Gunmen snatch former Pakistani PM's son at rally

People comfort Musa Gilani, right, the brother of Ali Haider Gilani who has been kidnapped in Multan, Pakistan, Thursday, May 9, 2013. Gunmen attacked an election rally in Pakistan's southern Punjab province on Thursday and abducted Ali Haider Gilani son of a former prime minister, intensifying what has already been a violent run-up to Saturday's nationwide elections. (AP Photo/Zeeshan Hussain)

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Gunmen attacked an election rally inPakistan's southern Punjab province on Thursday and abducted the son of a former prime minister, intensifying what has already been a violent run-up to Saturday's nationwide elections.

Ali Haider Gilani, the son of ex-premier Yousuf Raza Gilani from the Pakistan People's Party, is running for a provincial assembly seat in the district of Multan.

He was attending an election event in the city of Multan on Thursday — the last day of campaigning across Pakistan — when gunmen pulled up, started shooting, grabbed and threw him into a vehicle and drove off, officials and witnesses said.

A resident of Multan who attended the rally told a local TV station that the attackers first pulled up in a car and motorcycle outside the venue where the younger Gilani was meeting with a few hundred supporters.

When he came out of the building, two gunmen opened fire, killing at least one of the people in Gilani's entourage.

"One of the gunmen grabbed Haider who had blood splashed on his trousers," said Shehryar Ali in comments aired by Pakistani television broadcaster Geo News.

The former prime minister was not at the event when his son was taken.

Speaking to reporters at the family's home in Multan, the elder Gilani appeared shaken but composed. He said two of his son's guards were killed in the attack, but he did not know whether his son was wounded.

"His two guards were shielding him, and they died," said the former premier in comments aired onPakistani television. "I urge all of my party supporters to remain peaceful and participate in the vote."

It was not immediately known who abducted Gilani or why.

Gilani's father served for roughly four years as prime minister but was forced out of office last summer by the Supreme Court after refusing to pursue a corruption case against President Asif Ali Zardari.

Saturday's election marks a historic milestone for Pakistan as one civilian government completes its term and prepares to hand off to another.

But the race has been marred by a string of violent attacks against candidates and election events.

Much of the violence has been at the hands of the Taliban, who have mainly targeted political parties that have supported military operations against the militants in northwestern Pakistan.

The younger Gilani is running as a candidate for the Pakistan People's Party, one of the three parties the Taliban has said it is focusing on.

The PPP is the incumbent in this election but the security threats have forced it to curtail its campaign activities. Instead of the large, outdoor rallies that the party used to rally thousands of voters in the past, they have been relying on television and newspaper advertisements and smaller, indoor meetings with supporters.

Party officials have complained that a lack of protection means they have been left vulnerable.

"We were screaming that we need security for our candidates. We were saying that we have received threats, but no one heard our pleas, and we did not get security," said a party spokeswoman, Sharmila Farouqi. "Now see what has happened. The son of a former prime minister has been kidnapped."

The elder Gilani is one of the PPP's most prominent politicians. Although his ouster from office meant he could not run in this election, the Gilani family is still heavily represented in the race. In addition to the son who was grabbed Thursday, the former prime minister has two other sons who are running for national assembly seats in the Multan district.

The former prime minister has focused his efforts on helping his sons in their election efforts.

While most of the pre-election violence has been targeted at the parties viewed as more liberal and secular, no one has been immune.

On Thursday, a bomb blew up at an election office of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in the city of Mir Ali in the North Waziristan tribal area near Afghanistan, according to two Pakistan intelligence officials. One person was killed and six others wounded, the officials said.

The party is considered more favorable to the Pakistani Taliban and has supported negotiations with the militants instead of military operations in the tribal areas.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media.

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Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Zaheer Babar in Lahore and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar contributed to this report.

Greenhouse gas milestone; CO2 levels set record

For first time in 2 million years, levels of chief greenhouse gas hit 400 parts per million

Associated Press -

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warminghave hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said Friday.

Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station in Hawaii which sets the global benchmark. The last time the worldwide carbon level was probably that high was about 2 million years ago, said Pieter Tans of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That was during the Pleistocene Era. "It was much warmer than it is today," Tans said. "There were forests in Greenland. Sea level was higher, between 10 and 20 meters (33 to 66 feet)."

Other scientists say it may have been 10 million years ago that Earth last encountered this level of carbon dioxide.

The measurement was recorded Thursday. The number 400 has been anticipated by climate scientists and environmental activists for years as a notable indicator, in part because it's a round number — not because any changes in man-made global warming happen by reaching it.

When measurements of this chief greenhouse gas were first taken in 1958, carbon dioxide was measured at 315. Levels are now growing about 2 parts per million per year. That's 100 times faster than at the end of the Ice Age.

Before the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels were around 280 ppm, and they were closer to 200 during the Ice Age. There are natural ups and downs of this greenhouse gas, which comes from volcanoes and decomposing plants and animals. But that's not what has driven current levels so high, Tans said. He said the amount should be even higher, but the world's oceans are absorbing quite a bit, keeping it out of the air.

"What we see today is 100 percent due to human activity," said Tans, a NOAA senior scientist. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

At the end of the Ice Age it took 7,000 years for carbon dioxide levels to rise by 80 parts per million, Tans said. Because of burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, carbon dioxide levels have gone up by the same amount in just 55 years.

Carbon dioxide traps heat just like in a greenhouse and most of it stays in the air for a century, some lasts for thousands of years scientists say.

The speed of the change is the big worry, said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann. If carbon dioxide levels go up 100 parts per million over thousands or millions of years, plants and animals can adapt. But that can't be done at the speed it is now happening.

Last year, regional monitors briefly hit 400 ppm in the Arctic. But those monitoring stations aren't seen as a world mark like the one at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Generally carbon levels peak in May then fall slightly, so the yearly average is usually a few parts per million lower than May levels.

NKorea calls US-SKorea summit prelude to war

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Ahead of a nuclear-powered U.S. carrier's visit to South Korea, North Korea on Friday called this week's summit between the U.S. and South Korean presidents a prelude to war against Pyongyang. Yet it also said it was waiting "with patience" to see if Seoul changes its policies.

The North described South Korean President Park Geun-hye's visit to Washington as a "despicable sycophantic trip to please her master."

The summit between the two allies is "a curtain-raiser to a dangerous war to invade" the North, an unnamed spokesman for the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea told the official Korean Central News Agency. The committee deals with cross-border relations, which are at a low point.

At the same time, the North Korean spokesman said Pyongyang is "following the present authorities in South Korea with patience," arguing that it is not Pyongyang but Seoul that should change its stance.

North Korea unleashed a flurry of war threats last month, but there has been a lull of late. There are some tentative signs of interest in diplomacy, though Pyongyang has also kept up its criticism of both Seoul and Pyongyang.

North Korea previously criticized the impending visit of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. It and three other ships will arrive Saturday in the southeastern port city of Busan in a show of U.S. commitment in the region, the U.S.-South Korean Combined Forces Command said in a statement.

Wee Yong-sub, deputy spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, said Friday that the carrier will participate in a variety of annual naval exercises, including search and rescue operations.

North Korea's military earlier this week threatened the United States and South Korea over their joint naval drills taking place this week, including anti-submarine drills ending Friday in tense Yellow Sea waters.

Pyongyang sees American use of nuclear assets in the region as aimed at toppling its government. Amid North Korean threats of nuclear war in March, Washington took the unusual step of announcing the participation in big U.S.-South Korean military drills of nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers, drawing a furious response from Pyongyang.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry said Friday in a statement that those drills posed the "biggest-ever nuclear threat" to Pyongyang, urging President Barack Obama to reverse what it called a hostile U.S. posture toward the North.

Obama and Park met Tuesday in Washington and warned Pyongyang against nuclear provocations. Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test in February and triggered a new round of U.N. sanctions against it.

Park and Obama said after their summit that they are open to dialogue if Pyongyang moves toward nuclear dismantlement.

Park took office in February with a pledge to build trust with North Korea through aid and other civilian exchanges. In a speech to Congress on Wednesday, she said the North's twin goals of developing nuclear arms and pursuing economic improvement are incompatible.

The North Korean reunification spokesman called that slander.

On Monday, Glyn Davies, top U.S. envoy dealing with North Korea, will travel to Seoul to meet with senior officials as part of a three-day trip that includes China and Japan, the State Department said.

Carbon dioxide level crosses milestone at Hawaii site

By Environment Correspondent Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmospheretopped 400 parts per million at a key observing station in Hawaii for the first time since measurement began in 1958, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Friday.

To many scientists, crossing the 400 ppm threshold, which means that there are 400 molecules of carbon dioxide for every million molecules in the air, is a bit like the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising above 15,000 points.

"It's important mainly as a milestone that marks a steady progress of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said James Butler of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory.

The threshold has become an important marker in U.N. climate change negotiations, tagged as a dangerous level by most climate scientists.

For many years scientists have said that concentrations need to be kept below, or pushed back to, 350 ppm for countries to meet an international target of keeping the average temperature increase below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) this century.

Dozens of observing stations around the world monitor atmospheric carbon dioxide. But Mauna Loa, a volcanic mountain on the Big Island of Hawaii, is regarded as the benchmark site, NOAA said.

Two instruments at Mauna Loa showed carbon dioxide at 400.03 ppm on Thursday. Certain arctic observing stations exceeded 400 ppm more than a year ago, and the global average of atmospheric carbon dioxide could break the 400 ppm barrier in the next year or so, Butler said by telephone from Boulder, Colorado.

Whether or not that occurs, Earth's atmosphere hasn't had this much carbon dioxide in it for at least 800,000 years, and possibly for as long as 5 million years.

Carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. It is emitted by fossil-fueled vehicles and coal-fired factories and power plants as well as by natural activities such as breathing.

Carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa are documented in a graph known as the Keeling Curve, named for Charles Keeling, who began measurements there in 1958, when the level was 317 ppm. Information on the Keeling Curve is available at http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu.

During the last 800,000 years, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide fluctuated between 180 ppm and 280 ppm. With the widespread burning of coal and oil during the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of carbon dioxide rose to about 290 ppm by the end of the 19th century, Butler said.

In the 20th century, the rate of increase accelerated, with levels between 370 and 380 ppm by the year 2000. An animated graph that shows the history of atmospheric carbon dioxide is online at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html .

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Ros Krasny and Xavier Briand)

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