Thousands attend Tucson gun show one week after shootings.

More than 7,000 people were expected to attened
the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Tucson
this weekend.
Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- Thousands of people
determined "to exercise their Second Amendment
rights," attended a gun show Saturday in Tucson,
Arizona, one week after a well-armed gunman
opened fire at a local shopping center, the show's
president said.
The mood at the show was somber, said Bob
Templeton of Crossroads of the West Gun
Shows.
But the two-day event is expected to draw up to
nearly 7,000 patrons, rather than the customary
5,000, Templeton said. Attendees waited up to 20
minutes to buy tickets Saturday morning, he
said.
"We had a moment of silence here at the show,"
Templeton said, referring to the deaths of six
people and the wounding of 13 others, including
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, after last Saturday's
shooting.
Donations were being taken at the
show to assist victims and families.
Jared Lee Loughner, 22, allegedly
carried a knapsack to the shopping
center, according to a law
enforcement official familiar with
the investigation. He had a semi-
automatic handgun, four
ammunition magazines and a knife,
according to the official.
Loughner is accused of bringing a Glock handgun
to the Giffords event and opening fire.
Some critics have questioned whether the gun
show was appropriate so soon after the
shootings.
Templeton knows there will be a renewed debate
on gun control.
"It's going to be a long dialogue on gun control
and gun rights, and it will be hard to strike a
balance between those two positions," he said.
"Responsible firearm ownership means if you are
going to have a gun, you should be trained to
use it in a responsible way."
Bill Schaeffler of Tucson, among those at the
show Saturday, said he knows gun control and
high-capacity ammunition magazines will be hot
topics. Still, he said, people want to protect
themselves.
"There will be more guns owned in this state at
the end of this month than at the beginning of the
month," he told CNN.
A member of gun-rights lobbying group said he
would probably vote for Giffords if she returns to
Congress.
"You just have to admire somebody ... who has
that kind of perseverance," said Charles Heller,
secretary of the Arizona Citizens Defense League.
Heller argued that a well-armed society is a safer
society. "Being armed is the natural state of man,"
he said.
Federal law enforcement officials were on site to
monitor buyers and sales activity, Templeton
said. "They routinely watch gun shows near the
border area to try and curb the flow of guns into
Mexico."
Templeton told CNN affiliate KGUN the massacre
had nothing to do with lawful gun ownership.
"It was about a madman who had an agenda and
who committed unspeakable acts of mayhem
and violence," he said.


Source: Http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/01/15/arizona.gun.show/?hpt=T2

READ MORE ................... Thousands attend Tucson gun show one week after shootings.

Tunisians see new Web freedoms as acting president takes over.

Tunis, Tunisia (CNN) -- Even while under
curfew following the ouster of their long-serving
authoritarian leader, Tunisians on Saturday
experienced newfound freedoms online as their
acting president promised a "new phase" for his
embattled land.
Filters on websites like Facebook and YouTube,
put in place under former President Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali, were dropped and Internet speed
picked up considerably -- a development that
followed the new government's vow to ease
restrictions on freedoms.
In addition, three Tunisian journalists -- including
two bloggers critical of Ben Ali -- have been freed
from jail, the Committee to Protect Journalists
said Saturday.
These developments come as Fouad Mebazaa
was sworn in as the country's acting leader on
Saturday, after Ben Ali and his family took refuge
in Saudi Arabia following days of angry street
protests against the government
Speaking on national TV, Mebazaa,
who had been the country's
parliamentary speaker, promised to
ensure the nation's "stability,"
respect its constitution and "pursue
the best interest of the nation."
"Citizens, sons and daughters of
our country of Tunis, in this
important and urgent moment in
the history of our beloved country,
I appeal to all of you of various
political parties, and nationalist
organizations, and all civil society
organizations to fight for the
national interest and to respect the
army's command and the national
security in security matters, and to
preserve private and public
property and to bring the return of
peace and security in the hearts of
the citizens," he said.
Mebazaa's temporary assumption
of the presidency corresponds to
an article in Tunisia's constitution
that says power will be transferred
to the parliament speaker when the
president resigns, dies or is unable
to perform his responsibilities. He
asked Mohamed Ghannouchi to
remain as prime minister of what is
now a caretaker government.
This dramatic power shift comes
after the departure of Ben Ali, the
leader of the north African country
since 1987 who had a reputation
for ruthlessness and corruption,
Ben Ali fled to Jeddah, where he was welcomed
by the Saudi Arabian king.
"The government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
announces that it stands fully by the Tunisian
people, wishing, by God will, its people will stand
solid to overcome this difficult phase in its
history," the Saudi royal court said in a statement.
Moammar Gadhafi, leader of neighboring Libya,
denounced the developments in a televised
speech Saturday night. Ben Ali remains the
nation's rightful president, per its constitution, and
blamed unrest on criminal gangs, he said.
"Sadly, Tunisia is headed to more chaos and we
do not know how it will end," he said.
Gadhafi closed his speech by saying he was "sad
and hurt" by the recent developments, which he
said threatened to derail significant progress in
Tunisia.
"I hope your sanity returns and your wounds
heal, because you had a big loss that will never
return," he said, addressing the Tunisian people.
As the political situation remained fluid, the army
appears to have clamped down and established a
strong presence on the streets in the cities of
Tunisia, long a relatively stable and prosperous
country in what diplomats have described as "a
rough neighborhood."
Tunisian state TV reported that officials plan to
hold presidential elections in 60 days, and an
opposition leader told CNN that opposition figures
were meeting with the caretaker prime minister
to discuss formation of a unity government.
The ruling government declared a state of
emergency, ordering a curfew requiring all
people to remain indoors between 5 p.m.
Saturday and 7 a.m. Sunday.
No large street protests in the
capital, Tunis, were reported
Saturday. But multiple videos
posted online showed that Tunis'
main train station had been burned.
There were also reports of rioting
and looting in the country, and
security forces also have been
spotted rounding up and roughing
up people.
At least 42 people died when a fire
swept through a prison in the
eastern Tunisian city of Monastir,
Dr. Ali Chadly of the University
Hospital of Monastir told CNN. It
was not immediately clear what
sparked the fire.
A travel warning from the British Foreign Office
on Saturday said "there have been
demonstrations, some violent" and "significant
looting" in Tunis and other locations, citing
Sousse, Sfax, Nabul, Hammamet, Douze,
Kasserine, Requeb and Thia.
Under Ben Ali, Tunisia was a pro-Western state
supportive of U.S. policy in the Middle East and in
its efforts against terrorism.
On Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama
condemned "the use of violence against citizens
peacefully voicing their opinion in Tunisia" and
lauded "the courage and dignity of the Tunisian
people." He also urged Tunisia's government "to
respect human rights (and) hold free and fair
elections."
The wave of rallies in the North African nation
was stirred by the suicide of an unemployed
college graduate, who torched himself last month
after police confiscated his fruit cart, cutting off his
source of income.
Since then, protesters had called for Ben Ali to
step down and held daily demonstrations
denouncing his government.
The grass-roots protests, organized and
supported through online networks centered on
Twitter and Facebook, focused on poor living
conditions, high unemployment, government
corruption and repression.
Amnesty International spokesman Claudio
Cordone said that 55 people have been killed over
the past several weeks of demonstrations. The
former president had put the number at 21 before
his departure.
"We hope that the army will match its reputation
for being more professional and less trigger-
happy than the security forces that have been
responsible for much of the violence over the last
several weeks," Cordone said.
The tumult, including Ben Ali's departure, has
reverberated in the Arab world, where the news
of the uprising elated people in other countries
across the region, where authoritarian rule has
persisted for years.
In Cairo, Egypt, about 100 people inspired by
what some are calling the "Jasmine Revolution" in
Tunisia massed in front of the press syndicate
and called for a similar uprising there.
Amid heavy security and the presence of many
riot police in the city, the people chanted, "Down
with Hosni Mubarak," the nation's leader, and
called him a corrupt and ruthless ruler.
Tunisia has close cultural and economic links to
France, which invaded Tunisia in 1881. That move
led to the creation of a protectorate until Tunisia
became independent in 1956.
An official statement from French President
Nicolas Sarkozy noted France's "many ties of
friendship" to Tunisia and called for free elections
as soon as possible.
After Sarkozy met with some senior members of
his Cabinet Saturday to discuss Tunisia, Finance
Minister Christine Lagarde sent instructions to
financial institutions and banks to freeze the assets
in France of the Ben Ali family.
French government spokesman Francois Baroin
said Saturday that France asked some of Ben Ali's
relatives to leave the country, adding that Ben Ali
wouldn't be allowed in France.
The African Union's Peace and Security Council
on Saturday "expressed its solidarity" with
Tunisians and deplored the "excessive use of
force against demonstrators."
It also urged "the political stakeholders and the
Tunisian people to work together, in unity,
consensus and respect for legality, towards a
peaceful and democratic transition, which will
allow the Tunisian people to freely choose their
leaders through free, open, democratic and
transparent elections."
Also Saturday, the Arab League released a
statement regarding "this historic stage" and
urged the "return of calm and security,"
according to a report by Jordan's state-run news
agency, Petra.
The Cairo-based alliance offered support for a
peaceful, legal realization of "the Tunisian people's
aspirations for a decent, secure and stable future
in a climate of democracy and political stability."


Source: Http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/01/15/tunisia.protests/

READ MORE ................... Tunisians see new Web freedoms as acting president takes over.

④Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay.

“They’ve long been an important part of the
complex,” said Avner Cohen, author of “The
Worst-Kept Secret” (2010), a book about the
Israeli bomb program, and a senior fellow at the
Monterey Institute of International Studies. He
added that Israeli intelligence had asked retired
senior Dimona personnel to help on the Iranian
issue, and that some apparently came from the
enrichment program.
“I have no specific knowledge,” Dr. Cohen said of
Israel and the Stuxnet worm. “But I see a strong
Israeli signature and think that the centrifuge
knowledge was critical. ”
Another clue involves the United States. It
obtained a cache of P-1 ’s after Libya gave up its
nuclear program in late 2003, and the machines
were sent to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in
Tennessee, another arm of the Energy
Department.
By early 2004, a variety of federal and private
nuclear experts assembled by the Central
Intelligence Agency were calling for the United
States to build a secret plant where scientists
could set up the P-1 ’s and study their
vulnerabilities. “The notion of a test bed was really
pushed,” a participant at the C.I.A. meeting
recalled.
The resulting plant, nuclear experts said last week,
may also have played a role in Stuxnet testing.
But the United States and its allies ran into the
same problem the Iranians have grappled with:
the P-1 is a balky, badly designed machine. When
the Tennessee laboratory shipped some of its
P-1 ’s to England, in hopes of working with the
British on a program of general P-1 testing, they
stumbled, according to nuclear experts.
“They failed hopelessly,” one recalled, saying that
the machines proved too crude and
temperamental to spin properly.
Dr. Cohen said his sources told him that Israel
succeeded — with great difficulty — in mastering
the centrifuge technology. And the American
expert in nuclear intelligence, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity, said the Israelis used
machines of the P-1 style to test the effectiveness
of Stuxnet.
The expert added that Israel worked in
collaboration with the United States in targeting
Iran, but that Washington was eager for
“ plausible deniability.”
In November, the Iranian president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, broke the country’s silence about
the worm’s impact on its enrichment program,
saying a cyberattack had caused “minor
problems with some of our centrifuges.”
Fortunately, he added, “our experts discovered
it.”
The most detailed portrait of the damage comes
from the Institute for Science and International
Security, a private group in Washington. Last
month, it issued a lengthy Stuxnet report that said
Iran ’s P-1 machines at Natanz suffered a series of
failures in mid- to late 2009 that culminated in
technicians taking 984 machines out of action.
The report called the failures “a major problem”
and identified Stuxnet as the likely culprit.
Stuxnet is not the only blow to Iran. Sanctions
have hurt its effort to build more advanced (and
less temperamental) centrifuges. And last
January, and again in November, two scientists
who were believed to be central to the nuclear
program were killed in Tehran.
The man widely believed to be responsible for
much of Iran ’s program, Mohsen Fakrizadeh, a
college professor, has been hidden away by the
Iranians, who know he is high on the target list.
Publicly, Israeli officials make no explicit ties
between Stuxnet and Iran ’s problems. But in
recent weeks, they have given revised and
surprisingly upbeat assessments of Tehran’s
nuclear status.
“A number of technological challenges and
difficulties” have beset Iran’s program, Moshe
Yaalon, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, told
Israeli public radio late last month.
The troubles, he added, “have postponed the
timetable.”


Source: Http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?pagewanted=4&_r=1

READ MORE ................... ④Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay.

③Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay.

Controllers, and the electrical regulators they run,
became a focus of sanctions efforts. The trove of
State Department cables made public by
WikiLeaks describes urgent efforts in April 2009
to stop a shipment of Siemens controllers,
contained in 111 boxes at the port of Dubai, in the
United Arab Emirates. They were headed for Iran,
one cable said, and were meant to control
“ uranium enrichment cascades” — the term for
groups of spinning centrifuges.
Subsequent cables showed that the United Arab
Emirates blocked the transfer of the Siemens
computers across the Strait of Hormuz to Bandar
Abbas, a major Iranian port.
Only months later, in June, Stuxnet began to pop
up around the globe. The Symantec Corporation,
a maker of computer security software and
services based in Silicon Valley, snared it in a
global malware collection system. The worm hit
primarily inside Iran, Symantec reported, but also
in time appeared in India, Indonesia and other
countries.
But unlike most malware, it seemed to be doing
little harm. It did not slow computer networks or
wreak general havoc.
That deepened the mystery.
A ‘Dual Warhead’
No one was more intrigued than Mr. Langner, a
former psychologist who runs a small computer
security company in a suburb of Hamburg. Eager
to design protective software for his clients, he
had his five employees focus on picking apart the
code and running it on the series of Siemens
controllers neatly stacked in racks, their lights
blinking.
He quickly discovered that the worm only kicked
into gear when it detected the presence of a
specific configuration of controllers, running a set
of processes that appear to exist only in a
centrifuge plant. “The attackers took great care to
make sure that only their designated targets were
hit, ” he said. “It was a marksman’s job.”
For example, one small section of the code
appears designed to send commands to 984
machines linked together.
Curiously, when international inspectors visited
Natanz in late 2009, they found that the Iranians
had taken out of service a total of exactly 984
machines that had been running the previous
summer.
But as Mr. Langner kept peeling back the layers,
he found more — what he calls the “dual
warhead.” One part of the program is designed
to lie dormant for long periods, then speed up the
machines so that the spinning rotors in the
centrifuges wobble and then destroy themselves.
Another part, called a “man in the middle” in the
computer world, sends out those false sensor
signals to make the system believe everything is
running smoothly. That prevents a safety system
from kicking in, which would shut down the
plant before it could self-destruct.
“Code analysis makes it clear that Stuxnet is not
about sending a message or proving a concept,”
Mr. Langner later wrote. “It is about destroying its
targets with utmost determination in military
style. ”
This was not the work of hackers, he quickly
concluded. It had to be the work of someone
who knew his way around the specific quirks of
the Siemens controllers and had an intimate
understanding of exactly how the Iranians had
designed their enrichment operations.
In fact, the Americans and the Israelis had a
pretty good idea.
Testing the Worm
Perhaps the most secretive part of the Stuxnet
story centers on how the theory of
cyberdestruction was tested on enrichment
machines to make sure the malicious software
did its intended job.
The account starts in the Netherlands. In the
1970s, the Dutch designed a tall, thin machine for
enriching uranium. As is well known, A. Q. Khan,
a Pakistani metallurgist working for the Dutch,
stole the design and in 1976 fled to Pakistan.
The resulting machine, known as the P-1, for
Pakistan ’s first-generation centrifuge, helped the
country get the bomb. And when Dr. Khan later
founded an atomic black market, he illegally sold
P-1 ’s to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.
The P-1 is more than six feet tall. Inside, a rotor of
aluminum spins uranium gas to blinding speeds,
slowly concentrating the rare part of the uranium
that can fuel reactors and bombs.
How and when Israel obtained this kind of first-
generation centrifuge remains unclear, whether
from Europe, or the Khan network, or by other
means. But nuclear experts agree that Dimona
came to hold row upon row of spinning
centrifuges.


Source: Http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1

READ MORE ................... ③Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay.

②Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay

In recent days, American officials who spoke on
the condition of anonymity have said in
interviews that they believe Iran ’s setbacks have
been underreported. That may explain why Mrs.
Clinton provided her public assessment while
traveling in the Middle East last week.
By the accounts of a number of computer
scientists, nuclear enrichment experts and former
officials, the covert race to create Stuxnet was a
joint project between the Americans and the
Israelis, with some help, knowing or unknowing,
from the Germans and the British.
The project’s political origins can be found in the
last months of the Bush administration. In
January 2009, The New York Times reported that
Mr. Bush authorized a covert program to
undermine the electrical and computer systems
around Natanz, Iran ’s major enrichment center.
President Obama, first briefed on the program
even before taking office, sped it up, according to
officials familiar with the administration ’s Iran
strategy. So did the Israelis, other officials said.
Israel has long been seeking a way to cripple
Iran ’s capability without triggering the
opprobrium, or the war, that might follow an
overt military strike of the kind they conducted
against nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in
2007.
Two years ago, when Israel still thought its only
solution was a military one and approached Mr.
Bush for the bunker-busting bombs and other
equipment it believed it would need for an air
attack, its officials told the White House that such
a strike would set back Iran ’s programs by
roughly three years. Its request was turned
down.
Now, Mr. Dagan’s statement suggests that Israel
believes it has gained at least that much time,
without mounting an attack. So does the Obama
administration.
For years, Washington’s approach to Tehran’s
program has been one of attempting “to put time
on the clock,” a senior administration official said,
even while refusing to discuss Stuxnet. “And
now, we have a bit more.”
Finding Weaknesses
Paranoia helped, as it turns out.
Years before the worm hit Iran, Washington had
become deeply worried about the vulnerability of
the millions of computers that run everything in
the United States from bank transactions to the
power grid.
Computers known as controllers run all kinds of
industrial machinery. By early 2008, the
Department of Homeland Security had teamed up
with the Idaho National Laboratory to study a
widely used Siemens controller known as
P.C.S.-7, for Process Control System 7. Its
complex software, called Step 7, can run whole
symphonies of industrial instruments, sensors
and machines.
The vulnerability of the controller to cyberattack
was an open secret. In July 2008, the Idaho lab
and Siemens teamed up on a PowerPoint
presentation on the controller’s vulnerabilities that
was made to a conference in Chicago at Navy
Pier, a top tourist attraction.
“Goal is for attacker to gain control,” the July
paper said in describing the many kinds of
maneuvers that could exploit system holes. The
paper was 62 pages long, including pictures of
the controllers as they were examined and tested
in Idaho.
In a statement on Friday, the Idaho National
Laboratory confirmed that it formed a partnership
with Siemens but said it was one of many with
manufacturers to identify cybervulnerabilities. It
argued that the report did not detail specific flaws
that attackers could exploit. But it also said it could
not comment on the laboratory’s classified
missions, leaving unanswered the question of
whether it passed what it learned about the
Siemens systems to other parts of the nation ’s
intelligence apparatus.
The presentation at the Chicago conference,
which recently disappeared from a Siemens Web
site, never discussed specific places where the
machines were used.
But Washington knew. The controllers were
critical to operations at Natanz, a sprawling
enrichment site in the desert. “If you look for the
weak links in the system,” said one former
American official, “this one jumps out.”

Source: Http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

READ MORE ................... ②Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay

①Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran
toured the Natanz plant in 2008.
The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is
famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s
never-acknowledged nuclear arms program,
where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for
the arsenal.
Over the past two years, according to intelligence
and military experts familiar with its operations,
Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role
— as a critical testing ground in a joint American
and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to
make a bomb of its own.
Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say,
Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually
identical to Iran ’s at Natanz, where Iranian
scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They
say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the
Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program
that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of
Iran ’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay,
though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its
first nuclear arms.
“To check out the worm, you have to know the
machines,” said an American expert on nuclear
intelligence. “The reason the worm has been
effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”
Though American and Israeli officials refuse to
talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the
operations there, as well as related efforts in the
United States, are among the newest and
strongest clues suggesting that the virus was
designed as an American-Israeli project to
sabotage the Iranian program.
In recent days, the retiring chief of Israel’s Mossad
intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, and Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton separately
announced that they believed Iran’s efforts had
been set back by several years. Mrs. Clinton cited
American-led sanctions, which have hurt Iran ’s
ability to buy components and do business
around the world.
The gruff Mr. Dagan, whose organization has
been accused by Iran of being behind the deaths
of several Iranian scientists, told the Israeli
Knesset in recent days that Iran had run into
technological difficulties that could delay a bomb
until 2015. That represented a sharp reversal from
Israel’s long-held argument that Iran was on the
cusp of success.
The biggest single factor in putting time on the
nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most
sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed.
In interviews over the past three months in the
United States and Europe, experts who have
picked apart the computer worm describe it as
far more complex — and ingenious — than
anything they had imagined when it began
circulating around the world, unexplained, in
mid-2009.
Many mysteries remain, chief among them,
exactly who constructed a computer worm that
appears to have several authors on several
continents. But the digital trail is littered with
intriguing bits of evidence.
In early 2008 the German company Siemens
cooperated with one of the United States ’ premier
national laboratories, in Idaho, to identify the
vulnerabilities of computer controllers that the
company sells to operate industrial machinery
around the world — and that American
intelligence agencies have identified as key
equipment in Iran ’s enrichment facilities.
Seimens says that program was part of routine
efforts to secure its products against
cyberattacks. Nonetheless, it gave the Idaho
National Laboratory — which is part of the Energy
Department, responsible for America’s nuclear
arms — the chance to identify well-hidden holes
in the Siemens systems that were exploited the
next year by Stuxnet.
The worm itself now appears to have included
two major components. One was designed to
send Iran ’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly
out of control. Another seems right out of the
movies: The computer program also secretly
recorded what normal operations at the nuclear
plant looked like, then played those readings back
to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security
tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that
everything was operating normally while the
centrifuges were actually tearing themselves
apart.
The attacks were not fully successful: Some parts
of Iran ’s operations ground to a halt, while others
survived, according to the reports of international
nuclear inspectors. Nor is it clear the attacks are
over: Some experts who have examined the code
believe it contains the seeds for yet more
versions and assaults.
“It’s like a playbook,” said Ralph Langner, an
independent computer security expert in
Hamburg, Germany, who was among the first to
decode Stuxnet. “Anyone who looks at it carefully
can build something like it.” Mr. Langner is
among the experts who expressed fear that the
attack had legitimized a new form of industrial
warfare, one to which the United States is also
highly vulnerable.
Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials will
even utter the name of the malicious computer
program, much less describe any role in
designing it.


Source: Http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?_r=1

READ MORE ................... ①Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay.

New Leader in Tunisia Calls for a Unity Government.

Soldiers stand guard atop a building the center
of Tunis, 15 Jan 2011

Tunisia's new interim president called for the
formation of a coalition government as riots and
unrest continued to grip the North African
country.
It was another tumultuous day in Tunisia's
capital, marked by gunshots, helicopters flying
overhead and a fast-paced series of political
changes for this normally staid North African
country.
Just hours after hardline president Zine El Abdine
Ben Ali fled the country, Tunisia swore in a
new, interim leader. He is Fouad Mebazza, the
former head of the lower house of parliament.
He has ordered the creation of a unity
government that includes members of the
opposition. The Tunisia Constitutional Council,
which swore in Mr. Mebazza, says the new
leader has 60 days to hold new presidential
elections.
On the streets of the capital, Tunisians ventured
out to survey the damage of widespread looting
that broke out following massive
demonstrations Friday calling for Ben Ali to go.
Tanks dotted the streets that were littered with
broken glass and burnt objects. Assailants have
also torched Tunisia's main train station.
Still, 22-year old student Hishem Benyaghem
says he is optimistic about Tunisia's future. He
believes it will only bring good things.
Farez Bouslim, a man in his '40s, is less upbeat.
He thinks a democratic transition in Tunisia will
not be easy. He is afraid there will be more
bloodshed.
Reports of violence continue to flood in. Along
with the call to prayer, sounds of gunfire rang
across the capital Saturday evening. There were
reports of prisoner rebellions and prison fires
elsewhere in the country. The evening saw
another curfew, with the streets of Tunis empty
except for police and soldiers - and looters.
Fueled by the Internet and popular uprisings,
the power change - dubbed the Jasmine or
Facebook revolution - is being watched closely
overseas. Washington, France, the Arab League
and Germany have all praised the ordinary
Tunisians behind it. But they are also calling for
democratic elections to follow.
At the end, says Claire Spencer, a senior North
African analyst at London think-tank Chatham
House, Tunisians had had enough of Ben Ali's
hardline regime. "When the corruption is too
flagrant and the responses are too heavy
handed, people say we can't tolerate this
anymore. This is beyond what I and my
personal dignity can stand," she said.
Spencer believes democratic change is possible
but it will happen gradually. And she says that
other things Tunisians hunger for - jobs and
economic opportunities - will likely come
slowly.


Source: Http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Tunisian-Capital-Tense-as-Interim-Leader-Sworn-in-113795659.html

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