Local television said one policeman died from head injuries after clashes in the capital Dakar. Reuters reporters saw youths set fire to tires and overturn cars after a ruling of the West African country’s Constitutional Council late on Friday night.Rivals to 85-year-old Wade say the constitution sets an upper limit of two terms on the president. Wade, who came to power in 2000 and was re-elected in 2007, has argued his first term pre-dated the 2001 amendment establishing the limit.Senegal’s Constitutional Council validated his candidacy and that of 13 rivals for the February 26 vote but turned down the presidential bid of world music star Youssou N’Dour, saying he had not gathered the required 10,000 signatures of support.N’Dour called on his supporters to prevent the elections from going ahead.We will never allow Abdoulaye Wade to take part in the election, he said, speaking on his own TFM television channel.The decision to keep me out had nothing to do with the law. It was a political decision and we will reply with a political decision, he said, without giving further details.Senegal is the only country in mainland West Africa to have not had a coup since the end of the colonial era. February’s poll, and a possible run-off a few weeks later, are seen as major test of social peace in the predominantly Muslim country.WADE URGES CALMOne witness said a police station in the central town of Kaolack had been ransacked, while state radio said the local headquarters of Wade’s liberal PDS had been burned down. Street protests were also reported in the towns of Thies and Mbour. Wade has no right to a third term and the people will resist this, Moustapha Niasse, a former prime minister for Wade who is now challenging him for the presidency, said. Wade appeared on state television and made an appeal for calm, promising that the elections would be free and fair. Stop these displays of petulance which will lead to nothing, he said. The electoral campaign will be open. There will be no restrictions on freedom. The Council validated 13 other candidates including Socialist Party leader Ousmane Tanor Dieng, Niasse and two other ex-prime ministers – Idrissa Seck and Macky Sall. Its five judges, all selected by Wade, said authorities had been unable to identify around 4,000 of some 12,000 signatures gathered by N’Dour, meaning his candidacy was invalid. We are here to protest against Wade, Yero Toure, a 26-year-old student at an opposition rally of a couple of thousand people in central Dakar before the ruling. If they don’t reject him the people will rise up against him.Critics say that Wade, who spent 26 years in opposition to Socialist rule, has done nothing during his 12 years in power to alleviate poverty in a country where formal employment is scarce, and has dragged his heels on tackling official graft.Wade points to spending on education and infrastructure projects such as roadbuilding as proof of progress towards turning Senegal into an emerging market country and a trade hub.His candidacy has raised eyebrows abroad. The senior U.S. State Department official for Africa, William Fitzgerald, told French RFI radio this month Washington viewed it as a bit regrettable.From our point of view it was the right moment to go into retirement, to protect and support a good transition – democratically, peacefully, safely, Fitzgerald said.
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The revelations surfaced as the older of the two Roy High School students arrested on Wednesday, Dallin Morgan, 18, was charged by Weber County prosecutors with possession or use of a weapon of mass destruction.Morgan posted $10,000 bail on Friday and was released from the Weber County jail, Utah State Courts spokeswoman Nancy Volmer said.The 16-year-old boy arrested with him, Joshua Hoggan, remained held at a juvenile detention center, where he was booked on suspicion of conspiracy, Volmer said. It was unclear if he had been formally charged.Police in Roy, 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, have said the two students were not found to have any explosives in their possession after they were pulled out of classes and arrested on Wednesday following a tip from another student.But authorities said investigators had found evidence that the two youths had plotted to set off explosives during a school assembly and make their getaway in a stolen airplane.Charging documents filed against Morgan said that he did conspire to use a weapon of mass destruction.The arrest affidavit said that one of the students, whose name was blacked out on the document, had told investigators he was fascinated by the Columbine High School shooting spree.Two Columbine students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, shot 12 classmates and a teacher to death before killing themselves on April 20, 1999, in what then ranked as the deadliest outburst of school gun violence in U.S. history. Harris and Klebold also set off makeshift bombs fashioned from propane canisters.The accused Roy High School student said to have been inspired by the Columbine massacre also told investigators he had flown to Denver and paid a visit to Columbine High to interview the principal there. It was confirmed by Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis that (the unnamed student) arrived on December 12, 2011, at 11 a.m. to interview him about Columbine’s mass killing, the affidavit said. It also revealed that at least one of the two accused students sent text messages to a third pupil before their arrest. One of those messages said, Dallin is in on it. Another said, He wants revenge on the world, too. Police have said the two accused students had planned to escape after attacking their school by commandeering a plane from nearby Ogden-Hinckley Airport, a general aviation airfield. They trained for that plan with the aid of a computer flight simulator, police said. The text messages cited in the affidavit also pointed to the possibility of a plane being used. We ain’t gonna crash it, we’re just gonna kill and fly our way to a country that won’t send us back to the U.S., the affidavit quoted one of the students as writing in a text message. Police have not disclosed the date that they suspect the two students were planning to strike.
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A new 300,000 square foot building will consolidate into one site the satellite offices employing some 800 researchers, most of them focused on biology, who are currently scattered around the San Francisco Bay Area. It could eventually grow up to 2 million square feet and involve researchers in other fields, according to planning documents released by the lab on Thursday.Founded by cyclotron inventor Earnest O. Lawrence in 1931, the laboratory at first focused on nuclear energy but has gradually diversified and is now as much known for microscopy and nanotechnology as it is for energy.The new campus will begin with work on biofuels, genomics and cancer research, said laboratory director Paul Alivisatos.The lab has been so successful that it’s branching out in all directions, said Raymond L. Orbach, director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, and a former undersecretary for science in the U.S. Department of Energy.It’s quite unusual for one lab to contribute across the spectrum, he added.Thirteen Nobel laureates have worked at the lab, which is primarily funded by the Department of Energy but run by the University of California.After stagnating for a decade, U.S. funding for energy research will rise to $4. billion in 2012 from about $3. billion in 2007, said Matt Hourihan, a budget analyst for the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. There is bipartisan support for energy research, he said.The site in Richmond is already owned by the University of California, so the laboratory will not need to pay for its purchase. The lab is working now to set a budget for the new building, said lab spokesman Jon Weiner.The laboratory’s budget for 2011 was $735 million, with an additional $101 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, for a total of $836 million. Its 2012 budget has not yet been set, said Weiner. If we work hard together and make this long-range development plan, start to secure the financing and work our way through the environmental impact studies, and get all the input from the community, I’m optimistic we will be back here in 2016 opening the doors to the campus, said Alivisatos. The construction and staff spending associated with the new campus is expected to boost the economy of Richmond, which has struggled with high unemployment.
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A Yuma County judge disqualified Alejandrina Cabrera, a U.S. citizen born in Yuma, from running for a seat on the city council in the town of San Luis this week for what he called a large gap between her English proficiency and that required to serve on the council.It was clear to the court that she was stymied by many questions, did not understand many questions, failed to comprehend what was being asked, and guessed at answers, the court ruling said.The judge, in a move that sparked a debate over language in often bilingual U.S.-Mexican border communities, said Cabrera’s English was not of the level needed to carry out the professional duties required of a representative of the public.A notice of appeal was filed with the court late on Friday afternoon, according to Brandon Kinsey, one of Cabrera’s attorneys.Kinsey said the vast majority of his own conversations with Cabrera have been conducted in English and that she meets the baseline requirement for reading, writing, and speaking in the language.Whether or not she is the best candidate is a decision left up to the voters, he said. It should not be left up to a judge.Immigrant rights activists said the initial court decision misunderstood a community that spans both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. The San Luis on the U.S. side is a town of roughly 25,000 people 200 miles southwest of Phoenix.Immediately across the border, is another San Luis, population roughly 175,000. The two municipalities are considered by many residents as one and the same community.A lot of those people from San Luis have family members on the other side, go shopping on the other side, go out at night on the other side, said Luis Avila, president of the Arizona-based immigrant rights coalition Somos America. This is how people live in the border area, he added. Supporters of the judge’s decision said there were certain basic requirements set in law to be eligible for elected office, including a clear requirement for English proficiency. We favor English as the official language for government,3said Robert Vandervoort, executive director of advocacy group ProEnglish. We realize America is a melting pot, he said, But in terms of how we communicate through government, we believe it should be in English. Both English and Spanish are spoken during city council meetings in San Luis, Kinsey said.Supporters of Cabrera complain that public servants have increasingly come under scrutiny for heavy accents or an incomplete command of the English language in Yuma County and throughout the state.People feel afraid of the browning of the state of Arizona, said Avila, himself an immigrant from Mexico. Immigrant bashing has become a political point.
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Gerard Dugue was accused of obstructing justice, lying to the FBI and violating the civil rights of two people by writing false police reports about the September 2005 shooting.Two unarmed civilians were killed by police in the incident on the Danziger Bridge as much of the city was under water from flooding in the chaotic days following the storm.Dugue was not directly involved in the shootings but took up the investigation a few months later.District Judge Kurt Engelhardt granted the mistrial after a prosecutor mentioned a separate case that involved the defendant while questioning Dugue on the witness stand, according to the Times-Picayune newspaper.The trial, which began on Monday, was to be the final proceeding against a group of police officers charged in connection with the shootings.A federal jury last summer convicted five officers on 22 counts of violating the civil rights of innocent people and obstructing justice. They face potential sentences that range up to life in prison.Ronald Madison, 40, and James Brissette, 17, were killed, and four others were seriously injured on the bridge after the New Orleans police officers responded to a call about gunfire.While prosecutors painted a picture of out-of-control officers firing indiscriminately at innocent bystanders, defense lawyers maintained that officers saw guns and believed they were in danger.Five other officers pleaded guilty to participating in the shootings or cover-up and were sentenced to terms of three to eight years. Most of them testified for the prosecution during the 2011 trial, and some also this week in Dugue’s trial. The trial opened on Monday and had been expected to last about two weeks.
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Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals scheduled the trial of Scott Evans Dekraai, 42, to begin on October 15, almost exactly a year after the October 12, 2011, shooting rampage.Prosecutors, however, expressed doubt that the trial would begin on time.Prosecutors said Dekraai, who has pleaded not guilty to eight counts of murder, was locked in a bitter child custody battle with his ex-wife Michelle Fournier when he walked into Salon Meritage in Seal Beach carrying three guns and opened fire.Fournier, 48, was killed, along with salon owner Randy Fannin, 62, and five other people inside the salon. Prosecutors said Dekraai shot his victims at close range, several of them multiple times as they lay dying.Harriet Stretz, 73, who was in a chair having her hair styled by her daughter, Laura Lee Elody, at the time of the shooting, survived her wounds. Elody, 46, was among the dead.After leaving the salon, Dekraai shot dead 64-year-old David Caouette, who was sitting in his sport utility vehicle parked outside the salon, prosecutors said.Dekraai was arrested just blocks from the bloody scene in Seal Beach, a bucolic beachside community about 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles that had experienced only four homicides in the past decade.
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The German-born executive, who took over from two longstanding co-CEOs on Saturday, said his plans for RIM would be significant though he did not divulge details in an interview with Reuters.I will have time with the board in two weeks to present my ideas and changes, Heins said.But the executive, who was promoted from the role of chief operating officer, said he has already done groundwork to tackle his company’s most pressing problem – persuading the U.S. market to covet the BlackBerry again.While RIM is growing in other countries, Heins conceded that its U.S. business is in need of a major revival after losing out to rivals like Apple Inc’s iPhone at U.S. service providers and corporations, where it once had a clear advantage among employees heavily dependent on its email service.In general I wouldn’t consider RIM as a turnaround candidate. It is a turnaround candidate in the U.S., he said. We lost market share in this market quite substantially. That is something that we have to address.While U.S. operators such as Verizon Wireless and AT-T Inc have helped BlackBerry with heavy advertising and promotions in the past, these operators have been much more focused in the last few years on devices like iPhone and smartphones based on the Google Inc operating system.Heins’ quest to regain ground with these operators has been complicated by the fact that RIM had to announce in December that it is delaying the launch of phones based on BlackBerry 10 – its next-generation software – until the later part of 2012 as it is awaiting the availability of a high-powered chip.The executive would not say when exactly these phones would hit the market but implied that they would arrive in time for the year-end holiday-shopping season in the fourth quarter.So in the meantime, Heins will concentrate on getting the most current BlackBerrys into more consumers hands. He noted that only 20 percent of U.S. BlackBerry users have the company’s latest phones, which he says are competitive with rival smartphones. The rest of RIM’s U.S. customers have devices with older RIM software, some of which are two generations behind, he said. To overcome this, RIM has devised a new upgrade plan with U.S. operators to promote phones with the BlackBerry 7 system, which was launched in August last year. All the plans are ready. The carrier agreements are all ready. Now we have to get off the starting grid. Now we need to execute that upgrade program, Heins said. While he did not want to disclose specifics about the new agreements, Heins said RIM could look at new ways of bundling different devices together or offering carriers smartphones with a package of pre-loaded applications. He is also betting on the company’s PlayBook tablet to compete with the Apple iPad tablet. This spring, Heins said that RIM will launch a version of the Playbook, with a high-speed wireless connection based on LTE – a technology that the top three U.S. operators are building into their networks. Verizon Wireless and AT-T are already promoting LTE devices including smartphones and tablets from RIM’s rivals. RIM’s first smartphones with LTE connections will be in the company’s BlackBerry 10 line-up, Heins said.MOMENT OF SURPRISEIn his first presentation to Wall Street as CEO earlier this week, Heins said he did not think the company needed drastic change, causing some analysts to worry that the executive would not do enough to reverse the company’s fortunes.But the executive said on Friday that he was merely telling Wall Street that he does not want to change the core of RIM.Is RIM up for sale, is RIM up for a split-up? He rejected those possibilities as a drastic, seismic change because it would tear the company apart.Heins, who has been with RIM for four years after spending over two decades at German engineering group Siemens, was became COO responsible for software and products seven months ago.He explained that RIM had succession plans for co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in place for some time and that he had an inkling that he was being groomed to follow in their footsteps when he was named COO.The moment they tell you it’s still a surprise, Heins said, smiling broadly and adding that he immediately said yes.Lazaridis and Balsillie, who turned the BlackBerry maker into a global company and a household name, stepped down last week but will remain on the board.Some analysts have worried whether these executives would have too much of a say in the future strategy of the company because of their position on the board.Heins said, it would be an advantage to be able to tap into the experience and company knowledge of RIM founder Lazaridis, but he made it clear that he would be the one calling the shots. What I do with the company is my decision. The CEO runs the company.
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The group New Approach Washington submitted nearly 278,000 valid signatures for the measure, more than required to put it on the November ballot, David Ammons, a spokesman for the Washington Secretary of State’s office, said in a statement.The move comes as federal prosecutors have sought to crank up pressure on several mostly western states, including Washington, that have legalized medical marijuana even as cannibis remains classified as an illegal narcotic under federal law.The proposal, if approved by voters, would allow marijuana sales to people 21 and older, permit state taxes to be collected on the drug, ban pot advertising and prohibit driving under the influence of cannabis.Supporters of legalizing marijuana, who include acting Seattle city attorney Peter Holmes, say the federal prohibition on the drug has not curbed use and that it enriches drug cartels.This is the grown-up approach to regulating a relatively harmless drug, Holmes said.Opponents of legalization say it would lead to more abuse of the drug, including by young people, and that underground sales would continue.There will always be a black market. That’s been proven with cigarettes with the tobacco industry, said Calvina Fay, head of the Florida-based Drug Free America Foundation. Even though tobacco is legal and it’s regulated, there’s still a huge global black market.Washington is one of 16 states that, along with the nation’s capital, have decriminalized medical marijuana. But federal agents have raided medical marijuana dispensaries in several states, including Washington, in recent months.Under state law, the recreational legalization initiative next heads to the Washington State Legislature, which has the option of avoiding a popular vote by itself enacting the proposal to legalize marijuana, Ammons said. The legislature could also allow the measure to go to the ballot alongside an alternative from lawmakers, Ammons said. Alison Holcomb, campaign director of New Approach Washington, has said she did not expect the legislature would enact the proposal on its own, but would leave the issue for voters to decide. In 2010, a measure to legalize marijuana in California lost at the ballot box when less than 47 percent of voters approved it. No modern, affluent nation has ever legalized commercial production and distribution of marijuana, according to research organization RAND Corp. In the Netherlands, famous for its Amsterdam cafes where guests buy and smoke marijuana, authorities allow adults to buy the drug but the country officially has a policy that commercial production of it is illegal, said Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center.
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Gerard Dugue was accused of plotting to conceal wrongdoing in the 2005 fatal shooting of two unarmed civilians by police on the Danziger Bridge as much of the city remained underwater from flooding in the chaotic days following the storm. Dugue was not directly involved in the shootings.
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The Dodgers confirmed that a preliminary round of bidding had been completed, adding that all parties would be notified of the results. A spokesman for Major League Baseball did not respond to requests for comment.An estimated 12 parties submitted non-binding first-round bids for the storied baseball team, the stadium and related assets on Monday.Blackstone, which is handling the high-profile auction of one of baseball’s oldest franchises for the league, picked suitable suitors from among some of the biggest names in business and sports.Blackstone is notifying all of the bidders as to which ones will and which ones will not advance in the sales process, a statement from the Dodgers said.Sources familiar with the matter said billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen and ex-Yankees and Dodgers manager Joe Torre received the green light, while basketball great Magic Johnson was also in the running.Representatives for these bidders declined or were unavailable for comment.Those that did not make it into a second round will be notified promptly, one source said on condition of anonymity because the process was not public.This is very quick. The indication here is that there was lots of discussion with the prospective bidders before the bids were submitted, said Marc Ganis, president of SportsCorp, a Chicago-based sports business consulting firm.The sales prices could reach $1. billion based on the incredible interest in the team and the media rights, he said. AND WE’RE OFF1The Dodgers landed on the auction block after owner Frank McCourt was forced to place the team under bankruptcy (http://bankruptcy.ieurope.net) protection last year. Other bidders include Internet entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and former Dodger greats Orel Hershiser and Steve Garvey. News Corp’s Fox group, the current broadcast partner of the Dodgers, has also received a nondisclosure agreement from bankers involved in the sale and has been talking with bidders about potentially buying a minority stake to help secure TV rights beyond 2013. The lucrative media rights beyond 2013 are at the center of the Dodgers’ sale. Banking and sporting experts also expect various groups could forge ties as the process rolls on, and note the potential for confusion as alliances are made and remade.The sale is being conducted by the Blackstone Group and is being overseen by the U.S. bankruptcy (http://bankruptcy.ieurope.net) Court in Wilmington, Delaware. McCourt bought the team in 2004 for $430 million, primarily financed with debt.Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said on January 14 he was counting on the bankrupt team to be sold by April 30. Under the terms of a settlement between the league and McCourt, the Los Angeles businessman must sell the Dodgers and the stadium within that time frame.Fox owned the Dodgers from 1998 to 2004. A spokesman said the company has no desire to own the team.
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