GENEVA ? The political and social upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East had little impact on asylum claims to rich countries ? something politicians in Europe had been particularly fearful of ? according to a U.N. report Tuesday.
The U.N. refugee agency said applications rose 17 percent during the first half of 2011, but most came from countries considered to be typical sources of asylum seekers, such as Afghanistan, where some 15,300 applicants originated.
China was the second biggest source of claims, with 11,700 people asking to be given refuge abroad. Third was Serbia and Kosovo, with 10,300 claims, followed by Iraq (10,100) and Iran (7,600).
"2011 has been a year of displacement crises unlike any other I have seen in my time as High Commissioner," The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said of the so-called 'Arab Spring' unrest that drove hundreds of thousands in Libya and Tunisia to flee their homes.
Guterres said most had fled to neighboring countries.
The U.N. refugee agency said it expects to see 420,000 asylum applications in rich countries for 2011, the highest number in eight years.
The top destinations during the first six months were the United States, which had 36,400 applications, followed by France (26,100) and Germany (20,100).
UNHCR noted that asylum application in Japan and South Korea more than doubled, to 1,300 compared to 600 in the first half of 2010.
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(Reuters) ? Hundreds of friends and family of Elizabeth Taylor gathered on a Hollywood movie studio lot on Sunday for a memorial celebration of the screen star, who died earlier this year at the age of 79.
Hosted by Colin Farrell, some 400 invited guests including Michael Caine, Elton John and Taylor's children feted the actress at the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, outside Los Angeles, Taylor's publicist said.
"My mother was an extraordinary woman whose life touched so many, most of whom we will never know," Taylor's son Michael Wilding, told the starry assemblage.
"Our whole family is extremely proud of her accomplishments, and know what a unique and special experience it was to have her in our lives," said Wilding, Taylor's son with actor Michael Wilding,
"Today it was especially meaningful for us to be with so many good friends to celebrate her spirit, which will be with us forever," he added.
Kate Burton, Taylor's step-daughter from her two marriages to Richard Burton, was also on hand.
Taylor died in March of congestive heart failure and was buried the following day in a small private funeral service.
Sunday, speakers recalled Taylor's legendary beauty, as well as her humor. Mike Nichols, who directed Taylor in one of her two Oscar-winning performances, appeared in a video tribute.
Others focused on the actress's post-Hollywood career, both as a businesswoman with a successful fragrance line, and as a ferociously determined advocate for AIDS, which claimed the life of her friend, actor Rock Hudson.
Until her death, Taylor headed up The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. Several AIDS activists were also on hand as clips of Taylor's lobbying efforts were screened.
Some of Taylor's vast collection of jewelry, gowns and art are to be auctioned in New York in December.
(Reporting by Chris Michaud; editing by Jill Serjeant)
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NEW YORK ? The YouTube channel for "Sesame Street" is back online after hackers forced its shutdown for a day by loading X-rated material.
"Sesame Street" Executive Producer Carol-Lynn Parente (pah-REHNT'-tay) said Monday that YouTube had taken the channel down Sunday after noticing the racy material. The channel usually carries new and vintage clips from the popular preschool program.
Parente says it appears that the X-rated videos were online for less than an hour and that "Sesame Street" had received no viewer complaints.
She says, "We have great hopes that it was found out" before young viewers could see the X-rated material.
YouTube says it counsels clients to adopt tougher security to avoid hackers. The channel resumed at around midday Monday.
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Guests stand outside the new Spaceport America hanger Monday, Oct. 17, 2011 in Upham, N.M. British billionaire Richard Branson dedicated the newly completed terminal Monday where his Virgin Galactic is slated to begin his commercial space tourism venture from the remote patch of desert in Sierra County. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Guests stand outside the new Spaceport America hanger Monday, Oct. 17, 2011 in Upham, N.M. British billionaire Richard Branson dedicated the newly completed terminal Monday where his Virgin Galactic is slated to begin his commercial space tourism venture from the remote patch of desert in Sierra County. (AP Photo/Matt York)
British billionaire Sir Richard Branson stands along side the spacecraft White Knight Two after a test flight outside the new Spaceport America hanger Monday, Oct. 17, 2011 in Upham, NM. Branson dedicated the newly completed terminal Monday where his Virgin Galactic is slated to begin his commercial space tourism venture from the remote patch of desert in Sierra County. (AP Photo/Matt York)
The new Spaceport America hanger backdrops the spacecraft White Knight Two, Monday, Oct. 17, 2011 in Upham, N.M. British billionaire Richard Branson dedicated the newly completed terminal Monday where his Virgin Galactic is slated to begin his commercial space tourism venture from the remote patch of desert in Sierra County. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Guests stand outside the new Spaceport America hanger Monday, Oct. 17, 2011 in Upham, N.M. British billionaire Richard Branson dedicated the newly completed terminal Monday where his Virgin Galactic is slated to begin his commercial space tourism venture from the remote patch of desert in Sierra County. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Guests stand oustside the new Spaceport America hanger Monday, Oct. 17, 2011 in Upham, N.M. British billionaire Richard Branson dedicated the newly completed terminal Monday where his Virgin Galactic is slated to begin his commercial space tourism venture from the remote patch of desert in Sierra County. (AP Photo/Matt York)
UPHAM, New Mexico (AP) ? With his usual flare, British billionaire Richard Branson rappelled from a balcony, shook up a big bottle of champagne and took a swig while christening the world's first built-from-scratch commercial spaceport on Monday.
Branson's Virgin Galactic will stage its commercial space tourism venture from Spaceport America in a remote patch of desert in southern New Mexico.
Branson was joined by Gov. Susana Martinez, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and scores of would-be space travelers at the terminal-hangar for the dedication. It had been nearly a year since Branson was in New Mexico to celebrate the completion of the runway.
"The building is absolutely magnificent," he said. "It is literally out of this world, and that's what we were aiming at creating."
With the spaceport and mothership completed, the company is now finalizing its rocket tests.
"We're ticking the final boxes on the way to space," Branson said.
He hopes enough powered test flights of Virgin Galactic's sleek spacecraft can be done by the end of 2012 to start commercial suborbital flights from the spaceport soon after.
More than 450 people have purchased tickets to fly with Virgin Galactic. About 150 of them attended the ceremony.
Before getting to enter the hangar, the crowd was treated to a flyover by WhiteKnightTwo, the mothership that one day will help take space tourists on suborbital flights.
The $209 million taxpayer-financed spaceport will be a launch station for people and payloads on the rocket ships being developed for Virgin Galactic.
With custom metal paneling and massive panes of glass, the state-of-the-art terminal rises from the desert floor to face the nearly 2-mile(3.2-kilometer) concrete runway.
The building will house Virgin Galactic's spacecraft, mission control and a preparation area for travelers.
It was six years ago that Virgin Galactic and New Mexico officials reached an agreement to build the spaceport. Officials said the completion of the terminal and hangar marks another major milestone that brings the dream of rocketing tourists into space closer to reality.
Still, the question many are asking is when the first ships will launch from Spaceport America. It was Branson who once predicted the maiden passenger flight would take off in 2007.
Branson acknowledged the wait in an interview Monday. He and his two children will be among the first to fly, and he said he wants to ensure he can bring them home safely.
"We want to be sure we've really tested the craft through and through before turning it over to the astronauts who bought tickets to go up," he said. "If it takes a bit longer, we'll take a little bit longer."
Commercial service will start up after the company gets a license from the Federal Aviation Administration. NASA has already signed a $4.5 million contract with the company for up to three chartered research flights.
Tickets for rides aboard WhiteKnightTwo cost $200,000. The 2 1/2-hour flights will include about five minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth that until now only astronauts have been able to experience.
Like development of the spacecraft, construction of the 110,152-square-foot(10,233-square-meter) terminal and hangar facility has been complicated. There were delays, building code problems, contractor disputes and costly change orders.
State officials blamed the unprecedented nature of the project as well as its remote location, the lack of infrastructure and the weather.
New Mexico Spaceport Authority executive director Christine Anderson arrived at the spaceport a day early to find WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo stowed in the hangar.
"This was quite a feat," she said of the construction, joking with the crowd that she was glad the spacecraft fit in the cavernous hangar.
The building was designed by United Kingdom-based Foster + Partners, along with URS Corp. and New Mexico architects SMPC.
Virgin Galactic and officials with the New Mexico Spaceport Authority are touting the design as green. It uses geothermal energy; tubes running through the earthen berm surrounding part of the building help cool the interior; and natural ventilation can be used during mild seasons.___Follow Susan Montoya Bryan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanmbryanNM
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New York ? Obama is calling for the world to unite in getting tough on Iran over its nuclear program and alleged assassination plot in the U.S. Where will this lead?
President Obama is urging United Nations inspectors to release new classified evidence that Iran has been testing nuclear weapons technology, according to The New York Times. If the seemingly damning evidence is made public, it would likely rekindle the debate over whether the U.S. or some other country should launch military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities to keep Tehran from getting the bomb. Tehran is already lashing out at Washington for accusing it of plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the U.S. Could this mean war?
It certainly should: Iran "has the blood of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan on its hands," says William Kristol at The Weekly Standard. It's a "brutal dictatorship that has aided terrorists, and "it's seeking nuclear weapons while denying it's doing so." Obama should look at the assassination plot as "an engraved invitation" to strike and weaken the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the regime's nuclear program, to set it back before it's too late.
"Speak softly... and fight back"
Striking Iran is a bad idea: The question isn't whether the U.S. will attack Iran's nuclear installations ? Israel is far more likely to take that step, says Sefi Rachlevsky at Israel's Haaretz. But that would only "increase Iran's determination to embark on an open race for a nuclear bomb." And it would only undermine "Western support for the nuclear deterrent that protects Israel" from its hostile Muslim neighbors, while giving Iran greater incentive to use the bomb once it gets it.
"The link between Shalit's release and Iran's bomb"
We should keep the threat of war on the table: "Should we bomb Iran for plotting to blow up a Washington, D.C., restaurant in order to assassinate the Saudi ambassador?" asks Jonah Goldberg in the Baltimore Sun. "Probably not." But instead of insisting we should resolve this diplomatically, Obama should at least make the mullahs over there think it could start raining missiles at any time. A plot like this is "an act of war" ? we don't need any more proof that being reasonable with Tehran doesn't pay off.
"We probably shouldn't attack Iran, but we shouldn't tell them that"
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NEW YORK?? Anti-Wall Street demonstrators marched again Saturday in New York City as protests against corporate greed and economic inequality spread around the world.
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Over the past month, the protests have expanded from New York's financial district to cities across the United States and abroad. Demonstrations were called this weekend in the U.S., Canada and Europe, as well as in Asia and Africa.
About 1,000 people marched throughout New York's financial district, banging drums and chanting, "We got sold out, banks got bailed out," "All day, all week, occupy Wall Street," and "Hey hey, ho ho, corporate greed has got to go."
A Reuters reporter saw about 20 people being arrested at a Citibank branch in Greenwich Village as marchers moved uptown.
Story: Protests go global, rampage, tear gas in RomeProtesters said those arrested were trying to withdraw their money and close their accounts. Police did not immediately have details.
"It's not every day that you get to be at the most significant uprising in a generation," Occupy Wall Street said on its Facebook page. Protesters said they did not have any police permits for the New York demonstrations.
Police were directing protesters to stay on the sidewalk, saying they would arrest anyone who did not keep moving.
The march came a day after protesters at the heart of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in New York exulted Friday after beating back a plan they said was intended to clear them from the privately owned park where they have slept, eaten and protested for the past month. They said their victory will embolden the movement across the U.S. and abroad.
"We are going to piggy-back off the success of today, and it's going to be bigger than we ever imagined," said protester Daniel Zetah after Friday's announcement that protesters could remain in the park.
In the U.S., marches were planned in cities large and small from Providence, Rhode Island, to Little Rock, Arkansas; to Seattle. About 200 people camped overnight in Detroit, a group spokeswoman said.
How does a group like Occupy Wall Street get anything done?In New York, a march on a bank was scheduled for late morning with a rally simultaneously elsewhere, to be followed by other events through the day that were to culminate in what organizers called an Occupation Party starting late in the afternoon in Times Square.
The U.S. protests were linking up with anti-austerity demonstrations that have raged across debt-ridden Europe for months.
A call for mass protests on Saturday originated a month ago from a meeting in Spain, where mostly young and unemployed people angry at the country's handling of the economic crisis have been demonstrating for months. It was reposted on the Occupy Wall Street website and has been further amplified through social media.
On Saturday, tens of thousands nicknamed "the indignant" marched in European cities from Sarajevo, Bosnia, to Stockholm.
The Friday showdown in New York came as tensions rose, with dozens of arrests in several U.S. cities and scattered clashes between demonstrators and police.
The owners of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan had planned to temporarily evict the protesters Friday morning so the grounds could be power-washed. The protesters, their numbers swelled to about 2,000 before daybreak, feared the cleanup was a pretext to break up the demonstration. They vowed to stand their ground.
Just minutes before the appointed hour, park owners Brookfield Office Properties announced it would postpone the cleanup at the request of "a number of local political leaders." The company gave no details. Word of the decision brought boisterous cheers from the demonstrators.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose girlfriend is on Brookfield's board of directors, said his staff was under strict orders not to pressure the company one way or the other. He noted that Brookfield can still go ahead with the cleanup at some point.
Cold nights and pepper spray
In San Diego, police used pepper spray to break up a human chain formed around a tent by anti-Wall Street demonstrators. Police in riot gear herded hundreds of protesters away from the Colorado state capitol early Friday in Denver, arresting about two dozen people and dismantling their encampment. In New Jersey's capital of Trenton, protesters were ordered to remove tents near a war memorial.
Nearly 1,500 gathered Saturday for a march past banks in downtown Orlando, Florida. About 50 people ranging from college students to older people met in a park in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, carrying signs calling for "Health Care Not Warfare." Organizers expected more people to come and go during the day.
Some made more considerable commitments to try to get their voices heard. Nearly 200 spent a cold night in tents in Grand Circus Park in Detroit, donning gloves, scarves and heavy coats to keep warm, said Helen Stockton, a 34-year-old certified midwife from Ypsilanti, and plan to remain there "as long as it takes to effect change."
"It's easy to ignore us," Stockton said. Then she referred to the financial institutions, saying, "But we are not going to ignore them. Every shiver in our bones reminds us of why we are here."
Hundreds more converged near the Michigan state Capitol in Lansing with the same message, the Lansing State Journal reported.
Rallies drew young and old, laborers and retirees. In Pittsburgh, marchers also included parents with children in strollers and even a doctor. The peaceful crowd of up to 2,000 stretched for two or three blocks.
"I see our members losing jobs. People are angry," said Janet Hill, 49, who works for the United Steelworkers labor union, which she said hosted a sign-making event prior to the march.
Rallies downtown, uptown
Retired teacher Albert Siemsen of Milwaukee said at a demonstration in the Wisconsin city that he'd grown angry watching school funding get cut at the same time that banks and corporations gained more influence in government. The 81-year-old wants to see tighter Wall Street regulation.
Around him, protesters held signs reading, "Keep your corporate hands off my government," and "Mr. Obama, Tear Down That Wall Street."
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick visited protesters in Boston's Dewey Square for the first time. He said that after walking through the camp, he better understands the range of views and was sympathetic to concerns about unemployment, health care and the influence of money in politics.
And in Denver, a few thousand came to a rally downtown in support of the movement, KUSA-TV reported.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, a prominent civil rights leader, led a march in Washington that was not affiliated with the Occupy movement but shared similar goals. His rally was aimed at drumming up support for President Barack Obama's jobs plan. Thousands of demonstrators packed the lawn in the shadow of the Washington Monument to hear labor, education and civil rights leaders speak, including Sharpton.
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Meghan Barr, Karen Matthews and Patrick Walters in Philadelphia, Patrick Condon in Minneapolis, Mike Householder in Detroit, Colleen Long in New York and Michael J. Crumb in Des Moines, Iowa.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44914155/ns/us_news-life/
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