Yemen clashes 'leave dozens dead' in south

Some 30 people have been killed in clashes between suspected al-Qaeda militants and the army in Yemen's south, officials say.

At least 17 soldiers and 12 suspected militants were killed.

A military official said the rebels had occupied an army post in Mallah, Lahij province, and the government responded with artillery fire and air attacks.

Islamist militants have renewed attacks on the army since President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi took office last month.

President Hadi has made fighting al-Qaeda one of his top priorities.

The militants have taken advantage of a year of anti-government protests and have been locked in deadly battles with the army for months.

One military official told AFP that in the latest fighting "two army tanks and three al-Qaeda vehicles were destroyed".

He said several soldiers had been seized by al-Qaeda.

BBC News

Republican Hopefuls' Efforts At Humor Fail Easily In Heated Campaign Environment

After hitting an off note when he told a "humorous" story about his dad shutting down a factory, GOP hopeful MItt Romney's aides sent him to the "The Tonight Show" this past week with these instructions: "Don't try and be funny."

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney hit an off note when he told a "humorous" story about his dad shutting down a factory.

Robert De Niro managed to get both Newt Gingrich and the Obama campaign riled up when he joked at an Obama fundraiser that America isn't ready for a white first lady.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, still nursing wounds from his failed presidential campaign, did himself a world of good with his self-deprecating jokes at a recent Washington dinner.

Done right, humor can be a huge asset for a politician. But it is fumbled easily in the overheated environment of a political campaign.

That may be why Romney's aides sent him to the "The Tonight Show" this past week with these instructions: "Don't try and be funny."

The Republican presidential front-runner largely complied, and that worked out just fine for him. But he apparently forgot his advisers' advice the next day when he attempted to be funny on a conference call with people in next-to-vote Wisconsin.

Romney recounted what he called a "humorous" story about the time his auto executive father shut down a factory in Michigan and moved it to Wisconsin. Later, when his dad was in a parade while running for Michigan governor, the marching band kept playing the University of Wisconsin fight song.

"Every time they would start playing `On, Wisconsin! On Wisconsin!' my dad's political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop," Romney said with a laugh.

A joke about closing factories? In this economy? What was he thinking?

Democrats pounced on it as fresh evidence that Romney is out of touch with the economic concerns of ordinary voters.

Jokes that might be funny another time often don't pass muster under the klieg lights of a presidential campaign.

De Niro attempted satire during a New York fundraiser headlined by Michelle Obama this month when he ticked off the names of the wives of the GOP presidential candidates and then joked that America wasn't "ready for a white first lady."

Donors roared their approval. But by the next morning, Gingrich was calling the racial reference to the Republican wives "inexcusable" and the chastened Obama campaign was labeling the actor's comments "inappropriate."

De Niro at first declined to comment but ended up apologizing – sort of.

"My remarks, although spoken with satirical jest, were not meant to offend or embarrass anyone – especially the first lady," he said in a statement.

President Barack Obama, for his part, has had better luck using humor to deflect questions about his own vulnerabilities – real or perceived.

During a St. Patrick's Day reception this month, Obama was presented with a certificate of Irish heritage by the Irish prime minister.

"This will have a special place of honor alongside my birth certificate," Obama deadpanned, deftly sending the message that any lingering doubts about where he was born are nothing but a joke.

Sometimes, humor can come back to bite a candidate long after the laugh lines have faded.

In 2004, when Romney was Massachusetts governor, he took a jab at the wealth of that year's monied presidential candidate, Democratic Sen. John Kerry.

"There's a senator from my state, you may have heard, that wants to get elected president," Romney said at a Republican Governors Association dinner. "And I don't know why he wants to do that because, of course, if he won he'd have to move into a smaller house."

It may have been funny then, but the joke boomeranged when it resurfaced on the Internet this past week just as Romney is trying to combat an elitist image.

Perry, whose Republican presidential campaign quickly floundered in the primaries, took a big step toward rehabilitating his image with his appearance last weekend at a fancy Washington dinner for journalists and their guests.

He got plenty of laughs when he joked that his time as the GOP front-runner had been "the three most exhilarating hours of my life."

He perfectly skewered Romney by quipping that during the GOP debates, he'd been tempted to turn to his rival and ask, "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?"

Getting off a few well-rehearsed jokes – often written by someone else – is generally less challenging than displaying pitch-perfect humor day after day amid the grind of campaigning. Perry's jokes, for example, were written by GOP speechwriter Landon Parvin.

But even some of the most carefully thought-out jokes, in the end, just aren't funny.

Take President George W. Bush, at a White House Correspondents Association dinner in 2004. He narrated a slide show that included a photo of himself hunting around in the Oval Office and then quipped, "Those weapons of mass destruction gotta be somewhere."

Critics said it was a callous joke, given all those who had died in the Iraq war.

Even some candidates with a natural funny bone have found that it doesn't always translate well to a presidential campaign.

Republican Sens. Bob Dole and John McCain, whose humor was a hit with congressional colleagues and reporters, both discovered their sometimes wicked sense of humor could be too cutting for a presidential campaign.

Morris Udall, a Democratic congressman from Arizona, got more laughs than votes in his 1976 run for president and ended up writing a memoir titled, "Too Funny to be President."

On the other hand, some decidedly unfunny candidates have benefited by exceeding extremely low expectations.

When candidate Richard Nixon went on the TV comedy show "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" in 1968 and said "Sock it to ME?" he got rave reviews.

___

Associated Press writers Ben Feller, Charles Babington and Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.

___

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Trayvon Martin case stirs extremists, groups say

(CNN) -- The national conversation over Trayvon Martin's killing is loud and intense. In some places, it's also vile and violent.

The case -- in which a Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer killed the unarmed black teen in Sanford, Florida on February 26 -- has sparked a national controversy. It has also stoked extremist views, particularly on the internet, experts say.

George Zimmerman said he shot Martin in self-defense after the teen attacked him. Martin's family has disputed that.

Investigators have not charged Zimmerman.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the civil rights group that fights bigotry, said the case has stirred up "extremists on both sides of the racial divide."

A visitor to the website of one white supremacist group, for example, left a comment calling Martin "a punk negroe who messed with the wrong guy."

Meanwhile, the New Black Panther Party has offered a $10,000 reward for anyone who "captured" Zimmerman, an offer that Martin's family has condemned.

The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which fights bigotry, said "white nationalists are trying to inject their poison" into the case, too, portraying the teen as a "scary black man who deserved what he got."

"They have defamed Martin, concocted false allegations and amplified racial stereotypes of young black men -- in effect, putting the victim on trial in the court of public opinion," the group said.

Mark Potok, an expert on extremists for the Southern Poverty Law Center, says white supremacist attitudes often emerge during such hot-button controversies.

"You see this every time there really is something like this," an attempt to portray victims as perpetrators and this slain 17-year-old as a "gangster thug," he said.

William Bennett, a CNN contributor who served as secretary of education under President Reagan, wrote on CNN.com that a "mob mentality seems to be in the ascendancy."

"The facts are confounding and inconclusive. But the tendency in the first days by some, including Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and an angry chorus of followers, was to rush to judgment with little regard for fairness, due process, or respect for the terrible death of a young man," Bennett said.

He noted that film director Spike Lee tweeted what he thought was Zimmerman's home address.

It turned out to be the wrong address, though, and it "resulted in an older couple fleeing from their home and fearing for their lives after threats and crowds outside their residence."

Lee apologized to the couple and said he would pay the couple's cost of leaving their home.

Lester Spence, an assistant professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, said he's not surprised to hear about hate speech sprouting up. He said the internet intensifies it.

"As soon as something like this happens, bloggers focus on it. People that follow them share that content," he said.

He said the hate shows up in comments under stories and essays on the Web that almost always aren't signed by the writer.

"People will say what they want to say under the cover of anonymity," he said.

"Go to almost any website that deals with this issue," Spence said. If there are no filters, the hate pours through, he said.

Kelly McBride, senior faculty member for ethics at Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Florida, said she isn't surprised that extremist talk has emerged in this case.

"There have always been people who believe racist things and those people have existed on a continuum," she said.

Hate speech involving immigration and sexual orientation also ripples across the Web.

People who don't pay "super close attention to these issues may not notice the hate speech on a regular basis," she said.

"The internet affords people anonymity and insulation," she said.

Potok said Martin case reminds him of what happened with Shirley Sherrod, the black Agriculture Department employee who was engulfed in controversy two years ago.

Late blogger Andrew Breitbart posted an edited and incomplete video of a speech by Sherrod appearing to say she discriminated against a white farmer looking for assistance.

Sherrod resigned.

A full version of the speech, however, showed that Sherrod had assisted the farmer. The department later offered Sherrod her job back when it was clear she had been misrepresented.

Potok noted that she was briefly portrayed as anti-white and was briefly demonized. He compared the slams at Sherrod with the crude doubt cast on Martin's character and innocence.

CNN

France 'to allow first genocide extradition to Rwanda'

A French court has for the first time approved the extradition of a suspect to Rwanda on charges over the country's 1994 genocide, local media reports say.

A court in the town of Rouen decided that French-Rwandan dual national Claude Muhayimana, 51, could be sent back to Rwanda, AFP reports.

However, the French government still has to approve the extradition.

Mr Muhayimana's lawyer said her client denies all charges and would be appealing against the decision.

"My client believes he has no guarantee that he will be judged by an impartial court given the current situation there," Geraldine Boitieux told AFP news agency.

The court ruling follows an international arrest warrant for Mr Muhayimana issued in December. He is accused of taking part in genocide and crimes against humanity.

Mr Muhayimana says he would be ready to stand trial in France or at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), but not in Rwanda itself, Ms Boitieux said.

The Rwandan ambassador to France, Jacques Kabale, said in a statement that he was "satisfied" with the decision.

Mr Kabale insisted that Rwanda's courts were able to guarantee Mr Muhayimana's right to a fair trial.

Between 800,000 and one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in the 1994 genocide perpetrated by Hutu militias.

BBCNews

China unlikely to attend Syria meeting

A Syrian boy cries in a Red Crescent refugee camp in Boynuyogun village, in Hatay region, Turkey, on Sunday. The Boynuyogun camp houses some 2,000 Syrian refugees in 600 tents. Adem Altan / Agence France-Presse

China is unlikely to attend the second "Friends of Syria" meeting scheduled to convene in Istanbul in April, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

China received an invitation to the meeting, but due to the current situation, did not consider attending it, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a daily news conference on Monday.

"We think actions taken by the international community with regard to Syria should help ease the situation there, promote political dialogue, resolve disputes and maintain peace and stability in the Middle East," Hong said.

The resolution of the Syrian issue requires the participation of, and dialogue between, the major parties involved, and the international community should create favorable conditions for that, he said.

China will continue to work with all sides and play an active and constructive role in finding a peaceful and proper resolution to the Syrian issue, the spokesman added.

The first "Friends of Syria" meeting was held in Tunisia on Feb 24. The Syrian authorities and some opposition parties were not invited. China was invited but did not attend.

The West-backed meetings aim to solidify the opposition parties and call for more support from the international community for the opposition parties by increasing pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said Li Guofu, director of Middle East studies at the China Institute of International Studies.

"The meeting is not a positive response to Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League envoy," he said.

Annan is due in China on Tuesday to brief leaders about his proposal to end violence in the country. He will meet Chinese leaders and Foreign Ministry officials during his two-day visit, according to Hong.

Annan's proposal calls for an immediate cease-fire in Syria and political dialogue between the authority and opposition parties.

"China values and supports the mediation efforts of Annan and hopes this visit will allow in-depth discussions on a political resolution of the Syrian issue," Hong said.

"Annan will probably gain a better understanding of how supportive the Chinese are (for his plan)," Joshua Eisenman, senior fellow in China studies at the Washington-based American Foreign Policy Council, told AFP.

China would strengthen coordination with the UN and Arab League on the Syria issue through Annan's visit, said Li. "But the problem is that the opposition parties are reluctant to accept Annan's proposals of a political resolution."

China unveiled its six-point proposition earlier on the political settlement of the Syria issue. It backed a UN Security Council peace plan for Syria, with Russia, which was put forward by Annan last week.

US President Barack Obama said on Monday that he and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, agreed to support diplomatic efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria and ensure a "legitimate" government there.

There had been disagreements over the past few months between the US and Russia, but both agreed "we should be supportive of Kofi Annan's efforts to end some of the bloodshed that is taking place in Syria", and that the goal was to have a "legitimate" government in Damascus, Obama told reporters after a meeting between the two leaders in Seoul ahead of the 2012 nuclear summit.

Before flying to Seoul, Medvedev told Annan that he appreciated his efforts, calling it the last chance for peace.

"This may be the last chance for Syria to avoid a long-lasting and bloody civil war. Therefore, we will offer you our full support at any level and in various ways in those areas, of course, in which Russia is capable of providing support," he said.

Chinadailyusa

Paul Ryan Budget Likely To Go Back On Shelf After House Passage

WASHINGTON -- The most powerful prescriptions of a tough House GOP budget plan, like a dramatic restructuring of Medicare and big cuts to domestic programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and transportation appear destined to go back on the shelf almost as soon as the measure is passed this week.

Instead, lawmakers will advance more pedestrian, politically safe goals: passing a routine round of annual spending bills as well as a special budget bill that would block automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies from taking effect in January.

To protect the Pentagon and domestic priorities like education from $78 billion in cuts next year alone, House Republicans would substitute a larger, $261 billion set of spending cuts – but ones that would take effect more slowly over the coming decade.

The result? A higher deficit in the coming budget year than if Congress simply put the government on autopilot and went home.

Such is the reality under the arcane way Congress writes the federal budget. First comes a measure called a budget resolution, and that's the measure being voted on by the House this week. It's a nonbinding, hypothetical, invariably vague measure that sets out a broad vision on taxes, spending and deficits but often contains unrealistic assumptions about the kinds of spending cuts lawmakers can really stomach – whether Democrats or Republicans are writing it.

The House GOP budget that's headed for the floor this week is indeed loaded with bold, tough – critics say draconian – steps that if enacted into law would swiftly wrestle the budget deficit under control.

The follow-up legislation, however, is less ambitious. It's a round of annual agency budget bills and a special measure known as a budget reconciliation bill. A reconciliation measure is constructed by telling congressional committees to scrub the programs under their jurisdiction to find savings, which are then bundled together and passed on the floor.

This year, House GOP leaders are orchestrating such a measure, in hopes of both forestalling the automatic cuts and in placating tea party lawmakers unhappy that the party, while talking a good game on the deficit, isn't getting much in concrete results.

"Let's say, `Hey, we're Republicans. We don't just talk about it,'" said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan. "Actually pass something through the floor."

What is likely to make it into actual implementing bill later this spring, however, pales when compared with the sharp cuts called for in this week's nonbinding version.

The plan by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., getting a vote this week calls for cutting President Barack Obama's latest budget proposal by $5.3 trillion over the coming decade, with $187 billion of those cuts coming next year. Many of those cuts, however, can't pass when it actually comes to implementing them – especially in an election year.

Instead, the follow-up House budget measure – the Senate has no plans for a companion bill – would reduce deficits by just $261 billion over the coming decade, and by only $18 billion next year. Instead of sharp cuts to Medicaid, transportation and welfare, for example, the cuts will probably occur in federal employee pensions, farm subsidies, food stamps and other health care programs.

Even those cuts are likely to test Republicans, many of whom were not in Congress the last time it passed a deficit-cutting budget reconciliation bill in 2005. That measure was approved by a GOP-controlled Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush, but getting it passed was enormously difficult for Republicans. It cut $100 billion over a decade.

The 2005 debate, for example, featured numerous power plays by lawmakers protecting parochial interests, including a dramatic, last-minute push by Ohio Republicans to reverse Medicaid cuts that would have hit Buckeye State manufacturers of oxygen equipment.

Meanwhile, there's no sign that another key element in the GOP budget will advance this year. It's a tax plan promising sharply lower rates in exchange for eliminating many popular tax breaks. The GOP tax reform plan would lower the top rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, but at the risk of eliminating deductions on mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes. It's simply too controversial and difficult to do in a hyper-polarized election year.

Separately, House Republicans also promise to cut about 5 percent from domestic agencies whose operating budgets will be written by the appropriations committees later this year. But the move breaks faith with last summer's hard-fought budget pact and is likely to be reversed in any final deal next fall or winter.

The upcoming real-world budgeting follows moves last month to extend payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits and prevent a cut in Medicare payments to doctors – adding $101 billion to the budget deficit for this year and $40 billion for the upcoming 2013 fiscal year.

That bill was partially paid for by about $50 billion in new revenues and spending cuts that accrue slowly over the coming decade.

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Mitt Romney: 'If I'm The Godfather Of This Thing, Then It Gives Me The Right To Kill It'

Mitt Romney was asked by conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt Monday evening about a comment made by President Barack Obama's Senior Adviser David Plouffe, in which Plouffe said Romney is the "godfather" of Obama's health care law, the Affordable Care Act.

From the transcript on Hewitt's site:

HH: Now yesterday, the President’s campaign manager said that you are the godfather of Obamacare. I know that’s not the case. I know you didn’t cut Medicare or raise taxes, and you didn’t change every American’s health care plan. But just for the moment, if that’s who you are, can you make the Democrats an office they can’t refuse to repeal it?

MR: (laughing) That’s a great idea. We counted, by the way, that Mr. Plouffe is the Rumpelstiltskin of trying to turn straw into gold. He will not be successful. I can tell you one thing. If I’m the godfather of this thing, then it gives me the right to kill it. And if I’m the president, I will get rid of Obamacare. I will stop it in its tracks on Day One, and get it repealed.

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