Kenyans await ruling in disputed presidential race

By Edmund Blair

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's Supreme Court rules on Saturday on a challenge to Uhuru Kenyatta's presidential election win, a judgment seen as a test of the democratic system five years after another disputed vote triggered tribal bloodshed.

The country's outgoing president called for calm ahead of the decision that will either confirm the victory of Kenya's richest man Kenyatta or force another vote.

Defeated candidate Raila Odinga says the March 4 poll was marred by technical problems and widespread rigging. Both politicians have promised to abide by the court's final word.

Many ordinary Kenyans insist they will not allow a repeat of the anarchy that killed more than 1,200 people and hammered the economy following a dispute over the last election in 2007.

"We have moved on," said Monica Njagi, 28, owner of an Internet cafe in the port city of Mombasa. "Whatever the ruling, we shall go by it ... We have enough useful lessons from our past."

Peaceful voting this time round, and the fact that the dispute is being played out by lawyers not machete-wielding gangs, has already helped repair the image of east Africa's largest economy.

Saturday's ruling will test whether Kenyans trust their reformed judiciary and whether supporters of rival candidates will accept the result quietly in a nation where tribal loyalties largely determine political allegiances.

Chief Justice Willy Mutunga has yet to set a time on Saturday that he and his panel of judges will issue a verdict. Comments at a brief hearing on Friday suggested it might not come till later on Saturday.

"As the country awaits the Supreme Court ruling which is due this Easter weekend, I call upon all of us to accept the ruling and maintain peace," outgoing President Mwai Kibaki said in a message to mark the Christian Easter holiday.

"ESSENTIAL CONTACTS"

Western donors are watching the fate of a trade partner and a country they see as vital to regional stability. But they also face a headache if Kenyatta wins, because he is facing charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.

Kenyatta is accused of helping incite the violence after the 2007 vote but has denied the charges and promised to cooperate to clear his name.

Western nations have a policy of having only "essential contacts" with indictees of the court. They say that will not affect dealings with the government as a whole. But they still face a delicate balancing act to avoid driving a long-time ally of the West closer to emerging powers such as China.

Neighboring African states are also keeping a careful eye on the proceedings after they were hit by the knock-on effects when vital trade routes through Kenya were shut down five years ago.

Kenyatta comfortably beat Odinga in terms of votes won, 50.07 percent versus 43.28 percent, but only narrowly avoided a run-off after winning just 8,100 votes more than the 50 percent needed to be declared the winner outright.

In the Supreme Court's hearing on Friday, the legal teams reviewed results of recounts ordered in 22 of the 33,400 polling stations after Odinga said more votes were cast than registered voters. Both sides said the recounts supported their arguments.

Odinga's team argued that the failure of technology in tallying undermined the vote. Rival lawyers said any irregularities or technical hiccups had an insignificant impact and did not change the overall outcome.

International observers said voting itself was credible, but diplomats say observers did not watch the full five-day count.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Akwiri in Mombasa; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kenyans-await-ruling-disputed-presidential-race-022046688.html

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High court hears case on federal benefits for gays

WASHINGTON (AP) ? In the second of back-to-back gay marriage cases, the Supreme Court is turning to a constitutional challenge to the law that prevents legally married gay Americans from collecting federal benefits generally available to straight married couples.

A section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act says marriage may only be a relationship between a man and a woman for purposes of federal law, regardless of state laws that allow same-sex marriage.

Lower federal courts have struck down the measure, and now the justices, in nearly two hours of scheduled argument Wednesday, will consider whether to follow suit.

The DOMA argument follows Tuesday's case over California's ban on same-sex marriage, a case in which the justices indicated they might avoid a major national ruling on whether America's gays and lesbians have a right to marry. Even without a significant ruling, the court appeared headed for a resolution that would mean the resumption of gay and lesbian weddings in California.

Marital status is relevant in more than 1,100 federal laws that include estate taxes, Social Security survivor benefits and health benefits for federal employees. Lawsuits around the country have led four federal district courts and two appeals courts to strike down the law's Section 3, which defines marriage. In 2011, the Obama administration abandoned its defense of the law but continues to enforce it. House Republicans are now defending DOMA in the courts.

Same-sex marriage is legal in nine states and the District of Columbia. The states are Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Washington. It also was legal in California for less than five months in 2008.

The justices chose for their review the case of Edith Windsor, 83, of New York, who sued to challenge a $363,000 federal estate tax bill after her partner of 44 years died in 2009.

Windsor, who goes by Edie, married Thea Spyer in 2007 in Canada after doctors told them that Spyer would not live much longer. She suffered from multiple sclerosis for many years. Spyer left everything she had to Windsor.

There is no dispute that if Windsor had been married to a man, her estate tax bill would have been zero.

The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York agreed with a district judge that the provision of DOMA deprived Windsor of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the law.

Like the Proposition 8 case from California, Windsor's lawsuit could falter on a legal technicality without a definitive ruling from the high court.

The House Republicans, the Obama administration and a lawyer appointed by the court especially to argue the issue were to spend the first 50 minutes Wednesday discussing whether the House Republican leadership can defend the law in court because the administration decided not to, and whether the administration forfeited its right to participate in the case because it changed its position and now argues that the provision is unconstitutional.

If the Supreme Court finds that it does not have the authority to hear the case, Windsor probably would still get her refund because she won in the lower courts. But there would be no definitive decision about the law from the nation's highest court, and it would remain on the books.

On Tuesday, the justices weighed a fundamental issue: Does the Constitution require that people be allowed to marry whom they choose, regardless of either partner's gender? The fact that the question was in front of the Supreme Court at all was startling, given that no state recognized same-sex unions before 2003 and 40 states still don't allow them.

But it was clear from the start of the 80-minute argument in a packed courtroom that the justices, including some liberals who seemed open to gay marriage, had doubts about whether they should even be hearing the challenge to California's Proposition 8, the state's voter-approved gay marriage ban.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the potentially decisive vote on a closely divided court, suggested the justices could dismiss the case with no ruling at all.

Such an outcome would almost certainly allow gay marriages to resume in California but would have no impact elsewhere.

There was no majority apparent for any particular outcome, and many doubts were expressed by justices about the arguments advanced by lawyers for the opponents of gay marriage in California, by the supporters and by the Obama administration, which is in favor of same-sex marriage rights. The administration's entry into the case followed President Barack Obama's declaration of support for gay marriage.

On the one hand, Kennedy acknowledged that same-sex unions had only become legal recently in some states, a point stressed repeatedly by Charles Cooper, the lawyer for the defenders of Proposition 8. Cooper said the court should uphold the ban as a valid expression of the people's will and let the vigorous political debate over gay marriage continue.

But Kennedy pressed him also to address the interests of the estimated 40,000 children in California who have same-sex parents.

"They want their parents to have full recognition and full status," Kennedy said. "The voice of those children is important in this case, don't you think?"

Yet when Theodore Olson, the lawyer for two same-sex couples, urged the court to support such marriage rights everywhere, Kennedy feared such a ruling would push the court into "uncharted waters." Olson said the court similarly ventured into the unknown in 1967 when it struck down bans on interracial marriage in 16 states.

Kennedy challenged the accuracy of that comment: He noted that other countries had had interracial marriages for hundreds of years.

The justice also made clear he did not like the rationale of the federal appeals court that struck down Proposition 8, even though it cited earlier opinions in favor of gay rights that Kennedy had written.

That appeals court ruling applied only to California, where same-sex couples briefly had the right to marry before the state's voters in November 2008 adopted Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Reflecting the high interest in the cases, the court planned to release an audio recording of Wednesday's argument shortly after it concludes, just as it did Tuesday.

The Tuesday audio can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/dxefy2a .

___

Follow Mark Sherman at www.twitter.com/shermancourt

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/high-court-hears-case-federal-benefits-gays-065829810--politics.html

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Endangered tigers find refuge in massive new Indian park

The newly protected area ? the size of New York City ? connects several adjacent parks, making it one of the largest contiguous tiger habitats in the world.

By Douglas Main,?Our Amazing Planet / March 26, 2013

A tigress and her cub rest in India's Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary.

Vijay Kumar / WWF-India / LiveScience.com

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India has created a new protected area for tigers within a wildlife reserve in the south of the country.

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The area, part of the Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary, is home to about 25 tigers, according to a release from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a conservation group. This population of tigers rivals the size of some of India's better-known reserves, the statement said.

This will be the 42nd tiger reserve in the country, which is home to the largest population of tigers in the world. The 272-square-mile (705 square kilometers) protected area will help connect several adjacent parks, making it one of the largest continuous tiger habitats in the world, according to the WWF. The area is also home to elephants, leopards, hyenas and vultures.

For more than a decade, WWF-India has worked with local authorities in the state of Tamil Nadu (where the reserve is found) to support projects to counter poaching, improve communications via cellular phones and wireless networks, train forest rangers and monitor tigers, the statement said.

"The tiger is the national animal of India, and WWF congratulates the government for yet another important milestone in its conservation efforts that will make a tremendous contribution to the goal of conserving wild tigers and their natural habitats in the country," said Dipankar Ghose, of WWF-India, in the statement.

Tiger numbers have declined by about 95 percent in the last century across their entire historic range, and experts think there are only about 3,000 left in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Email Douglas Main?or follow him @Douglas_Main. Follow us?@OAPlanet, Facebook?or? Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/bhyyyuh7hgE/Endangered-tigers-find-refuge-in-massive-new-Indian-park

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N.D. gears up for legal dispute on abortion laws

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) ? North Dakota's governor positioned the oil-rich state Tuesday as a primary battleground in the decades-old fight over abortion rights, signing into law the nation's toughest restriction on the procedure and urging lawmakers to set aside cash for an inevitable legal challenge.

Minutes after Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed three anti-abortion measures ? one banning them when a heartbeat can be detected, which is as early as six weeks into a pregnancy ? unsolicited donations began pouring into the state's lone abortion clinic to help opponents prove the new laws are unconstitutional.

"Although the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question, this bill is nevertheless a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade," Dalrymple said in a statement, referring to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion up to until a fetus is considered viable ? usually at 22 to 24 weeks.

In an interview later Tuesday, Dalrymple told The Associated Press that the courts opened the door for a challenge by picking a specific moment in the timeline of gestation. He also said he studied the fetal heartbeat bill and "educated myself on the history and legal aspects as best I could. My conclusion is not coming from any religious belief or personal experience."

Dalrymple seemed determined to open a legal debate on the legislation, acknowledging the constitutionality of the measure was an open question. He asked the Legislature to set aside money for a "litigation fund" that would allow the state's attorney general to defend the measure against lawsuits.

He said he didn't know how much the likely court fight would cost, but he said money wasn't the issue.

"The Legislature has decided to ask these questions on additional restrictions on abortions, and I think they have the legitimate right to ask those questions," he said.

He also signed into law measures that would makes North Dakota the first state to ban abortions based on genetic defects such as Down syndrome and require a doctor who performs abortions to be a physician with hospital-admitting privileges.

Lawmakers endorsed a fourth anti-abortion bill last week that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the disputed premise that fetuses feel pain at that point. The governor stopped short of saying he would sign it, but said: "I've already signed three bills. Draw your own conclusion."

The signed measures, which take effect Aug. 1, are fueled in part by an attempt to close the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo ? the state's only abortion clinic.

Tammi Kromenaker, the clinic's director, called the legislation "extreme and unconstitutional" and said Dalrymple "awoke a sleeping giant" by approving it. The clinic, which performs about 3,000 abortions annually, was accepting cash donations and continued to take appointments Tuesday, she said.

"First and foremost, abortion is both legal and available in North Dakota," she said. "But anytime abortion laws are in the news, women are worried about access."

The Center for Reproductive Rights announced Tuesday that it has committed to challenging the fetal heartbeat bill on behalf of the clinic. The New York-based group already represented the clinic for free in a lawsuit over a 2011 law banning the widely accepted use of a medication that induces abortion. A judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of the law, and a trial is slated for April in Fargo.

Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem told the AP that lawyers from his office would defend any lawsuits that arise but an increase to the agency's budget would likely be necessary. He did not have a dollar amount.

The state has spent about $23,000 in legal costs to date defending the 2011 legislation, according to agency records obtained by the AP.

Julie Rikelman, litigation director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the group has provided three attorneys to argue that case. But in the recent round of legislation, the fetal heartbeat measure is the priority because it would effectively ban abortion in the state, she said.

"The impact is very, very clear," she said. "It would have an immediate and very large impact on the women in North Dakota."

Rikelman said the center also would support the clinic in other litigation, if need be and at no cost.

Kromenaker said other states have spent millions of dollars defending legislation, if the case reaches the nation's highest court. Rikelman said it's impossible to put a dollar amount on the impending legal fight in North Dakota.

"Litigation is so unpredictable," she said. "It could be very quick with a ruling in our favor."

North Dakota's law, since it would ban most abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, goes further than a bill approved earlier this month in Arkansas that establishes a 12-week ban ? prohibiting them when a fetal heartbeat can be detected using an abdominal ultrasound. That ban is scheduled to take effect 90 days after the Arkansas Legislature adjourns.

A fetal heartbeat can generally be detected earlier in a pregnancy using a vaginal ultrasound, but Arkansas lawmakers balked at requiring women seeking abortions to have the more invasive imaging technique.

North Dakota's legislation doesn't specify how a fetal heartbeat would be detected.

Doctors performing an abortion after a heartbeat is detected could face a felony charge punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Women having an abortion would not face charges.

The legislation to ban abortions based on genetic defects also would ban abortion based on gender selection. The Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion laws throughout the country, says Pennsylvania, Arizona and Oklahoma also have laws outlawing abortion based on gender selection.

The Republican-led North Dakota Legislature has endorsed a spate of anti-abortion Legislation this year. North Dakota lawmakers moved last week to outlaw abortion in the state by passing a resolution defining life as starting at conception, essentially banning abortion in the state. The measure is likely to come before voters in November 2014.

Dalrymple attended a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday for a new diesel refinery in western North Dakota and made no public appearance to explain his signing of the abortion legislation.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nd-gears-legal-dispute-abortion-laws-222233847.html

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Cyprus leader says EU bailout deal could come in 'next few hours'

Protesters in Cyprus gather outside parliament as government officials try to strike a bailout deal with the European Union. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

By Michele Kambas and Lidia Kelly, Reuters

A solution to Cyprus' bailout crisis within the framework set down by the European Union may be possible within "the next few hours," the deputy leader of the island's ruling Democratic Rally party said on Friday.

"There is cautious optimism that in the next few hours we may be able to reach an agreed platform so parliament can approve these specific measures which will be consistent with the approach, the framework and the targets agreed at the last Eurogroup," Averof Neophytou told reporters.?

The lines at bank cash machines in Cyprus are growing longer and in some cases angrier. The European Central Bank has given the island's government until Monday to find its six billion euro share of the bailout or - it says - it'll pull the plug on the rest of the cash and banks will face collapse. The banks themselves remain closed. Faisal Islam of Channel Four Europe reports.

The news came hours after the Cypriot finance minister left Moscow empty-handed when Russia turned down appeals for aid, leaving the island to strike a bailout deal with the EU before Tuesday or face the collapse of its financial system.

The rebuff left Cyprus looking increasingly isolated, with the deadline looming to find billions of euros demanded by the EU in return for a 10 billion euro ($12.93 billion) bailout.

Without it, the European Central Bank said on Wednesday it would cut off emergency funds to the country's teetering banks, potentially pushing Cyprus out of Europe's single currency.

"The talks have ended as far as the Russian side is concerned," Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters after two days of crisis talks with his Cypriot counterpart, Michael Sarris.

Having angrily rejected a proposed levy on tax deposits in exchange for the EU bailout, Nicosia had turned to the Kremlin to renegotiate a loan deal, win more financing and lure Russian investors to cut-price Cypriot banks and gas reserves.

Wealthy Russians have billions of euros at stake in Cyprus's outsized and now crippled banking sector.

Banks are closed on Cyprus but the ATM's are still dispensing cash as the government tries to avert a financial crisis. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

But Siluanov said Russian investors were not interested in Cypriot gas and that the talks had ended without result.

Sarris was due to fly home, where lawmakers were preparing to debate measures proposed by the government to raise at least some of the 5.8 billion euros ($7.48 billion) required to clinch the EU bailout.

They included a "solidarity fund" bundling state assets, including future gas revenues and nationalized pension funds, as the basis for an emergency bond issue and likened by JP Morgan to "a national fire sale".

They were also considering a bank restructuring bill that officials said would see the country's second largest lender, Cyprus Popular Bank, split into good and bad assets, and a government call for the power to impose capital controls to stem a flood of funds leaving the island when banks reopen on Tuesday after a week-long shutdown.

'Playing with fire'
There was no silver bullet, however, and Cyprus's partners in the 17-nation currency bloc were growing increasingly unimpressed.

To help pay for the $13 billion European bailout, the government plans to take up to 10 percent from all savings accounts, angering those who say they aren't responsible for the economic crisis. CNBC's Sue Herera reports.

"I still believe we will get a settlement, but Cyprus is playing with fire," Volker Kauder, a leading conservative ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, told public television ARD.

There were long lines at ATMs on Thursday and angry scenes outside parliament, where hundreds of demonstrators gathered after rumors spread that Popular Bank would be closed down and its staff laid off.

"We have children studying abroad, and next month we need to send them money," protester Stalou Christodoulido said through tears. "We'll lose what money we had and saved for so many years if the bank goes down."

Cypriots have been stunned by the pace of the unfolding drama, having elected conservative President Nicos Anastasiades barely a month ago on a mandate to secure a bailout. News that the deal would involve a levy on bank deposits, even for smaller savers, outraged Cypriots, who raided cash machines last weekend.

Related:

EU to Cypriots: Let us raid your savings or no bailout

Cyprus bailout backlash poses little wider risk - for now

Full business coverage from NBC News

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:02 AM EDT

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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