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BERLIN – A 35,000-year-old ivory carving of a busty woman found in a German cave was unveiled Wednesday by archaeologists who believe it is the oldest known sculpture of the human form. The carving found in six fragments in Germany’s Hohle Fels cave depicts a woman with a swollen belly, wide-set thighs and large, protruding breasts.
“It’s very sexually charged,” said University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard, whose team discovered the figure in September.
Carbon dating suggests it was carved at least 35,000 years ago, according to the researchers’ findings, which are being published Thursday in the scientific journal Nature.
“It’s the oldest known piece of figurative sculpture in the world,” said Jill Cook, a curator of Paleolithic and Mesolithic material at the British Museum in London.
Stones in Israel and Africa almost twice as old are believed to have been collected by ancient humans because they resembled people, but they were not carved independently.
The Hohle Fels cave discovery suggests the humans, who are believed to have come to Europe around 40,000 years ago, had the intelligence to create symbols and think abstractly in a way that matches the modern human, Conard said.
“It’s 100 percent certain that, by the time we get to 40,000 years ago in Swabia, we’re dealing with people just like you and me,” Conard told The Associated Press, referring to the southern German region where the sculpture was recovered along with other prehistoric artifacts.
Conard believes the 2.4-inch-tall (6-centimeter) figure may have been hung on the end of a string. The left arm is missing, but Conard said he hopes to find it by sifting through material from the cave.
The Hohle Fels sculpture is curvaceous and has neither feet nor a head, like some of the roughly 150 so-called Venus figurines found in a range from the Pyrenees mountains to southern Russia and dating back about 25,000-29,000 years.
But Cook warned against trying to draw any connections between the Venuses and the Hohle Fels figure, saying that would be like comparing Picasso to a classical sculptor — too much time had passed.
“I wonder whether at this point we’re looking at figures which are unique within themselves and unique within the cultures that they’re arising in,” she said.
Archaeologist Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge, suggested a clearer continuum.
“We now have evidence of that sort of artistic tradition of Venus figurines going back 6,000 years earlier than anybody ever guessed,” he said.
Neanderthals also lived in Europe around the time the sculpture was carved, and frequented the Hohle Fels cave. But Mellars said layered deposits left by both species over thousands of years prove the sculpture was crafted by humans.
“Nothing within a million miles of this has ever been found in a Neanderthal layer,” Mellars said.
The archaeologists agreed the sculpture’s age and features invite speculation about its purpose and the preoccupations of the culture that produced it.
Cook suggested it could be symbol of fertility, perhaps even portrayed in the act of giving birth.
Mellars suggested a more basic motivation for the carving: “These people were obsessed with sex.”
Conard said the differing opinions reinforced the connection between the ancient artist and modern viewer.
“How we interpret it tells us just as much about ourselves as about people 40,000 years ago,” he said.
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On the Net:

http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html

DETROIT (Reuters) –
General Motors Corp and Chrysler aim to drop as many as 3,000 U.S. dealers and are expected to begin sending notifications as early as Thursday, three people briefed on the still developing plans said.
GM, facing a U.S. government-imposed deadline of June 1 to restructure or file for bankruptcy, is expected to send termination notices to up to 2,000 dealers — a third of its roughly 6,000 U.S. dealers, the sources told Reuters.
Chrysler, which filed for bankruptcy on April 30, will also tell up to 1,000 of its 3,189 U.S. dealers that it is terminating their franchise agreements, according to the sources who asked not to be identified because the controversial closure plans have not been yet announced.
The moves to shut down auto dealerships underscores how the economic pain caused by the downward spiral of both automakers — now operating under U.S. government oversight — is spreading beyond their home base in Detroit.
Chrysler spokeswoman Kathy Graham said the automaker had not announced its dealership closure plans.
“We have not announced anything at this point,” she said. “We are not done with our process at this point.”
A GM spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Soyoung Kim and John Crawley in Washington; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

In a dramatic and high-profile reversal for his young administration, President Barack Obama is seeking to block the release of 44 photographs depicting abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Justice Department had already agreed to release the photos by May 28 in response to a lawsuit, but Obama is shifting course.
“Last week, the President met with his legal team and told them that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the DOD photos because he believes their release would endanger our troops, and because he believes that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court,” said a White House official who asked not to be named.
“At the end of that meeting, the President directed his counsel to object to the immediate release of the photos on those grounds,” the official said.
Obama’s reversal is sure to set off an outcry on the left, which has pushed the Obama administration to come clean about interrogation policies and other actions carried out by the Bush administration.
Obama endorsed such openness during the campaign – and even released memos detailing interrogation practices critics call torture.
But those “torture memos” gave Republicans fodder for attacks on Obama for weakening U.S. national security – and touched off a series of questions about what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about waterboarding and other practices, and when. Obama’s move seems designed at least in part to avoid giving Republican critics new fodder for attacks – even if that means angering those on the left.
“If it’s true that they’re reversing position, we find that wholly unacceptable,” ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer told POLITICO. “It’s inconsistent with the commitment they’ve made to the court and its inconsistent with the promise of transparency that they’ve repeated many times both before the election and since.”
Jaffer said the ACLU had not been officially informed of the government’s change in stance, which he earlier called an effort to “renege” on the administration’s prior promise.
Already last week, Obama was coming under pressure to squelch the photos from senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who wrote to Obama urging him to drop plans to release the photos.
The American Civil Liberties Union has been seeking the photos for years in a pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over records of alleged abuse of prisoners. A federal appeals court ruled last year that the Bush Administration could not use the danger of retaliation against U.S. soldiers to withhold the images. Last month, Obama administration officials said a decision was made not to appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court.
Yet in his reversal Obama cited concerns about retaliation against U.S. troops as one of the main reasons.
“The President would be the last to excuse the actions depicted in these photos. . . But the President strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing US forces, and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan,” the White House official said.
One hurdle that could complicate the president’s effort to reverse course is that the Justice Department sent U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein a letter on April 23 saying that “the Government has now decided” not to seek review of the 2nd Circuit appeals court decision by the Supreme Court. “The parties have reached an agreement that the Department of Defense will produce all responsive images by May 28, 2009,” the letter said.
Comments that the White House made about the photos just last month could also undermine any legal attempts the administration will now pursue.
Asked at an April 23 briefing why the administration was not seeking Supreme Court review, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “I know that the Department of Justice determined specifically based on the ruling that they were not likely to be successful.”
Gibbs was also unambiguous, at that time, that the government had agreed to disclose the pictures. “The administration, the Pentagon, and the court entered into an agreement to release those photos,” he said.

WASHINGTON – The government-installed head of AIG told Congress Wednesday the insurance giant is making progress toward repaying U.S. taxpayers by selling many of its foreign assets, but lawmakers questioned whether the plan makes sense and demanded details.
American International Group Inc. Chief Executive Edward Liddy said the company has reduced, but not eliminated, the risk its failure could pose to the global economy despite getting more than 180 billion in federal bailout aid.
“The assurance I can give you is we will do everything we can to not require more federal money” but that will hinge on how long the worldwide recession drags on and the condition of the financial markets, Liddy told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
With the government owning a nearly 80 percent stake in AIG, lawmakers pushed Liddy on themes they said have angered Main Street Americans: company secrecy, the payment of hundreds of millions in bonuses to employees and financial performance.
“What is the plan to repay the American people and does it have a realistic chance of working?” asked committee chairman Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y. The excesses continue with AIG paying public relations executives up to 600 an hour in taxpayer money, he said.
“We think that the American taxpayer will be fully repaid” in three to five years under the company’s plan, Liddy said.
Liddy agreed to provide portions of AIG’s “Project Destiny” restructuring plan to the committee, but said details are sensitive and could hurt the company’s ability to sell assets while unfairly helping its international competitors: ACE Ltd., Zurich Financial Services Group and Axa SA.
Jill Considine, one of three trustees charged with overseeing the government’s interest in AIG, called the company plan “workable.”
The trustees have asked Liddy to make a thorough review of AIG’s compensation programs and to develop a new one. They also are seeking new board members for the company, who could be elected at a shareholders’ meeting next month.
“We share the concerns about the payment of large bonuses at a time when AIG was failing and being rescued by the taxpayers,” Considine said.
Considine and the other trustees — Chester Feldberg and Douglas Foshee — appeared separately from Liddy but also endured some harsh questioning from lawmakers.
“It’s an inside deal,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, told them angrily, citing their former and current ties to large financial institutions.
Towns asked whether it made sense to sell off AIG’s assets in a bear market where prices are depressed.
New York-based AIG on Monday announced plans to sell its Japanese headquarters to Nippon Life Insurance Co. for 1.2 billion in cash. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter.
Liddy said AIG doesn’t intend to sell its assets at “fire-sale prices.” AIG plans to retain its U.S. property-casualty and foreign general insurance businesses, and a stake in its foreign life insurance operations.
It was the second grilling before Congress in less than two months for Liddy, who was brought out of retirement by the Bush administration for a 1 annual salary to lead the hobbled insurance giant after it nearly collapsed at the height of the financial crisis last fall. Liddy is the former chairman and CEO of Allstate Corp.
AIG became one in a string of corporate calamities and a touchstone for public outrage. The huge volume of credit default swaps — a form of insurance against bond defaults — sold by AIG, coupled with rising levels of defaulted mortgage and other debt, threatened the company’s existence and prompted the government to step in.
Government aid to AIG now totals 182.5 billion. Liddy pegged the company’s current value at around 5 billion. AIG shares, which traded as high as around 70 in mid-2007, fell 21 cents, or 11.6 percent, to 1.60 Wednesday afternoon.
Liddy said the company has reduced its exposure to credit default swaps to 1.5 trillion, compared with the original 2.7 trillion, trimming its risk of failure.
Noting the company’s fourth-quarter loss of 61.7 billion — the biggest quarterly loss in U.S. corporate history, Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., said “it appears that taxpayers are merely propping AIG up.”
Liddy said the company has made progress. In the January-March quarter, the loss narrowed to 4.3 billion, compared with 7.6 billion a year earlier.
The 450 million in bonuses AIG paid to employees, including to traders in the financial products unit that brought it to the brink of collapse, fueled public and congressional outrage. The Democratic-led House approved a bill in March that would slap punishing taxes on big bonuses at AIG and other companies bailed out by taxpayers. The Senate didn’t act on the plan, however.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) –
Pope Benedict on Wednesday said the fortified Israeli wall dividing Bethlehem from Jerusalem could be taken down, if Israel and the Palestinians could remove the walls around their hearts.
On a visit to the town where Christians believe the son of God was born, he said he had seen “overshadowing much of Bethlehem, the wall that intrudes into your territories, separating neighbors and dividing families.”
“Although walls can be easily built, we all know that they do not last forever,” the pope said. “They can be taken down.”
“First, though, it is necessary to remove the walls that we build around our hearts,” he added at the end of a day spent in Jesus's birthplace in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“My earnest wish for you, the people of Palestine, is that this will happen soon,” he said, before returning to Jerusalem and continuing a week-long tour of the Holy Land.
In a speech at a refugee camp school in the wall's shadow, he called it a towering symbol of deadlock in the struggle for peace and a “stark reminder of the stalemate that relations between Palestinians and Israelis seemed to have reached.”
“How earnestly we pray for an end to the hostilities that have caused this wall to be built,” Benedict said.
The wall did not exist when his predecessor John Paul came in 2000. Israel began raising its barrier of fences and concrete through and around the West Bank in 2002, in what it said was a temporary measure to stop deadly Palestinian bombings.
Palestinians, backed by the World Court, say it is an illegal construction which steals and divides their land.
The papal convoy drove the few miles south from Jerusalem, passing slowly through steel gates in the fortified barrier of towering concrete slabs and watchtowers, to reach the town.
“LEGITIMATE ASPIRATIONS”
Cheers of “Long Live the Pope, Long Live Palestine” greeted his black limousine along the steep, ancient streets, from Palestinians gathered to hear the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics back their independence aspirations.
“The oppressed have become oppressors,” said one graffiti slogan on the grey concrete barrier that formed a dramatic backdrop to the pope's speech at the Basic Boys' School.
“Bridges, not walls!” said another.
“It is understandable that you often feel frustrated,” the pope said. “Your legitimate aspirations for permanent homes, for an independent Palestinian state, remain unfulfilled. Instead you find yourselves trapped … in a spiral of violence.”
It was imagery and language Palestinians had hoped for. But the German-born pope, criticized for what Jews saw as a lack of emotion in his condemnation of the Holocaust, stressed he saw two sides to the conflict and urged an end to all violence.
Repeating a message he has delivered since the start of his first Middle East tour on Friday, the pope said on arrival in Bethelehem that the Vatican “supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with your neighbors.”
The two-state solution is backed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, by Arab nations and the West. Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declined so far to endorse it.
He was due to meet the pope in Nazareth on Thursday.
Abbas said the “apartheid wall” was a bid by the Jewish state to drive Palestinian Christians and Muslims from the Holy Land. He spoke of “oppression, tyranny and land expropriation” and said Palestinians wanted a future with “no occupation, no checkpoints, no walls, no prisoners, no refugees.”
The pope said Mass for about 5,000 people in Manger Square, next to the Church of the Nativity that marks the spot where Christians believe Jesus was born to Mary in a stable.
It was strange, Pope Benedict said, that Bethlehem was associated with the joy of Jesus's birth “yet here in our midst, how far this magnificent promise seems from being realized.”
They applauded when he said he prayed that Israel's embargo “will soon be lifted” from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, where up to 1,400 were killed in a 3-week Israeli offensive in January.
Thousands of Christians left Bethlehem after a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 and was met by an Israeli security clampdown and the start of construction of the barrier.
“There are fewer and fewer of us Palestinian Christians but we have strength,” said Kandra Zreineh, a 45-year-old mother of four from a village near Bethlehem. “We are proud to have this visit because we are small and I believe he may be able to make a difference for us. I still believe in miracles.”
On his arrival, Benedict acknowledged Israel's security concerns, and urged people not to “resort to acts of violence or terrorism” but to seek a genuine peace with their neighbors.
“On both sides of the wall,” he said, “great courage is needed if fear and mistrust is to be overcome.”
(Additional reporting by Jerusalem and Bethlehem staff; writing by Douglas Hamilton; editing by Alastair Macdonald)

DETROIT (Reuters) –
General Motors Corp and Chrysler aim to drop as many as 3,000 U.S. dealers and are expected to begin sending notifications as early as Thursday, three people briefed on the still developing plans said.
GM, facing a U.S. government-imposed deadline of June 1 to restructure or file for bankruptcy, is expected to send termination notices to up to 2,000 dealers — a third of its roughly 6,000 U.S. dealers, the sources told Reuters.
Chrysler, which filed for bankruptcy on April 30, will also tell up to 1,000 of its 3,189 U.S. dealers that it is terminating their franchise agreements, according to the sources who asked not to be identified because the controversial closure plans have not been yet announced.
The moves to shut down auto dealerships underscores how the economic pain caused by the downward spiral of both automakers — now operating under U.S. government oversight — is spreading beyond their home base in Detroit.
Chrysler spokeswoman Kathy Graham said the automaker had not announced its dealership closure plans.
“We have not announced anything at this point,” she said. “We are not done with our process at this point.”
A GM spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Soyoung Kim and John Crawley in Washington; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

LOS ANGELES – Ryan O’Neal says he and Farrah Fawcett will watch a documentary about her battle against cancer together.
O’Neal says he expects Fawcett to take “great pride” in the video diary, “Farrah’s Story,” airing Friday on NBC. O’Neal and Fawcett, who had a long romantic relationship that ended in the late 1990s, have remained close and have a son, Redmond.
The documentary was made with the help of Fawcett’s friend, Alana Stewart, who filmed Fawcett as she underwent treatment. Stewart says the former “Charlie’s Angels” star is a fighter who hasn’t given up trying to overcome her disease.
The 62-year-old Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006. It has spread to her liver.

German champions Bayern Munich have confirmed the appointment of Dutchman Louis van Gaal as their new head coach.
Van Gaal will take over from Jurgen Klinsmann at Bayern Munich after leading AZ Alkmaar to the Dutch title.
Van Gaal, who led AZ Alkmaar to the Dutch title this season, has been released from his contract with the Eredivisie club and will officially take up the reins as Jurgen Klinsmann’s successor on July 1. The 57-year-old has agreed a two-year deal with the Bundesliga outfit. Bayern Munich are currently being managed by caretaker coach Jupp Heynckes, who has steered the club to within goal difference of Bundesliga leaders Wolfsburg, with just two matches remaining this season. “We are happy to have signed an experienced and successful coach such as Louis van Gaal,” said Bayern chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in a club statement. Van Gaal has a wealth of European experience, leading Ajax to three consecutive Dutch titles in the mid-1990′s, before guiding Barcelona to the Primera Liga title in 1998 and 1999.
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Following a disappointing spell as Dutch national coach, Van Gaal has restored his reputation at Alkmaar, guiding the club to only the second Dutch title in their history, going on an unbeaten 28-match league run in the process.
Source:CNN

JOHANNESBURG, South AfricaThere is a quiet if somewhat skeptical reappraisal taking place in the middle-class suburbs of South Africa. More and more people are expressing their support for newly-elected President Jacob Zuma.
ANC leader Jacob Zuma has promised to govern in the same manner as Nelson Mandela.more photos »
It’s an important development because it was many in the middle-class, regardless of race, who were most opposed to Zuma becoming president of South Africa. His inaugural speech, delivered last weekend, was masterly, promising to return South African society to the values of the Mandela era. That alone has done much to win him the respect of his former detractors. The choices he has made in his new cabinet have increased that respect. He has retained the skills of people like Barbara Hogan, former health minister, though she has been moved to a less prominent job. Do you think Jacob Zuma can deliver on his promises? Former finance minister Trevor Manuel becomes head of a new planning commission with wide powers; he has attracted Pravin Gordhan, who proved highly capable as head of the country’s tax authority, to the finance post. And Zuma has appointed ANC stalwart and multi-millionaire businessman Tokyo Sexwale to the post of human settlement minister. These appointments will help to reassure the business community that there will be no precipitous lurch to the Left under Zuma’s watch.
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The appointment of Pieter Mulder as deputy minister of agriculture is a savvy olive branch to the Afrikaner right, while the new president has also paid his dues to his leftist allies by appointing the leader of the Communist party Blade Nzimande to take charge of higher education. In his first days in office, Zuma has displayed consummate leadership. He came into office with the near-adoring approval of two out of three South African votersthe vast majority of whom were drawn from the swelling ranks of the country’s black poor. His greatest challenge is to help these people, to confront South Africa’s miserable legacy of poverty and the brutal crime that plagues all walks of society. But if he is to deliver the better life he has promised his supporters and begin to bring down crime levels, then he knows that he desperately needs the middle-class. They are the people who pay the bulk of the taxes he needs to fund even the most rudimentary social services that are under such strain in South Africa. He needs them to build businesses which employ his poor supporters; he needs them to invest in the country; and, crucially, he needs them to persuade overseas skeptics that they, in turn, should keep investing in South Africa. Zuma has, indisputably, displayed poor judgment in the past. Charges of fraud and corruption against him have been dropped, but some opponents say that doubts remain as to his probity, no matter how much those doubts infuriate him and his supporters. He and his cabinet may chafe at perceptions abroad that South Africa is heading the way of so many other African countries. But the tension and political and legal uncertainty in the last years surrounding his rise to power have led many foreign observers to conclude that the country will be on the road to decline under his leadership. This is not the view of most South Africans, black or white. From his compatriots Zuma has earned the chance to prove himself, but his next challenge will be to earn the same respect in the wider world.
His handling of the ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe will likely be a crucial test in the coming months. He is caught in a dilemma. The political reality is that he cannot, as an African leader, institute the hard line against Robert Mugabe demanded by the West. On the other hand, he cannot follow the drifting, vague notions of African solidarity pursued by his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. The world will be watching closely to see what he does.
Source:CNN

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
In a reversal, President Barack Obama objected on Wednesday to the release of dozens of photographs showing the abuse of terrorism suspects, fearing the pictures could trigger a backlash against U.S. troops.
The Obama administration had said last month it would comply with a court order to release the pictures by May 28, amid concerns that they could fan the flames of a political firestorm over the treatment of terrorism suspects and other detainees during George W. Bush's presidency.
A U.S. official said Obama told his legal team last week that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the photos although in no way did he excuse the behavior of those responsible for tough interrogation tactics.
He directed the lawyers “to object to the immediate release of the photos” on grounds that “their release would endanger our troops, and because he believes that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court.”
“The president strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing U.S. forces, and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan,” the official, who declined to be identified, said.
Obama inflamed partisan tensions in Washington in April by releasing memos written by Bush-era Justice Department lawyers that provided the legal justification for interrogation tactics such as waterboarding, which is simulated drowning.
Human rights advocates have called for prosecuting those Bush officials.
Obama last month also opened the door to the prosecution of those officials, and Attorney General Eric Holder last week vowed to move cautiously and avoid partisan politics in deciding whether any Bush-era officials should be prosecuted.
On Capitol Hill, some Democrats, such as House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have been calling for appointment of a “truth commission” to conduct a highly public probe into Bush administration interrogation tactics.
The Obama White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, have been wary of such a move, fearing it would distract attention from Obama's agenda.
Republicans have insisted that the interrogation tactics provided valuable information and have pointed fingers at Pelosi, saying she was briefed on tactics such as waterboarding in 2002 and did not complain about them at the time.
Pelosi has insisted that she was only told waterboarding was an option, not that it was being used.
(Reporting by Caren Bohan, Editing by Sandra Maler and Cynthia Osterman)

LOS ANGELES – Anna Nicole Smith’s lawyer-turned-boyfriend and two doctors pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges they conspired to provide thousands of prescription pills to the former model before her overdose death two years ago.
The appearance of Howard K. Stern and Drs. Khristine Eroshevich and Sandeep Kapoor in Superior Court set the stage for a preliminary hearing that all parties said could last at least two weeks.
Deputy District Attorney Renee Rose said there are 1,400 pages of discovery in the case, which was investigated for two years before charges were filed. Court Commissioner Kristi Lousteau ordered documents in the case sealed although attorneys said that about a quarter of the material has already been made public.
The hearing was brief and Smith’s name was never mentioned.
Stern, Eroshevich and Kapoor stood before Lousteau with their lawyers. The defendants said “yes” when she asked if they were pleading not guilty and when they agreed to delay the matter until June 8 for setting of the preliminary hearing date. They declined to comment outside court.
Stern’s lawyer, Steve Sadow, said he wanted the preliminary hearing to begin as soon as possible.
The commissioner granted a motion requiring each defendant to provide a handwriting sample and she transferred the case to a judge for the next hearing.
Outside court, Stern’s lawyer was outspoken, exclaiming: “He did not commit a crime, period!”
Sadow said he had filed a demurrer, a legal document contending that the law under which Stern is charged does not apply to him.
“The statute deals with medical practitioners,” he said. “He is not a doctor.”
Kapoor’s lawyer, Ellyn Garafalo, said he continues to practice medicine and his patients have been supportive.
“We have no doubt Dr. Kapoor will be exonerated,” she said.
Smith, 39, was declared dead at a hospital after being found unconscious in her Florida hotel room in 2007. A medical examiner determined she died of an accidental overdose of a sleeping medication and at least eight other prescription drugs.
Prosecutors allege Stern was the principal enabler in a conspiracy to provide Smith thousands of prescription pills.
The defendants each face six counts including conspiracy, and up to five years, eight months in prison if convicted.

NEW ORLEANS – Mayor Ray Nagin was elected seven years ago as a reform-minded business executive, and quickly won kudos for his efforts to modernize City Hall and clean up local government corruption. But as he enters his last year in office, he continues to battle consternation over the slow recovery from Hurricane Katrina and recent ethical questions about vacations in Jamaica and Hawaii.
Allegations that Nagin didn’t pay for at least part of the trips were raised in a lawsuit over his once highly touted city crime camera system, now known more for cost overruns than catching criminals.
“It’s been cleverly portrayed as, ‘There’s something wrong here,’ and nobody’s been able to prove that yet,” Nagin recently told reporters. “And it further creates doubt about government and government officials, and … I don’t know how to deal with it other than to try and get through it.”
Nagin, who enjoyed an average approval rating of 60 percent during his first term, has seen his support fall to its lowest level ever — 24 percent — in a poll by the University of New Orleans.
Many residents are dissatisfied with what they see as the slow pace of rebuilding from the devastating 2005 storm and a lack of leadership and transparency in the mayor’s office. Violent crime also remains a concern, though police reported fewer murders last year.
A Web site, http://www.nagins-last-day.com, is devoted to the mayor’s departure in May 2010 — term limits prevent him running again. And bumper stickers use the date with this kicker: “Proud to See Him Gone.”
“He has very, very little political capital, and everyone is in a holding pattern waiting for a successor,” said University of New Orleans political scientist Ed Chervenak, who heard the boos at the opera.
Nagin, a cable TV executive and political novice promising to bring a businessman’s sensibility to City Hall, helped to root out corruption in the city’s taxicab bureau shortly after taking over, shaking up a political system with a reputation for patronage and corruption. Nagin told a newspaper the effort was “a battle for the soul of New Orleans.”
Now Nagin, whose off-the-cuff comments have gotten him in trouble in the past, is in a battle of his own.
It stems from a lawsuit over the city’s troubled surveillance camera system. Barely a quarter of the 1,000 cameras Nagin envisioned six years ago have been installed.
The lawsuit was filed by two companies that worked on the initial system. The suit claims people in and with ties to the city technology office misappropriated their work.
Surfacing as part of the suit were credit card records that show airfare for a Nagin family trip to Jamaica in 2005 was charged to a company with ties to Nagin’s then-technology chief Greg Meffert, an entrepreneur brought in to help modernize city government.
Nagin has said it’s difficult to recall the circumstances surrounding the trip, about three months after Katrina left 80 percent of New Orleans under water.
The other vacation was in December 2004, when the Mefferts and Nagins went to Hawaii. The mayor has said Meffert “sponsored” the trip and said he’d told Meffert he had no trouble going as long as there were no ethical issues involved. He’s called Meffert a friend and the trip a personal family vacation.
However, Meffert said in a deposition the trip was paid at least partly by NetMethods, a technology company. Meffert was a consultant for the company while at City Hall and had use of a NetMethods card, Meffert attorney Randall Smith said.
Smith said NetMethods never did business with the city. The two other companies claim in their lawsuit that it was created to compete with them.
Nagin and Meffert have denied any wrongdoing.
Rafael Goyeneche, president of the watchdog Metropolitan Crime Commission, believes there was mismanagement in the technology office, and noted reports by the city’s inspector general and one commissioned by the administration found as much.
“The question remains: Is there a criminal violation?” he said.
Goyeneche requested an ethics investigation of the Jamaica trip and another to Chicago for a fundraiser. A four-year window to file a complaint over the Hawaii vacation had passed, he said.
A former administrator for the state ethics board said elected officials are barred from accepting gifts from anyone who might seek a contract with a government agency. But Gray Sexton said a grayer area is whether an employer can accept an unsolicited gift from an employee.
John Kiefer, an associate political science professor at the University of New Orleans, said public officials need to take into account the perception of their actions.
“Even if it’s technically legal, you have to weigh every action you take,” he said.

NEW YORK – The credit card bill is a 30-page study in conspicuous consumption.
A quick scan shows a restaurant charge of more than 2,800, 2,000 in spending at a Parisian boutique and 441 at a gourmet bagel shop. The total amount due: more than 100,000.
Eye-popping numbers aside, the American Express statement from January 2008 has taken on broader meaning because of the notorious name on the corporate account: Bernard L. Madoff.
And the vast majority of the charges aren’t even his; they belong to his family and associates.
The bill is among a pile of exhibits filed recently in a Manhattan bankruptcy court by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee who is dissecting Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme. Lawyers for the trustee claim in accompanying court papers that the credit card statement and other records prove Madoff’s family used his clients’ money to pay for homes, travel, fancy meals and other personal expenses.
The admitted swindler treated Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities “as his personal bank account, taking funds when he needed them and transferring funds to other Madoff entities or family members when it suited his whim and purposes,” the lawyers wrote.
Since the money was so intertwined, Picard has argued to a Manhattan bankruptcy judge that it would be more efficient and economical to consolidate separate efforts to identify and liquidate Madoff’s business and personal assets. A hearing is set for May 21.
The trustee has frozen Madoff’s bank accounts, sold off legitimate portions of his business and filed lawsuits to reclaim ill-gotten gains. The money will be used to pay claims brought by thousands of burned investors.
Madoff, 70, pleaded guilty in March to charges that his secretive investment advisory operation was a multibillion-dollar fraud. He could spend the rest of his life in prison.
In his plea, Madoff took all the blame for the scheme. He tried to create a wall between himself and his family, saying the separate trading operations run by his brother and two sons were “legitimate, profitable and successful in all respects.”
Federal investigators have said they don’t believe that, but won’t discuss how the investigation — now in its fifth month — is progressing. Lawyers for various family members and firm executives have denied any wrongdoing.
The trustee has stopped short of accusing anyone else of participating in perhaps the largest securities scheme in history. But in sometimes-scathing language and in the most detail to date, his lawyers claim Madoff insiders were blatant beneficiaries.
Madoff used his firms in Manhattan “to siphon funds which were, in reality, other people’s money, for his personal use and the benefit of his inner circle,” the recent filing by trustee lawyers said. “Plain and simple, he stole it.”
They accuse the Madoff’s family of burning through hundreds of millions of dollars to cover their decadent lifestyle. Family members, the lawyers wrote, “used customer accounts as though they were their own.”
The trustee’s investigation has concluded that Madoff’s boat captain, maid and house-sitter in Florida were on his firm’s payroll. Since 1996, the business also paid nearly 1 million in fees and charges at high-end golf clubs on Long Island and in Florida.
Also purchased were two boats — worth more than 11.5 million — that “served no business purpose,” court papers said. The records show that 11 million more was funneled to Madoff’s sons to buy homes on the Upper East Side and on Nantucket, the trustee said.
Then there was the corporate credit card used by Madoff’s family and close business associates.
Of the 100,121.99 bill from Jan. 23, 2008, Madoff’s wife, Ruth, was the top spender, ringing up 29,887.94 in charges. They included a 2,000.01 purchase at a Giorgio Armani outlet in Paris, and 1,214.10 at a Diane Firsten shop in Cincinnati about a week later.
A sampling of the other charges: 2,879 at an upscale Mexican restaurant in Wyoming by son Andrew; 584.96 for limousine service by son Mark; 521.82 at a New Jersey wine shop by employee JoAnn Crupi; and 441.00 at a gourmet bagel shop by brother Peter.
It also contains numerous small charges at grocery stores, convenience stores, Internet retailers, gas stations and movie theaters.
The statement makes Bernard Madoff himself look miserly by comparison. He was charged only for an annual credit card membership fee and an airline tax.
The total: 470.

BERLIN – A 35,000-year-old ivory carving of a busty woman found in a German cave was unveiled Wednesday by archaeologists who believe it is the oldest known sculpture of the human form.
The carving found in six fragments in Germany’s Hohle Fels cave depicts a woman with a swollen belly, wide-set thighs and large, protruding breasts.
“It’s very sexually charged,” said University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard, whose team discovered the figure in September.
Carbon dating suggests it was carved at least 35,000 years ago, according to the researchers’ findings, which are being published Thursday in the scientific journal Nature.
“It’s the oldest known piece of figurative sculpture in the world,” said Jill Cook, a curator of Paleolithic and Mesolithic material at the British Museum in London.
Stones in Israel and Africa almost twice as old are believed to have been collected by ancient humans because they resembled people, but they were not carved independently.
The Hohle Fels cave discovery suggests the humans, who are believed to have come to Europe around 40,000 years ago, had the intelligence to create symbols and think abstractly in a way that matches the modern human, Conard said.
“It’s 100 percent certain that, by the time we get to 40,000 years ago in Swabia, we’re dealing with people just like you and me,” Conard told The Associated Press, referring to the southern German region where the sculpture was recovered along with other prehistoric artifacts.
Conard believes the 2.4-inch-tall (6-centimeter) figure may have been hung on the end of a string. The left arm is missing, but Conard said he hopes to find it by sifting through material from the cave.
The Hohle Fels sculpture is curvaceous and has neither feet nor a head, like some of the roughly 150 so-called Venus figurines found in a range from the Pyrenees mountains to southern Russia and dating back about 25,000-29,000 years.
But Cook warned against trying to draw any connections between the Venuses and the Hohle Fels figure, saying that would be like comparing Picasso to a classical sculptor — too much time had passed.
“I wonder whether at this point we’re looking at figures which are unique within themselves and unique within the cultures that they’re arising in,” she said.
Archaeologist Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge, suggested a clearer continuum.
“We now have evidence of that sort of artistic tradition of Venus figurines going back 6,000 years earlier than anybody ever guessed,” he said.
Neanderthals also lived in Europe around the time the sculpture was carved, and frequented the Hohle Fels cave. But Mellars said layered deposits left by both species over thousands of years prove the sculpture was crafted by humans.
“Nothing within a million miles of this has ever been found in a Neanderthal layer,” Mellars said.
The archaeologists agreed the sculpture’s age and features invite speculation about its purpose and the preoccupations of the culture that produced it.
Cook suggested it could be symbol of fertility, perhaps even portrayed in the act of giving birth.
Mellars suggested a more basic motivation for the carving: “These people were obsessed with sex.”
Conard said the differing opinions reinforced the connection between the ancient artist and modern viewer.
“How we interpret it tells us just as much about ourselves as about people 40,000 years ago,” he said.
___
On the Net:

http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html

ATLANTA – Federal authorities in Atlanta on Wednesday announced the biggest seizure of Mexican crystal methamphetamine ever recorded east of the Mississippi River.
Federal drug enforcement agents seized about 351 pounds of meth from two houses in Duluth, in suburban Atlanta, in an operation that began Sunday and extended into Monday morning. They arrested four Mexican nationals, three of whom are in the U.S. illegally.
“This is very typical of what we see regarding Mexican drug trafficking organizations and how they operate,” said Rodney Benson, who heads the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field office. “They want to blend in to communities in nondescript locations to conduct their business.”
The seizure is the culmination of a two-month investigation. In addition to the crystal meth, commonly known as “ice,” agents found one kilogram of cocaine, an undetermined amount of cash and chemicals and equipment for making meth.
The wholesale value of the meth seized is about 6 million, Benson said. The highly-addictive drug was packaged for distribution along the East Coast and would likely be worth tens of millions of dollars on the street, he said.
Over the last several years, the Atlanta area, and especially suburban Gwinnett County, has become a major drug distribution hub for Mexican drug trafficking organizations. Drugs are brought across the southwest border and along the interstates to Atlanta, where they are processed into the final product and repackaged. The traffickers tend to compartmentalize their operations so a bust doesn’t bring down their whole operation.
The two houses involved were “classic stash houses,” with virtually no furniture, Benson said. No guns were found and many of the bags of drugs were in the walls of the houses. Benson said he believes the drugs seized were part of a larger shipment.
Authorities haven’t yet made any definite links to a specific cartel.
Arrested were four Mexican nationals living in Duluth: Fernando Chavez-Chavez, 28; Luis Naranjo-Leon, 23; Gerardo Antonio Urena-Esquivel, 35; and Jose Raphael Lopez-Jimenez, 34. They face state drug trafficking charges.
One of the houses where the meth was seized is a few doors down from a house where a drug-related shooting Monday left one person dead and three injured. Benson said there is no evidence that incident is related to the drugs seized or people arrested in this week’s bust.

LOS ANGELES – Anna Nicole Smith’s former boyfriend and two doctors have pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles to charges they conspired to provide prescription drugs to the former model before her overdose death two years ago.
Howard K. Stern and Drs. Khristine Eroshevich and Sandeep Kapoor appeared Wednesday before Superior Court Commissioner Kristi Lousteau. The defendants said “yes” when she asked if they were pleading not guilty.
The commissioner granted a motion requiring each defendant to provide a handwriting sample. She scheduled a June 8 court date to determine when a preliminary hearing will begin.
Smith died of an accidental overdose in a Florida hotel room in 2007.

If human culture seems obsessed with sex lately, it's
nothing new. Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known artistic
representation of a woman – a carved ivory statue of a naked female, dating from
35,000 years ago.
The figurine, unearthed in September 2008 in Hohle Fels Cave
in southwestern Germany, may be the oldest known example of figurative
art, meaning art that is supposed to represent and resemble a real person,
animal or object. The discovery could help scientists understand the origins of
art and the advent of symbolic thinking, including complicated
language.
“If there's one conclusion you want to draw from this,
it's that an obsession
with sex goes back at least 35,000 years,” University of Cambridge
anthropologist Paul Mellars told LiveScience.
He was not involved in the new finding. “But if humans hadn't been largely
obsessed with sex they wouldn't have survived for the first 2 million years.
None of this is at all surprising.”
The fixation wasn't just for naked women, though. Early
carvings of phalluses appeared in Europe at about the same time.
Little 'Venus'
The tiny statue is carved out of the tusk of a woolly
mammoth and is less than 2.5 inches (60 millimeters) long. Instead of a head,
it has a ring that scientists think meant it was worn as a pendant looped
through string. Paleoanthropologist Nicholas Conard of Germany's Tubingen
University reported the discovery in the May 14 issue of the journal Nature.
The oldest human art dates back much further, to between
75,000 and 95,000 years ago in Africa. But that art was abstract, and consisted
of geometrical designs engraved on pieces of red iron oxide. This is the first
known art to represent a woman, and possibly the first art to represent
anything real at all. Another find, a simple drawing that may represent a
half-man, half-animal, could be a few thousand years older, but the date on
that is uncertain.
The jump from abstract art to representative art seems
significant, and might reflect a leap in the cognitive capacity of the human
brain around this time. Some experts think that the development might have gone
along with a leap in the complexity of human language.
“Language is a symbolic system – words are symbols for
things. And so is art,” Mellars said. “Art is a glaring illustration
of a capacity for symbolic thinking. Since symbolic thinking lies at the core
of language, people have often tried to link the two.”
Mellars pointed out that there isn't enough evidence to
really understand how complex human language was at this point, though.
Sex on the brain
The statue is notable not just for its symbolism, but for
its style – particularly its sexuality.
“The figure is explicitly – and blatantly – that of a
woman, with an exaggeration of sexual characteristics
(large, projecting breasts, a greatly enlarged and explicit vulva, and bloated belly
and thighs) that by twenty-first-century standards could be seen as bordering
on the pornographic,” Mellars wrote in a commentary essay in Nature.
Scientists guess that it may have represented female
fertility, or been related to shamanistic rituals and beliefs.
Ancient Cave Art
Full of Teenage Graffiti
Image
Gallery: Microscopic Images As Art
10
Surprising Sex Statistics
Original Story: Obsession with Naked Women Dates Back 35,000 Years
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BOSTON (Reuters) –
Online classified site Craigslist will replace its “erotic services” ads with a new adult category following pressure by state authorities after the murder of a masseuse who advertised on the site.
The “erotic services” section will end within seven days and be replaced by an “adult services” category where advertisements will be individually screened by Craigslist staff, Craigslist said in a statement on Wednesday.
The measures could set a precedent for similar sites, said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who led a 40-state task-force on Craigslist and campaigned publicly for tighter controls on the San Francisco-based service.
“Closing the erotic services section, a blatant Internet brothel, should lead to other blocking and screening measures, and set a model for other sites, if Craigslist keeps its word,” he said.
Craigslist's sex-service listings have faced intense scrutiny since the April 14 murder of 25-year-old masseuse Julissa Brisman, who advertised on Craigslist in Boston.
Philip Markoff, a 23-year-old Boston University medical student, was charged with killing Brisman and with attacks on two other women who he met through Craigslist ads.
Craigslist, a 14-year-old online bazaar that generates more than 20 billion page views per month in 50 countries with a staff of just 28 people, is partially owned by online auctioneer eBay, which bought 25 percent in 2004.
Along with free listings for everything from apartments and furniture to jobs and cars, Craigslist.org carries one of the largest and most controversial sex-service listings. Its rapid growth and low-cost business model have hurt newspapers by siphoning away advertising revenue.
Postings to the “erotic services” section will no longer be accepted, Craigslist said. Postings to the new section, which opened on Wednesday, cost $10. Once they are approved, they will be eligible for reposting at $5, the website added.
In April, Blumenthal asked Craigslist officials to eliminate photographs in the “erotic services” and similar sections of the site, hire staff to screen ads that violate Craigslist rules and offer incentives for people who flag and report prostitution advertisements.
“We will be monitoring closely to make sure that this measure is more than a name change from erotic to adult and that the manual blocking is tough and effective to scrub prostitution and pornography,” Blumenthal said.
Tabloids dubbed Markoff “the Craigslist killer.”
The murder followed the killing of George Weber, a New York reporter knifed to death after responding to a personal ad he placed on Craigslist in March, and the early-April sentencing of Michael Anderson, a Minnesota man convicted of killing a woman who responded to a babysitting ad.
(Editing by Helen Popper)

LAGOS, NigeriaFighting erupted Wednesday between Nigerian soldiers and armed militants in the country’s oil-rich southern Niger Delta, both sides said.
Militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger have attacked soldiers escorting oil workers.
Militants belonging to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta ambushed a military unit escorting Chevron workers at an oil terminal, injuring two soldiers, said military spokesman Col. Rabe Abubakar. The militant group, however, issued a statement saying the Nigerian armed forces launched an unprovoked attack on its camps. It issued a warning to oil companies in the region to evacuate their staff to avoid escalating violence. The movement said it had sunk two Army gunboats and inflicted several army casualties. Abubakar, however, said, “There is no truth to what the militants are saying.”
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The militants said the fighting continued to rage, while the army said it had stopped. Violence has limited shipment of crude oil supplies out of Nigeria, Africa’s largest producer. Militant fighters have attacked pipelines in retaliation against government forces. The movement demands that more of the country’s oil wealth be reinvested in the region instead of enriching foreign investors. It also demands the release of prisoners it believes are being held for political reasons. In the past, militants have taken American and European oil workers as hostages. A sick British oil worker, held for seven months, was released a month ago.
Source:CNN

LOS ANGELES – Anna Nicole Smith’s former boyfriend and two doctors have pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles to charges they conspired to provide prescription drugs to the former model before her overdose death two years ago.
Howard K. Stern and Drs. Khristine Eroshevich and Sandeep Kapoor appeared Wednesday before Superior Court Commissioner Kristi Lousteau. The defendants said “yes” when she asked if they were pleading not guilty.
The commissioner granted a motion requiring each defendant to provide a handwriting sample. She scheduled a June 8 court date to determine when a preliminary hearing will begin.
Smith died of an accidental overdose in a Florida hotel room in 2007.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) now patrolling three eastern border provinces of Afghanistan is a battle-hardened unit with a commander who's making his fourth tour in the country.
In helping them gear up for their counterinsurgency deployment February, their training focused as much on helping Afghans build a new society as it did on fighting the Taliban , al Qaida , criminal gangs and other destabilizing forces.
“It's not really what you'd expect of a pipe-swinging infantryman, but that's the war we're in,” Col. Michael Howard , the brigade commander, said in an interview in January.
Before deployment, Howard ordered a weeklong seminar for every company commander and leader from first sergeant and up. With university-level lectures, they studied historical counterinsurgency failures and successes, from Algeria and Vietnam to the Philippines and Colombia .
“It was a pretty rigorous training event,” Howard said.
The four-year-old brigade, part of the Hawaii -based 25th Infantry Division , is the Army's first airborne unit to be created in the post-World War II era. Its 3,500 soldiers are based at Fort Richardson in Anchorage .
A little more than a year after its birth, the brigade deployed for a one-year mission to Iraq , primarily in the mixed Sunni-Shiite Muslim rural areas south of Baghdad . Its area of operations included the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala , where it saw two of its biggest battles. One battalion was detached to help the Marines tame the then-Sunni insurgent stronghold around Fallujah , west of Baghdad .
On Jan. 20, 2007 , Fort Richardson soldiers assigned to a provincial government compound in Karbala came under attack. Militants dressed as Western-style private military contractors and driving big American SUVs got into the compound, with the probable assistance — an American investigation later found — of Iraqis inside. Iranian intelligence operatives were suspected of organizing the operation.
The militants kidnapped four American soldiers and later executed them when they encountered an unexpected roadblock and abandoned their vehicles. Another Fort Richardson soldier, who was killed in the compound when he jumped or fell on a grenade, was awarded the Silver Star posthumously.
Just a week later near Najaf, soldiers from the brigade, including its deputy commander, were drawn into one of the biggest battles since the 2003 Iraq invasion. More than 1,000 members of a doomsday cult, the Soldiers of Heaven, got into a firefight with the Iraqi army over the cult's suspected plans to attack religious pilgrims.
The militants shot down a U.S. Army helicopter and moved to seize the bodies of the crew, but about a dozen Fort Richardson soldiers got there first and held off the militants for hours until armored reinforcements arrived. By the time the battle ended, more than 400 cult members were dead and one U.S. soldier was seriously wounded.
When the Bush administration ordered a buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq , the brigade's deployment was extended to 14 months. When it finally returned to Anchorage in December 2007 , the names and photos of 53 paratroopers were memorialized on its Wall of Honor.
Even as troops were unpacking and taking long family leaves, however, the brigade learned that it would be part of a Pentagon experiment in rapid turnaround, one way to get more out of an Army stretched thin by two wars. While a unit the size of a brigade would be expected to remain at home about two years before deploying again, the 4-25th was told that it would have only 12 months.
Under pressure to maintain troop strength, lower-level commanders invoked the threat of “stop loss” — an Army rule that can force soldiers to remain in uniform after their expected release dates — to convince some soldiers to re-enlist.
Howard, the brigade commander, said some lower-ranking officers were out of line in making the threats. When the unit departed for Afghanistan , however, about 10 percent of the force — some 350 soldiers — was there under stop loss, according to his personnel office. About 40 percent of the brigade was made up of paratroopers who'd also served with the unit in Iraq .
Howard said the experience of engaging in the Iraq counterinsurgency would help his soldiers in their latest assignment. He's served three previous tours in Afghanistan since 2002, one as a battalion commander in the eastern part of the country. He said he'd seen the Afghan army mature, the police forces grow and local governments begin to coalesce, and he hopes that his soldiers understand how important that is.
“Some people take that to mean a year of no fighting. It doesn't mean that at all,” Howard said. It could mean taking a firefight to the Taliban or other insurgents who are interfering with efforts to build roads or train judges.
“Sometimes the people who are up to this foolishness are kids, 18-year-old boys who have been paid money to cause trouble, and sometimes it's better to run them off than it is to kill them and then cause this huge problem in a run-down village, where you probably could have talked to the elders and said you've got a bunch of 18-year-olds who are going to get hurt if you don't do something about it,” he said.
“The brilliance comes when a young sergeant figures that out instead of just going in with a machine gun.”
(Mauer reports for the Anchorage Daily News .)
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BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) –
Pope Benedict on Wednesday said the fortified Israeli wall dividing Bethlehem from Jerusalem could be taken down, if Israel and the Palestinians could remove the walls around their hearts.
On a visit to the town where Christians believe the son of God was born, he said he had seen “overshadowing much of Bethlehem, the wall that intrudes into your territories, separating neighbors and dividing families.”
“Although walls can be easily built, we all know that they do not last forever,” the pope said. “They can be taken down.”
“First, though, it is necessary to remove the walls that we build around our hearts,” he added at the end of a day spent in Jesus's birthplace in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“My earnest wish for you, the people of Palestine, is that this will happen soon,” he said, before returning to Jerusalem and continuing a week-long tour of the Holy Land.
In a speech at a refugee camp school in the wall's shadow, he called it a towering symbol of deadlock in the struggle for peace and a “stark reminder of the stalemate that relations between Palestinians and Israelis seemed to have reached.”
“How earnestly we pray for an end to the hostilities that have caused this wall to be built,” Benedict said.
The wall did not exist when his predecessor John Paul came in 2000. Israel began raising its barrier of fences and concrete through and around the West Bank in 2002, in what it said was a temporary measure to stop deadly Palestinian bombings.
Palestinians, backed by the World Court, say it is an illegal construction which steals and divides their land.
The papal convoy drove the few miles south from Jerusalem, passing slowly through steel gates in the fortified barrier of towering concrete slabs and watchtowers, to reach the town.
“LEGITIMATE ASPIRATIONS”
Cheers of “Long Live the Pope, Long Live Palestine” greeted his black limousine along the steep, ancient streets, from Palestinians gathered to hear the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics back their independence aspirations.
“The oppressed have become oppressors,” said one graffiti slogan on the grey concrete barrier that formed a dramatic backdrop to the pope's speech at the Basic Boys' School.
“Bridges, not walls!” said another.
“It is understandable that you often feel frustrated,” the pope said. “Your legitimate aspirations for permanent homes, for an independent Palestinian state, remain unfulfilled. Instead you find yourselves trapped … in a spiral of violence.”
It was imagery and language Palestinians had hoped for. But the German-born pope, criticized for what Jews saw as a lack of emotion in his condemnation of the Holocaust, stressed he saw two sides to the conflict and urged an end to all violence.
Repeating a message he has delivered since the start of his first Middle East tour on Friday, the pope said on arrival in Bethelehem that the Vatican “supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with your neighbors.”
The two-state solution is backed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, by Arab nations and the West. Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declined so far to endorse it.
He was due to meet the pope in Nazareth on Thursday.
Abbas said the “apartheid wall” was a bid by the Jewish state to drive Palestinian Christians and Muslims from the Holy Land. He spoke of “oppression, tyranny and land expropriation” and said Palestinians wanted a future with “no occupation, no checkpoints, no walls, no prisoners, no refugees.”
The pope said Mass for about 5,000 people in Manger Square, next to the Church of the Nativity that marks the spot where Christians believe Jesus was born to Mary in a stable.
It was strange, Pope Benedict said, that Bethlehem was associated with the joy of Jesus's birth “yet here in our midst, how far this magnificent promise seems from being realized.”
They applauded when he said he prayed that Israel's embargo “will soon be lifted” from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, where up to 1,400 were killed in a 3-week Israeli offensive in January.
Thousands of Christians left Bethlehem after a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 and was met by an Israeli security clampdown and the start of construction of the barrier.
“There are fewer and fewer of us Palestinian Christians but we have strength,” said Kandra Zreineh, a 45-year-old mother of four from a village near Bethlehem. “We are proud to have this visit because we are small and I believe he may be able to make a difference for us. I still believe in miracles.”
On his arrival, Benedict acknowledged Israel's security concerns, and urged people not to “resort to acts of violence or terrorism” but to seek a genuine peace with their neighbors.
“On both sides of the wall,” he said, “great courage is needed if fear and mistrust is to be overcome.”
(Additional reporting by Jerusalem and Bethlehem staff; writing by Douglas Hamilton; editing by Alastair Macdonald)

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration wants government to have a say in how financial institutions pay their employees and is working to change Wall Street practices so that compensation is more closely tied to performance over time.
The attention to pay practices arises from the Obama administration’s belief that lucrative compensation packages encouraged financial sector executives to engage in short-term risky ventures that had adverse consequences and contributed to the financial crisis.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, as recently as last week, called for new compensation standards and principles that would guide banks and other institutions. Options include giving the Fed, which regulates banks, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees the financial markets, greater powers to set those standards.
The financial industry is watching warily and is discouraging policymakers from setting rules that are too stringent.
Such standards would be included in a broader effort by the administration and Congress to adopt new regulations some time this year that would govern financial institutions for the long-term and reduce the kind of risk that can lead to a financial system meltdown.
A senior congressional official said compensation standards could also be adopted more quickly if tied to legislation that would set up an overarching regulator of systemic risk — an entity that would guard against financial practices that could have negative, systemwide repercussions. Lawmakers such as House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., are still discussing whether to move the risk regulator bill separately or as part of a comprehensive regulatory package.
“We had a period where compensation practices just became completely unmoored from reality, defied gravity, and they created incentives for risk-taking that overwhelmed all the basic checks and balances in the system,” Geithner told PBS’ Charlie Rose last week. He stressed that the goal was not to set specific limits on compensation.
Industry and government officials believe public outrage over executive pay, which peaked in March following disclosures of bonuses to employees of American International Group, has subsided, creating a less volatile environment to discuss compensation standards.
Separately, the Treasury is close to releasing new pay restrictions for institutions receiving federal money. Those regulations are in response to legislation included in the 787 economic stimulus package that Congress passed in February. Those limits would apply only to banks benefiting from the 700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.
But officials want changes in compensation practices for the long-term, as well. The pay standards also would apply to sectors of the industry that have been less regulated before, such as hedge funds and private equity firms.
“That is going to apply — has to apply across the financial system,” Geithner said on PBS.
Bernanke has repeatedly stressed the need for banking supervisors to examine bonuses and other compensation practices to make sure they provide incentives that promote the “long-run health” of a financial institution. The Fed has been working in international forums on these issues, Bernanke said in a speech last week.
Bernanke told Congress last week that compensation should be structured in a way that ties closely to “actual, measurable performance” and that it does not induce “unnecessary or excessive risk taking.”
The Fed, he told lawmakers, is working on supervisory guidance or rules on this that “will ask or tell banks to structure their compensation, not just at the very top level but down much further, in a way that is consistent with safety and soundness which means that payments, bonuses, and so on should be tied to performance and should not induce excessive risk.”
Scott Talbott, the senior lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, an industry group, said institutions are already making adjustments, delaying full compensation to take into account the long-term success or failure of a product or type of transaction. As a result, an executive might get a portion of his compensation in the first year, another portion three years later and the remainder in five years.
“On the short term, there are rewards for selling the product,” he said. “But we want to defer compensation until the risk horizon of that product is known.”
___
Associated Press Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa contributed to this report.