Syrian president warns of fallout if regime falls

This citizen journalism image provided by the Local Council of Barzeh, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows the aftermath of rocket attacks on the Barzeh district of Damascus, Syria, Friday, April 5, 2013. A barrage of rockets slammed into a contested district on the northeastern edge of Damascus, killing several people and trapping others under the rubble, while violence raged around suburbs of the capital, activists said Friday. The attack on Barzeh, where rebels aiming to topple President Bashar Assad are known to operate, follows days of heavy fighting between the rebels and the military in the area.(AP Photo/Local Council of Barzeh)

This image taken from video obtained from the Shaam News Network, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows a damaged building due to heavy shelling in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, Syria, on Wednesday, April 3, 2013. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network via AP video)

BEIRUT (AP) — President Bashar Assad warned the fall of his regime or the breakup of Syria will unleash a "domino effect" that will fuel Middle East instability for years to come, in his sharpest warning yet about the potential fallout of his country's civil war on neighboring states.

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin said the Syrian conflict has become "a massacre" that must be stopped through peace talks, and repeated the Kremlin's firm rejection of calls for Assad's ouster.

Speaking in an interview broadcast Friday, Assad accused his neighbors of stoking the revolt against his rule and warned they would eventually pay a heavy price.

"We are surrounded by countries that help terrorists and allow them to enter Syria," he told the Turkish TV station Ulusal Kanal.

"Everybody knows that if the disturbances in Syria reach the point of the country's breakup, or terrorist forces control Syria ... then this will immediately spill over into neighboring countries and there will be a domino effect that will reach countries across the Middle East," he said.

The Syrian regime is under growing pressure from an increasingly effective rebel force that has managed to pry away much of northern Syria and is making significant headway in the south, capturing military bases and territory that could offer rebels a staging ground to attack the capital,Damascus, the seat of Assad's power.

The rebel gains coincide with what Western and Arab officials say are U.S.-backed training of opposition fighters in Jordan and an influx of foreign-funded weapons into the south. The rebel advances have given the opposition momentum and put the government on the defensive in the 2-year-old conflict that the U.N. estimates has killed more than 70,000 people.

Assad also lashed out at Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was a close ally before the crisis began but has turned into one of his harshest critics. Turkey has been one of the strongest backers of the Syrian opposition, providing it with logistical support and shelter.

"When the prime minister (Erdogan), or the government or officials get involved in shedding Syrian people's blood there is no place for bridges between me and them or the Syrian people that don't respect them," Assad said.

The president criticized Erdogan for reconciling with Israel after three years of cold relations, and accused the Turkish leader of "working in coalition with Israel to strike against Syria."

Assad used the interview to quash rumors that he had been killed by one of his guards or that he has been in hiding. "I am present in front of you and not in a shelter. These are mere rumors," he said.

The Syrian revolt started with largely peaceful protests in March 2011 but has morphed into a civil war with increasingly sectarian overtones. Sunni Muslims dominate rebel ranks, while the Assad regime is composed mostly of Alawites, an offshoot Shiite group to which the president and his family belong.

Russia, a close Assad ally, has shielded Damascus from U.N. sanctions and largely stood by the regime, although it has also signaled that it is not tied to his remaining in power. At the same time, it has refused to back calls for Assad to step down, and has instead pushed for talks with the opposition.

Speaking to the German ARD television in remarks released by the Kremlin on Friday, Putin repeated Moscow's firm rejection of calls for Assad's ouster.

"What is going on is a massacre, this is a disaster, a catastrophe," Putin said. "It has to be stopped."

He added, however, that "when they say that Assad is fighting against his own people, we need to remember that this is the armed part of the opposition."

Putin said that negotiations between the government and the opposition are necessary to provide guarantees to all parties and prevent the country from sliding into turmoil, as befell Libya, Iraq and Yemen.

"Therefore, we believe that it is necessary to bring everyone to the negotiation table, so that all warring parties could reach an agreement on how their interests will be protected and in which way they will participate in the future governance of the country," he said.

Inside Syria, meanwhile, rebel forces continued to make gains in the south, overrunning an army garrison that defends the main border crossing with Jordan after a weeklong siege, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Earlier in the day, activists said a barrage of rockets slammed into a contested district on the northeastern edge of Damascus, killing at least five people and trapping others under the rubble. The attack on the capital's Barzeh neighborhood, where opposition fighters are known to operate, followed days of heavy fighting between the rebels and the military in the area.

Meanwhile, the Italian Foreign Ministry said four Italian journalists were kidnapped in northern Syria, the Italian news agency ANSA said. It provided no further details.

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Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report

Building collapses in India; at least 45 dead

Illegal building collapses in India, at least 45 people killed, dozens injured

Associated Press -

MUMBAI, India (AP) -- A residential building being constructed illegally on forest land in a suburb of India's financial capital collapsed into a mound of steel and concrete, killing at least 45 people and injuring more than 50 others, authorities said Friday.

The eight-story building in the Mumbai suburb of Thane caved in Thursday evening, police said.Rescue workers with sledgehammers, gasoline-powered saws and hydraulic jacks struggled Friday to break through the tower of rubble in their search for possible survivors. Six bulldozers were brought to the scene.

"There may be (a) possibility people have been trapped inside right now," local police commissioner K.P. Raghuvanshi said Friday.

At the time of the collapse, between 100 and 150 people were in the building. Many were residents or construction workers, who were living at the site as they worked on it, said Sandeep Malvi, a spokesman for the Thane government.

More than 20 people remained missing Friday afternoon and three floors of the building remained to be searched, said R.S. Rajesh, an official with the National Disaster Response Force who was at the scene.

"All the three floors are sandwiched ... so it's very difficult for us," he said.

The dead included 12 children, police said.

A nearby hospital was filled with the injured, many of whom had head wounds, fractures and spinal injuries. Hospital officials searched in vain for the parents of an injured 10-month-old girl who had been rescued.

At least four floors of the building had been completed and were occupied. Workers had finished three more floors and were adding the eighth when it collapsed, police Inspector Digamber Jangale said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the structure to collapse, but Raghuvanshi said it was weakly built. Police were searching for the builders to arrest them, he said.

"The inquiry is ongoing. We are all busy with the rescue operation; our priority now is to rescue as many as possible," he said.

Police with rescue dogs were searching the building, which appeared to have buckled and collapsed upon itself. Rescuers and nearby residents stood on the remains of the roof trying to get to people trapped inside. Residents carried the injured to ambulances and one man carried a small child caked white with dust from the wreckage.

Raghuvanshi said rescue workers had saved 15 people from the wreckage.

Building collapses are common in India as builders try to cut corners by using poor quality materials, and multi-storied structures are built with inadequate supervision. The massive demand for housing around India's cities and pervasive corruption allow builders to add unauthorized floors or build entirely illegal buildings.

The neighborhood where the building collapsed was part of a belt of more than 2,000 illegal structures that had sprung up in the area in recent years, said Malvi, the town spokesman.

"Notices have been served several times for such illegal construction, sometimes notices are sent 10 times for the same building," he said.

G.R. Khairnar, a former top Mumbai official, said government officials who allowed the illegal construction should be tried along with the builders.

"There are a lot of people involved (in illegal construction) — builders, government machinery, police, municipal corporation — everybody is involved in this process," he told CNN-IBN television.

The building that collapsed was illegally constructed on forest land, and the city informed forestry officials twice about it, Malvi said.

A local resident, who did not give his name, said the site was meant to hold a smaller structure and accused officials of turning a blind eye to the problem.

"They made an eight-story building of what was supposed to be a four-story building. People from the municipality used to visit the building but the builder still continued to add floors," he said.

In one of the worst recent collapses, nearly 70 people were killed in November 2010 when an apartment building in a congested New Delhi neighborhood crumpled. That building was two floors higher than legally allowed and its foundation appeared to have been weakened by water damage.

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Aid groups: US should send cash, not food, abroad

WASHINGTON (AP) — Food aid groups are urging the Obama administration to overhaul the way the United States helps starving people abroad.

The White House will not say whether Obama's budget proposal, scheduled to come out next week, will seek to change the way foreign food aid is distributed. But food aid groups, farm groups and their allies in Congress are preparing for the possibility.

At issue is whether the government should ship U.S.-grown food overseas to aid developing countries and starving people or simply help those countries with cash to buy food. The United States now donates much of its food aid by shipping food abroad, a process many food aid groups say is inefficient.

Former President Bill Clinton said after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that U.S. policies to flood developing countries with agricultural imports — a boon to rice farmers in his native Arkansas — had been a mistake after many of Haiti's own rice farmers were put out of business.

Three years later, aid groups are pushing Obama to make the kind of change Clinton argued for and send cash in lieu of crops.

Sending crops abroad has long been a profitable enterprise for American farmers and shippers, and those groups are strongly opposing any changes to the program.

But several food aid groups say times have changed and argue that shipping bulk food abroad is too expensive when government budgets are tight and developing countries need every dollar. Particularly controversial is the process of what is called "monetization," or selling the food once it arrives overseas to finance development projects. A 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office found monetization cost the U.S. an extra $219 million over a three years, money that could have been used for other development projects.

Aid groups are split on the point, since some finance their activities through monetization. But major aid groups like Oxfam and CARE say the process can destroy local agriculture by dumping cheap crops on the market at a price too low for local farmers to compete.

The food aid groups are pushing Obama to shift all or part of the average $1.8 billion spent on the program annually to other cash development accounts. But if the administration does propose a change, it could be in for a tough political battle.

Worried that an overhaul of the Food for Peace program could come in Obama's budget, a bipartisan group of 21 senators wrote a letter to the president in February asking him not to make changes.

"American agriculture is one of the few U.S. business sectors to produce a trade surplus, exporting $108 billion in farm goods in 2010," the senators wrote. "During this time of economic distress, we should maintain support for the areas of our economy that are growing."

The letter was signed by Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Arkansas Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that controls agriculture spending. The top Republicans on both of those panels signed the letter as well, as did Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.

Farm groups say the program is also a public relations tool for the United States.

"Bags of U.S.-grown food bearing the U.S. flag and stamped as "From the American People" serve as ambassadors of our nation's goodwill, which can help to address the root causes of instability," several farm and shipping groups wrote in a February letter to Obama.

"These are the kinds of things you don't want to make dramatic quick changes to," said Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, one of the groups that signed the letter.

But aid groups say change is a long time coming. Gawain Kripke of Oxfam said his group estimates that by spending the same amount of money, the United States could provide assistance for 17 million more poor people by changing the way the aid is distributed.

Blake Selzer of CARE said he is encouraged that food aid is being discussed.

"A lot of people don't understand our food aid program," he said. "The more daylight this is given, the more people will say to themselves, is this the best way to use our tax dollars?"

More State Laws Are Loosening Gun Restrictions

The Newtown school massacre has prompted much legislation concerning gun laws, but ironically most of the bills passed or being considered by states are aimed at loosening rules on gun possession.

Connecticut, Colorado and Maryland have grabbed headlines for passing tough new laws on gun ownership along with President Obama's campaign for a federal law.

At the same time, however, Georgia and Arkansas lawmakers have pursued legislation for opening more public places to guns.

Legislation in Georgia to allow guns in churches and bars was gutted in the state House after passing out of the state Senate, but in Arkansas, lawmakers approved a bill to let churches decide if their parishioners can tout pistols in the pews.

West Virginia was on the brink of implementing uniform gun laws across the state that would loosen restrictions in four counties, but stopped when state senators who opposed the bill received death threats.

"I will never reward that kind of behavior with legislative victory when you're resorting to that kind of terrorist, bullying behavior," Senate President Jeffrey Kessler told the Associated Press. "It just will not be tolerated."

Lawmakers in South Dakota made it legal for schools to allow faculty and administrators to carry guns to work – a measure the National Rifle Association recommended in its recently released School Shield Program panel.

Alaska, Iowa, Texas and Maine all also have considered expanding protections for gun owners in their states since the Connecticut slaughter took place last December.

Adam Winkler, professor of Constitutional law at UCLA, said these pro-gun bills are products of "symbolic politics" and it's taking place on both sides of the aisle.

"I don't think there's a huge number of people who want to bring guns into churches," Winkler told ABC News. "As usual I think the deep division is unfortunate because we can't have a thoughtful discussion about gun policy. Right now it's everyone's pro gun or anti gun when the truth is the guns are here to stay no matter what anyone wants to do and we should all agree that keeping guns out of the hands of felons and the mentally ill is worth considerable effort."

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said these new laws were not just symbolic.

"I think there's a realization by most people that gun control is not an effective means of trying to reduce crime," Arulanandam told ABC News. "I think there's a realization that in order to do something substantive to reduce crime we need to fix the broken mental health system. We need to make sure that criminals ... are arrested prosecuted and punished."

President Obama's administration maintains that the majority of Americans support their plan for cracking down on gun violence, including requiring background checks for all transfers of guns. Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer told reporters in Washington Wednesday that it was a "90 percent issue," referring to the 90 percent of Americans who supported background checks in a poll released earlier this year.

Gun Debate Prompts State to Ease Restrictions

"I've been in politics a long time," Pfeiffer said at Politico's Playbook Breakfast Wednesday. "I very rarely run into a 90-percent issue. … Universal background checks are a 90 percent issue."

Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners' Action League (GOAL) of Massachusetts hopeslawmakers will look at what happened in his state after the passage of measures that restricted gun access in 1998.

"Gun control laws simply didn't work because they went after the thing rather than the human criminal element which is where they should be spending their time," Wallace told ABC News.

GOAL held a rally in Boston Wednesday with more than 1,000 supporters asking state legislators to oppose gun control measures.

Wallace wants lawmakers to turn away from background checks and bans on high capacity magazines and focus on fixing the mental health system and strengthening penalties for criminals. Similarly the NRA's Arulanandam said these laws place the burden on law-abiding gun owners.

"I think that's the frustration that gun owners are being made the scapegoats that if we only give up some of our rights then your children will be safer," Wallace said. "And that's simply not the case."

NKorea warns embassies it can't guarantee safety

In this Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013 file photo, on a large television screen in front of Pyongyang's railway station, a North Korean state television broadcaster announces the news that North Korea conducted a nuclear test. North Korea responded with fury over U.N. sanctions following its third nuclear test Feb. 12, and over ongoing U.S.-South Korean military exercises. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin)

FILE - In this Saturday April 14, 2012 file photo, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, waves as North Korean military officers clap at a stadium in Pyongyang during a mass meeting called by the Central Committee of North Korea's ruling party. Kang Dong-wan, a cross-border relations expert at Dong-A University in Busan, believes South Koreans should start taking North Korean threats more seriously than before because Pyongyang's young leader, Kim Jong Un, is still tightening his grip on power and has not been proven to make sound military judgments. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

MOSCOW (AP) — North Korea has warned diplomats in Pyongyangthat it can't guarantee the safety of embassies in the event of a conflict and suggested they may want to evacuate their staff, Russia's top diplomat said Friday.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is demanding an explanation from the North Koreans — asking whether the warning is an order to evacuate the North Korean capital or merely a proposal to consider doing so.

"This proposal has been sent to all the embassies in Pyongyang," Lavrov said. "We are now trying to clarify the situation. We asked our North Korean neighbors a few questions that need to be asked in this situation."

About two dozen countries have embassies in North Korea. Lavrov said during a visit to Uzbekistan as saying that Russia is in touch with China, the United States, Japan and South Korea — all members of a dormant talks process with North Korea — to try to figure out the motivation behind the warning.

"We are very much worried by inciting of tensions, even though it's verbal so far," Lavrov said. "We would like to understand the reasons behind the proposal to evacuate the embassies, whether it's a decision of the North Korean leadership or a proposal. We were told it's a proposal."

North Korea's government did not comment on the embassy warnings. Tensions have been roiling in the past few weeks following a North Korean nuclear test and the country's subsequent warnings to South Korea and the United States that it would be prepared to attack.

A South Korean analyst said North Korea is "advertising to the world" tensions on the Korean Peninsula as a follow-up measure to its announcement last week that it had entered a "state of war" with South Korea.

"It appears to be a ruse to draw the attention of as many countries as possible to the tension and make it an international issue," said Chang Yong-seok, an expert at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. "Pyongyang is telling the nations with diplomats in Pyongyang that something needs to be done about it."

Britain's Foreign Office confirmed that it had received the warning, which it called part of ongoing rhetoric from Pyongyang to portray the U.S. as a threat.

"The British Embassy in Pyongyang received a communication from the North Korean governmentthis morning saying that the North Korean government would be unable to guarantee the safety of embassies and international organizations in the country in the event of conflict from April 10th," it said in a statement.

Britain said it was "considering next steps" and had no immediate plans to withdraw from Pyongyang.

Sweden said North Korea's foreign ministry had a meeting with foreign diplomats but didn't order them to leave.

"It was a meeting that dealt with the security situation in the country, where the North Koreans asked whether there was any need for assistance in case of an evacuation," Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Teo Zetterman said.

Sweden also represents the United States, which doesn't have an embassy or any direct diplomatic presence in North Korea. Any Americans in North Korea would be NGO workers or tourists but it's not officially known how many might be there.

"This is just an escalating series of rhetorical statements, and the question is, to what end?" U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington.

"This is an unpredictable regime and an unpredictable situation," Nuland said. "Our posture remains to be prudent, to take appropriate measures, in the defense and deterrence sphere, both for ourselves and for our allies, but to continue to urge the DPRK to change course, because this is not going to end their isolation."

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul also issued a notice to Americans in South Korea, saying it had "no specific information to suggest an imminent threat to U.S. citizens or facilities."

The U.N. says its staff was continuing to work in North Korea while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon studied the North Korean message to consider evacuating U.N. personnel.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said a U.N. representative joined diplomats at a meeting Friday in Pyongyang and that U.N. staff "remain engaged in their humanitarian and developmental work throughout the country."

Asked whether Ban would go to Pyongyang, Nesirky said the U.N. chief has offered to facilitate dialogue "to help to bring people together."

"Dialogue is what's needed to try to turn the volume down. The volume has been turned up tremendously high in recent days and the volume needs to be turned back down again and the secretary-general is certainly keen to help," he said.

Nesirky added that the U.N. was "providing very important life-saving assistance to people, particularly children" in North Korea.

Russia has appeared increasingly upset with North Korea, strongly criticizing its neighbor for its "defiant neglect" of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

"We are counting on maximum restraint and composure from all sides," a Russian foreign ministry statement said Friday.

Other nations with diplomatic missions in North Korea, such as the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and India, also said they were weighing the situation carefully. The Czechs said they had no plans to withdraw; the Romanians and Bulgarians were speaking with the 27-nation European Union about the situation.

"Naturally, we assess that there is no outside threat to North Korea whatsoever," said Marcin Bosacki, spokesman for Poland's Foreign Ministry. "In our opinion, the current military rhetoric is exclusively directed to the internal audience and does not reflect the true international intentions of the country."

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AP writers Karl Ritter in Stockholm, Danica Kirka in London, Matt Lee in Washington, Edith Lederer at the United Nations, Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, Alison Mutler in Bucharest, Romania, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, Karel Janicek in Prague, Czech Republic, and Sam Kim in Seoul contributed to this story.