Lawmaker Apologizes for Inviting Teen to 'Snake' Under His Desk

A five-time Connecticut state representative issued an apology and was stripped of his leadership post for what some people construed as a lewd remark to a teenage girl.

"If you're bashful I got a snake sitting under my desk here," State Rep. Ernest Hewett can be heard telling a 17-year-old girl during a Feb. 20 committee meeting.

The teenager had just testified in support of more funding for the Connecticut Science Center's ambassador program.

She had told lawmakers that by participating in the program, which included handling snakes and turtles, she became more outgoing.

Hewett told ABC News' New Haven affiliate WTNH-TV that he meant nothing sexual by the comment.

"I have apologized to her for what was taken out of context," he said.

In a statement, Matt Fleury, the president and CEO of the Connecticut Science Center said he believed the apology was sincere and passed it on to the student, who also accepted it.

Since the incident, Hewett has been removed as deputy speaker of the House, but some Republicans are calling for even stronger action, calling Hewett's comment a "disgrace and embarrassment."

Chad says it killed Algeria hostage mastermind in Mali

N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chadian soldiers in Mali have killedMokhtar Belmokhtar, the al Qaeda commander who masterminded a bloody hostage-taking at an Algerian gas plant in January, Chad's military said on Saturday.

The death of one of the world's most wanted jihadists would be a major blow to al Qaeda in the region and to Islamist rebels already forced to flee towns they had seized in northern Mali by an offensive by French and African troops.

"On Saturday, March 2, at noon, Chadian armed forces operating in northern Mali completely destroyed a terrorist base. ... The toll included several dead terrorists, including their leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar," Chad's armed forces said in a statement read on national television.

On Friday, Chad's president, Idriss Deby, said his soldiers had killed another al Qaeda commander,Adelhamid Abou Zeid, among 40 militants who died in an operation in the same area as Saturday's assault - Mali's Adrar des Ifoghas mountains near the Algerian border.

France - which has used jet strikes against the militants' mountain hideouts - has declined to confirm the killing of either Abou Zeid or Belmokhtar.

In Washington, an Obama administration said the White House could not confirm the killing of Belmokhtar.

Analysts said the death of two of al Qaeda's most feared commanders in the Sahara desert would mark a significant blow to Mali's Islamist rebellion.

"Both men have extensive knowledge of northern Mali and parts of the broader Sahel and deep social and other connections in northern Mali, and the death of both in such a short amount of time will likely have an impact on militant operations," said Andrew Lebovich, a Dakar-based analyst who follows al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Anne Giudicelli, managing director of security consultancy Terrorisc, said the al Qaeda commanders' deaths - if confirmed - would temporarily disrupt the Islamist rebel network but would also raise concern over the fate of seven French hostages believed to be held by Islamists in northern Mali.

Chad is one of several African nations that have contributed forces to a French-led military intervention in Mali aimed at ridding its vast northern desert of Islamist rebels who seized the area nearly a year ago following a coup in the capital.

Western and African countries are worried that al Qaeda could use the zone to launch international attacks and strengthen ties with African Islamist groups like al Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria.

'MARLBORO MAN'

Belmokhtar, 40, who lost an eye while fighting in Afghanistan in the 1990s, claimed responsibility for the seizure of dozens of foreign hostages at the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria in January in which more than 60 people were killed.

That attack put Algeria back on the map of global jihad, 20 years after its civil war, a bloody Islamist struggle for power. It also burnished Belmokhtar's jihadi credentials by showing that al Qaeda remained a potent threat to Western interests despite U.S. forces killing Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.

Before In Amenas, some intelligence experts had assumed Algerian-born Belmokhtar had drifted away from jihad in favor of kidnapping and smuggling weapons and cigarettes in the Sahara where he earned the nickname "Marlboro Man".

In a rare interview with a Mauritanian news service in late 2011, Belmokhtar paid homage to bin Laden and his successor, Ayman al-Zawahri. He cited al Qaeda's traditional global preoccupations, including Iraq, Afghanistan and the fate of the Palestinians, and stressed the need to "attack Western and Jewish economic and military interests".

He shared command of field operations for AQIM - al Qaeda's North African franchise - with Abou Zeid, although there was talk the two did not get along and were competing for power.

A former smuggler turned jihadi, Algerian-born Abou Zeid imposed a violent form of sharia, Islamic law, in the ancient desert town of Timbuktu, including amputations and the destruction of ancient Sufi shrines.

Robert Fowler, a former Canadian diplomat held hostage by Belmokhtar from 2008 to 2009, told Reuters, "While I cannot consider reports of the death of both Abou Zeid and Mokhtar Belmokhtar as anything but good news ... I must temper my enthusiasm by the fact that this is by no means the first time Belmokhtar's death has been reported."

President Francois Hollande said on Friday that the assault to retake Mali's vast desert north from AQIM and other Islamist rebels that began on January 11 was in its final stage and so could not confirm Abou Zeid's death.

A U.S. official and a Western diplomat said, however, the reports about Abou Zeid's death appeared to be credible.

U.S. Representative Ed Royce, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the killing of Belmokhtar "would be a hard blow to the collection of jihadists operating across the region that are targeting American diplomats and energy workers."

Washington has said it believes Islamists operating in Mali were involved in the killing of the U.S. ambassador in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi in September.

After its success in dislodging al Qaeda fighters from northern Mali's towns, France and its African allies have faced a mounting wave of suicide bombings and guerrilla-style raids by Islamists in northern Malian towns.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday that a U.N. peacekeeping force to replace French troops in Mali should be discussed as soon as possible.

Chad was among the quickest to respond to Mali's appeals for help alongside the French, rushing in hundreds of troops experienced in desert warfare, led by Deby's son, General Mahamat Deby.

The country's president may be hoping to polish his regional and international credentials by assisting in this war, while bolstering his own position in power in Chad, which has been threatened in the past by eastern neighbor Sudan.

(Additional reporting by John Irish and David Lewis in Dakar, Gus Trompiz in Paris, and Mark Hosenball and Mark Felsenthal in Washington; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Peter Cooney)

Article: Factbox: North African al Qaeda's Belmokhtar

Moscow skeptical about US autopsy of Russian boy

U.S. lurches into new budget crisis, spending cuts imminent

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the sequester after a meeting with congressional leaders at the White House in Washington March 1, 2013. Obama pressed the U.S. Congress on Friday to avoid a government shutdown when federal spending authority runs out on March 27, saying it is the "right thing to do." REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS POLITICS) - RTR3EG78

By Richard Cowan and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government stumbled headlong on Friday toward spending cuts that could dampen the economy and curb military readiness, after President Barack Obama and congressional leaders failed to find an alternative budget plan.

Put in place during a bout of deficit-reduction fever in 2011, the automatic cuts can only be halted by agreement between Congress and the White House.

As expected, a deal proved elusive in talks on Friday, meaning that government agencies will now begin to hack a total of $85 billion from their budgets between Saturday and October 1. Financial markets in New York shrugged off the stalemate in Washington.

Democrats predict the cuts, known as "sequestration," could soon cause air-traffic delays, furloughs for hundreds of thousands of federal employees and disruption to education.

New U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the cuts, half of which will fall on the Pentagon, put at risk "all of our missions."

While the International Monetary Fund warned that the belt-tightening could slow U.S. economic growth by at least 0.5 of a percentage point this year, that is not a huge drag on an economy that is picking up steam.

Obama was resigned to government budgets shrinking.

"Even with these cuts in place, folks all across this country will work hard to make sure that we keep the recovery going, but Washington sure isn't making it easy," he said after meeting Republican and Democratic congressional leaders.

At the heart of Washington's persistent fiscal crises is disagreement over how to slash the budget deficit and the $16 trillion national debt, bloated over the years by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and government stimulus for the ailing economy.

Obama wants to close the fiscal gap with spending cuts and tax hikes, but Republicans do not want to concede again on taxes after doing so in negotiations over the "fiscal cliff" at the New Year.

"The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over. It's about taking on the spending problem," House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said on leaving the meeting.

The full brunt of the automatic cuts will be borne over seven months. Congress can stop them at any time if the two parties agree on how to do so.

No matter how Obama and Congress resolve the 2013 battle, this round of automatic spending cuts is only one of a decade's worth of annual cuts totaling $1.2 trillion mandated by the sequestration law.

Given the absence of a deal, Obama will issue an order to federal agencies by midnight on Friday to reduce their budgets. The White House budget office must send a report to Congress detailing the spending cuts.

The Justice Department has already sent notices of furloughs that will begin April 21 at the earliest to some 115,000 workers, including at the FBI.

Unlike previous fiscal dramas, the sequestration fight is not rattling Wall Street.

U.S. stocks rose moderately on Friday, with the Dow Industrials closing up 35 points, as data showed manufacturing expanded at its fastest pace in 20 months in February. Despite the market being up more than 7 percent this year, and near a record high, the discord in Washington has not prompted traders to cash in gains.

"Most of us believe that sequestration is not something that will make us fall off the cliff, since the cuts will be worked in relatively slowly," said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management in Philadelphia.

CANADA FRUSTRATED

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty expressed rare public frustration with the United States for lurching from crisis to crisis.

Flaherty said he was confident Canada would not suffer too badly from the fiscal troubles its biggest trading partner is suffering from. "It is regrettable, though, that the U.S. continues to move from crisis to crisis in fiscal terms," he told reporters.

Another influential minister in Canada's Conservative government, House Leader Peter Van Loan, took a swipe at the United States, saying it was up to its ears in debt because of big-spending, left-wing policies.

One reason for the inaction in Washington is that both parties still hope the other will either be blamed by voters for the cuts or cave in before the worst effects predicted by Democrats come into effect.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday showed 28 percent of Americans blamed congressional Republicans for the sequestration mess, 18 percent thought Obama was responsible and 4 percent blamed congressional Democrats. Thirty-seven percent blamed them all, according the online poll.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicts 750,000 jobs could be lost in 2013, and federal employees throughout the country are looking to trim their own costs.

"The kids won't go to the dentist, the kids might not go to the doctor, we won't be spending money in local restaurants, local movie theaters," said Paul O'Connor, president of the Metal Trades Council, which represents 2,500 workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

After weeks of White House warnings about the cuts causing air-traffic chaos, threatening cancer research and keeping law enforcement officers off the streets, Obama acknowledged it might be a while before effects fully kicked in.

"We will get through this. This is not going to be an apocalypse," he told journalists in the White House.

"Not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away. The pain though will be real. Beginning this week, many middle-class families will have their lives disrupted in significant ways," Obama said.

In the absence of any deal at all, the Pentagon will be forced to slice 13 percent of its budget between now and September 30.

In his first Pentagon news conference since he was sworn in on Wednesday, Hagel struck a more moderate tone than many defense officials who have said the spending reductions would be devastating or could turn the U.S. military into a second-rate power.

"America ... has the best fighting force, the most capable fighting force, the most powerful fighting force in the world," he said. "The management of this institution, starting with the Joint Chiefs, are not going to allow this capacity to erode."

Most non-defense programs, from NASA space exploration to federally backed education and law enforcement, face a 9 percent reduction.

Moving to head off a new budget crisis later this month, Boehner said the Republican-led House would move a "continuing resolution" to fund government through the rest of the fiscal year, thus hopefully averting a government shutdown.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Roberta Rampton and Deborah Zabarenko in Washington and David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Army sent to north Bangladesh as clashes continue

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Authorities deployed soldiers in a northern Bangladeshi district on Sunday after Islamic party activists clashed with police, leaving five people dead during a nationwide general strike called to denounce war crimes trials. Seven people died in similar clashes in the northwest, police and news reports said.

With the latest casualties, the death toll in four days of rioting climbed to 58. The clashes broke out Thursday after a war crimes tribunal sentenced a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh's largest Islamic party, to death for atrocities committed during Bangladesh's 1971 independence war against Pakistan.

Delwar Hossain Sayedee was the third defendant to be convicted by the tribunal, which was set up in 2010 by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government.

Bangladesh says the war left 3 million people dead, 200,000 women raped and forced millions to flee to neighboring India.

Mokbul Hossain, a police superintendent in Bogra district, said the deployment of troops there came after five men died in clashes on Sunday.

Hossain said the latest violence erupted after Jamaat-e-Islami activists attacked at least four police outposts and an office of the ruling Awami League party and torched the home of a local ruling party leader.

Authorities banned all gatherings in Bogra to stop any further escalation of violence.

Separately, three people, including a child, died in violence in the northwestern district of Rajshahi, the Daily Star newspaper and Independent television station reported. Details were not immediately available and the reports could not be independently verified.

Another three people were killed in clashes between police and Jamaat activists in Joypurhar district, a local police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Joypurhat is 208 kilometers (130 miles) northwest of Dhaka, the capital.

A policeman was killed in similar clashes in western Jhenaidah district, the Daily Star reported.

In Dhaka, schools and most businesses remained closed Sunday while traffic on the usually clogged streets was thin during the first day of a two-day nationwide strike called by Jamaat-e-Islami. Thousands of security officials were patrolling the streets, according to the Dhaka Metropolitan Police.

In another development Sunday, the government filed an appeal with the Supreme Court seeking the death penalty for another Jamaat leader, Abdul Quader Mollah, Attorney General Mahbube Alam said. Last month, Mollah was convicted of mass killings during the 1971 war. He received a life prison sentence, a penalty the prosecution considered too lenient.

Seven other Jamaat leaders, including its chief, Matiur Rahman Nizami, are on trial on war crimes charges. The party is accused of forming auxiliary forces that helped the Pakistani army in killing and other serious crimes during the war.

Jamaat, which opposed Bangladesh's struggle for freedom in 1971 but denies committing atrocities, called for a nonstop shutdown across the country for Sunday and Monday to protest the trials.

The United Nations, the United States and the New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch have all expressed their concerns over the violence and urged all sides to stop the fighting.

Jamaat is a partner in Bangladesh's main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, and was a partner in Zia's government from 2001 to 2006.

Zia says the war crimes trials are politically motivated to target the opposition, an allegation denied by the government. Zia's party has called for a nationwide general strike for Tuesday.