Syrian rebels free 48 Iranians in prisoner swap

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian rebels on Wednesday freed 48 Iranians held captive since August in exchange for the release of more than 2,000 detainees in the first major prisoner swap of the country's civil war, officials said.
The exchange, which was brokered by Iran, Turkey and Qatar, came just days after Assad vowed to press ahead with the fight against rebels despite international pressure to end the bloodshed that has left more than 60,000 people dead.
Iran is one of Assad's main backers and the Iranians, who were seized outside Damascus in August, were a major bargaining chip for factions trying to bring down his regime.
The group of 48 men arrived at the Sheraton hotel in several vans escorted by Syrian security forces. Iran's ambassador in Damascus, Mohammad Riza Shibani and several Iranian clerics greeted each one with a white rose.
Rebels claimed the captives were linked to Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard, but Tehran has denied that, saying the men were pilgrims visiting Shiite religious sites in Syria.
Shibani said their release was a result of elaborate and "tough" negotiations, but he did not provide any other details of the deal. The Syrian government, which rarely gives details on security related matters, had no official comment and it was not clear what prompted the exchange.
"The conditions placed on the deal were difficult, but with much work ... we succeeded in securing this release," he said. "I hope such tragedies will not be repeated."
The rebels had threatened to kill the captives unless the Syrian regime halted military operations against the opposition.
A spokesman for a Turkish Islamic aid group that helped coordinate the release said the regime had agreed to release 2,130 people in exchange for the Iranians.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed the swap, but expressed regret that many remain locked up by the Syrian government.
"Let's hope that they may be released as well and let's hope that the process is beneficial for all," Erdogan said during a visit to Niger.
He said the deal was brokered with the help of a Turkish and a Qatari aid organization, and added that Turkey had been talking with the rebels during the negotiations.
"The rebels had made some preliminary preparations for the release, but we did not know what the Syrian reaction would be," Erdogan said.
"In the end, it seems that they agreed," he said, adding that four Turks and "a number of Palestinians" were among the prisoners released by the Syrian government.
There were conflicting reports about how many of the prisoners in Syrian custody had been freed. Speaking in Istanbul, Umit Sonmez of the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief said the 48 Iranians were handed over to aid workers soon after the Syrian regime let a group go.
Sonmez said the Syrian prisoners included "ordinary people or friends or relatives of the rebels."
"This is the largest prisoner exchange to date," Sonmez said. "We are pleased that people from all sides who were held and victimized have finally been freed."
Sonmez said the foundation coordinated the negotiations.
"Turkey and Qatar, who have influence over the rebels, spoke with the rebels. They also spoke with Iran. Iran for its part spoke with Syria."
Turkey's state-run agency Anadolu Agency also said a group of people, including women and children, held in the Syrian Interior Ministry building in Damascus had been released and were escorted onto buses. The report could not immediately be confirmed.
Bulent Yildirim, the head of the Turkish aid organization, told Anadolu in Damascus that 1,000 people have been released so far, including 74 women and a number of children between the ages of 13 and 15.
Some photographs released from the aid organization showed a group women lined up against a wall, apparently waiting to be released, inside a building. Most appeared to be hiding their faces from the camera. Another showed a group of men, their heads shaven, standing in a room.
The deal marks the first major prisoner swap since the uprising against Assad began in March 2011.
Regime forces and rebels have exchanged prisoners before, most arranged by mediators in the suburbs of Damascus and in northern Syria, but the numbers ranged from two to 20 prisoners. The Syrian Red Crescent also has arranged exchanges of bodies from both sides.
In a speech Sunday, Assad struck a defiant tone, ignoring international demands to step down and saying he is ready to talk — but only with those "who have not betrayed Syria."
He outlined his vision for a peace initiative that would keep him in power to oversee a national reconciliation conference, elections and a new government. But he also vowed to continue the battle "as long as there is one terrorist left," a term the government uses for rebels.
The opposition rejected his offer, which also drew harsh international criticism.
Syria's Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said countries like the United States and its Western allies that have called on Assad to step down since the start of the uprising have dismissed the president's initiative "before even having the time to translate it."
Al-Zoubi was speaking in Damascus late Tuesday after an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss the proposal.
___
Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press writers Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran and Barbara Surk in Beirut contributed to this story.

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Egypt's ultraconservative party chooses new leader

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CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's largest ultraconservative Islamist party, which has emerged as a potent political force in the country, elected a new leader Wednesday after the previous head broke away to form his own political group following months of infighting.
Younis Makhyoun, a 58-year-old cleric and trained dentist, was selected in a consensus vote to lead the Salafi Al-Nour party, one of several religion-based parties to take root after the 2011 Egyptian uprising. His election marks the consolidation of power within the party of the religious clerics who co-founded Al-Nour and successfully faced down a challenge to separate the group's political and religious leadership.
The infighting could cost the Salafis in upcoming parliamentary elections as they compete with fellow Islamists for seats in the legislature and try to shape Egypt's future in a political struggle with secular-minded political groups.
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is expected to set a date soon for the elections. His spokesman, Yasser Ali, told reporters Wednesday that preparations for the vote would begin Feb. 25.
In taking the reins of the party, Makhyoun immediately turned his sights Wednesday to the elections. He described the next parliament as "the most dangerous and the most important" in Egypt's history because its mission will be "to purify all laws from whatever violates Shariah," or Islamic law.
Makhyoun was a member of the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly that wrote Egypt's new constitution. The document deeply polarized Egyptians and sparked deadly street protests, but passed by a 64 percent "yes" vote in a referendum in which around 33 percent of voters participated.
Islamists perceive the constitution as the first step toward redefining Egypt's identity to conform to Islamic law.
"We want to liberate Egypt from slavery and submission," Makhyoun said Wednesday, while also trying to assuage fears of women and Christians by saying Shariah would "liberate even Western women from the West's moral decay."
Al-Nour was founded by a group of influential hardline Salafi clerics shortly after the 2011 Egyptian uprising that toppled longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak. Their single-minded dedication to applying Islamic law sets them apart from Egypt's strongest Islamist force, the Muslim Brotherhood, which shares many of the Salafi fundamentalist beliefs but also has a history of political pragmatism to achieve its ends.
Salafis follow the Wahhabi school of thought, which predominates in Saudi Arabia. They promote a strict interpretation of Islamic law which mandates segregation of the sexes, bans banks from charging interest and punishes theft by cutting off thieves' hands.
Al-Nour made a surprisingly strong showing in the country's first parliamentary elections last year, capturing 25 percent of the seats and trailing only the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's best-organized political force. Their success reflected years of grassroots organizing throughout the country, giving them a ready-made network of support when they entered politics.
That parliament was disbanded by a court order last year.
The party has been riven by internal feuds over the past year as it struggles to reconcile political maneuvering with religious ideology. It was not immediately clear how the power struggle would affect the Salafis' popularity at the polls.
Al-Nour's founder, Emad Abdel-Ghafour, broke away earlier this month to form a new party over disagreements tied to the role of a body of clerics in the group's politics.
Some of the divisions were also linked to concerns with the Brotherhood. Some Salafis fear the Brotherhood is too willing to compromise in pursuit of an Islamic state. During last year's parliamentary elections, Al-Nour split from an electoral alliance with the Brotherhood after complaining of the group's attempt to monopolize the alliance.

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Winter storm batters Mideast, 8 dead

    
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AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — The fiercest winter storm to hit the Mideast in years brought a rare foot of snow to Jordan on Wednesday, caused fatal accidents in Lebanon and the West Bank, and disrupted traffic on the Suez Canal in Egypt. At least eight people died across the region.
In Lebanon, the Red Cross said storm-related accidents killed six people over the past two days. Several drowned after slipping into rivers from flooded roads, one person froze to death and another died after his car went off a slippery road, according to George Kettaneh, Operations Director for the Lebanese Red Cross.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, a Palestinian official said two West Bank women drowned after their car was caught in a flash flood on Tuesday. Nablus Deputy Governor Annan Atirah said the women abandoned their vehicle after it got stuck on a flooded road, and their bodies were apparently swept away by surging waters. Their driver was hospitalized in critical condition.
In the Gaza Strip, civil defense spokesman Mohammed al-Haj Yousef said storms cut electricity to thousands of Palestinian homes and rescuers were sent to evacuate dozens of people.
Parts of Israel were bracing for snow a day after the military was forced to send helicopters and rubber dinghies to rescue residents stranded by floodwaters. In Jerusalem, streets were mostly empty as light snow began to stick Wednesday night. School was canceled for the next day because of the weather, which Israeli meteorologists said was the stormiest in a decade.
The unusual weather over the past few days hit vulnerable Syrian refugees living in tent camps very hard, particularly some 50,000 sheltering in the Zaatari camp in Jordan's northern desert. Torrential rains over four days have flooded some 200 tents and forced women and infants to evacuate in temperatures that dipped below freezing at night, whipping wind and lashing rain.
"It's been freezing cold and constant rain for the past four days," lamented Ahmad Tobara, 44, who evacuated his tent when its shafts submerged in flood water in Zaatari. A camp spokesman said that by Wednesday, some 1,500 refugees had been displaced within the camp and were now living in mobile homes normally used for schools.
Weather officials said winds exceeded 45 miles (70 kilometers) per hour and the rain left two feet (70 centimeters) of water on the streets.
The storm dumped at least a foot of snow on many parts of Jordan and was accompanied by lashing wind, lightning and thunder. It shut schools, stranded motorists and delayed international flights, Jordanian weatherman Mohammed Samawi said. The unusually heavy snowfall blocked streets in the capital Amman and isolated remote villages, prompting warnings from authorities for people to stay home as snow plows tried to reopen clogged roads. It forced at least 400 families to evacuate their homes and move to government shelters overnight.
Samawi called it the "fiercest storm to hit the Mideast in the month of January in at least 30 years."
The snowstorm followed four days of torrential rain, which caused flooding in many areas across the country.
In Lebanon, several days of winds and heavy rain along the coast and record snow in the mountains caused power outages across the country, blocked traffic and shut down mountain passes. Later Wednesday, snow is forecast at altitudes higher than 200 yards (meters), while rain that has already flooded suburbs of the capital, Beirut, should continue.
In Egypt, rare downpours, strong winds and low visibility disrupted Suez Canal operations over the past three days and also led to the closure of several ports. The number of ships moving through the Suez Canal had fallen by half because of poor visibility, the official MENA news agency reported. A canal official said that by Wednesday, operations had returned to normal. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.
MENA also reported that ports in the northern Mediterranean city of Alexandria and Dakhila were shut down, while cities in the Nile Delta suffered power outages and fishing stopped in cities like Damietta, northeast of Cairo.
MENA also reported 10 fishermen went missing after their boat capsized near Marsa Matrouh on the Mediterranean.
In Syria, where a civil war is raging, snow was piling up in and around the capital, Damascus. Officials said many villages in central Homs province and along the southern border with Israel have been cut off after heavy snowfall. Torrential rains are expected over the next three days with temperatures around freezing. Some 2.5 million people within Syria have been displaced in fighting that has stretched on for nearly two years now.

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GM recalls more than 69,000 vehicles that could roll away

(Reuters) - General Motors Co is recalling more than 69,000 full-size trucks and vans globally that could roll away after being parked due to a potential steering column defect, the automaker said on Friday.
The vehicles may have been built with a fractured park lock cable or a malformed steering column lock actuator gear, and could roll away after the driver has exited the vehicle, according to documents filed with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
GM said most of the affected vehicles are believed to be still on dealer lots or in transit to dealers. It said it was not aware of any crashes or injuries related to the defect.
Only about one in 1,000 of the recalled vehicles are expected to have the defect, it said.
About 55,000 of the vehicles in the recall are in the United States, 6,310 are in Canada and 7,084 are exports, GM said. Another 670 are in Mexico.
Affected vehicles include certain 2013-model Cadillac Escalade, Escalade EXT and Escalade ESV SUVs; Chevrolet Express vans, Silverado and Avalanche pickup trucks, and Tahoe and Suburban SUVs; and GMC Savanna vans, Sierra pickup trucks, and Yukon and Yukon XL SUVs, GM said.
If the steering column defect is present, a driver could shift from "park" while the key is removed from the ignition or the key is in the "off" position, GM said. The transmission also could be shifted out of "park" with application of the brake pedal while the key is in the "off" position, or the key may be rotated to the "off" position and removed while the shifter is not in "park."
GM said the steering column will be replaced if necessary at no cost to the vehicle owner. Letters are expected to be mailed to vehicle owners alerting them to the recall beginning January 22.

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Canada jobless rate at 4-year low even as growth slows

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's economy created far more jobs than expected in December and the jobless rate slid to a four-year low, bolstering the likelihood of a central bank interest rate rise later this year.
The economy added 39,800 jobs in December from November, Statistics Canada said on Friday, well above market expectations for 5,000 jobs and surpassing even the most bullish forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts.
In a report that appeared at odds with other figures pointing to sluggish growth, Statscan said the unemployment rate dipped to 7.1 percent from 7.2 percent in November.
It was the third surprisingly strong jobs report over the past four months and contrasted with the situation in the United States, where non-farm payrolls rose a disappointing 155,000 last month.
Analysts expected little Canadian hiring in December, ahead of a recent deal by U.S. lawmakers and the White House to avert potentially crippling austerity measures due to take effect early this year.
"My initial response is not only are they defying expectations, they are defying gravity," Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets, said of the Canadian jobs numbers.
Canada has recovered all the jobs lost during the 2008-09 recession, although hiring has been unsteady as businesses fret about headwinds from the United States and Europe.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said those headwinds could mean more "bumps in the road" for the Canadian economy and people should not get too excited by a single month's data.
However, he noted that employment has been growing steadily for several years.
"We have more Canadians working today than ever before and we are one of the very few advanced industrial economies that can say that," Harper told reporters.
The Bank of Canada does not formally target employment and inflation has been below its 2 percent target. But the strength of the jobs market suggests the economy entered 2013 in a stronger position than other economic indicators have suggested.
"I don't think the bank will be in any rush to do anything. But it likely means they'll keep a mild hawkish bias in place," said Porter.
The Bank of Canada has held rates at 1 percent since September 2010, but has insisted for the past several months that the next move will be up, not down.
Most primary securities dealers surveyed by Reuters expect a move in the fourth quarter of this year.
Overnight index swaps, which trade based on expectations for the central bank's key policy rate, showed that traders increased bets on a rate increase in late 2013 after the employment report.
The Canadian dollar rallied after the data and at 1:20 p.m. (1820 GMT) was at $0.9866 to the U.S. dollar, or $1.0137, compared with C$0.9880, or $1.0121, at Thursday's North American close.
Another Statscan report on Friday showed producer prices fell 0.3 percent in November from October as gasoline and other fuel prices fell. Raw materials prices slid 1.9 percent. Both indices were down from a year earlier.
TOO GOOD TO LAST
Taking their cue from the U.S. jobs data, analysts forecast the latest trend of Canadian job creation would not continue.
According to Statscan, the economy churned out 59,300 jobs in November, the equivalent of 534,000 in the United States, and outsized gains in September and August. October saw a lull.
"There is still a sense that the levitation act on jobs can't continue for much longer," said Mark Chandler, head of fixed income and currency strategy at Royal Bank of Canada.
"There's still some doubt cast around these numbers even though they look solid in all the details."
Statscan's household survey tends to be volatile from month to month, so analysts prefer to look at the six-month trend, which showed average job gains of about 26,000.
In 2012 as a whole, employment grew by roughly the same amount as in 2010, 1.8 percent, or 312,000 jobs. That was up from 1.1 percent in 2011, but weaker than the pace of growth in the pre-recession years of 2006 and 2007.
Most of the details in the December report were positive. All the gains were in full-time jobs and most were in the private sector.
Employment gains were spread across goods-producing and services sectors, with the strongest hiring in transportation and warehousing, construction and health care and social assistance.
"It is very tough to reconcile this with a lot of the other indicators we are seeing on the economy, but we have to accept the numbers as presented. Almost every aspect of this report was strong," said Porter.
(Additional reporting by Alex Paterson in Ottawa and Cameron French, Andrea Hopkins, Julie Gordon and Alastair Sharp in Toronto; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Janet Guttsman and Andre

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Canada meets key aboriginal demand amid blockades

 Canada's prime minister will meet with native leaders next week to discuss social and economic issues, an olive branch to an angry aboriginal movement that has blockaded rail lines and threatened to close Canada's borders with the United States.
Stephen Harper made no mention of the aboriginal protests in a statement on Friday announcing the January 11 meeting.
But the meeting is a key demand from native Chief Theresa Spence, who has been on a hunger strike for 25 days on an island within sight of the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa.
Spence's spokesman Danny Metatawabin told reporters, on the snowy ground outside her traditional teepee, that she would continue her hunger strike until she was satisfied with the outcome of next week's meeting.
Spence's hunger strike has been one of the most visible signs of a protest movement called Idle No More, which had announced plans for blockades on Saturday all along the U.S.-Canadian border.
It was not clear if these blockades would now be called off, or if there would be any disruptions at the border crossings between the two big trading partners.
The movement is not centrally organized, and Metatawabin said he would not tell others what to do. Several hours after Harper's announcement, the Idle No More website still had a call up for blockades on Saturday.
Demonstrators blocked a Canadian National Railway Co line in Sarnia, Ontario, for about two weeks until Wednesday, and there were shorter blockades elsewhere in the country, including one that delayed passenger trains between Montreal and Toronto for several hours on Sunday.
Harper said next Friday's meeting would address economic development, aboriginal rights and the treaty relationship between the government and native groups. He described it as a follow-up to a meeting with aboriginal leaders last January as well as talks in November with Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo.
"While some progress has been made, there is more that must be done to improve outcomes for First Nations communities across Canada," Harper said in a statement.
DISMAL CONDITIONS
Many of Canada's 1.2 million aboriginals live on reserves where conditions are often dismal, with high rates of poverty, addiction and suicide.
Treaties with Ottawa signed a century ago finance their health and education in a way that many experts say is now dysfunctional.
Speaking to reporters in Oakville, Ontario, Harper sidestepped a question on whether he had agreed to the meeting because of Spence's hunger strike and fear the protests could snowball like last year's Occupy Movement.
Asked about the demonstrations, he said: "People have the right in our country to demonstrate and express their points of view peacefully as long as they obey the law, but I think the Canadian population expects everyone will obey the law in holding such protests."
Idle No More was sparked by legislation that activists say Harper rushed through Parliament without proper consultation with native groups and which affects their land and treaty rights. But it has broadened into a complaint about conditions in general for native Canadians.
In her meeting with reporters after Harper's announcement, Spence said she planned to attend the meeting in person along with three of her supporters and she wanted the governor general - Queen Elizabeth's representative - and the Ontario premier to attend as well.
She stood flanked by her daughter and several supporters, some of them holding up feathers. There were several minutes of drumming and singing before she and her spokesman began talking.
When asked what she needed to hear from the prime minister in order to start eating again, she said, "a positive result because there's a lot of issues we need to discuss" and that they should discuss the issues as equal partners.

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UN: Analysis suggests 60,000-plus killed in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — At least 60,000 people have been killed in Syria's civil war, with monthly casualty figures steadily increasing since the conflict began almost two years ago, according to a new analysis released Wednesday by the United Nations.
The death toll is a third more than the figure of 45,000 given by activists opposed to the regime of President Bashar Assad — the first time that the global body's estimates are higher.
It comes as activists report that a Syrian warplane blasted a gas station near Damascus on Wednesday, killing and wounding dozens of people and igniting a huge fire in what could be one of the bloodiest attacks in weeks during the 22-month conflict.
Independent experts compared 147,349 killings reported by seven different sources — including the government — for the study, which was commissioned by the U.N. human rights office.
By removing duplicates they arrived at a list of 59,648 individuals killed between the start of the uprising on March 15, 2011, and Nov. 30, 2012. In each case, the victim's first and last name, the date and the location of his or her death were known.
"Given there has been no let-up in the conflict since the end of November, we can assume that more than 60,000 people have been killed by the beginning of 2013," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement. "The number of casualties is much higher than we expected, and is truly shocking."
The real death toll is likely to be even greater because reports containing incomplete information were excluded and a significant number of killings may not have been documented at all by the sources available.
"There are many names not on the list for people who were quietly shot in in the woods," Pillay's spokesman Rupert Colville told The Associated Press.
The data, which didn't distinguish among soldiers, rebels and civilians, also show that the killing in Syria has accelerated.
During the summer of 2011, shortly after the uprising against Assad began, the monthly death toll stood at around 1,000. A year later, an average of 5,000 were killed each month, the U.N. said.
Most of the killings occurred in Homs, followed by rural Damascus, Idlib, Aleppo, Daraa and Hama. At least three quarters of the victims were male.
"The failure of the international community, in particular the Security Council, to take concrete actions to stop the blood-letting, shames us all," Pillay said. "Collectively, we have fiddled at the edges while Syria burns."
The U.N. rights chief warned that thousands more would die or suffer terrible injuries if the conflict continues, and repeated her call that those responsible for the killings — which in some cases could amount to war crimes — should be held accountable.
"We must not compound the existing disaster by failing to prepare for the inevitable — and very dangerous — instability that will occur when the conflict ends," she said.
"Serious planning needs to get under way immediately, not just to provide humanitarian aid to all those who need it, but to protect all Syrian citizens from extra-judicial reprisals and acts of revenge" like those seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Congo, she said.
What began with peaceful protests has evolved into a full-scale civil war in Syria, with scores of armed groups fighting regime forces across the Arab country.
Anti-regime activists said Wednesday that a single Russian-built MiG fighter fired a missile that hit the gas station, setting off an inferno in the eastern suburb of Mleiha. Black smoke billowed from the site. An amateur video posted online showed charred bodies and gruesome carnage at the scene.
Mohammed Saeed, an activist who visited the site, said the missile struck as drivers waited in line with their cars at the station. Syria has been facing a fuel crisis, and people often must wait for hours to get gasoline.
Meanwhile, rebels have been targeting airports, including the Mannagh military helicopter base near the Turkish border.

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Iran says it captured 2 more US drones in past

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An Iranian navy commander claims Iran captured two small U.S. drones in past missions in addition to at least four others reported earlier.
Adm. Amir Rastgari says the two drones were of the small, low-altitude RQ-11 type, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency. He said one was captured in summer of 2011 and the other Nov. 2012.
Rastgari claimed most of the data from the unmanned aircraft was recovered.
Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said last month that it captured a ScanEagle American drone after it entered Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf. At the same time, Iran claimed it had taken possession of two other simple, small ScanEagles.
In 2011, Iran claimed it brought down a more sophisticated CIA spy drone after it entered Iranian airspace from Afghanistan.

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Israel orders Bedouins to leave West Bank area

KHIRBET AL-MEITEH, West Bank (AP) — The Israeli military on Wednesday ordered dozens of Palestinian Bedouins to leave their communities so it could conduct military exercises in a remote area of the West Bank.
The military said the order was temporary, and that the Palestinians were living illegally in closed military zones. The Bedouins say they have lived in the area for decades. While the army has issued temporary evacuation orders in the past, Bedouins say they have increased in frequency, and they charge the practice is meant to pressure them to leave their homes.
Israel has used largely empty areas of the West Bank for military bases, firing ranges and maneuvers since shortly after it captured the territory in 1967, marking off large areas for exclusive use of the military and bringing frequent complaints from Palestinians. The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank as a key part of a future state.
After receiving the latest evacuation order, one family dismantled its tents, and loaded sheep and small children onto a trailer in the community of Khirbet al-Meiteh alongside thin mattresses, pillows and blankets. "We will sleep here tonight, in this trailer," said Walid Zawahiri, 57. "There's nowhere else to go."
He and other residents said they had to leave their youngest sheep behind because they had nowhere warm to keep them. They feared that they would be eaten by wild animals or shot during military training. The communities rely on herding animals to survive.
Zawhiri said it was the fourth time he had been ordered to relocate in a year. Nearby, soldiers arrived in military vehicles, setting up dummies for target practice.
The evictions occurred in the Jordan Valley, a section of the West Bank along the border with Jordan. Although Palestinians have a measure of self-rule in other parts of the West Bank, Israel retrains overall military and administrative control over most of the Jordan Valley.
The area, mostly desert, is home to 60,000 Palestinians, the United Nations estimates. Some 8,000 are Bedouins, a culturally distinct community that once roved between winter and summer grazing sites with its livestock. Now they are mostly tethered to one area, and rely on sheep herding and manual labor to get by. They tend to live on the poor margins of Palestinian society.
The Jordan Valley is among the 60 percent of the West Bank that remains under full Israeli control, nearly two decades after interim peace accords granted the Palestinians autonomy elsewhere in the territory. The Israeli-controlled section includes military bases, nature reserves and Jewish settlements.
In a separate incident Wednesday, dozens of Israeli settlers tried to block access to a strip of land that Palestinians sought to cultivate near the northern West Bank village of Jaloud. The Palestinians obtained a court order allowing them enter their lands after Israeli settlers in the past tried to claim the land as their own, said lawyer Qamar Mashriqi.
The military said soldiers dispersed the crowd.
The settlers of the Esh Kodesh outpost rolled flaming tires at Palestinian-owned tractors before the soldiers intervened.

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UN estimates Syria death toll more than 60,000

BEIRUT (AP) — The United Nations estimated Wednesday that more than 60,000 people have been killed in Syria's 21-month-old uprising against authoritarian rule, a toll one-third higher than what anti-regime activists had counted. The U.N. human rights chief called the toll "truly shocking."
Opposition activist groups had been estimating the death toll at more than 45,000 and this was the first time that the U.N. estimate was higher.
"Given there has been no letup in the conflict since the end of November, we can assume that more than 60,000 people have been killed by the beginning of 2013," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement. "The number of casualties is much higher than we expected, and is truly shocking," she added.
"The failure of the international community, in particular the Security Council, to take concrete actions to stop the blood-letting, shames us all," Pillay said. "Collectively, we have fiddled at the edges while Syria burns."
A regime airstrike on a gas station in a Damascus suburb on Wednesday pushed that death toll in the civil war even higher. Anti-government activists said dozens were killed and wounded when the strike ignited an inferno and left behind a gruesome trail of charred bodies. It may be one of the bloodiest attacks in weeks.
Mohammed Saeed, an activist who visited the site in the eastern suburb of Mleiha, said the missile struck as drivers waited in line with their cars at the station. Syria is facing a fuel crisis and people often wait in line for hours to get gas.
An amateur video posted online showed the carnage at the scene, where black smoke billowed from the fire.
In northern Syria, rebels clashed with government troops near at least three airports, part of their push to cut into the government's air power.
A number of rebel groups, including the Islamic extremist Jabhat al-Nusra, attacked a helicopter base near the village of Taftanaz in Idlib province. Videos posted online showed them blasting at targets inside the airport with heavy machine guns mounted on the backs of pick-up trucks.
The videos appeared to be genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting on the issue.
Rebels also clashed with government forces near the Mannagh airport in Aleppo province and near the Aleppo international airport, shutting down air traffic for a second straight day, activists said.
In another blow to the regime and Syria's economy, a Philippine-based container port operator says it has pulled out of Syria and withdrawn all of its Filipino workers from a key port because of the civil war.
The move by Manila-based International Container Terminal Services Inc., through its Syrian subsidiary Tartous International Container Terminal, could effectively derail cargo services in the northwest port city of Tartus, Syria's largest port.
The family of American journalist James Foley revealed Wednesday that he had been missing in Syria for more than one month. He was providing Agence France-Press with videos and his family said he was kidnapped by unknown gunmen on Thanksgiving day.
The family called on those holding him to contact them.
"James is a professional journalist who has remained totally neutral in this conflict," AFP chairman Emmanuel Hoog said in a statement. "His captors, whoever they may be, must release him immediately."
Covering Syria has been a challenge for journalists. The government rarely gives visas to journalists, prompting some to sneak in with the rebels, often at great danger to themselves.
The new U.N. analysis said monthly casualty figures have been steadily increasing since the conflict began in March 2011.
Independent experts compared 147,349 killings reported by seven different sources — including the government — for the study, which was commissioned by the U.N. human rights office.
By removing duplicates they arrived at a list of 59,648 individuals killed between the start of the uprising on March 15, 2011, and Nov. 30, 2012. In each case, the victim's first and last name, the date and the location of his or her death were known.
The real death toll is likely to be even greater because reports containing incomplete information were excluded and a significant number of killings may not have been documented at all by the sources available.
"There are many names not on the list for people who were quietly shot in the woods," Pillay's spokesman Rupert Colville told The Associated Press.
The data, which didn't distinguish among soldiers, rebels and civilians, also show that the killing in Syria has accelerated.
During the summer of 2011, shortly after the uprising against Assad began, the monthly death toll stood at around 1,000. A year later, an average of 5,000 were killed each month, the U.N. said.
Most of the killings occurred in Homs, followed by rural Damascus, Idlib, Aleppo, Daraa and Hama. At least three quarters of the victims were male.
The U.N. rights chief warned that thousands more would die or suffer terrible injuries if the conflict continues, and repeated her call that those responsible for the killings — which in some cases could amount to war crimes — should be held accountable.
"We must not compound the existing disaster by failing to prepare for the inevitable — and very dangerous — instability that will occur when the conflict ends," she said.
"Serious planning needs to get under way immediately, not just to provide humanitarian aid to all those who need it, but to protect all Syrian citizens from extra-judicial reprisals and acts of revenge" like those seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Congo, she said.
The U.N. refugee agency said about 84,000 fled Syria in December alone, bringing the total number of refugees from the conflict about a half million. Many more are displaced inside Syria.

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3 Egyptian officials fly to UAE to discuss arrests

CAIRO (AP) — Three senior Egyptian officials flew to the United Arab Emirates Wednesday to discuss the arrest of 11 Egyptians accused of forming a Muslim Brotherhood cell in the emirate, Cairo airport officials said.
A statement from Egypt's president said one of the envoys, Essam el-Haddad, presidential adviser for foreign affairs and international cooperation, was carrying a letter from President Mohammed Morsi to the UAE President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Later Wednesday, airport officials said Maj. Gen. Mohammed Rifaat Shehata, the head of Egypt's intelligence services, traveled to the Emirates.
Morsi is from the Muslim Brotherhood, which has emerged as Egypt's most powerful political force in the aftermath of the uprising that ousted longtime President Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago.
The statement from the president's office did not disclose the contents of the letter. It said el-Haddad will also meet officials in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
The UAE's Al-Khaleej newspaper reported Tuesday that the 11 Egyptians were arrested last month after allegedly collecting security information about the UAE, holding secret meetings, recruiting members and sending large amounts of money to Brotherhood leaders in Cairo.
All political parties or groups are banned in the tightly controlled UAE.
Relations between the Emirates and Egypt have taken a sharp downward turn after the rise of Islamists to power in Egypt. The rich Gulf nation has cracked down on Islamists from other Arab countries in its territory since the outbreak of protests against Arab leaders in the region nearly two years ago.
The crackdown prompted some Islamists in Egypt to sharply criticize the Emirates, which had warm relations with the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
Envoys are expected to discuss relations between the two countries, which soured further after Egyptian presidential candidate and former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq flew to the UAE soon after he narrowly lost to Morsi in Egypt's presidential elections last year.
Litigation against Shafiq followed his departure, with a number of investigations and court cases accusing him of corruption during his long political career under Mubarak.
News media in the two countries reported accusations about alleged conspiracies against each other, including rumors of a plan to kidnap Morsi and take him to the UAE. The rumors peaked when thousands of Egyptians demonstrated in front of Morsi's palace last month, protesting a draft constitution and a presidential decree giving Morsi wider powers.
In September, Dubai's police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, warned of an "international plot" to overthrow the Gulf governments by Islamists inspired by the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The UAE has not faced street protests during Arab Spring upheavals, but authorities have stepped up arrests and pressure on groups including an Islamist organization, Al Islah, accused of undermining the country's ruling system.

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Morales mum on Cuba trip after Chavez surgery

 Bolivian President Evo Morales made a lightning trip this weekend to Havana where ally Hugo Chavez is convalescing after cancer surgery, but was mostly silent Monday on the details of his trip or even whether he met with the ailing Venezuelan leader.
The secrecy surrounding his visit was sure to add to the uncertainty surrounding Chavez's condition, despite reassurances Monday from Venezuelan officials that the president was slowly improving.
The Venezuelan leader has not been seen or heard from since his Dec. 11 surgery. Venezuelan officials have given few specifics about his condition and have offered no information about his long-term prognosis.
Luis Vicente Leon, a pollster who heads the Venezuelan firm Datanalisis, said the government's daily but vague updates on the president's health seem designed to calm anxious Chavez supporters rather than keep the country fully informed. For government opponents, however, he said the updates likely raise more questions than they answer.
"It's more for the Chavez movement than the country in general," Leon said. "There's nothing that one can verify, and the credibility is almost nil."
Morales did not speak to the foreign media while in Havana. Journalists had been summoned to cover his arrival and departure, but hours later that invitation was canceled. No explanation was given, though it could have been due to confusion over Morales' itinerary as he apparently arrived later than initially scheduled.
Cuban state media published photos of President Raul Castro receiving Morales at the airport and said he came "to express his support" for Chavez, his close ally, but did not give further details.
At an event in southern Bolivia on Monday, Morales made no mention of his trip to Cuba, even though aides had told reporters that he might say something about Chavez's recovery. Later, Morales' communications minister did not respond directly to a question about whether the two South American presidents had met face-to-face, saying only that he "was with the people he wanted to be with" and had no plans to return to Cuba.
"The report that President Morales has given us is that Chavez is in a process of recovery after the terrible operation he underwent," Amanda Davila told The Associated Press.
Morales is the second Latin American leader to visit since Chavez announced two weeks ago that he would have the operation. Rafael Correa of Ecuador came calling the day of the surgery. Uruguay's Jose Mujica has expressed interest in making the trek.
The visits underscore Chavez's importance to regional allies as a prominent voice of the Latin American left, as well as how seriously they are taking his latest bout with cancer.
Chavez underwent his fourth cancer-related operation of the last year-and-a-half on Dec. 11, two months after winning reelection to a six-year term. Venezuelan officials say Chavez is stable and his recovery is progressing, though he was treated for a respiratory infection apparently due to the surgery.
If Chavez is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan constitution calls for new elections to be held. Chavez has asked his followers to back his vice president and hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, in that event.
In Caracas, Venezuelan Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a statement Monday saying that Chavez is showing "a slight improvement with a progressive trend," is keeping up with events back home and sends Christmas greetings to Venezuelans.
Maduro and several Cabinet ministers attended a Christmas Eve Mass in Caracas to pray for the president. Maduro again assured Venezuelans that the president was recovering, though he and other officials continued to strongly suggest that Chavez would not return in time for his Jan. 10 inauguration.
Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution does not allow the president's swearing-in to be postponed, and say new elections should be called if Chavez is unable to take the oath on time.
But Attorney General Cilia Flores insisted the constitution lets the Supreme Court administer the oath of office at any time if the National Assembly is unable to do it Jan. 10 as scheduled.
"Those who are counting on that date, hoping to thwart the Revolution and the will of the people, will end up frustrated once again," Flores said. "What we have is a president who has been re-elected, he will take over, will be sworn in on that day, another day, that is a formality."
Jaqueline Farias, the head of government for the Caracas area, told the AP outside the church that "we are very happy because each hour the 'commandante' is showing signs that he is overcoming this phase of the operation, his fourth operation."
When asked if the president was breathing on his own, she said she didn't know and walked off, refusing to answer more questions.
Dozens of Chavez supporters gathered outside the church, some carrying posters of the president or wearing red T-shirts decorated with a photograph of just Chavez's eyes. Some women rushed to the church after seeing footage of the Mass on state television and yelled at security guards to let them inside.
"Chavez is going to be mad, if he sees this," said Andres Sanchez, an unemployed Chavez supporter watching a woman shouting at a guard that she wanted to pray for Chavez, too. "He told the ministers to talk to the people."
"Venezuela without Chavez is like a ship without a rudder," Sanchez said, his voice wobbling. "I pray to God that he recovers because he is a man who loves the people, the children, the elderly and everyone a little bit.

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VP says he spoke with Chavez, who is up, walking

 Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said late Monday night that he had spoken by telephone with President Hugo Chavez and that the leader is up and walking following cancer surgery in Cuba.
It was the first time a top Venezuelan government official had confirmed speaking personally with Chavez since the Dec. 11 operation. Venezuelan officials have given few specifics on Chavez's condition, and have yet to offer information on his long-term prognosis.
Maduro told state television station Venezolana de Television that the Christmas Eve conversation lasted about 20 minutes. He said the president was walking and doing some recovery exercises. He added that Chavez had given him guidance on budgetary matters for 2013.
"He was in a good mood," Maduro said. "He was walking, he was exercising."
"He wants to send a hug from the comandante to all the girls and boys in the country who will soon be receiving a visit from baby Jesus," he added. Venezuelan tradition has it that baby Jesus delivers gifts to children on Christmas, along with Santa Claus.
Maduro's surprise announcement came after Chavez's ally, Bolivian President Evo Morales, made a lightning visit to Cuba that had added to the uncertainty surrounding the Venezuelan leader's condition.
Morales was largely silent Monday on the details of his trip or even whether he met with the ailing Venezuelan leader.
Morales did not speak to the foreign media while in Havana. Journalists had been summoned to cover his arrival and departure, but hours later that invitation was canceled. No explanation was given, though it could have been due to confusion over Morales' itinerary as he apparently arrived later than initially scheduled.
Cuban state media published photos of President Raul Castro receiving Morales at the airport and said he came "to express his support" for Chavez, his close ally, but did not give further details.
At an event in southern Bolivia on Monday, Morales made no mention of his trip to Cuba, even though aides had told reporters that he might say something about Chavez's recovery. Later, Morales' communications minister did not respond directly to a question about whether the two South American presidents had met face-to-face, saying only that he "was with the people he wanted to be with" and had no plans to return to Cuba.
"The report that President Morales has given us is that Chavez is in a process of recovery after the terrible operation he underwent," Amanda Davila told The Associated Press.
Morales was the second Latin American leader to visit since Chavez announced two weeks ago that he would have the operation. Rafael Correa of Ecuador came calling the day of the surgery.
The visits underscore Chavez's importance to regional allies as a prominent voice of the Latin American left, as well as how seriously they are taking his latest bout with cancer.
Chavez underwent his fourth cancer-related operation of the last year-and-a-half on Dec. 11, two months after winning re-election to a six-year term. He was treated for a respiratory infection apparently due to the surgery.
If Chavez is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan constitution calls for new elections to be held. Chavez has asked his followers to back Maduro, his hand-picked successor, in that event.
Earlier Monday, Venezuelan Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a statement saying that Chavez is showing "a slight improvement with a progressive trend."
Luis Vicente Leon, a pollster who heads the Venezuelan firm Datanalisis, said that the government's daily but vague updates on the president's health seem designed to calm anxious Chavez supporters rather than keep the country fully informed. For government opponents, however, he said the updates likely raise more questions than they answer.
"It's more for the Chavez movement than the country in general," Leon said. "There's nothing that one can verify, and the credibility is almost nil."
Maduro and several Cabinet ministers attended a Christmas Eve Mass in Caracas on Monday afternoon to pray for the president.
The vice president and other officials continued to strongly suggest that Chavez would not return in time for his Jan. 10 inauguration.
Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution does not allow the president's swearing-in to be postponed, and say new elections should be called if Chavez is unable to take the oath on time.
But Attorney General Cilia Flores insisted the constitution lets the Supreme Court administer the oath of office at any time if the National Assembly is unable to do it Jan. 10 as scheduled.
"Those who are counting on that date, hoping to thwart the Revolution and the will of the people, will end up frustrated once again," Flores said. "What we have is a president who has been re-elected, he will take over, will be sworn in on that day, another day, that is a formality.

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Mexico bishop inspires, infuriates with activism

 The white-haired bishop stepped before some 7,000 faithful gathered in a baseball stadium in this violence-plagued northern border state. He led the gathering through the rituals of his Mass, reciting prayers echoed back by the massive crowd. And then his voice rose.
Politicians are tied to organized crime, Bishop Raul Vera bellowed while inaugurating the church's Year of Faith. Lawmakers' attempts to curb money laundering are intentionally weak. New labor reforms are a way to enslave Mexican workers.
How, Vera asked, can Mexicans follow leaders "who are the ones who have let organized crime grow, who have let criminals do what they do unpunished, because there's no justice in this country!"
In a nation where some clergy have been cowed into silence by drug cartels and official power, Vera is clearly unafraid to speak. That makes him an important voice of dissent in a country where the Roman Catholic Church often works hand-in-hand with the powerful, and where cynicism about politics is widespread and corrosive.
Vera's realm is a wide swath of Coahuila, a state bordering Texas that's become a hideout for the brutal Zetas drug cartel. It's where the current governor's nephew was killed in October and the former governor, the victim's father, resigned last year as leader of the political party that just returned to power with newly inaugurated President Enrique Pena Nieto.
Marked by his unvarnished speech, the Saltillo bishop's voice carries beyond his diocese here, especially when he weighs in on hot issues such as drug violence, vulnerable immigrants and gay rights.
In late 2007, Mexico City's Human Rights Commission denounced death threats against Vera and a burglary of the diocese's human rights offices. The following year, after Coahuila became the first Mexican state to allow civil unions for gay couples, a move the bishop endorsed, Vera was invited to speak at a U.S.-based conference for a Catholic gay and lesbian organization. In 2010, he was awarded a human rights prize in Norway.
Anonymous critics have hung banners outside the cathedral asking for what they called a real Catholic bishop. And last year, the 67-year-old was summoned to the Vatican to explain a church outreach program to gay youth.
Natalia Niño, president of Familias Mundi in Saltillo, told the Catholic News Agency last year that Vera had placed too much focus on supporting the gay community.
"A pastoral commitment to homosexual persons is necessary and welcomed, but not at the expense of the family and a solid pastoral plan for marriage and family, which is unfortunately being neglected in the diocese," she said.
Vera, who has had government bodyguards before, said he was foregoing similar security despite the criticism and threats. Such measures were rare and frowned upon in Saltillo, he said.
"I'm not the only one exposed, there are lots of people exposed who work with immigrants, with the missing," Vera said. "How do I cover myself? Them?"
Mexico's Bishops Conference did not respond to repeated requests for an interview about Vera. The church's hierarchy in Mexico did issue a statement in 2010 congratulating Vera on his human rights prize, and last year, the church condemned anonymous threats against him.
Vera's office often lends more weight to his words, especially when he speaks up about human rights, said Emiliano Ruiz Parra, a Mexican journalist and author of a new book that portrays Vera and other "black sheep" of the church in Mexico.
"Among the defenders of human rights he is the one who hedges the least, he says things the way they are," Parra said before Pena Nieto's Dec. 1 inauguration. "He's not afraid, for example, to take on the president, the one who's leaving or the president-elect."
Vera's homily on an October Sunday in Monclova included a lengthy diatribe about an alleged vote-buying scheme involving grocery store gift cards critics say were distributed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI. Citing press reports, the bishop told the crowd organized crime paid for the scheme and helped Peña Nieto's victory. He also labeled as "collaborators" anyone who took a gift card in exchange for their vote.
"What we're seeing now is nothing other than the reaccommodation of the criminal groups with the new government teams," Vera said later as he raced back to Saltillo for another Mass. "The criminal groups always have their agreements with those who are in the state governments, in the federal government."
An industrial hub on the high desert about an hour west of Monterrey, Saltillo had long been known as a quiet haven in Mexico, distinguished by its auto manufacturing and a modern museum exhaustively detailing the surrounding terrain.
In recent years, however, the area has fallen victim to the drug violence plaguing other parts of Mexico. In 2011, 729 murders hit the state, compared to 449 the year before and 107 in 2006, according to preliminary figures released by the government this summer. Four bodies were found hanging from a Saltillo overpass earlier this month.
Until the nephew of Gov. Ruben Moreira was killed in early October, the political class had showed little concern for violence, Vera said.
"Fear of the conditions that Mexico is going through with the insecurity, with so much violence, makes us silent, and Don Raul is a strong voice who says what the rest of us are too scared to say," said Maria Luz Lopez Morales, a Vera friend and self-professed atheist who runs literacy programs for women in rural areas outside Monclova.
Vera arrived in Saltillo in 2000, after serving as the co-bishop in a deeply divided diocese in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where Zapatista rebels were battling government troops. He came with a reputation as a social crusader.
"Ever since I arrived here, as I came from Chiapas and I wasn't a person who was going to support the government, since this moment they decided that my image needed to be restrained," Vera said. He pointed to critical coverage from a local television network where a host once displayed Vera's picture surrounded by flames of eternal damnation. Vera said he believed the host was paid to do the government's bidding.
In February 2006, Vera celebrated Mass at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine where 65 miners had perished and spent days with their families hammering the mine's owners, government officials and union leaders for dangerous working conditions.
Five months later, he traveled to Castanos, a small town near Monclova, where soldiers had been arrested in connection to the sexual assaults of more than a dozen prostitutes. He and his longtime collaborator Jackie Campbell started their own investigation, leading the diocese's human rights office to successfully push to try some of the soldiers in civilian courts, where several were sentenced.
Mysterious cars followed Vera and Campbell during that time. Campbell's home phone line was cut and Vera was threatened. Campbell eventually moved to Argentina for three years to escape the harassment and to pursue graduate studies.
Vera has also demanded investigations into the thousands of migrants who have gone missing while passing through the state and clamored for a DNA database to identify bodies. In an email, the Rev. Pedro Pantoja, who oversees the diocese's migrant programs, said he's enjoyed total support from Vera and called his commitment to social causes "prophetic."
What's drawn perhaps the most controversy has been Vera's stand on gay rights, which even called Rome's attention. In 2001, the Rev. Robert Coogan, an American priest in Saltillo ordained by Vera, suggested starting an outreach program to gay youth, after a teenager came to him when his parents threw him out of the house. Vera lent his support to the program, called Comunidad San Elredo, and later escaped reprimand when called to the Vatican to explain it.
"It flows out of his conviction: The church is for everyone," Coogan said.
Parishioner Julia Castillo, of Saltillo, said Vera wasn't just making headlines with his bold stands. He was also inspiring Mexicans at a time when many are feeling besieged.
"He talks about all of the injustice there is right now, of all the danger there is, that we have to stick together to fight against the corruption, above all in the government and the police," Castillo said. "We like the way he is.

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VP says Chavez up, walking; doubts persist

 Vice President Nicolas Maduro surprised Venezuelans with a Christmas Eve announcement that President Hugo Chavez is up and walking two weeks after cancer surgery in Cuba, but the news did little to ease uncertainty surrounding the leader's condition.
Sounding giddy, Maduro told state television Venezolana de Television that he had spoken by phone with Chavez for 20 minutes Monday night. It was the first time a top Venezuelan government official had confirmed talking personally with Chavez since the Dec. 11 operation, his fourth cancer surgery since 2011.
"He was in a good mood," Maduro said. "He was walking, he was exercising."
Chavez supporters reacted with relief, but the statement inspired more questions, given the sparse information the Venezuelan government has provided so far about the president's cancer. Chavez has kept secret various details about his illness, including the precise location of the tumors and the type of cancer. His long-term prognosis remains a mystery.
Dr. Michael Pishvaian, an oncologist at Georgetown University's Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, said it was an encouraging sign that Chavez was walking, and it indicated he would be able to return to Venezuela relatively soon. But he said the long term outlook remained poor.
"It's definitely good news. It means that he is on the road to recover fully from the surgery," Pishvaian said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "The overall prognosis is still pretty poor. He likely has a terminal diagnosis with his cancer that has come back."
Pishvaian and other outside doctors have said that given the details Chavez has provided about his cancer, it is most likely a soft-tissue sarcoma.
Chavez first underwent surgery for an unspecified type of pelvic cancer in Cuba in June 2011 and went back this month after tests had found a return of malignant cells in the same area where tumors were previously removed.
Venezuelan officials said that, following the six-hour surgery two weeks ago, Chavez suffered internal bleeding that was stanched and a respiratory infection that was being treated.
Maduro's announcement came just hours after Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a statement saying Chavez was showing "a slight improvement with a progressive trend."
Dr. Carlos Castro, director of the Colombian League against Cancer, an association that promotes cancer prevention, treatment and education, said Maduro's announcement was too vague to paint a clear picture of Chavez's condition.
"It's possible (that he is walking) because everything is possible," Castro told AP. "They probably had him sit in up in bed and take two steps."
"It's unclear what they mean by exercise. Was it four little steps?" he added. "I think he is still in critical condition."
Maduro's near-midnight announcement came just as Venezuelan families were gathering for traditional late Christmas Eve dinners and setting off the usual deafening fireworks that accompany the festivities. There was still little outward reaction on a quiet Christmas morning.
Danny Moreno, a software technician watching her 2-year-old son try out his new tricycle, was among the few people at a Caracas plaza who said she had heard Maduro's announcement. She said she saw a government Twitter message saying an announcement was coming and her mother rushed to turn on the TV.
"We all said, thank God, he's okay," she said, smiling.
Dr. Gustavo Medrano, a lung specialist at the Centro Medico hospital in Caracas, said if Chavez is talking, it suggests he is breathing on his own despite the respiratory infection and is not in intensive care. But Medrano said he remained skeptical about Maduro's comments and could deduce little from them about Chavez's prognosis for recovery.
"I have no idea because if it was such a serious, urgent, important operation, and that was 14 days ago, I don't think he could be walking and exercising after a surgery like that," Medrano said.
Over the weekend, Chavez's ally, Bolivian President Evo Morales, made a lightning visit to Cuba that only added to the uncertainty.
Journalists had been summoned to cover his arrival and departure in Havana, but hours later that invitation was canceled. No explanation was given, though it could have been due to confusion over Morales' itinerary as he apparently arrived later than initially scheduled.
Cuban state media published photos of President Raul Castro receiving Morales at the airport and said he came "to express his support" for Chavez, his close ally, but did not give further details. He left Sunday without making any public comments.
For the second day in a row Tuesday, Morales made no mention of his trip to Cuba during public events in Bolivia.
Yet more questions surround Chavez's political future, with the surgery coming two months after he won re-election to a six-year term.
If he is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan Constitution calls for new elections to be held. Chavez has asked his followers to back Maduro, his hand-picked successor, in that event.
Venezuelan officials have said Chavez might not return in time for his Jan. 10 inauguration.
Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution does not allow the president's swearing-in to be postponed, and say new elections should be called if Chavez is unable to take the oath on time.
But government officials have said the constitution lets the Supreme Court administer the oath of office at any time if the National Assembly is unable to do it Jan. 10 as scheduled.

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Cuba has much to lose as ally Chavez fights cancer

Cubans who were tuned in to the nightly soap opera on a recent Saturday received a sudden burst of bad news, from the other side of the Caribbean.
State TV cut to the presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez revealed that his cancer had returned. Facing his fourth related surgery in 18 months, he grimly named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his possible successor.
The news shocked not only Venezuelans but millions of Cubans who have come to depend on Chavez's largesse for everything from subsidized oil to cheap loans. Venezuela supplies about half of Cuba's energy needs, meaning the island's economy would be in for a huge shock and likely recession if a post-Chavez president forced the island to pay full price for oil.
Despite the drama, the news likely wasn't a surprise to Cuba's Communist government, and not only because Chavez has been receiving medical care on the island.
Havana learned important lessons about overdependence when the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union threw the country into a deep crisis. Trying to avoid the consequences of a similar cut, the Cuban government has been diversifying its portfolio of economic partners in recent years, looking to Asia, Europe and other Latin American nations, and is only about half as dependent on Caracas as it was on the former Soviet Union.
Cuba is also working to stimulate its economy back home by allowing more private-sector activity, giving a leg up to independent and cooperative farming, and decentralizing its sugar industry. A stronger Cuban economy would in theory have more hard currency to pay for energy and other imports.
Also getting off the ground is an experiment with independent nonfarm collectives that should be more efficient than state-run companies. And next year, another pilot program is planned for decentralized state enterprises that will enjoy near-autonomy and be allowed to control most of their income.
"This could have good results," said a Cuban economist who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to the foreign media. Cuba "is also thinking of boosting foreign investment in areas of the national economy, including in restricted areas like the sugar industry."
One of the country's top goals has been to make the island's struggling economy less dependent on a single benefactor.
Under the leadership of Chavez, who regularly calls former Cuban President Fidel Castro his ideological father and has followed parts of the Communist leader's governance playbook, Venezuela has sent billions of dollars a year to Cuba through trade and petro-aid.
Bilateral trade stood at a little over $8 billion last year, much of it in Cuban imports of oil and derivatives. In return, Havana primarily provides Venezuela with technical support from Cuban teachers, scientists and other professionals, plus brigades of health care workers. Analysts say those services are overvalued by outside standards, apparently costing as much as $200,000 per year per doctor. Experts peg the total Venezuelan subsidy to Cuba at around $2 billion to $4 billion a year.
While business with Venezuela makes up 40 percent of all Cuban trade, it's still a far cry from the days when the Communist Eastern Bloc accounted for an estimated 80 percent.
"A (loss of) $2 billion to $4 billion would definitely pinch. But it is not the same relative weight as the sudden complete withdrawal of the Soviet subsidies in the early '90s," said Richard E. Feinberg, a professor of international political economy at the University of California, San Diego. "Cuba's not going to go back to the days of bicycles. Could it throw the Cuban economy into recession? Yes."
That kind of resilience would result largely from Cuba's successes in courting foreign investors for joint ventures.
Last month, authorities announced a deal with a subsidiary of Brazil's Odebrecht to manage a sugar refinery, a rare step in an industry that has long been largely off limits to foreign involvement.
China has invested in land-based oil projects, and along with Canada is a key player in Cuba's important nickel industry. Spain has ventures in tourist hotels and tobacco, while French company Pernod Ricard helps export Cuban liquors. And since 2009, Brazil has been a partner in a massive project to modernize and expand the port at Mariel, west of the capital.
Trade with China alone was $1.9 billion and rising in 2010, and Raul Castro paid a visit to Chinese and Vietnamese leaders earlier this year to help cement Asian relationships.
But while Havana says it wants to boost foreign investment, obstacles remain. The approval process for investment projects can be long and cumbersome, and pilferage, disincentives to productivity and government intervention can cut into efficiencies. Foreign companies also pay a sky-high payroll tax.
Feinberg, who wrote a report on foreign investment in Cuba published this month by the U.S. think tank the Brookings Institution, said that while a number of foreign companies are successfully doing business with the island, others have run into problems, sending a chilly message to would-be investors. In particular he noted the recent cases of a government takeover of a food company run by a Chilean businessman accused of corruption, and contentious renegotiations of a contract with Dutch-British personal and home care products giant Unilever amid shifting government demands.
"The Cuban government has to decide that it wants foreign investment unambiguously. I think now there seem to be divisions among the leadership," Feinberg said. "Some are afraid that foreign investment compromises sovereignty, creates centers of power independent of the leadership or is exploitative."
He estimated Cuba has left on the table about $20 billion in missed investment over the past decade by not following practices typical of other developing nations. Instead, Cuba received $3.5 billion in foreign investment in that period.
Experts say a worst-case scenario for Chavez wouldn't automatically translate into the oil spigot shutting off overnight.
If Chavez's hand-picked successor, Vice President Maduro, were to take office, he would likely seek to continue the special relationship.
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has said he wants to end the oil-for-services barter arrangements, but could find that easier said than done should he win. The two countries are intertwined in dozens of joint accords, and poor Venezuelans who benefit from free care by Cuban doctors would be loath to see that disappear.
"You can't flip the switch on a relationship like this," said Melissa Lockhart Fortner, a Cuba analyst at the Pacific Council on International Policy, a Los Angeles-based institute that focuses on global affairs. "It would be terrible politics for him. ... Switching that off would really endanger his support far too much for that to be really a feasible option."
For Cuba, Chavez's latest health scare capped off a year of disappointments in the island's attempt to wean itself from Venezuelan energy.
Three deep-water exploratory oil wells drilled off the west coast failed to yield a strike, and last month the only oil rig in the world capable of drilling there without violating U.S. sanctions sailed away with no return in sight.
Yet time and again Havana has shown that it's nothing if not resilient, weathering everything from U.S.-backed invasion and assassination plots in the 1960s to the austere "Special Period" in the early 1990s, when the Soviet collapse sent Cuba's GDP plummeting 33 percent over four years. When hurricanes damaged the country's agriculture sector and the global financial crisis squeezed tourism four years ago, Cuba tightened its belt, slashed imports and survived.
"Some people are saying the demise of Chavez is also going to be the demise of Communism in Cuba because the regime's going to collapse and the people are going to rise up," Feinberg said. "That's probably yet another delusion of the anti-Castro exile community."
Still, many Cubans are nervously tuning into the near-daily updates about Chavez's health, carried prominently in state media.
"I don't know what would happen here," said 52-year-old Havana resident Magaly Ruiz. "We might end up eating grass."

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NBA: Kings suspend top scorer Cousins indefinitely

(Reuters) - The Sacramento Kings have suspended leading scorer and rebounder DeMarcus Cousins indefinitely for "unprofessional behavior and conduct detrimental to the team", the Kings said on Saturday. The suspension, his third this season, came after Cousins exchanged words with Kings coach Keith Smart during halftime of Friday's loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. The center did not play in the second half after being left in the locker by Smart. Cousins, who is averaging 16.6 points and 9.5 rebounds, lashed out at Smart after the coach said something to him, the Sacramento Bee reported. Cousins later apologized for his actions. "I shouldn't have responded back," he told reporters. "Should have accepted what was said and stayed quiet." Cousins twice has been suspended by the National Basketball Association this year. He was suspended for two games in November for confronting a San Antonio Spurs announcer and was benched one game by the league earlier this month after striking the Dallas Mavericks' O.J. Mayo in the groin.

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AP Source: D-backs, Ross agree to 3-year contract

PHOENIX (AP) — Outfielder Cody Ross has agreed to a three-year contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks, a person with knowledge of the negotiations said Saturday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal had not been announced. Ross, who turns 32 Sunday, adds to the abundance of outfielders on the Arizona roster, leading to speculation a trade may be ahead. He .267 with 22 home runs and 81 RBIs last season with the Boston Red Sox. He's a career .267 hitter in nine big league seasons. The addition gives the Diamondbacks four veteran outfielders — Ross, Justin Upton, Gerardo Parra and Jason Kubel — along with two youngsters the organization has deemed ready for the majors — Adam Eaton and A.J. Pollock. That would indicate a trade could be in the works with Kubel the center of that speculation. In his one season with Arizona, the left-handed slugger hit .253 with 30 home runs and 90 RBIs. He was hitting .300 on July 22 but batted .176 with 19 RBIs the rest of the season. Ross, who throws left-handed and bats right-handed, was a fourth-round draft pick of Detroit out of Carlsbad, N.M., High School in 1999. He had brief major league stints with the Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Cincinnati before becoming a full-time big leaguer with the Florida Marlins. Ross was claimed by San Francisco off waivers in August 2010 and was MVP of that year's NL championship series, when he hit .350 with three home runs in five RBIs against Philadelphia. He also homered against Texas in the World Series. He committed one error in each of the last two seasons.

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OF Cody Ross and Diamondbacks agree to 3-year deal

PHOENIX (AP) — Cody Ross and the Arizona Diamondbacks agreed to a three-year contract Saturday with a club option for 2016. Ross, who turns 32 on Sunday and lives in nearby Scottsdale, adds to the abundance of outfielders on the Arizona roster, leading to speculation a trade might be coming. Ross batted .267 with 22 home runs and 81 RBIs last season for the Boston Red Sox. He's a career .267 hitter in nine big league seasons with six teams. "Could not be happier to be in the Dbacks family! Truly Blessed!" Ross posted on his Twitter account. The addition gives the Diamondbacks four veteran outfielders — Ross, Justin Upton, Gerardo Parra and Jason Kubel — along with two youngsters the organization has deemed ready for the majors: Adam Eaton and A.J. Pollock. That would indicate a trade could be in the works, with Kubel the center of that speculation. In his first season with Arizona last year, the left-handed slugger hit .253 with 30 home runs and 90 RBIs. He was hitting .300 on July 22 but batted .176 with 19 RBIs the rest of the season. Ross, who throws left-handed and bats right-handed, was a fourth-round draft pick of Detroit out of Carlsbad, N.M., High School in 1999. He had brief major league stints with the Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Cincinnati before becoming a full-time big leaguer with the Florida Marlins. Ross was claimed by San Francisco off waivers in August 2010 and was MVP of that year's NL championship series, hitting .350 with three home runs and five RBIs against Philadelphia. He also homered against Texas in the World Series and batted .294 (15 for 51) with five homers, five doubles and 10 RBIs in 15 postseason games for the champion Giants. He committed one error in each of the last two seasons. The Diamondbacks also announced that infielder Gustavo Nunez cleared waivers and was returned to Detroit, opening a spot for Ross on the 40-man roster. Nunez was claimed off waivers from Pittsburgh in October after the Pirates selected him from the Tigers in the 2011 Rule 5 draft.

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Boise State wins Vegas Bowl, beating Washington

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The last two times Boise State played in the Las Vegas Bowl, there were other places the Broncos wanted to be. Not so on Saturday, when the smallest player on the team came up big in a 28-26 victory over Washington. After two straight blowouts in the Las Vegas Bowl, the Broncos had to work hard for a win sealed by a 27-yard field goal by 5-foot-5 Michael Frisina with 1:16 left. It left them feeling good about a game and a season when, unlike the last two years, there was hardly any talk about Boise State being in a BCS game. "The most satisfying thing about this season was each week you'd see us get just a little bit better," Boise State coach Chris Petersen said. "These guys, they don't go through the motions. They have a chip on their shoulder." The win capped another strong year for the No. 20 Broncos (11-2), who had to overcome a 205-yard rushing game by Bishop Sankey against their normally stingy defense. Sankey also had 74 yards receiving, giving him 279 of Washington's 447 yards from scrimmage. But it was Frisina who came up with the biggest game of his career in his final game. He kicked three field goals, including the first game winner he could ever recall booting. "It's every kicker's dream to win a big game with a field goal," Frisina said. "For this one to come on the last game of my career, you couldn't ask for anything more.' Washington (7-6) had taken the lead for the first time on a 38-yard field goal by Travis Coons with 4:09 left when No. 20 Boise State got a big kickoff return by freshman Shane Williams-Rhodes to the Washington 42. Joe Southwick guided the team to the 12 before Frisina hit the winning kick. "I was just focused on what I had to do," Frisina said. "I'm there as the insurance guy, I guess you'd say." Boise State sealed the win when Jeremy Ioane intercepted Keith Price's pass as the Huskies neared midfield. "To their credit they found a way to win the game in the end," said Washington coach Steve Sarkisian. "Our inability to finish is pretty blaring." Sankey, who was third on the depth list when fall practice began, rushed 30 times and caught six passes in the biggest game of his career. He scored one touchdown and was the MVP of the game, despite being on the losing side. "There's a lot of mixed emotions going on," Sankey said. "The MVP doesn't mean so much when you come out a loser." Frisina was only 12 for 17 on field goals coming into the game, but kicked three of them, including a 34-yarder to open the scoring that was his first field goal over 30 yards for the year. Southwick, meanwhile, had another efficient game, completing 26 of 38 passes for 264 yards and two touchdowns for a Boise State team that struggled offensively through much of the season before improving over its last three games. "All year I knew I could play at this level," he said. "It's just a lot of work, a lot of moving parts to put the puzzle together. The last three games it's really showed. We've just been executing at a high level in the offense." Southwick, a junior who took over from the departing Kellen Moore, also ran for 39 yards and had a punt that pinned Washington by its goal line in the fourth quarter. Boise State, which outscored Utah and Arizona State 82-24 in its two previous Las Vegas Bowl wins, looked headed for a third straight blowout when Holden Huff scored on a 34-yard pass with 5:25 left in the second quarter for an 18-3 lead. But Sankey scored on a 26-yard run on Washington's next possession, and Price scrambled for another score with 3 seconds left to make it 18-17 at halftime. The teams traded long drives in the third quarter, with Boise going 74 yards in 15 plays to open the second half, and Washington responding with a 75 yard, 12 play drive. The Huskies went for a 2-point conversion that would have tied it, but the pass was incomplete Sankey kept Washington in the game almost by himself in the first half, scoring the first touchdown for the Huskies and gaining huge chunks of yardage against the normally stingy Bronco defense. Of the 238 yards Washington gained in the half, Sankey had 178 of them. He ran 16 times for 130 yards and stretched out two short passes for another 48 yards. Boise State was playing without starting defensive end Demarcus Lawrence, the team's sack leader. Lawrence was sent home Thursday for violating unspecified team rules, his second suspension of the season. The two teams had met only once before, but they won't have to wait long to meet again. They will play in the opener of Washington's new stadium next August.

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