NEw SARS-likE viRUS EMERGES iN MidEASt - Kuwait Times

LIMA: Mexican President-elect Franciso Pena Nieto (2-L), his wife
Angelica Rivera (L), Peruvian President Ollanta Humala (2-R) and
Peruvian First Lady Nadine Heredia (R) pose at the Government Palace in
Lima yesterday. Pena Nieto in on a one-day visit to Peru. — AFP
Six youth offenders caught
after knocking out guard
SEATTLE: The teenage boys apparently
planned their escape from the juvenile
detention center in Washington state.
Some had packed bags with them, and one
boy even stuffed his bed to make it look
like he was there, authorities said.
On Saturday night, when they were supposed
to be locked in their rooms at Echo
Glen Children’s Center in Snoqualmie,
about 25 miles east of Seattle, six inmates
knocked a staff member unconscious,
locked her in a room and fled, authorities
said.
They were captured a few hours later
after a helicopter crew using thermal-imaging
equipment spotted them in nearby
woods early Sunday, according to the King
County Sheriff’s Office.
“They basically attacked the staff member,
knocked her out, took her keys and
fled,” Sgt. Cindi West said. The teens left the
woman unconscious and locked in a room
at the facility, she said. All of the inmates
should have been locked in their rooms by
11 p.m., but they somehow managed to
get out, said David Griffith, who directs
institution programs for the state Juvenile
Rehabilitation Administration.
“The kids were supposed to be locked in
their rooms. It may have been a procedural
error, or the youth hid out and she (the staff
member) didn’t know where they were,”
Griffith said. “It’s very scary ... We’ll investigate
what went wrong, absolutely,” he
added, noting that the agency will address
procedural changes if necessary.
He said the staff member was treated
and is at home. The teens were in a maximum-security
unit of the juvenile correction
facility, which currently houses about
165 youth offenders in 10 separate living
units. The units include a small kitchen, living
room and classroom.
“We’re not sure how it was initiated. It
might have been a single person, or a concerted
effort,” Griffith said. “The kids who
assaulted the staff member opened the
doors for all kids living in the unit, so there
was a potential for the entire unit to
escape.”
Six fled. Seven decided to stay and they
notified security, Griffith said. The King
County Sheriff’s office said it received word
of the escape at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday.
The unarmed staff member was alone in
the unit, which is typical after lockdown,
Griffith said.
She apparently wasn’t able to push a
panic button or call security for help, he
said. Witnesses told detectives that the staff
member was beaten with a chunk of ice
frozen in a water bottle, the Seattle Times
reported.
“It definitely appears this was planned.
The detective on the scene said when they
found the boys they had their packed bags
with them,” West told the Times. Griffith
added: “They had some planning because
they had one bed that was stuff. One kid
put stuff in his bed to make it look like he
was there.”
The six males, three 14-year-olds and
three 15-year-olds, were serving time for
offenses including assault, possession of
firearms and burglary, West said.
Law officers on the ground with search
dogs and in the air combed the area on the
outskirts of Snoqualmie before a helicopter
crew spotted them in woods near the
center, according to West. All were captured
by 2 am Sunday.
“The biggest reason they were apprehended
so quickly was the helicopter,” she
said. “Without that we would have been
looking for needles in a haystack. It allowed
us to apprehend them before they got into
the neighborhood.”
Echo Glen Children’s Center is a medium
and maximum security facility for offenders
serving time mostly for felony crimes. The
facility is not fenced, but is bordered by
natural wetlands. It provides treatment
services for younger male offenders and is
the main institution for female juvenile
offenders, according to its website.
Once the teens were spotted by the helicopter,
they split up into three groups and
ran in different directions, West said.
Deputies in the helicopter were able to
direct deputies on the ground, including K-
9 units, to where the teens were running or
hiding.
One was bitten by a police dog while
trying to escape and was taken to a hospital
for treatment, West said. The others
were arrested without incident and booked
on charges of assault, unlawful imprisonment
and escape, she said. “There was no
indication that this was coming up,” Griffith
said. — AP
Togo ruling family
faces increasingly
determined opposition
LOME: The leader of a stick-wielding mob, a
small axe dangling from a rope around his
neck, made no secret of why they had come:
to stop a protest organised by opposition and
civil society groups. But he insisted their
actions did not involve politics, saying the
mob wanted to protect the elderly people in
the neighbourhood. If police fired tear gas at
the protest-as they often do-it may harm residents,
he said.
“What we are doing has nothing to do with
politics,” he said not long before the mob
pulled a motorcycle rider off his bike for
unclear reasons and repeatedly hit him. “It is
just social.” Police stood by and watched as
they roamed the street, and protest organisers
canceled the demonstration, accusing the
mob of being a ruling party militia.
The September 15 incident seemed to be
another chapter in a cat-and-mouse game
ahead of parliamentary elections in this small
west African nation run by the same family for
more than four decades.
The elections are due in October, but they
are widely expected to be delayed.
While change has swept other parts of the
world over the past couple of years, Togo, an
impoverished and largely agricultural nation
under French rule before independence in
1960, can sometimes feel like a throwback to
another era. Lingering suspicions over an
alleged coup bid in 2009 have added to tensions,
with the president’s half-brother sentenced
to 20 years in prison and 32 others to a
range of jail terms over the incident last year.
Opposition and civil society groups have been
organising protests that the government
seeks to prevent, usually with police firing tear
gas. It recently banned demonstrations in
commercial areas of the capital Lome.
Clashes have occasionally broken out
between protesters and security forces. The
Let’s Save Togo coalition has been calling the
protests over a range of demands, most
notably the departure of President Faure
Gnassingbe, who was installed in power by
the army after his father’s death in 2005 and
who won elections a few months later and
again in 2010. Women even called for a sex
strike at one point in support of the coalition.
More protests are planned for Tuesday,
Wednesday and Thursday which may be
volatile since they are to be held in an area of
Lome where marches are banned.
“We are done holding elections just to
please others-to please and help a fraudulent
regime and to please the West. It’s over,” said
Jean-Pierre Fabre, leader of the opposition
National Alliance for Change who demands
sweeping electoral reforms.
Fabre finished second to Gnassingbe in
2010 elections and disputes the results.
Gnassingbe’s supporters describe a more
complex situation, saying the government is
taking real steps toward change, but that it
will have to come gradually in a country
where the military wields major power.
Ethnic tensions also come into play, with
the Kabye ethnic group from the country’s
north viewed as having dominated politics
and the security forces.
The president, whose father was a general
who ruled for 38 years, has signaled intentions
to move toward reforms, and observers have
noted that 2010 presidential elections were a
significant improvement over the 2005 polls,
which were marred by deadly violence.
Gilbert Bawara, minister of territorial administration,
has sought to portray the opposition
as simply power hungry with no real plan to
run the country. He accused them of being fixated
on Gnassingbe yielding power. “And then
what?” Bawara said, suggesting that the opposition
may not be able to control the army if it
came to power now. “What will happen next?”
He defended the government’s decision to
ban demonstrations in commercial areas, saying
such marches posed a threat to public
order and prevented merchants from operating
their businesses.— AFP
international
WASHINGTON: Republican Mitt Romney hits the
campaign trail hard this week to try to inject some
fresh momentum into his flagging presidential bid
as polls show his path to the White House narrowing.
The vote is six weeks from Tuesday and the former
Massachusetts governor trails President Barack
Obama both in national polls and, more importantly,
in eight of the nine crucial swing states that will
decide the election.
Efforts to claw back some ground on the incumbent
since Obama received a significant boost from
the Democratic Party Convention at the beginning
of the month have fallen into disarray due to a
series of campaign missteps.
After rushing to judgment over Obama’s
response to the anti-Islamic film that spawned
protests in the Muslim world, Romney was embarrassed
by a secretly-recorded video in which he
wrote off almost half the electorate as “victims”
who were dependent on government handouts.
“The Romney campaign has to get turned
around,” respected conservative columnist Peggy
Noonan wrote on Friday. “This week I called it
incompetent, but only because I was being polite. I
really meant ‘rolling calamity.’”
A Romney reset effort began in earnest even
before a campaign event on Sunday evening in
Colorado as he flew from Los Angeles to Denver,
Colorado. Romney said that his poll numbers had
declined in swing states because Obama’s campaign
is lying about his record, including on issues
such as the automobile industry bailout, abortion
and taxes.
“He’s trying to fool people into thinking that I
think things I don’t,” Romney said, talking to
reporters on his plane. “And that ends I think during
the debates.” Meanwhile, running mate Paul
Ryan kicks off a “Romney Plan For A Stronger
Middle Class” tour on Monday across Rust-belt
Ohio, where an average of the latest polling shows
Obama ahead by more than four percentage
points. Under the US system, each state is awarded
a certain number of electoral college votes and on
election night a candidate needs to reach the magic
270 figure to emerge victorious. The swing states
with the largest number of electoral college votes
up for grabs are Florida (29), North Carolina (15),
Ohio (18) and Virginia (13). Polling of nine swing
states shows Romney leading only in North
Carolina and trailing by more than four percent in
both Ohio and Virginia. Florida is closer, with
Obama credited with a razor-thin lead of around
one percent.
“These are the dominoes that have to fall for
each of the campaigns, and the trouble is, based
on the polling at least, eight of the nine dominoes
are at least slightly tilted in Obama’s direction,” said
expert Charles Franklin. “Romney needs to tilt
some of them back in his direction and he needs to
do that fairly soon,” said Franklin, a politics professor
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and cofounder
of Pollster.com.
The Romney campaign remains defiant and
insists their man is still effectively tied with an
incumbent who has a large Achilles heel: the economy.
“Given everything we’ve gone through, everybody
wants to count this guy out,” Neil Newhouse,
Romney’s campaign pollster, told the Washington
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012
Romney seeks momentum
in campaign swing
9 swing states show Romney leading in N Carolina
Post. “And yet the poll numbers don’t do that. The
poll numbers put him right in the middle of this.”
The candidate himself seemed confident about
his prospects in an interview with broadcaster CBS
aired late Sunday. Asked if he could win the
upcoming elections, Romney replied: “I’m going to
win this thing.”
A week from Tuesday, Romney will face off
against Obama in the first of three televised presidential
debates that collectively represent his final
big opportunity to turn things around.
On election day, November 6, there is always
the question of which side has had the better
“ground game,” getting voters to the polls and
ensuring their candidate is not defeated by low
turnout. Franklin said he wasn’t ready to call the
race for Obama. “This is sort of like knowing a halftime
score in an American football game. It tells
you something about the outcome but it’s not the
final score,” he told AFP— AFP
DENVER: US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks to the
press as Ohio Senator Rob Portman (R) looks on aboard his campaign plane
while in flight en route to Denver yesterday. — AFP