World / Nation briefs January 1, 2012

World rings in a new year

PARIS - With glittering fireworks and celebrations from New Zealand to Times Square, the world eagerly welcomed a new year and hope for a better future Saturday, saying goodbye to a year of hurricanes, tsunamis and economic turmoil that many would rather forget.

Revelers in Australia, Asia and the South Pacific island nation of Samoa, which jumped across the international dateline to be first to celebrate, welcomed 2012 with booming fireworks displays. Up to a million revelers were expected to jam New York's Times Square for the famed crystal-paneled ball drop, and big crowds gathered under twinkling lights on Paris' Champs-Elysees boulevard to pop Champagne corks at midnight.

But across the world, people battered by weather disasters, joblessness and economic uncertainty hoped the stroke of midnight would change their fortunes.

Romney seeks Iowa pay dirt

LE MARS, Iowa - Mitt Romney is the clear Republican front-runner in Iowa in the final days before the first voting in the 2012 presidential election. But that's where the glimmer of clarity ends in this unpredictable nomination race.

Five others are fighting, as they have all year, to emerge as the alternative to the former Massachusetts governor.

The ascendant Rick Santorum and Rick Perry are battling to win over social conservatives. Libertarian-leaning Ron Paul is working to preserve support that's starting to slip. Newt Gingrich is struggling to end his sharp slide. Michele Bachmann is hardly a factor.

While much can happen before Tuesday's caucuses, Romney is in strong contention to win. Interviews with operatives inside and outside the campaign, along with public and internal campaign polls, show him leading the pack. He's aided by conservative voters who are dividing their support among the field.

Karzai welcomes U.S. remarks

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday welcomed remarks from the Obama administration that the Taliban were not necessarily America's enemies.

Earlier this month, Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with Newsweek magazine that the Islamist militants did not represent a threat to U.S. interests unless they continued to shelter al-Qaida.

"Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That's critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests," Biden was quoted as saying by Newsweek.

The Obama administration and other governments are trying to establish a peace process with the Taliban to help end the 10-year war.

Police: More cars set ablaze in L.A.

LOS ANGELES - On what is already one of their busiest nights of the year, authorities in Hollywood and surrounding areas had another daunting worry this New Year's Eve: Will the mysterious arsonist blamed in a string of overnight fires strike again?

Early Saturday, several vehicles were set ablaze in 13 fires set between midnight and 6 a.m., mostly in North Hollywood. Officials said they bore a resemblance to the nearly two dozen fires set in and around Hollywood a day earlier.

No one has been injured. But some residents were on edge as authorities ramped up efforts to catch the culprit or culprits on a night when resources are stretched thin as drunken New Year's revelers hit the town.

Firefighters were to be stationed around the city to respond to emergencies, while authorities set up a hotline and pored through tips.

Safest 10 years in U.S. aviation history

NEW YORK - Boarding an airplane has never been safer.

The past 10 years have been the best in the country's aviation history with 153 fatalities. That's two deaths for every 100 million passengers on commercial flights, according to an Associated Press analysis of government accident data.

The improvement is remarkable. Just a decade earlier, at the time the safest, passengers were 10 times as likely to die when flying on an American plane. The risk of death was even greater during the start of the jet age, with 1,696 people dying - 133 out of every 100 million passengers - from 1962 to 1971. The figures exclude acts of terrorism.

Sitting in a pressurized, aluminum tube seven miles above the ground may never seem like the most-natural thing. But consider this: You are more likely to die driving to the airport than flying across the country. There are more than 30,000 motor-vehicle deaths each year, a mortality rate eight times greater than that in planes.

NASA probes arrive at moon

PASADENA, Calif. - A NASA spacecraft fired its engine and slipped into orbit around the moon Saturday in the first of two back-to-back arrivals over the New Year's weekend.

Ground controllers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers and applause after receiving a signal that the probe was healthy and circling the moon. An engineer was seen on closed-circuit television blowing a noisemaker to herald the New Year's Eve arrival.

The celebration was brief. Despite the successful maneuver, the work was not over. Its twin still had to enter lunar orbit on New Year's Day.

The Grail probes - short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory - have been cruising independently toward their destination since launching in September aboard the same rocket on a mission to measure lunar gravity.

- The Associated Press