Israeli forces dismantle Palestinian encampment

BURIN, West Bank (AP) — Israeli troops fired tear gas and stun grenades at rock-throwingPalestinian protesters Saturday as soldiers tried to dismantle an encampment that activists set up inthe West Bank to protest Israeli building restrictions.

The al-Manatir camp — a group of four tents and five metal shacks built in a Palestinian olive grove near the West Bank village of Burin — is the fourth protest encampment that Palestinians have tried to establish in recent weeks. The Palestinians are trying to draw attention to Israel's control of territory that they want for their future state.

In particular, they protest what they say is Israel's broader policy of not allowing Palestinians to build in areas under Israeli control.

Clashes erupted Saturday after khaki-clad soldiers tried to dismantle the camp, with soldiers firing tear gas and some of the dozens of Palestinians throwing rocks. The Israeli army said five Palestinians were arrested. No serious injuries were reported.

The village of Burin has come under frequent attack by hard-line Jewish settlers who live nearby. About a dozen young men and boys, apparently Jewish settlers, clashed with Palestinian civilians at the scene.

The Israeli military said soldiers broke up the crowd. One Israeli civilian and a paramilitary border policeman were lightly wounded in the clash, the army said.

By building encampments, Palestinians are imitating the hard-line Jewish settlers who have established a series of wildcat outposts throughout the West Bank, typically clusters of caravans near already-built Jewish communities. Although Israel views the wildcat outposts as illegal, few have been dismantled.

There are also some 500,000 Israelis who live in Jewish settlements scattered through the West Bank and around east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital. Israel's settlement policy is seen as illegal by the international community, and the United Nations sharply criticized the Jewish state's West Bank settlements in a report released Thursday.

"We are doing this to confirm our ownership of the land, and its sovereignty," said Abir Kopty, a Palestinian activist. "It's not enough to make reports and condemnations. There's a need for concrete action."

llegal fireworks blamed for deadly blast in China

BEIJING (AP) — A truck that exploded and caused an elevated stretch of highway to collapse in central China, killing 10 people, was loaded with holiday fireworks that were illegally produced and transported, authorities said Saturday.

Local authorities have shut down the company that made the fireworks, Hongsheng Fireworks Manufacturing Co. Ltd., and detained four company officials following Friday's blast, state media reported.

It remained unclear what set off the fireworks as they were shipped eastward on a major highway through Henan province. State-runChina Central Television said witnesses believed a collision caused by heavy smog might have triggered the blast, which occurred about 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of the ancient city of Luoyang.

The Ministry of Public Security said Hongsheng, based in the neighboring province of Shaanxi, had illegally produced the explosives, packaged them in disguise and contracted with atrucking company unlicensed to handle hazardous commodities.

It said the factory had failed to check the credentials of the trucking company's personnel.

The state-run China News said the explosives had been declared as general commodities.

Preliminary investigations blamed the explosion for the collapse of the 80-meter (260-foot) stretch of the elevated highway in Mianchi county, sending trucks and sedan cars plummeting 24 meters (79 feet) to the ground, according to a statement by the provincial government of Henan.

Most of those who were killed died from the fall, CCTV said. Eleven people were injured.

Photos by state media and television footage showed hunks of concrete, overturned trucks and crumpled cars in the debris. In one photo, a truck's back wheels were perched at the edge of a shorn-off section of the highway.

"It was horrible. It was horrible," survivor Hou Chunlin murmured from his hospital bed in an interview by CCTV.

Fireworks are a major part of the festivities surrounding the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 10 this year. To meet the demand, fireworks are made, shipped and stored in large quantities, sometimes in unsafe conditions.

As a result, there are periodic catastrophes. In 2006, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, a storeroom filled with fireworks exploded at a temple fair in Henan, killing 36 people and injuring dozens more. In 2000, an unlicensed fireworks factory in southern China exploded, killing 33 people, including 13 primary and secondary school students working there.

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Conservatives make gun issue new rallying cry

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — An immigration debate is raging and a budget crisis looms in Congress, but the conservative activistsgathered outside the New Hampshire Statehouse had just one thing on their minds: guns.

"The Second Amendment is there to protect us from losing the rest of them," said Adam Brisebois, 34, of Hudson, who cradled his 3-year-old daughter on his right shoulder and a rifle on the left. "If we don't fight, we'll lose our rights."

Thursday's rally, organized by tea party leaders, drew nearly 500 people, many of them waving signs and carrying loaded weapons, to the state capital. Conservative leaders elsewhere report a wave of similar protests as grass-roots activists from Florida to Colorado seize on a new rallying cry for a tea party movement, which is trying to recover from a painful 2012 election season.

Many activists aren't happy with the GOP's sudden embrace of more lenient immigration proposals and they're monitoring the approaching congressional deadline to avoid massive cuts to military programs. But for now at least, the debate over guns and the perceived threat of losing them tops their list.

It's an "organic" movement with little coordination from national conservative organizations, according to Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express. "It's happening by itself," she said.

It doesn't matter that neither President Barack Obama nor congressional Democrats are calling for a wholesale repeal of gun rights. Tea partyers are enraged by the possibility of any erosion of the Second Amendment's "right of the people to keep and bear arms."

The gun control debate in Washington took center stage after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre in December, when a gunman used a semi-automatic assault rifle to kill 26 people, 20 of them children. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats have promised to make gun restrictions a legislative priority. Obama already has proposed requiring background checks for all gun sales and reviving both an assault weapons ban and a 10-round limit on the size of ammunition magazines.

There was little mention of the school shooting at the New Hampshire rally, where the crowd focused squarely on the belief that helped lead to the creation of the tea party movement four years ago: that an overbearing government is trampling on the nation's founding principles.

"There is an assault going on on the Constitution. And that is job one of ours — to protect our flank and protect gun owners," said Tom Gaitens, a Tampa, Fla.-based tea party leader. "To us, this is the fundamental issue on the founding of our nation."

Florida tea party activists already have traveled to Washington to protest new gun restrictions, and conservative leaders in the state are considering a series of gun-related rallies, Gaitens said.

Many protesters are hunters, but say access to hunting is not their prime concern — just as a sign hanging behind the podium at the New Hampshire rally said: "The right to keep arms is not about deer hunting. It is about defending the republic from tyranny."

"I don't have an automatic weapon. I don't want an automatic weapon. But the citizens need to have guns that are equal to the guns that the government has," said Roger Rist, a 69-year-old business owner from Meredith. "I certainly hope I don't have to take up arms against the government. Might we have to? Yeah."

In Colorado, foes of illegal immigration have been quiet as the Democrat-controlled Legislature has moved to allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at state colleges and universities. Similar bills in the past drew dozens of angry witnesses, but only one man from a group opposing illegal immigration testified against it at the Statehouse this month, compared with a parade of supporters of the bill.

In contrast, gun advocates held a spirited rally at the Colorado Statehouse to oppose gun controlmeasures and drew more than 100 people last month. They also held a widely-publicized training recently for teachers and school workers who want to carry guns at the workplace.

In Georgia, tea party conservatives have introduced a range of bills that together would effectively allow Georgians to carry weapons anywhere. They also attempt to exempt certain weapons from federal gun control laws.

"We don't have a single member who thinks we need any new laws on this," said Ken Baxley, a local tea party leader in southeast Georgia's Effingham County, said. "When that tragedy happened, our anger was directed at the shooter, not at the guns."

An Associated Press-GfK poll found last month that 58 percent of Americans felt the gun laws in the United States should be stricter. Among Republicans, 53 percent want the nation's gun laws to stay as they are, while 2 in 3 women favor stricter gun laws, as do 60 percent of independents.

The fate of new gun legislation on Capitol Hill is uncertain at best. And as tea party activists clamor against any changes, the powerful gun lobby is echoing their argument.

"I think without any doubt, if you look at why our Founding Fathers put (the Second Amendment) there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny," Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association said in a congressional hearing last week.

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