World/Nation Briefs May 30, 2012
Trump's 'birther' talk overshadows Romney's big day
LAS VEGAS - Mitt Romney's presidential campaign collided with Donald Trump's "birther" rhetoric on Tuesday as the reality television star hosted a fundraiser for the Republican while claiming again that President Barack Obama is foreign-born.
The debunked conspiracy theory among conservative activists dubbed "birthers" charges that Obama is not constitutionally qualified to serve in the White House. Romney has said he believes Obama was born in America, but he has not condemned Trump's comments.
Democrats contend it's the latest example of Romney's reluctance to confront the more extreme elements in his party.
"A lot of people do not think it was an authentic certificate," Trump told CNN of Obama's birth certificate, just hours before he was set to host Romney's finance event at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.
Such allegations have been repeatedly proven false. The state of Hawaii recently re-affirmed that Obama was born there.
Western nations toss Syria envoys over massacre
BEIRUT - Eyewitness accounts from the Syrian massacre emerged Tuesday, describing shadowy gunmen slaughtering whole families in their homes and targeting the most vulnerable in poor farming villages. Western nations expelled Syrian diplomats in a coordinated move against President Bashar Assad's regime over the killing of more than 100 people.
U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan met with Assad in Damascus to try to salvage what was left of a peace plan, which since being brokered six weeks ago has failed to stop any of the violence on the ground.
Survivors of the Houla massacre blamed pro-regime gunmen for at least some of the carnage as the killings reverberated inside Syria and beyond, further isolating Assad and embarrassing his few remaining allies.
"It's very hard for me to describe what I saw, the images were incredibly disturbing," a Houla resident who hid in his home during the massacre told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "Women, children without heads, their brains or stomachs spilling out."
Mideast states hit by insidious computer virus
LONDON - Iran and other Middle East countries have been hit with a cunning computer virus that can eavesdrop on computer users and their co-workers and filch information from nearby cellphones, cybersecurity experts said Tuesday. And suspicion immediately fell on Israel as the culprit.
The Russian Internet security firm Kaspersky Lab ZAO said the "Flame" virus is unprecedented in size and complexity, with researcher Roel Schouwenberg marveling at its versatility.
"It can be used to spy on everything that a user is doing," he said.
Computers in Iran appear to have been particularly affected, and Kaspersky's conclusion that the virus was crafted at the behest of a national government fueled speculation it could be part of an Israeli-backed campaign of electronic sabotage against the Jewish state's archenemy.
The virus can activate a computer's audio systems to listen in on Skype calls or office chatter. It can also take screenshots, log keystrokes and - in one of its more novel functions- steal data from Bluetooth-enabled cellphones.
Political prisoner allowed to travel outside Myanmar
BANGKOK - For 24 years, Aung San Suu Kyi was either under house arrest or too fearful that if she left Myanmar, the government would never let her return.
Now, in a sign of how much life there has changed, the democracy activist and longtime political prisoner is resuming world travels, arriving Tuesday night in neighboring Thailand after an 85-minute flight from her homeland.
With the installation of an elected government last year, and her party's own entrance into parliament this year, she can claim at least partial success for her long fight and feel the freedom to explore the world.
Suu Kyi is to spend several days in Thailand, meeting with poor migrant workers and war refugees from her homeland, as well as international movers and shakers at the World Economic Forum on East Asia.
BlackBerry maker warns of losses, layoffs
TORONTO - Struggling BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion issued a dire warning about its business, saying Tuesday that it will post an operating loss for the second-straight quarter and will lay off a large number of employees this year.
RIM also said it has hired J.P. Morgan and RBC Capital Markets to help it evaluate strategies, including possibilities of partnering with other companies and licensing software, in addition to other alternatives.
Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM made no mention of a sale of the company. But new Chief Executive Thorsten Heins did not rule that out.
- The Associated Press