Arab team prepares Syria mission after deadly assault (Reuters)

BEIRUT (Reuters) ? Arab League officials arrive in Syria on Thursday to prepare for monitors overseeing an Arab peace plan, after activists said President Bashar al-Assad's forces carried out the deadliest assault in their nine-month crackdown on protests.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian forces killed 111 civilians and activists were killed on Tuesday when Assad's forces surrounded them in the hills of Idlib province and unleashed two hours of bombardment and heavy gunfire.

France branded the killings an "unprecedented massacre" and the United States said Syrian authorities had "flagrantly violated their commitment to end violence."

Another 100 army deserters were either wounded or killed, making it the "bloodiest day of the Syrian revolution," the British-based Observatory's director Rami Abdulrahman said.

Events in Syria are hard to verify because authorities, who say they are battling terrorists who have killed more than 1,100 soldiers and police, have banned most independent reporting.

Tuesday's bloodshed brought the death toll reported by activists in the last 48 hours to over 200.

The main opposition Syrian National Council said "gruesome murders" were carried out, including the beheading of a local imam, and demanded international action to protect civilians.

The escalating death toll in nine months of popular unrest has raised the specter of civil war in Syria with Assad, 46, still trying to stamp out protests with troops and tanks despite international sanctions.

Idlib, a northwestern province bordering Turkey, has been a hotbed of protest during the revolt, inspired by uprisings across the Arab world this year, and has also seen increasing attacks by armed insurgents against his forces.

A politician in neighboring Lebanon said Assad was trying to crush opposition in the area before the arrival of the monitors, to prevent any de facto "buffer zone" emerging near the Turkish border.

The Observatory said rebels had damaged or destroyed 17 military vehicles in Idlib since Sunday while in the southern province of Deraa violence continued on Wednesday.

Tanks entered the town of Dael, the British-based group said, leading to clashes in which 15 security force members were killed. Six army defectors and a civilian also died and dozens of civilians were wounded, it said.

ARAB PEACE MONITORS

The Syrian National Council said 250 people had been killed on Monday and Tuesday in "bloody massacres," and that the Arab League and United Nations must protect civilians.

It demanded "an emergency U.N. Security Council session to discuss the (Assad) regime's massacres in Jabal al-Zawiyah, Idlib and Homs, in particular" and called for "safe zones" to be set up under international protection.

It also said those regions should be declared disaster areas and urged the International Red Crescent and other relief organizations to provide humanitarian aid.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said on Tuesday that an advance observer team would go to Syria on Thursday to prepare the way for 150 monitors due to arrive by end-December.

Syria stalled for weeks before signing a protocol on Monday to admit the monitors, who will check its compliance with the plan mandating an end to violence, withdrawal of troops from the streets, release of prisoners and dialogue with the opposition.

Syrian officials say over 1,000 prisoners have been freed since the plan was agreed six weeks ago and that the army has pulled out of cities. The government promised a parliamentary election early next year as well as constitutional reform which might loosen the ruling Baath Party's grip on power.

Syrian pro-democracy activists are deeply skeptical about Assad's commitment to the plan, which, if implemented, could embolden demonstrators demanding an end to his 11-year rule, which followed three decades of domination by his father.

Assad is from Syria's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, and Alawites hold many senior posts in the army which he has deployed to crush the mainly Sunni Muslim protests.

In recent months, peaceful protests have increasingly given way to armed confrontations, often led by army deserters.

The United Nations has said more than 5,000 people have been killed in Syria since anti-Assad protests broke out in March.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris and Alister Bull in Washington; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111222/wl_nm/us_syria_arabs

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Toyota aims to sell 8.48 million vehicles in 2012 (AP)

TOKYO ? Toyota is aiming for a comeback, targeting record global sales of 8.48 million vehicles in 2012 and an even bigger number in 2013, after being battered this year by the March disaster in Japan and flooding in Thailand.

Toyota Motor Corp., Japan's top automaker, relinquished its title as the world's biggest in global vehicle sales for the first half of this year, sinking to No. 3 behind U.S. rival General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG of Germany.

Toyota's global vehicle sales for this year totaled 7.9 million vehicles, including group companies, down 6 percent from the previous year, it said in a statement Thursday.

General Motors Co. spokesman Jim Cain said it will release its full-year global sales totals in January.

The Detroit-based automaker had been at the top for more than seven decades until Toyota took the crown in 2008.

After the first three quarters, GM sold 6.788 million vehicles worldwide, according to its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If fourth-quarter results are consistent with prior months, it will sell just more than 9 million vehicles in 2011. Last year, GM sold 8.39 million vehicles around the world.

Volkswagen also has not released its 2011 tally but said earlier this month it delivered 7.51 million vehicles globally during the January-November period.

Toyota's targets for 2012 and 2013 do not include group companies such as Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors, and so aren't directly comparable with numbers from GM and Volkswagen.

Toyota said its sales target for calendar 2012 is based on achieving 20 percent growth from its global sales this year and would be a record high for the company, underlining its turnaround ambitions.

The automaker's current sales record of 8.43 million vehicles was attained in 2007.

"It won't be a surprise to me if Toyota reaches a new record in global sales," said Mamoru Katou, auto analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research. Hybrids remain popular in Japan, the Camry sedan is doing well in the U.S. and demand is robust in emerging markets, he said.

Toyota has been making up for sales declines in North America and Japan with momentum in relatively new but booming markets such as China and India.

The manufacturer of the Prius hybrid and Lexus luxury models said it plans to sell 8.95 million vehicles around the world in 2013, not including group companies.

Toyota said it had not yet figured out forecasts for the group companies. It is possible the target might exceed 9 million vehicles, had they been included.

Targeted overseas sales of 6.95 million vehicles this year, up 19 percent year-on-year, would also be a new record for Toyota, if attained.

Toyota acknowledged many uncertainties, which could push the numbers in either direction. One possible plus is the extension of Japanese government incentives for green vehicles, according to Toyota.

Toyota, with its strong hybrid lineup, has been a major beneficiary of such incentives.

Still, Toyota has gone through some hard times lately.

The global financial crisis in 2008 was behind a serious sales plunge in the key North American market.

Then came massive recalls, mostly in the U.S., that tarnished Toyota's once pristine reputation for quality amid speculation it had not been as forthright as it should have been about defects.

Toyota was on a gradual recovery track when the March 11 earthquake and tsunami struck in northeastern Japan, damaging suppliers and disrupting production because of a severe parts shortage.

Production got slammed again later in the year, although on a smaller scale, from flooding in Thailand.

Toyota also said it expects to produce 8.65 million vehicles next year, up 24 percent from 6.97 million this year. It expects to produce 8.98 million vehicles in 2013, it said. Those numbers do not include group companies.

Michael Robinet, managing director of IHS Automotive Consultants in Northville, Michigan, said a global sales lead doesn't matter as much as how much money the company makes per vehicle, its model portfolio and overall profit.

A difference of several tens of thousands of vehicles is not significant for automakers that sell millions of vehicles like Toyota and GM, he said.

"It doesn't matter all that much when you're already in the 9 million to 10 million unit range," Robinet said.

___

AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher contributed from Detroit.

___

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/japan/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111222/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_toyota

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Serial killer blamed for 1974 killing of Ga. girl (AP)

ATLANTA ? Georgia investigators used DNA and other evidence to link the slaying of a 13-year-old girl who went missing in 1974 with a serial killer who was blamed for murdering at least 18 people, authorities said Wednesday.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said agents were "reasonably confident" that Ima Jean Sanders was killed 37 years ago by Paul John Knowles.

"If you talk about a proverbial cold case, this would have been it," said special agent Gary Rothwell. "It was the family that never forgot."

Ima was living with her mother and her 4-year-old sister in Warner Robins, Ga., when she disappeared in August 1974. Her mother, Betty Wisecup, said she came home from her job cleaning mobile homes and was told by the 4-year-old that Ima had hopped in a van. She never saw her daughter again.

"That's the last anyone ever heard of her," Wisecup told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "She up and disappeared and we had never heard anything about it."

About two years later, authorities found skeletal remains in a wooded area in Peach County in the central part of the state, but investigators at the time could only tell that they belonged to a young white female.

The break in the case came in January, after a Texas investigator working on another cold case realized that data from Ima's killing wasn't entered into a database designed to match unidentified remains with missing persons cases. Wisecup, who lives in Beaumont, Texas, submitted DNA, and investigators said this week it matched the skeletal remains.

Documents were also used to help link Knowles to the killing. Amid the crime spree, Knowles mailed audio confessions of his crimes to a Florida attorney, but the recordings were never released publicly and the transcripts were ruined a few years ago by flooding at the federal courthouse in Macon.

Investigators tracked down a 1975 letter buried in the state archives that was written by a former U.S. attorney who summarized Knowles' confessions.

The letter said Knowles picked up a young female hitchhiker named "Alma" in August 1974 and brought her to a wooded area outside Macon, near where the remains were found. He raped her, strangled her and then left her body, the letter said. He returned to the area about two weeks later to bury the jawbone.

Knowles was captured in November 1974 near McDonough, Ga., after he kidnapped a Florida state trooper and another man. He killed both of them. Knowles was shot to death a month later trying to escape custody.

Warner Robins police Capt. Chris Rooks, who helped investigate the killing, said he hopes it brings the family a "sense of closure they would have never had."

Wisecup said she was stunned by the news.

"I always wondered where she was," she said. "There wasn't a day and night where I didn't wonder where she was. And she would have been another unidentified person if we didn't give the DNA."

She's now trying to raise money to bring her daughter's remains to her home in Texas, where she will place them in an urn in her living room and later bury them in a family plot.

"All we want to do is to bring her home and have a proper burial," she said.

___

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111221/ap_on_re_us/us_cold_case_solved

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China sends long-missing lawyer Gao back to jail

FILE - In this file photo taken on April 7, 2010, Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer, gestures as he spoke during his first meeting with the media since he resurfaced, at a tea house in Beijing, China. State media says a Chinese court has sent activist lawyer Gao back to jail for three years for breaking his probation. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe, File)

FILE - In this file photo taken on April 7, 2010, Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer, gestures as he spoke during his first meeting with the media since he resurfaced, at a tea house in Beijing, China. State media says a Chinese court has sent activist lawyer Gao back to jail for three years for breaking his probation. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe, File)

FILE - In this file photo taken on April 7, 2010, Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer, speaks during his first meeting with the media since he resurfaced, at a tea house in Beijing, China. State media says a Chinese court has sent activist lawyer Gao back to jail for three years for breaking his probation. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe, File)

BEIJING (AP) ? More than a year and a half after prominent civil rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng disappeared, China's government gave the first sign Friday that he is alive, saying he would be sent to prison for three years for violating his probation.

A brief report by the state-run Xinhua News Agency did not answer key questions about Gao ? the condition of his health and his whereabouts now and in the 20 months since he disappeared, presumably at the hands of the authorities.

"Are they sending him to a proper prison? Which prison was he at before? Where were they hiding him?" said Gao's brother, Gao Zhiyi, who has been on a quest to find his sibling.

Charismatic and pugnacious, Gao was a galvanizing figure for the rights movement, advocating constitutional reform and arguing landmark cases to defend property rights and political and religious dissenters. Convicted in 2006 of subversion and sentenced to three years, he was quickly released on probation before being taken away by security agents in 2009 in the first of his forced disappearances that set off an international outcry.

The Xinhua report referred to his 2006 subversion conviction and said Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court found that Gao "had seriously violated probation rules for a number of times, which led to the court decision to withdraw the probation."

The report did not explain what violations Gao had committed but said his five-year probation was due to expire next Thursday ? timing which legal experts said may have prompted the government to send Gao back to jail. "He would serve his term in prison in the next three years," the report said.

Calls to the No. 1 court and the city's appeals court rang unanswered Friday.

Gao has been held incommunicado in apparent disregard of laws and regulations for all but two months of the last three years. When he emerged from the first 14-month bout in April 2010, he told The Associated Press that he had been shunted between detention centers, farm houses and apartments across north China and repeatedly beaten and abused.

He said he had been hooded several times. His captors made him sit motionless for up to 16 hours and threatened to kill him and dump his body in a river.

"'You must forget you're human. You're a beast,'" Gao said police told him in September 2009.

At one point, six plainclothes officers bound him with belts and put a wet towel around his face for an hour, bringing on a feeling of slow suffocation.

"It's hard to fathom what they might be referring to when they say that he violated his parole given that he seems to have been under constant supervision," said Joshua Rosenzweig, a human rights researcher based in Hong Kong. "It's kind of cynical."

Formalizing Gao's detention as a prison term, Rosenzweig said, gives Chinese leaders a ready response to queries from foreign governments and officials. Gao's case has repeatedly been raised by the U.S. and European governments, drawing cryptic responses if any from Chinese officials. U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke mentioned him in a public statement last weekend.

Gao's wife, Geng He, fled China with their two children, escorted by human traffickers overland to Southeast Asia, around the time he first disappeared. They now live in the United States.

Activists in China seemed astounded and outraged by the news. Huang Qi, who runs a rights monitoring group in Sichuan province, strongly condemned what he said was the use of the judicial system to persecute dissidents and he offered his services to Gao's family.

"Gao Zhisheng has used his actions to write a glorious page in the history of the Chinese democracy movement," Huang said in a statement.

Amnesty International called the move to send Gao to prison "a travesty."

"This inhuman treatment must stop. Gao Zhisheng and his family have suffered enough and he must be freed," Catherine Baber, deputy director in Asia for the group, said in a statement.

While Gao may be the most prominent government critic to be treated so harshly in years, the authorities have done so with other dissidents.

Du Daobin, an outspoken critic also convicted of subversion and sentenced to three years in prison in 2004, did not immediately start his sentence, according to the Laogai Research Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy group that runs a website for which Du wrote. Instead, Du was released and lived under probation for four years before being sent to prison in 2008, apparently because he continued to criticize the government online.

Gao's family and supporters meanwhile have continued to campaign for him, with little result. His brother, Zhiyi, has been on a constant search for information. When he asked Beijing police in September about his brother, one officer told him Gao Zhisheng was a "missing person and no one knows where he is."

___

Associated Press writers Alexa Olesen and Gillian Wong contributed to this report.

The Evening Sun

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-12-16-AS-China-Missing-Lawyer/id-16d323d86b6e4f299b4bb86456177ad2

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'SNL' boss makes merry with annual holiday show (AP)

NEW YORK ? It's a holly, jolly Christmas for "Saturday Night Live" chief Lorne Michaels as he marks another holiday edition of the show he created 36 years ago, and as he welcomes back "SNL" alum Jimmy Fallon as guest host for this special yuletide bash.

Boasting singer Michael Buble as its musical guest, the program airs, of course, Saturday on NBC at 11:30 p.m. EST.

But on Thursday night, as Michaels welcomed a reporter to his Rockefeller Center office ? overlooking Studio 8H, from where "SNL" originates ? the clock was ticking: little more than two days until show time.

In the studio, a sketch was being blocked for the cameras: Denver Broncos quarterback (and famously devout Christian) Tim Tebow confronts Jesus in the locker room.

"It's been rewritten since last night when we read it," Michaels said. "We read 40-some-odd sketches yesterday, and narrowed them down to the pieces over there" ? he pointed to a board with a tentative rundown ? "and that's about 15 minutes (too) long. By the time `(Weekend) Update' gets done, the show will be maybe 25 minutes long, which is what we'll go into dress rehearsal with."

Dress rehearsal takes place in front of a live audience on Saturday evening, after which, according to the audience's response, the show is rearranged, cut and otherwise revamped during a crash session to whip it into shape to perform a couple hours later for the world.

For Michaels, dress brings pain every week.

"Things you were certain would work, don't," he sighed. "Things that were really bright flatten and fall apart."

So does this mean that, even after all these years of executive-producing "SNL," Michaels, the old hand at 67, is still caught by surprise at how an audience reacts?

"Every week," he nodded. "I think it's why I'm still here. It's not a thing you ever master."

Or do you?

"Lorne has done this for 36 years, and he knows what will work," Fallon had insisted during an interview earlier in the week. "He's a pro. He's a Beatle."

Fallon was an "SNL" cast member for six seasons before leaving in 2004. Then, in 2009, he was tapped by Michaels, who also executive-produces NBC's "Late Night," to fill its hosting job when Conan O'Brien graduated to "The Tonight Show."

Now, for the first time, Fallon has been invited back by Michaels to his old haunts at "SNL" to serve as host.

"There will be holiday-themed sketches for different religions," said Fallon, who said he arrived with "about 300 ideas" on Monday. "I'm working on some impressions that I haven't done before. I've got some surprises: Some old friends might be coming back for a cameo or two. And then I want to see if can dust off my `Update' suit."

Fallon was asked if any of the special demands of "SNL" had been hard to face again.

"Staying up late," he instantly replied. "I don't do that anymore. I have a 9-to-5 job now with `Late Night.' I got to work on keeping my energy up, so I'm ready to go on Saturday. Which I will be."

Once he steps onstage at the top of the show, "it's going to be an adrenaline rush," he predicted. It will also be an emotional rush to be back, in a proud guest-host role on the show he has loved all his life.

"I just hope I don't break down and cry," he said. "My mom and dad are going to be there. I got to make sure I don't make eye contact with them. I'd be a mess, a blubbering mess."

"I was down in Jimmy's dressing room a half-hour ago," Michaels said Thursday night, relaxing for a moment on a sofa in his office. "We were going over the monologue, and I could see he looked anxious about it. He's putting so much pressure on himself for this to be the greatest show of all time!

"I found myself saying, `You know, it's Thursday. It's NOT Friday. That means there's the rest of tonight and all day tomorrow for that missing piece to be written.'"

It's the step-by-step, day-by-day "SNL" process, a week-long evolution that's hard to keep in mind when you're in the middle of the stampede for Saturday.

"For a returning cast member or past host, the very last memory of having done the show is the party," Michaels said, "and, before that, how the show felt on the air, and the goodnights when it's ending.

"But you don't remember that on Monday there was nothing: `Really?! THOSE are the ideas?!' And then came the writing, and choosing which pieces, and the rewrites. It's rare that you're excited about the show on Tuesday, or even Thursday. But the process is all about it getting better.

"By the time Jimmy leaves here tomorrow night at 1 or 2 in the morning," Michaels said, "we'll know kind of what's looking good."

It's that process that keeps Michaels challenged, and fired up, and still very much in love with the job he said he has no thoughts of ever leaving.

"There's no other way to do it," he declared, and smiled resolutely as Saturday night loomed. "If there was, I would have figured it out. Trust me."

___

Online:

http://www.nbc.com

___

EDITOR'S NOTE ? Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_en_ot/us_ap_on_tv_lorne_michaels

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Business You Is Looking After the Artist You ? Art Biz Blog

Guest Blogger: Heidi Spiegel

In my mind, I have created two characters: the Artist Me and the Business Me.

One is committed to making art, while the other believes in the art enough to support and promote it.

This is the result of a mental shift I made during the Art Biz Coach Blast Off class, which addresses the artist as well as the business of art.

It has helped me balance making art with marketing art, while also attending to personal needs and financial needs.

? Heidi L. Spiegel. Inside the Tuileries (detail). Pencil and collage on watercolor paper.

So, keeping myself in good health, exercising, and eating right are good business moves. Likewise, completing 5 tasks each day to market my art, setting aside time in the studio, and researching a project are good for the business.

I?m training my mind to ask: Is this good for the business? Is this good for me?

This practice is totally unrelated to my creative self, which means that there are less emotional ties to many of my decision-making tasks. The emotions are where they belong: with my art-making, and not in the business-making.

This was a breakthrough.

It helped me to understand that the Business Me has my Artist Me?s best interest in mind. The Business Me is eager for the Artist Me to succeed.

The challenges related to making a living as an artist are still overwhelming. But allowing myself to step back and ask ?Is this good for the business? Is this good for me?? has removed much of the emotional frustration from the equation.

Try it!

About the Guest Blogger
A native of Hollywood, CA, Heidi Spiegel?s art focuses on transforming various found papers into illustrative collage images. Her artwork can be found in private collections throughout Los Angeles and in Europe. Recently, Heidi has expanded her art career overseas and lives both in the US and in France.

The Blast Off class Heidi refers to in this post is starting up again on January 11. We?d love for you to join our New Year launch.

Tagged as: mindset

Source: http://www.artbizblog.com/2011/12/business-you.html

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