University in State College, Pa., Biden noted he was criticized a day earlier in New Hampshire for urging Democrats to "remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives."

"All I heard when I got here in Happy Valley was the roar of lions. Folks, it's time for us to roar," Biden said, pressing his audience to knock on doors, make phone calls and commit to vote.

With the elections looming, the White House and Democratic Party are focused primarily on trying to compel their core voters � liberals and minority groups � as well as the ideologically broad coalition that helped elect Obama in 2008 to participate in the first congressional elections of his presidency.

They have little choice.

Midterm contests largely turn on which party can get out more of its backers. And polls show that Republicans are far more enthusiastic this year partly because of tea party anger. Also, polls show Democrats can't count on independent voters who carried them to victory in consecutive national elections.

Mindful of that and armed with polling, the White House has started arguing that voters who backed Obama in 2008 must turn out for Democrats this year because the GOP wants to undo what the president has accomplished.

"We are focused on motivation, not laying blame or pointing fingers, because the consequences for sitting this election out could be disastrous," said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director.

White House aides said House Republicans "Pledge to America" last week made it easier for Obama to do something he's been trying for weeks: to frame the election as a choice between Democrats' ideas and Republicans' proposals. By signaling plans for deep spending cuts in popular areas such as education, officials said, the GOP pledge presented an opportunity for the White House to remind voters, and particularly the base, what's at stake in November.

Aides say Obama was trying to underscore those stakes in his interview with Rolling Stone, and the final-stretch strategy � in everything from rhetoric to events � is to underscore that midterm elections have consequences.

"People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up," Obama said in the interview. "Bringing about change is hard � that's what I said during the campaign."

"But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place," Obama said.

He was speaking to all Democrats, including first-time voters in 2008 and liberals who have complained that Obama sacrificed his campaign promises on health care and national security for legislative compromise.

Democratic-leaning groups have largely been missing from the TV airwaves this fall as GOP-aligned organizations pummel Democratic House and Senate candidates with attack ads. Seeing allies outspent 6-1, White House aides recently decided to use that disparity to compel their base to vote.

Several Democratic strategists privately fear that the strategy to motivate Democrats with sternness could backfire partly because it runs counter to Obama's carefully cultivated hopeful, uplifting image. There's also some concern that it could further alienate liberals and other Democratic critics who don't think Obama has done enough to pursue issues important to them.

"It's not helpful," said John Aravosis, the editor of the progressive AMERICAblog.com. "The base is depressed and they're depressing it even more, and it's not clear why."

Said DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas: "They wouldn't be in this predicament if they delivered on their campaign promises, rather than waste the last two years putting bipartisanship above action."

Obama's tough-love comments came just days before more than 300 liberal groups planned to participate in a rally on the National Mall on Saturday.

During the three-day trip, Obama also was trying to counter the notion that he's out of touch as well as sway undecided voters with a series of backyard visits � in Albuquerque, Des Moines, Iowa; and Richmond, Va. � that give him time to explain his policies in everyday settings. He's recently embraced this form of intimate-but-televised event to defend and explain his record on the economy, health care and other topics.

___

Sidoti reported from Washington.

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Afghan government sets up 70-member peace council (AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan � In an effort to find a political solution to the war, the Afghan government on Tuesday set up a 70-member peace council, formalizing efforts already under way to reconcile with top Taliban leaders and lure insurgent foot soldiers off the battlefield.

A political resolution to the nine-year war is a key to any U.S. exit strategy in Afghanistan. Still, leaders of ethnic minorities, including some named to the peace council, remain concerned that negotiating with the Taliban will open a path for the hardline fundamentalist group to regain power.

President Hamid Karzai has long said that he will talk to insurgents who renounce violence, sever ties to terrorists and embrace the Afghan Constitution. Publicly, the Taliban have responded, saying they won't negotiate until foreign troops leave the country, yet there are many indications that backdoor discussions have occurred.

Waheed Omar, spokesman for Karzai, said the new High Council for Peace will guide future contacts with Taliban leaders who have reached out directly or through back channels to the highest levels of the government.

"In the past there have been no negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban � only some contacts and some signs from both sides," Omar said, declining to elaborate.

"With the announcement of the peace council, I don't think it will be wise to have back channels," he said. "The council will be the sole body to take care of peace talks and the government of Afghanistan will respect its mandate and will not try to create back channels or try to duplicate the work of the High Council for Peace."

Omar denied that President Barack Obama's stated goal of beginning to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan in July 2011, if conditions allow, spurred the Afghan government to set up the council or reach out to the Taliban.

"For the people of Afghanistan, peace is a need and we want to pursue it in any case," Omar said. "It has no relation with any other announcement. It has no relation with withdrawal or with the presence of international forces here in Afghanistan."

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley in Washington said the Afghan government pledged to set up the peace council earlier this year at international conferences in both London and Kabul.

"Our position remains that we support this process and the keys to participation and reconciliation and reintegration are to cease violence, cut ties to al-Qaida and its affiliates and live under the Afghan Constitution, which includes protection of rights end of all Afghan men and women," Crowley said.

The council includes jihadi leaders, about a half-dozen former Taliban, former members of the communist regime, at least six women and leaders from civil, religious and ethnic groups from across the nation. Two members have not yet been named.

Rachel Reid, an analyst for Human Rights Watch, expressed concern about the makeup of the group.

"Many of these men are unlikely peacemakers," she said. "There are too many names here that Afghans will associate with war crimes, warlordism and corruption. This is a disappointing outcome for Afghan women and girls. Women are once again being short changed."

Arsala Rahmani, a member of the new council and deputy education minister under the Taliban regime, said the council's large size makes it unwieldy, and it could amount to window-dressing with little substance.

"It's another commission to spend money so foreigners and government can look like they are doing something," he said.

That skepticism, however, is countered by statements made in recent months by scores of top military and political leaders from around the world who say that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won on the battlefield alone. Japan, the United States, Britain, Germany and other nations have pledged more than $100 million to support the country's peace and reconciliation program.

Qaribur Rahman Saeed, a member of the five-member delegation from Hizb-i-Islami, a major militant group that held reconciliation talks with Karzai in the spring, suggested that the council's first order of business should be to set a realistic timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces.

"As long as they are in the country, there will be no solution," Saeed said.

Saeed said Hizb-i-Islami, directed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, had not yet received a positive or negative response to the 15-point peace plan it presented to the Afghan government.

Hekmatyar, among the heroes of the war against the Soviets in the '80s, earned a more reviled reputation during the bloody civil war that followed. Hekmatyar's fighters rained down rockets on Kabul, nearly destroying the city. Nevertheless, he struck a deal with the new government and served as prime minister twice in the 1990s.

The announcement of the peace council also officially kicked off a nationwide program to lure Taliban foot soldiers off the battlefield. The plan, which is just starting to be developed across the nation, seeks to attract 25,000 to 35,000 fighters with promises of jobs, literacy and vocational training, and development aid for their villages.

"This is, of course, the process where mid- and lower-level insurgents raise their hands and say that they'd like to lay down their weapons and rejoin society, basically, and stop life on the run," Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, said Monday.

Recent coalition operations have increased pressure on these fighters to rejoin society, Petraeus said. He said he's heard of about 20 cases of insurgents expressing interest in switching sides.

Peace and reconciliation councils have already been set up in at least two of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, said Maj. Gen. Philip Jones, director of the reintegration cell at NATO headquarters in Kabul.

"The debate is live out there, but it has yet to reach the subtlety and the detail of what this all means � what the reintegration program is all about and what the implications are at the community and district level," Jones said.

Insurgents in about a half-dozen provinces � including Herat and Bagdhis in the west, Baghlan in the north, Nangarhar in the east and a few in Helmand in the south � have expressed interest in signing up for the reintegration program. But right now, those who have expressed interest number in the hundreds, not thousands, said Aziz Ahmadzai, a senior adviser to Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, a top Karzai adviser who crafted the reintegration program.

In a sign that reintegration may be gaining traction, Mohammad Sharif Mujaddi, head of reconciliation in western Afghanistan, said about 200 Taliban fighters were transferred Tuesday morning from a western province to the capital of Herat province.

___

Associated Press Writers Rahim Faiez, Heidi Vogt and Amir Shah in Kabul and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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Petraeus fights time, enemy in Afghanistan (AP)

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan � Gen. David Petraeus trudges across a gravel helicopter landing area with his aides, looking purposeful but a bit grim, as he reaches a village outpost in the violent Afghan province of Helmand. He's here to chart progress, or lack thereof, in a war that's running at the pace of a horse cart, in a world that runs at the speed of a text message.

The only time the 57-year-old commander's smile reaches his eyes are a couple of brief moments when he stops and chats with troops. He poses for snapshots that memorialize his first months in command here, fighting a long war that he knows the American public, not to mention the White House, wants done yesterday.

Petraeus does not snap when a reporter asks him a question he has answered 50 times before, and will at least another 50 this year: Do you see progress?

When he replies, the pressure weighing on him shows in his voice � quieter than when he was in charge at U.S. Central Command in Florida, or earlier in Baghdad and Mosul � and it shows as well in the slightly hunched set of his shoulders, leaning on one arm of the chair.

There is none of the showmanship described in magazine profiles that sketched a megawatt four-star commander who outmaneuvers his adversaries with political and media savvy.

Instead, there is a solemn professor, patiently getting through the next order of business in a day scheduled down to the minute. To answer that "progress" question, he asks his aide for a stack of charts, leafs through to the chosen page, and then walks the reporter through his vision of the war, like a tough calculus problem he keeps having to explain over and over.

Yes, there is some progress, but only some, Petraeus says. No, he will not be drawn out on whether it's a trend. Yes, things are going according to plan. But no, he won't give the plan a timeline, because yes, he knows NATO has overpromised before.

His favorite expression is "only now do we have all the right inputs in place," as in only now do the United States and NATO have all the tools, from manpower to surveillance platforms to all the logistics and air support needed to fight the military side of a counterinsurgency conflict. That encompasses "stressing" the enemy through capturing and killing, and moving Army units into contested Afghan neighborhoods, to win them back from the Taliban.

He's got a chart showing those "inputs," too, including one called "People," which lists Gen. Stanley McChrystal � the man dismissed from the post Petraeus now occupies, after quotes embarrassing to the White House appeared in a Rolling Stone article. If you ask an aide why the chart hasn't been updated to say "General Petraeus," instead of "General McChrystal," the aide says: "McChrystal's name is there because the boss wants it there." McChrystal put everything into place, he explains.

True to that, Petraeus brings up McChrystal's name in nearly every conversation, mentioning how everything that's happening now was jointly planned by him and McChrystal last fall.

Petraeus says the burden of convincing the American public that this war is winnable is not his job � he advises the White House on how to prosecute the war, nothing more.

Yet when pressed about the dour headlines of diving public opinion polls back home, he turns to his computer and digs out the latest statistics on violence in Iraq � only six incidents thus far that day, compared to roughly "220 a day back in 2007," which is proof, he says, that his counterinsurgency strategy worked once and will again. You get the sense the tired general keeps an eye on that rearview mirror as a touchstone, to remind himself as much as the journalist sitting before him that no one believed he would turn around that war, either.

And he is keenly aware that few are convinced he can turn this one.

The NATO commanders he is to visit that day do report incremental progress, mapped out in spreading blotches of color overlaid on village maps, showing where once no-go zones have been turned into safe areas. In the U.S. Army counterinsurgency manual Petraeus helped author, these blotches of territory where troops establish security are called "inkspots." The plan, a standard counterinsurgency tactic for nearly 100 years, is that the inkspots grow to meet each other.

The commanders Petraeus visits explain the slow pace is because Afghans will work with NATO troops only if they see "Hesco" barriers go up. Those are the steel cages wrapped in a tough canvas burlap that troops station around their more permanent bases, filled with rocks and earth to stop car bombs and the like.

In the one area on the map the general visited Thursday � in and near the town of Lashkar Gah � these "Hesco inkspots" had indeed grown over the past year. The barriers are a symbol, Petraeus later explains, that the NATO troops and the security they provide are there to stay, presumably to be replaced later by Afghans.

Opponents of Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy have raised doubts about whether Afghan troops will be ready to take the lead from NATO by 2014 � Afghan President Hamid Karzai's stated deadline.

And NATO officers, like Petraeus' predecessor McChrystal, have openly admitted that the local government-in-a-box that was supposed to backfill NATO efforts is not yet providing adequate services. U.S. and Afghan officials privately complain that Afghan officials extorting bribes from the people they were hired to serve also remains commonplace.

Questioned about some of those obstacles, Petraeus said it was too soon to guess how much progress would be made on security, or governance, over the next year.

A member of Petraeus' staff explained the thinking � that they were "hunkered down," in "fingers-crossed" mode, because the whole plan's success depends on the Afghan government doing what now seems unthinkable: rooting out graft in a country where every level of government subsists on a latticework of bribes leveraged against impoverished Afghans. And the decision to do that is in the hands of an Afghan president whose own family is accused of benefiting from corruption.

The staffer spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the strategy debates within headquarters.

The most encouraging report of the day was of progress on "stressing" networks of insurgents. The commanders, American and British, painted a picture of Taliban leaders so under pressure from constant special operations night raids that they were running out of ammunition in some areas, and even trying to expand into rival Taliban territory to shake down the locals for cash to make up for their own weapons and ammunition shortfall.

But on Petraeus' mind were the losses of three Navy SEALs and a Navy Special Warfare electronic engineer whose private memorial service he attended that afternoon. The Navy men were among the nine victims of a helicopter crash that week. They were not on a mission that day, a reminder that every move in war zone carries deadly risk.

Petraeus' staff had tried to talk him out of going to the service, saying his days were too packed. He overruled them.

Asked about the service, he calls it "tough," before adding "four times as tough," to lose them all at once. The next day, he was to attend the service for the others � the chopper's five-man air crew from the 101st Airborne.

Next on Petraeus' schedule that night was a formal dinner in the commander's dining room across from his office � or as formal as it can be in a windowless room crammed with what looks like an oversized school table, lined by eight scuffed chairs, set with handmade place cards painstakingly penned by his staff. Petraeus would dine with his civilian counterpart, Ambassador Mark Sedwill, and guests before starting the routine again at 5 a.m. or so the following day.

How are Petraeus and his staff managing the 15-hour-a-day schedule, seven days a week?

"I think we've pushed it right to the limit," the general says, "and we stay there."

He calls the pace "sustainable," but says quietly, as he shakes hands, "there's not much of a reserve."

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Recession rips at US marriages, expands income gap (AP)

WASHINGTON � The recession seems to be socking Americans in the heart as well as the wallet: Marriages have hit an all-time low while pleas for food stamps have reached a record high and the gap between rich and poor has grown to its widest ever.

The long recession technically ended in mid-2009, economists say, but U.S. Census data released Tuesday show the painful, lingering effects. The annual survey covers all of last year, when unemployment skyrocketed to 10 percent, and the jobless rate is still a stubbornly high 9.6 percent.

The figures also show that Americans on average have been spending about 36 fewer minutes in the office per week and are stuck in traffic a bit less than they had been. But that is hardly good news, either. The reason is largely that people have lost jobs or are scraping by with part-time work.

"Millions of people are stuck at home because they can't find a job. Poverty increased in a majority of states, and children have been hit especially hard," said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the Population Reference Bureau.

The economic "indicators say we're in recovery, but the impact on families and children will linger on for years," he said.

Take marriage.

In America, marriages fell to a record low in 2009, with just 52 percent of adults 18 and over saying they were joined in wedlock, compared to 57 percent in 2000.

The never-married included 46.3 percent of young adults 25-34, with sharp increases in single people in cities in the Midwest and Southwest, including Cleveland, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Albuquerque, N.M. It was the first time the share of unmarried young adults exceeded those who were married.

Marriages have been declining for years due to rising divorce, more unmarried couples living together and increased job prospects for women. But sociologists say younger people are also now increasingly choosing to delay marriage as they struggle to find work and resist making long-term commitments.

In dollar terms, the rich are still getting richer, and the poor are falling further behind them.

The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its largest margin ever, a stark divide as Democrats and Republicans spar over whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy.

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans � those making more than $100,000 each year � received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent made by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, the data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.

Three states � New York, Connecticut and Texas � and the District of Columbia had the largest gaps between rich and poor. Big gaps were also evident in large cities such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston and Atlanta, home to both highly paid financial and high-tech jobs as well as clusters of poorer immigrant and minority residents.

Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Hawaii had the smallest income gaps.

"Income inequality is rising, and if we took into account tax data, it would be even more," said Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in poverty. "More than other countries, we have a very unequal income distribution where compensation goes to the top in a winner-takes-all economy."

Lower-skilled adults ages 18 to 34 had the largest jumps in poverty last year as employers kept or hired older workers for the dwindling jobs available. The declining economic fortunes have caused many unemployed young Americans to double-up in housing with parents, friends and loved ones, with potential problems for the labor market if they don't get needed training for future jobs, he said.

Homeownership declined for the third year in a row, to 65.9 percent, after hitting a peak of 67.3 percent in 2006. Residents in crowded housing held steady at 1 percent, the highest since 2004, a sign that people continued to "double up" to save money.

Average commute times edged lower to 25.1 minutes, the lowest since 2006, as fewer people headed to the office in the morning. The share of people who carpooled also declined, from 10.7 percent to 10 percent, while commuters who took public transportation were unchanged at 5 percent.

The number of U.S. households receiving food stamps surged by 2 million last year to 11.7 million, the highest level on record, meaning that 1 in 10 families was receiving the government aid. In all, 46 states and the District of Columbia had increases in food stamps, with the largest jumps in Nevada, Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin.

Other findings:

_The foreign-born population edged higher to 38.5 million, or 12.5 percent, following a dip in the previous year, due mostly to increases in naturalized citizens. The share of U.S. residents speaking a language other than English at home also rose, from 19.7 percent to 20 percent, mostly in California, New Mexico and Texas.

_The poorest poor hit record highs. Twenty-eight states had increases in the share of people below $10,977 in income, half the poverty line for a family of four. The highest shares were in the District of Columbia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas and South Carolina. Nationally, the poorest poor rose to 6.3 percent.

_Women's average pay still lags men's, but the gap is narrowing. Women with full-time jobs made 78.2 percent of men's pay, up from 77.7 percent in 2008 and about 64 percent in 2000, as men took bigger hits in the recession.

_More older people are working. About 27.1 percent of Americans 60 and over were in the work force. That's up from 26.7 percent in 2008.

The census figures come weeks before the pivotal Nov. 2 congressional elections, when voters anxious about rising deficits and the slow pace of the economic recovery will decide whether to keep Democrats in control of Congress.

The 2009 tabulations, which are based on pretax income and exclude capital gains, are adjusted for household size where data are available. Prior analyses of after-tax income made by the wealthiest 1 percent compared to middle- and low-income Americans have also pointed to a widening inequality gap, but only reflect U.S. data as of 2007.

___

Online:

http://www.census.gov

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Iceland ex-PM faces possible charges in meltdown (AP)

REYKJAVIK, Iceland � Iceland's former Prime Minister Geir Haarde has been referred to a special court in a move that could make him the first world leader to be charged in connection with the global financial crisis.

After a heated debate Tuesday, lawmakers voted 33-30 to refer charges to the court against Haarde for allegedly failing to prevent Iceland's 2008 financial crash � a crisis that sparked protests, toppled the government and brought the economy to a standstill by collapsing its currency.

Haarde faces up to two years in jail if found guilty. The court, which could dismiss the charges, has never before convened in Iceland's history. A hearing date has not yet been set.

Haarde, ex-leader of the Independence Party, is no longer in parliament and stepped down from office last year following widespread protests and treatment for esophageal cancer.

"I will answer all charges before the court and I will be vindicated." Haarde, 59, told the Icelandic Broadcaster RUV. "I have a clean slate. This charge borders on political persecution."

Iceland, a volcanic island with a population of just 320,000, went from economic wunderkind to fiscal basket case almost overnight when the credit crunch took hold.

After dizzying economic growth that saw banks and companies in this tiny Nordic nation snap up assets around the world for a decade, the global financial crisis wreaked political and economic havoc in Iceland. Its banks collapsed in October 2008.

Unemployment has soared since then and the country has lurched from crisis to crisis.

In April, an eruption at Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano triggered a giant ash cloud that disrupted global air travel for weeks and later restricted travel to and from the island nation.

In the same month, a report into the banking collapse accused Haarde and the central bank chief of acting with "gross negligence" in allowing the financial sector to overheat without adequate oversight.

The 2,300-page government-commissioned report detailed a litany of mistakes made in the lead-up to the bank meltdown.

Pall Hreinsson, the supreme court judge appointed to head the Special Investigation Commission that issued the report, singled out seven former officials including Haarde and central bank chief David Oddsson for particular criticism.

No other officials besides Haarde were referred for prosecution to the court on Tuesday. Lawmakers decided Tuesday not to charge three other former ministers, which angered some who felt the blame extended beyond Haarde.

"You could say that all of the four former ministers should have been charged or none at all," says Thorkell Sigvaldason, 35, a university student. "But on the other hand, Geir Haarde was the leader and sometimes they have to pay for the mistakes of their men."

Teacher Bragi Johannnsson, 41, agreed that all four should face charges. He said the laws are too lenient and must be toughened.

"I think there is a need for reform on the laws on politicians," he said.

Haarde has blamed the banks in the past, and said he felt government officials and regulatory authorities tried their best to prevent the crisis.

The report found that the country's three leading banks � Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki � got too big and overwhelmed the financial system when they ran into trouble with excessive risk-taking.

By the time the banks dropped in a domino-like sequence within a week of one another in October 2008, the banking sector had grown to dwarf the rest of the economy by around nine times.

In one major blunder detailed in the report, staff at the Icelandic central bank forgot to extend a $500 million loan agreement, reached in March 2008, with the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. A belated attempt to receive an extension was not granted by the international bank.

The report said that it was a key error at a time when few things were more important than building up Iceland's foreign currency reserves.

The central bank then turned to the Bank of England in April 2008, seeking a currency swap agreement. Mervyn King, the British central bank's governor, refused, but offered to help Iceland to reduce the size and burden of its banking sector. Iceland rejected the offer at the time.

Before Haarde was prime minister, he also held the posts of finance minister and foreign minister.

The special court will consist of 15 members � five supreme court justices, a district court president, a constitutional law professor and eight people chosen by parliament every six years.

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Ethics panel faces partisan split over trial dates (AP)

WASHINGTON � The House ethics committee split along party lines Tuesday as Republicans demanded pre-election trials for two prominent Democrats, Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters.

The rift is important politically because proceedings in October could generate negative headlines for Democrats. Trials after the election would likely keep the Democrats' ethics record in the background in midterm campaigns largely fought over economic issues.

The split shatters anew the image of the committee as a panel where members of both parties work together to investigate allegations of ethical wrongdoing.

In past years, the committee has been stymied by internal, partisan disputes over its investigative rules and by a political agreement between the parties to avoid new cases.

A statement by ranking committee Republican Jo Bonner, signed by all five Republicans on the 10-member committee, accused Chairman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., of stalling the Rangel and Waters cases. Both lawmakers have asked for trials before the election.

Until now, the committee has been actively issuing decisions under Lofgren's chairmanship, partly due to new procedures that force the panel to address recommendations of an independent ethics office run by non-lawmakers.

Rangel, of New York, is the former chairman of the influential Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax law. Waters, of California, is a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, which approved the recent overhaul of financial industry regulations and established new consumer protections.

Rangel is accused of financial wrongdoing and misuse of his office, while Waters is charged with improperly helping a bank - in which her husband owns stock - receive federal financial aid.

Lofgren had no immediate comment.

The Republican statement said, "Members of the committee have repeatedly expressed their willingness and desire to move forward with public trials of these matters and have repeatedly made themselves available to the chairwoman for October settings."

The House may recess for the elections as early as this week. Bonner, of Alabama, said, "In past congresses, committee members have returned to Washington during a recess in an effort to conclude pressing ethics matters."

Lofgren "has repeatedly refused to set either the Rangel or Waters trial before the November election," Bonner said.

Republicans signing the Bonner statement were Reps. K. Michael Conaway of Texas, Charles Dent of Pennsylvania, Gregg Harper of Mississippi and Michael McCaul of Texas.

Rangel is accused by a House investigating committee of 13 ethical violations. Allegations include using House stationery and staff to solicit money for a New York college center named after him; soliciting donors with interests before the Ways and Means Committee, leaving the impression the money could influence official actions; and failing to disclose at least $600,000 in assets and income in a series of inaccurate reports to Congress.

Rangel is also accused of using a rent-subsidized New York apartment for a campaign office, when it was designated for residential use, and failing to report to the IRS rental income from a unit in a Dominican Republic resort.

The New York congressman has acknowledged some ethical lapses, including his failure to pay taxes on time and his belated financial disclosures.

Waters is charged with trying to obtain federal financial assistance for the minority-owned OneUnited Bank, where her husband is an investor. She denies any wrongdoing, saying she did nothing more than request that Treasury Department officials meet with an association of minority-owned banks that included OneUnited.

OneUnited eventually received $12 million in federal bailout money, but Waters insisted she had nothing to do with that decision.

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Colombian officials put mudslide death toll at 30 (AP)

BOGOTA, Colombia � Colombian rescue officials said Tuesday it will take at least a week to unearth about 30 people who were buried by a landslide as many changed from one bus to another on a mountain road blocked by a previous slide.

"There are no survivors, that's for sure," the regional disaster relief chief, John Freddy Rendon, told The Associated Press.

President Juan Manuel Santos visited the scene Tuesday between the towns of Giraldo and Canasgordas in Antioquia state northwest of Bogota.

"The situation is very difficult," he told reporters as rescue teams with sniffer dogs probed the tons of earth under which Rendon said were buried victims that included children, pregnant women and the inhabitants of five houses.

Witnesses described a roar as first rocks and then earth swept over the road Monday afternoon. Amateur video shows the slide bearing down and scouring away the houses.

Heavy rains in recent weeks across Colombia have triggered flooding that has claimed at least 74 lives.

Meteorologists attribute the rise in precipitation over the Colombian Andes to the "La Nina" climatic phenomenon, which is caused by a cooling of adjacent waters in the Pacific Ocean and is expected to persist into early 2011.

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Eiffel Tower reopens after telephoned bomb threat (AP)

PARIS � The Eiffel Tower was briefly evacuated Tuesday evening after officials received a bomb threat called in from a telephone booth, in the second such alert at the monument in two weeks.

The warning came as French officials have been on alert for possible terror attacks on crowded targets.

Police closed off the immediate surroundings of the tower, France's most visited monument, blocking off traffic. Officers pulled red-and-white police tape across a bridge leading over the Seine River to the monument. Dozens of officers stood guard in the area.

Bomb experts combed through the 324-meter (1,063-foot) tower and found nothing unusual, the Paris police headquarters said. Tourists were let back inside about two hours after the structure was emptied.

Jean Dupeu, a 74-year-old Paris retiree, had planned to go to dinner in the tower but found himself looking for another restaurant.

"It's surely a bad joke," he said of the threat, adding, "Now is not a good time."

National Police Chief Frederic Pechenard said last week that authorities suspect al-Qaida's North African branch of plotting a bomb attack on a crowded location in France. His warning came after Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, claimed responsibility for the Sept. 16 abduction of five French nationals and two Africans in northern Niger.

The French parliament voted this month to ban burqa-style Islamic veils in France, a subject that has prompted warnings by AQIM. Counterterrorism officials say that is just one of several factors contributing to the heightened threat.

At the Eiffel Tower, an anonymous caller using a phone booth in a nearby neighborhood called in a warning to firefighters, the Paris police headquarters said. The company that runs the monument asked police to evacuate it.

Police responded to a similar false alert at the tower on Sept. 14, also following a phone threat. On Monday, the bustling Saint Lazare train station in Paris was briefly evacuated and searched.

As soon as the latest bomb alert ended, huge lines of eager tourists immediately formed under the tower.

Mike Yore, 43, of Orlando, Florida, was among those waiting in line who had no idea the 121-year-old iron monument had even been evacuated.

"There's no bomb that can blow this thing up," he said.

___

Associated Press reporter Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed to this report.

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Kremlin fires defiant Moscow mayor after 18 years (AP)

MOSCOW � President Dmitry Medvedev fired Moscow's boisterous mayor on Tuesday, ousting the man who gave the capital a modern facelift but destroyed some of its most precious historic landmarks amid a construction boom that turned his wife into Russia's wealthiest woman.

Medvedev signed a decree relieving the 74-year-old Yuri Luzhkov of his duties due to a "loss of confidence" in him after Luzhkov openly defied the Kremlin and rejected a facesaving offer to resign after 18 years on the job.

Luzhkov's dismissal ended an increasingly hostile battle of wills, squashing a regional leader's mutiny unseen in a decade of tightening Kremlin controls. Medvedev and his predecessor and mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, appeared to be sending a powerful signal that no regional leader was indispensable and no one should openly criticize Medvedev like Luzhkov had done.

The firing also clears the way for a redistribution of the capital's wealth, a sizable chunk of which has for years been controlled by Luzhkov's billionaire wife, construction mogul Yelena Baturina.

Some of Putin's top lieutenants were named by observers as possible successors to Luzhkov, and business groups close to Putin and Medvedev were expected to win more of Moscow's lucrative building contracts.

Some foreign businessmen were optimistic, saying that Luzhkov's departure could help eradicate some of the corruption and cronyism that poisoned the city's investment climate.

Andrew Sommers, president of American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow, told The Associated Press that Luzhkov's ouster should not affect foreign investment in Moscow � and could even encourage more free competition.

"How contacts are rewarded could benefit from a more transparent system," he said.

Hawk Sunshine, head of investment banking at Moscow-based Metropol bank, also voiced hope that a broader circle of investors could gain access to construction contracts.

"Luzhkov has been in power for so long, he's institutionalized preferences," he said. "So any non-market-based relations could be reversed now."

Most of Moscow's roads have not seen significant improvement for the past 20 years although the number of cars has increased six-fold. Luzhkov has been criticized for the lack of new road construction and poor planning that made busy city streets even more congested.

"Infrastructure for the city needs to be fixed because the amount of the traffic here is diabolical," said Sunshine.

Tuesday's firing ended months of rumors that Luzhkov was on the way out.

"It's hard to imagine a situation in which (Luzhkov) and the president of Russia ... continue to work together when the president has lost confidence in the regional leader," Medvedev said in Shanghai, where he was on an official visit.

Luzhkov made no public comment Tuesday, but in a resignation letter to United Russia, the ruling party headed by Putin, he suggested there had been an orchestrated campaign to oust him.

"I have been fiercely attacked by state mass media, and the attacks were related to attempts to push Moscow's mayor off the political scene," Luzhkov said in the letter, which was released to the media.

Luzhkov said he decided to leave the party because it "did not provide any support, did not want to sort things out and stop the flow of lies and slander."

Putin said Tuesday that Luzhkov had done a lot for the capital but his defiance went too far.

"It's quite obvious that there was a strain in the Moscow mayor's relations with the president, but the mayor is subordinate to the president, not the other way round," Putin said in televised remarks. "(He) should have taken steps to normalize the situation."

Luzhkov had remained in power due to his ability to deliver the Moscow vote for United Russia, which he helped create. Firing him now gives the Kremlin time to appoint a successor who can get out the vote for the 2011 parliamentary election and the 2012 presidential ballot.

Luzhkov's deputy, Vladimir Resin, was named acting mayor pending the appointment of a permanent successor, but he was not thought to be a possible candidate.

Luzhkov leaves a considerable legacy.

The stocky former chemical engineering plant manager ran the city of 10 million with the aggressive vigor of a tough foreman. His efforts to exert absolute control went as far as announcing plans to seed snow clouds outside Moscow to stop them from dumping snow on the city.

Under Luzhkov's long tenure, Moscow underwent an astonishing makeover from a shabby and demoralized city into a swaggering and stylish metropolis. As the prices for Russia's oil and gas soared and foreign investment poured into the vastly underdeveloped country, Russia's capital sprouted gigantic construction projects � malls, offices and soaring apartment towers.

Much of that work was done by Inteko, the construction company headed by Luzhkov's wife, who is believed to be Russia's only female dollar billionaire with an estimated fortune of $2.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Suspicions swirled consistently that corruption by Luzhkov fed his wife's wealth.

"Moscow's business landscape is all about Inteko and its affiliates," Alexander Lebedev, a wealthy businessman who ran against Luzhkov in the 2003 mayoral election, the last before Putin made the position by appointment only, told the AP. "The procedures for construction approval have been designed to fit Baturina's companies exclusively."

Lebedev said Baturina had been involved in every construction contract over $100 million.

Inteko spokesman Gennady Terebkov rejected any allegations of corruption, saying in an e-mail that "courts have proved on several occasions that allegations like these are all lies."

Luzhkov's star began falling sharply in July when an ill-conceived repair project on the main highway to Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport created backups that left drivers taking up to six hours to get there. Anger against the mayor then soared when he stayed on vacation in Austria in August even as Moscow suffered through weeks of heavy, suffocating smog from nearby forest and peat-bog fires.

But the final blow was an open spat with Medvedev over plans to build a highway through a forest just outside of Moscow that environmentalists wanted to protect. Medvedev in August ordered the project suspended, a decision that Luzhkov criticized in a newspaper article.

While many Muscovites have watched their city's feverish changes with pride, Luzhkov was despised by preservationists for bulldozing historic buildings in prime locations. In some cases, including the iconic Moskva Hotel, the buildings were demolished only to be replaced by clumsy replicas.

He also inflicted a tacky aura by promoting the gargantuan works of sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, including a 370-foot (94-meter) statue of Peter the Great on a man-made island in the Moscow River that ranks in some surveys as one of the world's ugliest structures.

Luzhkov appalled human rights activists by his frequent denunciation of gay rights activists � at one point calling them "satanic" � and vehemently blocking their attempts to rally. For this year's observance of the end of World War II in Europe, he wanted to allow billboards portraying Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, but the initiative met strong resistance from the Kremlin.

On the streets of Moscow, the mood was mixed Tuesday.

"Of course, he is a rich man, and his wife is even richer, and, of course, they did take something for themselves," businessman Alexei Gorlo said. "But despite all the talk about them stealing, for me personally, for my family living in Moscow, they have done much more. I live in an almost-European city."

Yet others were more critical.

"We've been waiting for this decision for a long time," said Olga Savelieva, an architecture preservationist. "He shouldn't have had such an attitude to the city, to the historical heritage, to Muscovites. He shouldn't have thought only about his own wife and the family pockets that need to be filled."

___

Associated Press writers Mansur Mirovalev, Nataliya Vasilyeva and Vladimir Isachenkov contributed to this article.

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Carter taken to Ohio hospital with upset stomach (AP)

CLEVELAND � Former President Jimmy Carter, on a trip promoting his new book, developed an upset stomach on a flight to Cleveland and was taken to a hospital for observation, officials said.

Carter was taken to MetroHealth Hospital, where he was resting comfortably, according to the Carter Center, his Atlanta-based think tank. The center said he is expected to resume his book tour this week.

Carter, 85, was a passenger on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Cleveland when he became ill. Upon landing, he was taken off the plane by rescue crews, said Jackie Mayo, a spokeswoman at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

Carter was scheduled to sign copies of his new book, "White House Diary," at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in suburban Cleveland on Tuesday afternoon, according to the store's event coordinator, Calondra McArthur. About 500 people were waiting in line at the store, he said.

In the book, Carter said he pursued an overly aggressive agenda as president that may have confused voters and alienated lawmakers. But he said the tipping points that cost him the 1980 election were the Iran hostage crisis and the Democratic primary challenge by U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Carter, a former peanut farmer elected to the White House in 1976, has spent his recent years pursuing peace and human rights, efforts that won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

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Obama: Education key to economic success (AP)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. � Determined to energize dispirited Democrats, President Barack Obama told New Mexico voters on Tuesday that Republicans would reverse the progress he's made on education reform and student aid.

Addressing a small group in an Albuquerque family's front yard, Obama shifted from his recent focus on the economy, which has run headlong into the grim reality of continued high unemployment. Instead, five weeks ahead of midterm elections that could turn into a Democratic bloodletting, the president told voters to think about education when they head to the polls.

"Who's going to prioritize our young people to make sure they've got the skills they need to succeed?" the president said.

"Nothing's going to be more important in terms of our long-term success." Obama argued that Republicans would cut education spending to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

Later in the day, Obama was heading to a big rally at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he hopes to replicate the raucous, youthful, big-stage events for which he became famous in the 2008 presidential campaign.

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Castro address tens of thousands for over an hour (AP)

HAVANA � Fidel Castro gave his longest speech since illness forced him from power four years ago, but limited his comments on Tuesday to describing Cuba's past and avoided any mention of the tumultuous economic changes the country is embarking on under his brother's leadership.

The speech before tens of thousands marked the 50th anniversary of the establishment of neighborhood watch groups designed to defend the government against subversive activity.

As is his style lately, the 84-year-old offered no opinions on contemporary Cuban life, such as the recent decision to fire half a million workers and embrace small pockets of private enterprise.

Nor did Castro say anything about his health or future plans. Though he is no longer Cuba's leader, he remains head of the Communist Party. Instead he spent much of the first part of his address quoting his own old speeches and joking about his age.

Gesturing to younger members of the crowd, Castro said, "I really envy the youth I see in these guys" even though he himself appeared stronger than he did during appearances even a few weeks back.

He used reading glasses to decipher prepared remarks and deviated little from them at first, mostly railing against what he described as the all-powerful imperialist monster of the north: The United States.

But when his prepared text ended, Castro began talking without notes, waving his hands for emphasis and noting that the morning sun was not yet unbearable. His second wind pushed the speech to an hour, 14 minutes � the longest address in years though far from the five- and six-hour speeches that were routine in the younger days of the revolution.

"We haven't even been here two hours," he finally grinned in conclusion. "But I'm leaving now. It's getting hot."

The former Cuban leader wore olive-green fatigues without any insignia designating rank, as well as a military cap, as he has on past occasions.

Castro ceded Cuba's presidency to his younger brother Raul after his health crisis of July 2006 and has said nothing publicly to indicate he is itching to retake power since emerging from the shadows several months ago and launching a series of public appearances.

A swelling crowd, many waving Cubans flags, stretched from an outdoor stage in front of Cuba's former presidential palace for blocks through parks and surrounding streets. "Fidel! Fidel!," it chanted, and "Where ever you lead, Fidel!"

A surrounding downtown area normally filled with strolling tourists and hulking Detroit sedans from the 1950s was instead blocked off by police and crammed with parked Soviet-era buses that ferried supporters to the speech.

That effort made it by far the largest crowd Castro has addressed in years. He spoke to a smaller group of university students for 35 minutes earlier this month.

The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution keep an eye on their neighbors and report behavior considered subversive, but they also lead immunization drives, recycling efforts and other public service campaigns.

Their task is to defend the communist government and the revolution that brought Castro to power on New Years Day 1959, "house by house and block by block." A banner hanging behind Castro on Tuesday featured the logo of the committees and read, "Defending Socialism and the Revolution."

Castro announced their creation during a nighttime speech from nearly the same location at the presidential palace on Sept. 28, 1960, amid a wave of bomb attacks meant to destabilize his new government. Then, he denounced the U.S. as masterminding those attacks, and said Cubans then fleeing the island in droves for exile there would be disappointed with American life.

Tuesday's event opened with a snippet of video from that night a half century ago. Castro smiled playfully as he watched a younger version of himself gesturing and wagging his finger in the air during the animated 1960 speech.

"What a privilege it is for me to come back here to meet with all of you 50 years later," he said.

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Consumer, business confidence both weaken (AP)

NEW YORK � Americans' view of the economy turned grimmer in September amid escalating job worries, falling to the lowest point since February.

The downbeat report was released Tuesday on the same day a survey of CEOs was released that showed dimming optimism about business. The Business Roundtable's poll indicated that executives weren't as optimistic about sales growth as they were in June, suggesting some are putting plans to hire more workers on hold.

The Conference Board, based in New York, said its monthly Consumer Confidence Index now stands at 48.5, down from the revised 53.2 in August. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters were expecting 52.5.

The reading marked the lowest point since February's 46.4. It takes a reading of 90 to indicate a healthy economy � a level not approached since the recession began in December 2007.

Economists watch confidence closely because consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity and is critical to a strong rebound.

The index � which measures how shoppers feel about business conditions, the job market and the next six months � had been recovering fitfully since hitting an all-time low of 25.3 in February 2009, but Americans are just as downbeat as they were a year ago.

In September 2009, the index stood at 53.4. Since then, it has mostly hovered in a tight range between the mid-40s and the high 50s. May 2010 was the peak, at 62.7.

One portion of the index, which measures how shoppers feel now, decreased to 23.1 in September from 24.9. The other, which measures consumers' assessment of economic conditions over the next six months, fell to 65.4 from 72.0.

"Overall, consumers' confidence in the state of the economy remains quite grim," Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said in a statement. "And, with so few expecting conditions to improve in the near term, the pace of economic growth is not likely to pick up in the coming months."

Fears had been easing that the economy isn't heading toward a double-dip recession amid a fresh batch of economic reports. While companies aren't making lots of job offers, far fewer people are applying for unemployment, according to the latest figures from the Labor Department. And the nation's trade deficit narrowed in July, due to a bigger appetite overseas for American exports.

Such reports fueled a September's stock rally, which put the Dow Jones industrial average back to about even for 2010. But Tuesday's Conference Board's report made investors jittery, though major indexes recouped much of their losses as traders were encouraged by another flurry of corporate deals.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 5 points after being down 83 points earlier in the day. Broader indexes dipped.

Many Americans feel they're still in a recession, even though it's officially over. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the panel that determines the timing of recessions, concluded last week that the latest recession ended in June 2009 and lasted 18 months.

People are grappling with unemployment that's stuck at nearly 10 percent. Dramatic improvement in hiring isn't expected to happen until corporate executives have more confidence to add workers. And the latest poll of CEOs by Business Roundtable underscores that won't be happening anytime soon.

Two-thirds of the CEOs that Business Roundtable surveyed in September expected sales to grow over the next six months. That's down from 79 percent who said they expected sales growth in June. The group is an association of CEOs of big U.S. companies.

Meanwhile, the housing market is still weak. Home prices ticked up in July for the fourth straight month, but many cities are bracing for declines in the year ahead, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index.

The price increases were fueled by now-expired homebuyer tax credits. With the peak buying season over, a record number of foreclosures, job concerns and weak demand from buyers are pushing prices down.

The home price index increased 0.6 percent in July from June and 3.2 percent from a year ago. Twelve cities showed monthly price gains, while Cleveland's prices were flat.

The Consumer Confidence Index is based on a random survey mailed to 5,000 households from Sept. 1 to Sept. 21.

___

AP Real Estate Writer Janna Herron and AP Business Writer Tali Arbel contributed to this report in New York.

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Mexican governor: hundreds feared dead in slide (AP)

OAXACA, Mexico � A hillside collapsed on a rural Mexican community on Tuesday and the region's governor said hundreds of people are feared dead.

Oaxaca state Gov. Ulises Ruiz told the Televisa television network that the early morning landslide in the town Santa Maria de Tlahuitoltepec buried 100 to 300 houses and speculated that 500 to 1,000 people could be dead.

Donato Vargas, an official in Santa Maria de Tlahuitoltepec reached by a satellite telephone, said 500 people were missing and that 300 homes were buried.

"We were all sleeping and all I heard was a loud noise and when I left the house I saw that the hill had fallen," Vargas said.

He said he called the Mexican army and state officials for help.

"It has been difficult informing authorities because the road are very bad and there isn't a good signal for our phone," Vargas said shortly before the call dropped.

Ruiz said the landslide followed days of rain in the Sierra de Juarez region.

Rescuers were flying in from Mexico City and emergency personnel have been sent to the town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Oaxaca city and 130 miles (220 kilometers) from Mexico City.

"There has been lots of rain, rivers have overflowed and we're having a hard time reaching the area because there are landslides on the roads," he said.

Luis Marin, an official with Oaxaca state's civil protection department, said rescue crews had yet to reach the area.

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Mexican governor: hundreds feared dead in slide (AP)

MEXICO CITY � A hillside collapsed on a rural Mexican community on Tuesday and hundreds of people are feared dead, the region's governor said.

Oaxaca state Gov. Ulises Ruiz told the Televisa television network that the early morning landslide in the town Santa Maria de Tlahuitoltepec buried 100 to 300 houses and speculated that 500 to 1,000 people could be dead. He said rescuers are having a hard time reaching the area.

Ruiz said the landslide followed days of rain in the Sierra Juarez region.

Rescuers were flying in from Mexico City and emergency personnel have been sent to the town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Oaxaca city.

"There has been lots of rain, rivers have overflowed and we're having a hard time reaching the area because there are landslides on the roads," he said.

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Nigeria kidnappers abduct school children from bus (AP)

KANO, Nigeria � Gunmen kidnapped 15 school children on their way to class at a private school near Nigeria's oil-rich and restive southern delta, a police spokesman said Tuesday.

Abia state police spokesman Geoffrey Ogbonna said the gunmen stopped the school bus Monday morning as it headed toward the Abayi International School. The gunmen seized all the mobile telephones from the students, the bus driver and a teacher onboard before taking the children away, the spokesman said.

Ogbonna said the kidnappers apparently demanded more than $130,000 to release the children. The spokesman said he did not know the identities of the kidnappers or the hostages.

A spokesman for Nigeria's federal police force in Abuja said the agency had sent additional investigators and officers to the region to assist in the search for the children.

Abia state, in Nigeria's southeast, sits near the Niger Delta, a maze of mangroves and creeks where foreign oil firms draw crude in Africa's most populous nation. The region has long been plagued by violence from militants upset about the region's unceasing poverty and from opportunistic criminal gangs targeting foreigners for kidnappings.

Now, with oil firms keeping their workers hidden behind razor wire and under paramilitary protection, gangs have increasingly turned to middle-class Nigerian families. Middle-class children, as well as priests, politicians and doctors have been targeted by criminal gangs. Typically, most are released a week or two after their families pay whatever ransom they can scrape together.

Last week, pirates operating off the delta's coast kidnapped three French oil workers and a Thai national. The workers have yet to be released.

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Home prices rise 0.6 percent in July from June (AP)

NEW YORK � Home prices ticked up in July for the fourth straight month, but many cities are bracing for declines in the year ahead.

The price increases were fueled by now-expired homebuyer tax credits. With the peak buying season over, a record number of foreclosures, job concerns and weak demand from buyers are pushing prices down.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index released Tuesday increased 0.6 percent in July from June and 3.2 percent from a year ago. Twelve cities showed monthly price gains, while Cleveland's prices were flat.

However, seven cities showed month-over-month declines and the gains in many cities were weaker from the previous month.

The report measures home prices over three months. However, sales and prices in two of those months � May and June � were inflated by the government tax credits. July had the slowest sales pace in 15 years, and sales in August weren't much better.

The biggest monthly price increases were in Detroit, New York and Washington. All three cities had price increases of roughly 1 percent.

Las Vegas and Phoenix had the largest declines of 0.8 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively.

Nationally, prices have risen almost 7 percent from their April 2009 bottom. But they remain nearly 28 percent below their July 2006 peak.

Most experts predict about 5 million homes will be sold this year. That would be in line with last year and just above 2008, the worst sales performance since 1997.

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Obama: Democratic voter apathy 'inexcusable' (AP)

WASHINGTON � Admonishing his own party, President Barack Obama says it would be "inexcusable" and "irresponsible" for unenthusiastic Democratic voters to sit out the midterm elections, warning that the consequences could be a squandered agenda for years.

"People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up," Obama told Rolling Stone in an interview to be published Friday. The president told Democrats that making change happen is hard and "if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place."

The midterm elections are in five weeks and polling shows that Republicans, out of power at the White House and on Capitol Hill, have a much more excited base of supporters than Democrats. Obama, campaigning this week in four states, is in a sprint to restore the voter passion that helped him win office.

Yet in his attempt to light a fire under supporters, Obama comes across as fired up himself about how many backers fail to acknowledge the progress he sees. He said the glass-half-empty view among many progressive voters can be a debilitating force that distracts them from the real worry: Republicans.

The GOP is poised to win seats in the House, if not control of the chamber, and gain ground in the Senate, too.

"It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election," Obama said.

The president has been telling Democrats to "wake up" and recognize that he and the Democratic-run Congress have delivered on promises, from a new health care law to tougher rules for Wall Street to more aid for college students. Obama wants disenchanted supporters to see that Republican wins in November would undermine the ability of Democrats to get the unfinished business done, from climate change legislation to allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

What emerges in the magazine story is a stern, lecturing tone from Obama.

It comes mainly at the end of the interview. Obama had wrapped the lengthy Q-and-A session, according to the magazine, but then returned unprompted to make one more impassioned point and unleash on the enthusiasm gap. He portrayed a clear choice between an administration that despite some warts has helped advance its agenda, and a Republican Party that would offer disastrous policies for the economy and civil liberties.

"The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible," he said in the interview. He said Democrats should be thinking about what's at stake this election "if they want to move forward over the next two years or six years or 10 years."

The Rolling Stone interview was conducted Sept. 17. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the story, titled "Obama Fights Back."

Obama expresses plenty of disappointment over how Republicans made a tactical decision from the start to oppose him, but also offers some "grudging admiration" for its political effectiveness in keeping the GOP united. He said the resulting slog between Republicans and himself � legislative delays and political fighting reminiscent of the Washington he ran against � has worsened public skepticism of government and eroded the feeling of hope that surrounded his election.

The president said he keeps a checklist of his campaign promises and that he has met, by his account, about 70 percent of them.

As for the rest: "Well, that's what the next two years is for, or maybe the next six."

Obama would need to win re-election in 2012 for that latter timeframe to occur.

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Karzai tearful as bombing kills Afghan official (AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan � A suicide bomber killed a deputy provincial governor and five others Tuesday in eastern Afghanistan, police said. Later, a tearful President Hamid Karzai decried the violence, fretting that young people will choose to flee their country.

The bomber rammed a motorized rickshaw loaded with explosives into one of two vehicles in a convoy taking Deputy Gov. Khazim Allayar to his office in Ghazni city. His adult son, a nephew and a bodyguard were also killed, said Ghazni province police chief Zarawar Zahid. Two civilians nearby were also killed in the blast and a number of others wounded, he said.

Afghan government officials are prime targets for the Taliban and other insurgent groups that have instituted an assassination campaign against people who work with either the Afghan government or NATO forces.

Allayar, who held the post for more than seven years, survived a bombing attempt just two months ago in Ghazni city.

Karzai condemned the attack in a statement. He then called on his fellow Afghans to decry such violence during a speech in the capital about literacy efforts in the country.

"Our sons cannot go to school because of bombs and suicide attacks. Our teachers cannot go to school because of clashes and threats of assassination. Schools are closed," he said, adding he worries that those among Afghanistan's youth who can flee will abandon their country, go to school abroad and become estranged from Afghanistan.

"I don't want my son Mirwais to be a foreigner. I want Mirwais to be Afghan," Karzai said of his four-year-old son and breaking into tears. Wiping his face, he asked Afghans not to use war as an excuse to let their country fall apart.

To the Taliban he said: "My countrymen, do not destroy your own soil to benefit others."

Karzai � who first became Afghan leader after a U.S.-led invasion that toppled the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001 and still relies on international troops to support his weak government � said that the people of Afghanistan, buffeted by war for decades, are once again victims in the current fight.

"Now NATO is here and they say they are fighting terrorism, and this is the 10th year and there is no result yet," he said, explaining that Afghans are caught up in the violence between the goals of Western powers and militants backed by other countries.

"Whoever has any problem, they come to Afghanistan to find a solution," he said.

Much of the anger at outsiders derives from the tense relationship between Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, which militants use as a safe haven for launching attacks and planning strategy.

Karzai has regularly called on the international community to spend more effort chasing down insurgents across the border in Pakistan, a contentious issue because Islamabad says it bars NATO forces from operating there. The U.S. relies on drones for attacks on militant targets in Pakistan, but manned coalition aircraft have also crossed the border in pursuit of insurgents.

On Monday, Pakistan issue a strong protest to NATO over helicopter strikes that killed more than 70 militants at the weekend, saying that U.N. rules do not allow the choppers to cross into its airspace even in hot pursuit of insurgents.

NATO said it launched the strikes in self-defense after militants attacked a small security post in Afghanistan near the border.

The dispute over the strikes fuels unease between the two countries. The Pakistani military has fought Pakistani Taliban fighters, but it has resisted pressure to move against the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network. The Haqqanis, who control vast stretches of territory in North Waziristan and the bordering Afghan province of Khost, carry out attacks in Afghanistan � but not in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Karzai's office said it was looking into the possible deaths of civilians in Laghman province, northeast of Kabul. NATO forces said one Afghan civilian was killed by a coalition service member in Laghman's Alishing district Sunday. It said an investigation is ongoing into the circumstances of the man's death.

Civilian deaths are a very sensitive issue in Afghanistan. Protests were held in Laghman after about 30 insurgents were killed during an operation involving a combined force of more than 250 Afghan army, Afghan police and coalition soldiers last week. NATO said no civilians were harmed in that operation.

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