India warns Kashmiris of possible nuclear attack

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Officials in Indian-controlled Kashmir are warning residents to be prepared for a possible nuclear war by building build bomb-proof basements and collecting two weeks' worth of food and water.

Local officials said the advisory was routine, though it was the first time it had been published in a newspaper. They said it did not signal new concerns about a nuclear attack in the region, repeatedly fought over by nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan.

A series of deadly skirmishes along the cease-fire line in recent weeks has heightened tensions between the two countries, and the timing of the advisory surprised many residents in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

"This is fueling an atmosphere of fear. Educating people is fine but not this brazen way," said resident Fayaz Ahmed.

The notice, published Monday by the Kashmir police in the Greater Kashmir newspaper, advised people to build toilet-equipped basements large enough to house their entire families for two weeks. If there is no basement, residents should construct bunkers in their front yards, the notice advised.

The shelters should be stocked with candles, battery-operated lights and radios, it said, adding that stores of nonperishable food and water should be regularly replaced to ensure it is fresh.

The notice said that during a nuclear attack, motorists should dive out of their cars toward the blast to save themselves from being crushed by their soon-to-be tumbling vehicles.

"Expect some initial disorientation as the blast wave may blow down and carry away many prominent and familiar features," it advises.

It also warns residents to keep people contaminated by fallout out of their shelters.

Yoginder Kaul, inspector-general at the civil defense and state disaster response force, said the advisory was part of a normal campaign to educate the public, and the information has been available on a government website for some time.

"We routinely train and educate people regarding different natural and man-made disasters and that's our duty. This advertisement too was part of such a campaign. Please, let's not read into this beyond that. Let it be clear that this is purely in the nature of educating people and not connected with anything else," he said.

Both India and Pakistan claim the divided Kashmir region in its entirety and have fought two wars over it.

Earlier this month, three Pakistani soldiers and two Indian soldiers were killed in the worst bout of fighting in Kashmir since a cease-fire accord was signed by the countries in 2003.

In light of the violence, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Sunday he was reviewing future ties with Pakistan.

Iran's president scoffs at Western sanctions

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's president on Tuesday claimed his country can create 10 times more wealth from inventions than from oil, rendering Western economic sanctions powerless.

The West's oil embargo over Iran's suspect nuclear program won't stop the Islamic Republic's scientific and technological progress, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.

Addressing a group of Iranians in the western city of Hamedan, Ahmadinejad mocked the embargo, saying that Iranian universities would churn out money-making innovations. He did not mention any specific technologies.

"Don't buy our oil? To hell with you," Ahmadinejad said in remarks aimed at the West. "It's better if you don't buy... 10 times more money will head to people's pockets through the inventions of our scientists."

Last week, Ahmadinejad said Iran must move away from dependence on oil revenues to overcome Western sanctions that have slowed the economy and disrupted foreign trade. Iran has long depended on oil sales for about 80 percent of its foreign currency revenue.

Iran's income from oil and gas exports has dropped by 45 percent as a result of sanctions. The West fears Iran may ultimately be able to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

Iran's national currency has also lost about 8 percent of its value in the past two days, hitting a record low against the U.S. dollar and other foreign currencies in street trading. Street traders said Tuesday it reached 36,200 rials to the dollar. It was 33,500 rials on Sunday.

Iran's national currency lost nearly 40 percent of its value in 2012 alone. Each U.S. dollar was traded at about 10,000 rials as recently as early 2011. Iranian authorities have accused the West of waging an "economic war."

The country is living under stepped up Western sanctions that also include banking restrictions that make it increasingly difficult for Iran's Asian customers to pay for oil deliveries.

The government is preparing an austerity budget for the next Iranian calendar year that begins March 21. It aims to avoid a budget deficit by substantially increasing income taxes to make up for shrinking oil revenues.

Syrian rebels clash with Kurds in northeast: activists

BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least 56 people have been killed in a week of fighting in northeast Syria between anti-government rebels and members of the long-oppressed Kurdish minority who have seized on the civil war to try to secure self-rule, activists said on Tuesday.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which collates reports on Syria's violence from local activists, said on Tuesday that the anti-Damascus rebels were using tanks and mortars on Tuesday against Kurdish forces.

In a separate incident, it said at least 42 people including women and children had been killed when a car bomb targeting a pro-government militia went off on Monday evening in the town of Salamiyah, east of the central city of Hama.

With Arab rebels entangling government forces to the west and south, the Kurds, who make up around 10 percent of the population, have exploited the vacuum to set up the Kurdish schools and cultural centers long denied them under Baath party rule, as well as police and armed militias.

But they have remained at arm's length from the increasingly Islamist-dominated mostly Sunni Arab rebels, fearing that these would not honor the autonomy aspirations of a region that holds a significant part of Syria's estimated 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil reserves.

On Tuesday, fighters of the Kurdish People's Defence Units clashed with several rebel groups in the city of Ras al-Ain in Syria's northern Hasaka province, the Observatory said.

"The clashes erupted (last) Wednesday ... and (have) resulted in the deaths of at least 56 fighters," the group said.

The fighting is one of many sectarian or ethnic fault lines that have prevented the emergence of a single coherent movement to try to oust President Bashar al-Assad since insurgents took up arms after the government cracked down on peaceful protests in March 2011.

Since then, the conflict has become a full-scale civil war in which more than 60,000 people have been killed, 650,000 pushed to flee the country and well over a million made homeless within Syria.

A video posted online showed men and women gathering around a street strewn with rubble at what the Observatory said was the site of the blast in Salamiyah.

It said some of the wounded were in critical condition.

The state news agency SANA said the blast had been caused by a suicide bomber and that 25 people had been killed.

Reuters cannot verify such reports from inside Syria because the government severely limits access for independent media.

(Reporting by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Report: New Mexico teen planned more shootings

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — After killing his parents and three younger siblings at home, 15-year-old Nehemiah Griego reloaded an assault rifle and a .22-caliber rifle and planned to go somewhere "populated" and randomly shoot more people until he could be killed in a shootout with law enforcement, authorities said.

The teen also sent a picture of his dead mother to his girlfriend, and met her and her grandmother at the church where his father used to work, according to charging documents.

It wasn't immediately clear if that contact avoided further bloodshed. But a statement of probable cause says Griego spent time at the church, first talking to his girlfriend and her grandmother and then meeting with the church pastor and a security guard.

Church officials called authorities, and Griego initially told arriving officers he had come home Saturday morning after spending time at a friend's house to discover his family dead.

The teen later confessed to shooting his mother because he "had anger issues" and was annoyed with her, the charging document said. He said he killed his siblings after they woke up and became upset, then grabbed his parents' assault rifle and waited in the downstairs bathroom to ambush his father.

After killing his father, Griego said he reloaded the guns so "he could drive to a populated area to murder more people," according to the statement.

His plan, the statement said, was to "shoot people at random and eventually be killed while exchanging gunfire with law enforcement."

Bernallillo County sheriff's officials planned a midmorning news conference Tuesday to release more details in the case.

Griego, meanwhile, was set to appear in adult court on charges of murder and child abuse resulting in death. He was arrested Saturday at his family's home in a rural area southwest of Albuquerque.

Detectives spent two days collecting evidence and trying to piece together what led to the attacks.

"There's no other way to say it, except that we have a horrific crime scene down there that we are working on," Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston said Sunday.

The detectives had finished their work at the home by Monday afternoon. The metal gate at the home's entrance was shut, a small bouquet of purple flowers was on the top of the gate, and at each side there were religious signs, including one that read "Jesus is the reason for the season."

The sheriff's office identified the victims as Greg Griego, 51, his wife, Sarah Griego, 40, and three of their children: a 9-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2. All appeared to have gunshot wounds to the head.

A sheriff's detective questioned the teen Saturday night, and the details of their conversation were spelled out in the statement.

The teen allegedly told the detective that he took a .22-caliber rifle from his parents' closet around midnight Saturday and shot his mother in the head while his younger brother slept next to her.

Griego told the detective that his brother woke up but did not believe him that their mother was dead, so he showed his mother's bloody face to his brother and then shot him, according to the statement.

The teen is accused of then shooting his two young sisters after they began crying in their room, and retrieving a military-style semi-automatic rifle from his parents' closet and waiting in a downstairs bathroom for his father to come home. The statement said he shot his father multiple times after he passed the bathroom doorway.

Greg Griego was a pastor who had once served at Calvary, one of Albuquerque's largest Christian churches. He also was well-known throughout the law enforcement community for his work as a voluntary chaplain.

Neighbor Terry Wootan described Greg Griego as a man with a big heart. The two sometimes chatted at the mailbox and would wave to each other when passing by. Wootan said Griego told him about his time in California when he was involved in gangs and how he turned his life around and found God.

"What he wanted to do was help people, and he would never quit," Wootan said.

The pastor's death has shocked the community, including the Albuquerque Fire Department and the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he volunteered his spiritual guidance.

A records check by the Children, Youth and Families Department indicated no problems with the Griego family and that Nehemiah Griego had never been in trouble with the law.

Sheriff's Deputy Aaron Williamson confirmed there was no history of any emergency calls to the home in the recent past.

According to the probable cause statement, Nehemiah Griego first told a staff member at Calvary that his family was dead and that he placed the two rifles in the family van as protection before driving to the church. He later changed his story, according to the detective's statement.

Asked if he had said anything to anyone else about killing his family, Griego allegedly told the detective that he had taken a picture of his dead mother and sent it to his girlfriend.

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Life in Lebanon "horrible" for Palestinians fleeing Syria: U.N.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Palestinians who fled Syria's war to neighboring Lebanon are living up to 20 in a room with no water, fresh air or electricity, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday.

Donors needed to do more to help at least 20,000 Palestinians who have already come in and more than 200 who join them every day, the chief of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Filippo Grandi, told Reuters.

The near two-year revolt against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has pushed refugees over all its borders, putting services under pressure and threatening to further destabilize an already fragile region.

Most of the Palestinians crossing Syria's southwestern boundary into Lebanon were living with friends and family in existing Palestinian camps set up to take in refugees after the creation of Israel in 1948, Grandi said in an interview.

He had toured the Shatila Palestinian camp and found "the conditions were horrible" for new arrivals.

"The main problem they have is accommodation. They rent small, cramped, very unsanitary premises without running water, without ventilation, without electricity," he said.

"And sometimes you see rooms in which 12, 15, 20 people live in really substandard conditions." He met one family living in a dark room with only one candle. "I couldn't see who I was speaking to," Grandi said.

Lebanon, the smallest of Syria's neighbors, already hosts more than 200,000 refugees from Syria but has not set up new camps to house them.

Some politicians fear an influx of majority Sunni Muslim Syrians and Palestinians will tip the demographic balance of a country that is still reeling from its own 15-year civil war. More than 400,000 Palestinian refugees already live in Lebanon.

Grandi said that UNRWA was trying to find buildings that could be refurbished and adapted to house families who could not find accommodation with families in Lebanon.

"Not ideal, perhaps. But that would provide us with the opportunity of giving (Palestinian refugees) some assistance in a more adequate fashion," he said.

FUNDS NEEDED

UNRWA asked donors for $13 million to cover costs in Lebanon until June but only half has been donated and more may be needed, Grandi said.

"The donor community must help Lebanon bear the immense burden of this huge refugee problem," he added.

Before the revolt, Syria hosted half a million Palestinian refugees.

A third were housed in the densely-built apartment blocks of Damascus' Yarmouk district but most of its residents were forced to flee when fighting erupted there in December.

Grandi said Jordan, which already hosts 2 million Palestinian refugees and their descendents from the Arab-Israeli wars, was turning back Palestinian refugees from Syria, though he did not have figures.

Jordan has said it cannot take in more Palestinian refugees.

"I understand the sensitivity of the issue for the Jordanian authorities," Grandi said.

"I would like to appeal to (Jordan) to exercise all humanitarian considerations when Palestinian refugees ask to be admitted to Jordanian territory from Syria," he added.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Andrew Heavens)