In elf ears and wizard hats, 'Hobbit' fans rejoice

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Wearing elf ears and wizard hats, sitting atop their dad's shoulders or peering from balconies, tens of thousands of New Zealanders watched their favorite "Hobbit" actors walk the red carpet Wednesday at the film trilogy's hometown premiere.

An Air New Zealand plane freshly painted with "Hobbit" characters flew low over Wellington's Embassy Theatre, eliciting roars of approval from the crowd.

Sam Rashidmardani, 12, said he came to see Gollum actor Andy Serkis walk the red carpet — and he wasn't disappointed.

"It was amazing," Rashidmardani said of the evening, adding his Gollum impression: "My precious."

British actor Martin Freeman, who brings comedic timing to the lead role of Bilbo Baggins, said he thought director Peter Jackson had done a fantastic job on "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey."

"He's done it again," Freeman said in an interview on the red carpet. "If it's possible, it's probably even better than 'The Lord of the Rings.' I think he's surpassed it."

While it is unusual for a city so far from Hollywood to host the premiere of a hoped-for blockbuster, Jackson's filming of his lauded 'LOTR' trilogy and now "The Hobbit" in New Zealand has helped create a film industry here. The film will open in theaters around the world next month.

One of the talking points of the film is the choice by Jackson to shoot it using 48 frames per second instead of the traditional 24 in hopes of improving the picture quality.

Some say the images come out too clear and look so realistic that they take away from the magic of the film medium. Jackson likens it to advancing from vinyl records to CDs.

"I really think 48 frames is pretty terrific and I'm looking forward to seeing the reaction," Jackson said on the red carpet. "It's been talked about for so long, but finally the film is being released and people can decide for themselves."

Jackson said it was strange working on the project so intimately for two years and then having it suddenly taken away as the world got to see the movie.

"It spins your head a little bit," he said.

Aidan Turner, who plays the dwarf Kili in the movie, said his character is reckless and thinks he's charming.

"I don't get to play real people it seems, I only get to play supernatural ones," he said. "So playing a dwarf didn't seem that weird, actually.

Perhaps the most well-known celebrities to walk the carpet were Cate Blanchett and Elijah Wood, who reprise their roles in the LOTR in the "Hobbit."

"Mostly I came here to see everyone. I like them all," said fan Aysu Shahin, 16, adding that Wood was her favorite. She said she wanted to see the movie "as soon as possible. I'm excited for it."

At a news conference earlier in the day, Jackson said many younger people are happy to watch movies on their iPads.

"We just have to make the cinema-going experience more magical and more spectacular to get people coming back to the movies again," he said.

Jackson said only about 1,000 of the 25,000 theaters that will show the film worldwide are equipped to show 48 frames, so most people will see it in the more traditional format. The movie has also been shot in 3D.

A handful of animal rights protesters held signs at the premiere.

The protest by the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals comes after several animal wranglers said three horses and up to two dozen other animals had died during the making of the movies because they were housed at an unsafe farm.

Jackson's spokesman earlier acknowledged two horses had died preventable deaths at the farms but said the production company worked quickly to improve stables and other facilities and that claims of mistreatment were unfounded.

"No mistreatment, no abuse. Absolutely none," Jackson said at the news conference.

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CDC: HIV spread high in young gay males

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials say 1 in 5 new HIV infections occur in a tiny segment of the population — young men who are gay or bisexual.

The government on Tuesday released new numbers that spotlight how the spread of the AIDS virus is heavily concentrated in young males who have sex with other males. Only about a quarter of new infections in the 13-to-24 age group are from injecting drugs or heterosexual sex.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said blacks represented more than half of new infections in youths. The estimates are based on 2010 figures.

Overall, new U.S. HIV infections have held steady at around 50,000 annually. About 12,000 are in teens and young adults, and most youth with HIV haven't been tested.

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CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns

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Egyptians challenge Mursi in nationwide protests

CAIRO (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Egyptians rallied on Tuesday against President Mohamed Mursi in one of the biggest outpourings of protest since Hosni Mubarak's overthrow, accusing the Islamist leader of seeking to impose a new era of autocracy.

Police fired tear gas at stone-throwing youths in streets near the main protest in Cairo's Tahrir Square, heart of the uprising that toppled Mubarak last year. Clashes between Mursi's opponents and supporters erupted in a city north of Cairo.

But violence could not overshadow the show of strength by the normally divided opponents of Islamists in power, posing Mursi with the biggest challenge in his five months in office.

"The people want to bring down the regime," protesters in Tahrir chanted, echoing slogans used in the 2011 revolt.

Protesters also turned out in Alexandria, Suez, Minya and other Nile Delta cities.

Tuesday's unrest by leftists, liberals and other groups deepened the worst crisis since the Muslim Brotherhood politician was elected in June, and exposed the deep divide between the newly empowered Islamists and their opponents.

A 52-year-old protester died after inhaling tear gas in Cairo, the second death since Mursi last week issued a decree that expanded his powers and barred court challenges to his decisions.

Mursi's administration has defended the decree as an effort to speed up reforms and complete a democratic transformation in the Arab world's most populous country.

"Calls for civil disobedience and strikes will be dealt with strictly by law and there is no retreat from the decree," Refa'a Al-Tahtawy, Mursi's presidential chief of staff, told the Al-Hayat private satellite channel.

But opponents say Mursi is behaving like a modern-day pharaoh, a jibe once leveled at Mubarak. The United States, a benefactor to Egypt's military, has expressed concern about more turbulence in a country that has a peace treaty with Israel.

"We don't want a dictatorship again. The Mubarak regime was a dictatorship. We had a revolution to have justice and freedom," 32-year-old Ahmed Husseini said in Cairo.

The fractious ranks of Egypt's non-Islamist opposition have been united on the street by crisis, although they have yet to build an electoral machine to challenge the well-organized Islamists, who have beaten their more secular-minded rivals at the ballot box in two elections held since Mubarak was ousted.

MISCALCULATION

"There are signs that over the last couple of days that Mursi and the Brotherhood realized their mistake," said Elijah Zarwan, a fellow with The European Council on Foreign Relations. He said the protests were "a very clear illustration of how much of a political miscalculation this was".

Mursi's move provoked a rebellion by judges and has battered confidence in an economy struggling after two years of turmoil. The president still must implement unpopular measures to rein in Egypt's crushing budget deficit - action needed to finalize a deal for a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan.

Some protesters have been camped out since Friday in Tahrir and violence has flared around the country, including in a town north of Cairo where a Muslim Brotherhood youth was killed in clashes on Sunday. Hundreds have been injured.

Supporters and opponents of Mursi threw stones at each other and some hurled petrol bombs in the Delta city of el-Mahalla el-Kubra. Medical sources said almost 200 people were injured.

"The main demand is to withdraw the constitutional declaration (decree). This is the point," said Amr Moussa, a former Arab League chief and presidential candidate who has joined the new opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front. The group includes several top liberal politicians.

Some scholars from the prestigious al-Azhar mosque and university joined Tuesday's protest, showing that Mursi and his Brotherhood have alienated some more moderate Muslims. Members of Egypt's large Christian minority also joined in.

Mursi formally quit the Brotherhood on taking office, saying he would be a president for all Egyptians, but he is still a member of its Freedom and Justice Party.

The decree issued on Thursday expanded his powers and protected his decisions from judicial review until the election of a new parliament, expected in the first half of 2013.

In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney urged demonstrators to behave peacefully.

"The current constitutional impasse is an internal Egyptian situation that can only be resolved by the Egyptian people, through peaceful democratic dialogue," he told reporters.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the decree gives Mursi more power than the interim military junta from which he took over.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an Austrian paper he would encourage Mursi to resolve the issue by dialogue.

DECREE'S SCOPE DEBATABLE

Trying to ease tensions with judges, Mursi assured Egypt's highest judicial authority that elements of his decree giving his decisions immunity applied only to matters of "sovereign" importance. That should limit it to issues such as declaring war, but experts said there was room for interpretation.

In another step to avoid more confrontation, the Muslim Brotherhood cancelled plans for a rival mass rally in Cairo on Tuesday to support the decree. Violence has flared in Cairo in the past when both sides have taken to the streets.

But there has been no retreat on other elements of the decree, including a stipulation that the Islamist-dominated body writing a new constitution be protected from legal challenge.

"The decree must be cancelled and the constituent assembly should be reformed. All intellectuals have left it and now it is controlled by Islamists," said 50-year-old Noha Abol Fotouh.

With its popular legitimacy undermined by the withdrawal of most of its non-Islamist members, the assembly faces a series of court cases from plaintiffs who say it was formed illegally.

Mursi issued the decree on November 22, a day after he won U.S. and international praise for brokering an end to eight days of violence between Israel and Hamas around the Gaza Strip.

Mursi's decree was seen as targeting in part a legal establishment still largely unreformed from Mubarak's era, when the Brotherhood was outlawed.

Though both Islamists and their opponents broadly agree that the judiciary needs reform, Mursi's rivals oppose his methods.

Rulings from an array of courts this year have dealt a series of blows to the Brotherhood, leading to the dissolution of the first constitutional assembly and the lower house of parliament elected a year ago. The Brotherhood dominated both.

The judiciary blocked an attempt by Mursi to reconvene the Brotherhood-led parliament after his election victory. It also stood in the way of his attempt to sack the prosecutor general, another Mubarak holdover, in October.

In his decree, Mursi gave himself the power to sack that prosecutor and appoint a new one. In open defiance of Mursi, some judges are refusing to acknowledge that step.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Seham Eloraby, Marwa Awad and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and Michael Shields in Vienna; Writing by Edmund Blair and Tom Perry; Editing by Giles Elgood/Mark Heinrich)

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Sex tape used to bribe Chinese official goes viral

BEIJING (AP) — A 5-year-old sex tape of an 18-year-old woman allegedly hired by developers to sleep with a city official is causing yet another scandal for China's ruling Communists in the city formerly led by fallen politician Bo Xilai.

The 50-something official, Lei Zhengfu, was fired from his position as district party secretary after the video, an apparent extortion attempt, went viral earlier this month and his jowly, pop-eyed mug became the butt of numerous Internet caricatures. But the scandal may still be growing, as a whistleblowing former journalist says he may release similar tapes of more city officials soon.

The party is already reeling from the scandal that triggered Bo's purge and further battered the party's reputation in the public mind. Chongqing, the city that he ran, has been depicted by prosecutors and state media as rife with cover-ups, abuse of power and corruption. Bo's wife was convicted of murdering a British businessman, and Bo himself faces allegations of corruption and obstruction of justice in the murder case.

News of the sex tape, which was apparently shot in 2007 but only leaked this month, comes as China's newly installed leadership ramps up anti-corruption efforts as it deals with a steady stream of bribery and graft cases that it fears has undermined its authority.

The tape exploded on the Chinese Internet Nov. 20 when screenshots of it were uploaded by a Beijing-based former journalist Zhu Ruifeng to his Hong Kong-registered website, an independent online clearing house for corruption allegations.

The lurid images, apparently taken secretly from a bedside table, show Lei having sex with a woman. Zhu told The Associated Press that the woman, whose face is not visible in the screen grabs, was hired by a construction company to sleep with Lei in return for construction contracts. The company later tried to use the tape to extort more business from Lei, he said.

Zhu says he obtained the video from someone inside the Chongqing Public Security Bureau who gave it on condition of anonymity. He said he was also given tapes implicating five other Chongqing officials but is trying to verify their content before releasing them.

Zhu said that after the blackmail attempt, Lei reported the case to Chongqing officials sometime around 2009, which led to the construction boss being jailed for a year on unrelated charges and the woman being detained for a month.

Xinhua reported Monday that Chongqing's corruption watchdog had pledged a thorough investigation of Lei, who was dismissed Friday, but said it had yet to formally receive a report about the allegations against Lei or the footage.

The China Daily in an editorial Tuesday said the case showed that the "Internet is worth being embraced by the country's corruption busters as a close ally."

It also called for greater transparency in handling this and other cases, and listed a few of the lingering questions that the salacious case has thrown up.

"Strangely, the mistress was once detained and the contractor jailed for blackmailing Lei," it said. "What had happened? ... These are crucial questions waiting to be answered."

With a younger set of incoming leaders announced this month in Beijing, the government is keen to show that those in power are worthy of their posts and that wrongdoers will be weeded out. In his first remarks to the press after being appointed as the new Communist Party chief, Xi Jinping vowed to tackle corruption.

The party's corruption watchdog underlined its zero-tolerance for graft on Monday.

"There is no place for corrupt figures to hide away within the party," the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.

Many Chinese, however, are cynical about the allegations against high-profile party members and that they signal a true crackdown on corruption. Many think Bo was no more or less dirty than the average Chinese politician and that he was deposed not for his behavior but because he was on the losing end of factional power struggle.

Xiao Weilong, 30, an insurance salesman in Beijing, bemoaned how "ordinary people can't do anything about" cases such as Lei's.

"These sorts of abnormal things have become the norm, and we don't have any say," he said Tuesday.

Zhu, the journalist who broke the Lei story, said the fact that his website had not been blocked despite the allegations it outlined was a possible sign that the government is more serious than in the past getting tough on corruption.

"Possibly what we are seeing is that the new leaders are perhaps taking steps toward enforcing the constitution, a sliver of a new dawn," he said.

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HTC confirms 5-inch ‘Deluxe’ smartphone won’t launch in Europe

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Berry's ex says he was threatened before fight

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Halle Berry's ex-boyfriend claims the actress's fiance threatened to kill him during a Thanksgiving confrontation that left him with a broken rib, bruised face and under arrest.

Gabriel Aubry's claims are included in court filings that led a judge Monday to grant a restraining order against actor Olivier Martinez, who is engaged to the Oscar-winning actress.

Aubry, 37, was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery after his confrontation with Martinez on Thursday, but he states in the civil court filings that he was not the aggressor and that he was threatened and attacked without provocation. Martinez told police that Aubry had attacked first, the filings state.

A representative for Martinez could not be immediately reached for comment.

Aubry's filing claims Martinez threatened him the day before the fight at an event at his daughter's school that he and the actors attended. Aubry, a model, has a 4-year-old daughter with Berry and the former couple have been engaged in a lengthy custody battle.

The proceedings have been confidential, but Aubry states a major aspect of the case was Berry's wish to move to Paris and take her daughter with her. The request was denied Nov. 9, Berry's court filings state, and Aubry shares joint custody of the young girl.

Aubry claims Martinez told him, "You cost us $3 million," while he was punched and kicked him in the driveway of Berry's home. Aubry had gone to the home to allow his daughter to spend Thanksgiving with her mother, the filings state. Aubry claims Martinez threatened to kill him if Aubry didn't move to Paris.

Berry was not in the driveway during the confrontation and neither was their daughter, the documents state.

Photos of Aubry's face with cuts and a black eye were included in his court filing.

A judge set a hearing for Dec. 17 to consider whether a three-year restraining order should be granted. Aubry has a Dec. 13 court date for the possible battery case, which has not yet been filed by prosecutors.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

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Bounce houses a party hit but kids' injuries soar

CHICAGO (AP) — They may be a big hit at kids' birthday parties, but inflatable bounce houses can be dangerous, with the number of injuries soaring in recent years, a nationwide study found.

Kids often crowd into bounce houses, and jumping up and down can send other children flying into the air, too.

The numbers suggest 30 U.S. children a day are treated in emergency rooms for broken bones, sprains, cuts and concussions from bounce house accidents. Most involve children falling inside or out of the inflated playthings, and many children get hurt when they collide with other bouncing kids.

The number of children aged 17 and younger who got emergency-room treatment for bounce house injuries has climbed along with the popularity of bounce houses — from fewer than 1,000 in 1995 to nearly 11,000 in 2010. That's a 15-fold increase, and a doubling just since 2008.

"I was surprised by the number, especially by the rapid increase in the number of injuries," said lead author Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Amusement parks and fairs have bounce houses, and the playthings can also be rented or purchased for home use.

Smith and colleagues analyzed national surveillance data on ER treatment for nonfatal injuries linked with bounce houses, maintained by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Their study was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Only about 3 percent of children were hospitalized, mostly for broken bones.

More than one-third of the injuries were in children aged 5 and younger. The safety commission recommends against letting children younger than 6 use full-size trampolines, and Smith said barring kids that young from even smaller, home-use bounce houses would make sense.

"There is no evidence that the size or location of an inflatable bouncer affects the injury risk," he said.

Other recommendations, often listed in manufacturers' instruction pamphlets, include not overloading bounce houses with too many kids and not allowing young children to bounce with much older, heavier kids or adults, said Laura Woodburn, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Amusement Ride Safety Officials.

The study didn't include deaths, but some accidents are fatal. Separate data from the product safety commission show four bounce house deaths from 2003 to 2007, all involving children striking their heads on a hard surface.

Several nonfatal accidents occurred last year when bounce houses collapsed or were lifted by high winds.

A group that issues voluntary industry standards says bounce houses should be supervised by trained operators and recommends that bouncers be prohibited from doing flips and purposefully colliding with others, the study authors noted.

Bounce house injuries are similar to those linked with trampolines, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended against using trampolines at home. Policymakers should consider whether bounce houses warrant similar precautions, the authors said.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

Trade group: http://www.naarso.com

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Experts exhume Arafat, seek poison proof

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Forensic experts took samples from Yasser Arafat's buried corpse in the West Bank on Tuesday, trying to determine if he was murdered by Israeli agents using the hard-to-trace radioactive poison, Polonium.

Palestinians witnessed the funeral of their hero and longtime leader eight years ago, but conspiracy theories surrounding his death have never been laid to rest.

Many are convinced their icon was the victim of a cowardly assassination, and may stay convinced whatever the outcome of this autopsy. But some in the city of Ramallah where he lies deplored the exhumation.

"This is wrong. After all this time, today they suddenly want to find out the truth?" said construction worker Ahmad Yousef, 31, who stopped to watch the disinterment, carried out behind a wall of blue plastic near the Palestinian presidency headquarters.

"They should have done it eight years ago," he said.

French magistrates in August opened a murder inquiry into Arafat's death in Paris in 2004 after a Swiss institute said it had discovered high levels of polonium on clothing of his which was supplied by his widow, Suha, for a television documentary.

"Samples will be taken according to a very strict protocol and these samples will be analyzed," said Darcy Christen, spokesman for Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland that carried out the original tests on Arafat's clothes.

"In order to do these analyses, to check, cross-check and double cross-check, it will take several months and I don't think we'll have anything tangible available before March or April next year," he added.

Arafat was always a freedom fighter to Palestinians but a terrorist to Israelis first, and a partner for peace only later. He led the bid for a Palestinian state through years of war and peacemaking, then died in a French hospital aged 75 after a short, mysterious illness.

No autopsy was carried out at the time, at the request of Suha, and French doctors who treated him said they were unable to determine the cause of death.

But allegations of foul play immediately surfaced, and many Palestinians pointed the finger at Israel, which confined Arafat to his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah for the final two and a half years of his life after a Palestinian uprising erupted.

Israel denies murdering him. Its leader at the time, Ariel Sharon, now lies in a coma from which he is expected never to awake. Israel invited the Palestinian leadership to release all Arafat's medical records, which were never made public following his death and still have not been opened.

FRENCH INVESTIGATORS

Polonium, apparently ingested with food, was found to have caused the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. But some experts have questioned whether Arafat could have died in this way, pointing to a brief recovery during his illness that they said was not consistent with radioactive poisoning. They also noted he did not lose all his hair.

Eight years is considered the limit to detect any traces of the fast-decaying polonium and Lausanne hospital questioned in August if it would be worth seeking any samples, if access to Arafat's body was delayed as late as "October or November."

Not all of Arafat's family agreed to the exhumation, and his wife Suha chose not to attend the operation she had prompted.

Working in parallel with the forensic team, French magistrates were in Ramallah this week to ask if members of Arafat's inner circle might be able to shed light on his death.

One source told Reuters the French had a list of 60 questions, and had questioned one man for five hours.

Many Palestinians acknowledge that a Palestinian would almost certainly have had to administer any poison, wittingly or unwittingly.

(Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Douglas Hamilton and Tom Pfeiffer)

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Tourists trickle into violence-plagued W. Myanmar

MRAUK-U, Myanmar (AP) — It was dusk in a corner of Myanmar recently shaken by some of the bloodiest sectarian violence in a generation, and a dozen Canadian tourists climbed to the top of a grassy hill, cameras ready to capture the sweeping view.

Moss-covered pagodas rose from foggy hilltops all along the horizon, their bell-shaped silhouettes dark against the blue sky. Birds flitted through lush treetops. A small throng of children played on a dirt road nearby.

From here, it was hard to tell anything was wrong.

Just six miles (10 kilometers) to the south, though, security forces have blocked roads to a village that was reportedly overrun last month by a frenzied mob of Rakhine Buddhists armed with swords and spears who beheaded Muslim civilians and slaughtered women and children.

Across western Myanmar's Rakhine state, the United Nations is distributing emergency supplies of food and shelter to terrified refugees who have fled burning homes. A nighttime curfew is in force in several townships, including Mrauk-U.

But none of that has kept a small but steady trickle of determined tourists from traveling here to ogle at the monuments of this region's glorious past.

"We heard the news before coming," Caroline Barbeau, a French-speaking social worker from Montreal, said of violence that has shaken the region since June, displacing 110,000 people from their homes.

But "we've had no problems," she said. "The people are very nice, very kind."

Asked what had touched her most, Barbeau turned pensive. "Their smiles."

Mrauk-U itself has been spared the bloodshed between Buddhist and Muslims that has scarred other parts of Rakhine state. It is calm, and for foreign tourists, safe. But the Muslims who once worked and traded here just a few months ago no longer dare set foot in the town, part of a worrying new pattern of segregation that has split the two communities.

What draws tourists to this remote place are its storied relics — hundreds of them, scattered across the hilltops. Mrauk-U is the spiritual heartland of the Rakhine, the former capital of a now-defunct Buddhist kingdom that reached its height in the 16th century. The dynasty conquered a swath of mountainous territory along what is now Myanmar's western coast, waging major battles against rival empires — including Muslims from Bengal.

Their descendants — the Buddhist Rakhine and the Muslim Rohingya — have been fighting and killing each other across this region in recent months.

The conflict centers around the question of nationality, scarce land, and some say, racism. The Rakhine consider the darker-skinned Muslims among them to be foreign intruders from Bangladesh, even though many have lived here for generations. The government denies the Rohingya citizenship, considering them "Bengalis." But Bangladesh does too, effectively rendering them stateless.

After three Muslim Rohingya men allegedly raped and murdered a Buddhist Rakhine woman in late May, violence rocked the state for a week in June, then again in October. In what may have been the bloodiest episode so far, a thousands-strong mob of Buddhists with spears, arrows and homemade guns overran the village Yan Thei, just south of Mrauk-U, razing most of it to the ground, according to Human Rights Watch.

Although the violence has subsided, tensions have not, and there are fears the worst is yet to come.

Which raises the question: Should any tourists be traveling here at all?

During Myanmar's half-century of military rule, which ended last year, only the most intrepid travelers made their way to places like Mrauk-U, and even then there was debate over whether traveling to the Southeast Asian country would bolster the oppressive junta.

But after the army ceded direct power last year to an elected but still military-dominated government, the new president embarked on a wave of widely praised democratic reforms, and the number of tourists skyrocketed.

The serene pace and historic legacy of places like this are a big part of the draw.

Even the route to Mrauk-U is worth the trip — a slow, meandering boat journey up the Kaladan River past a timeless horizon of shimmering rice fields. Thatched bamboo huts rise from the water's edge on stilts. Oxen graze. Golden pagodas rise from green hills.

Philippe Grivel, a retired Frenchman traveling solo in Rakhine state, said he was afraid not of the potential for violence, but of the possibility of missing one of Myanmar's grandest historical sites.

After the fighting began, the government banned local travel agencies from taking foreign tourists to the region. But nothing has stopped individual travelers from making the journey, and special permits have been granted to some larger tour groups.

When Grivel emailed a hotel in Mrauk-U to inquire if it was possible to visit, they told him that if the authorities didn't turn him back at the airport in Sittwe, the state capital, he was free to come.

Explorateur, the Canadian tour agency that arranged Barbeau's travel and advertises three-week trips to Myanmar called "Light and Harmony," assured its clients the trip would be safe.

And it was.

"This is still a virgin country without many tourists," said another of the Canadian tourists, a francophone from Montreal who gave only her family name, Allard, because of security concerns. "It's magnificent."

The sightseers — 12 tourists and one guide — spent several days bicycling through Mrauk-U's quaint, crumbling streets. They visited the town market. They saw nothing disturbing.

Allard, though, was surprised to learn that one of Mrauk-U's monasteries is home to more than 700 Buddhist refugees, nine of whom had just walked there after hearing rumors that Muslims armed with Molotov cocktails were readying for an assault.

The tour group did not visit the monastery. But they did express concern over the violence. Allard called the recent bloodshed "horrible."

On the eve of their final day, the group toured Mrauk-U's most famous temple, a stone labyrinth called Shittaung. Also known as the "Temple of Victory," it was built in 1535 to commemorate King Min Bin's conquest over the 12 provinces of Muslim-dominated Bengal.

As a Burmese guide explained the temple's history, the group snapped photos of the ubiquitous stone Buddhas lined up inside its dim, maze-like hallways. Some strained their necks to gaze up at the elaborate royal artwork painted on the ceilings above.

Kyaw Zaw Tun, who works at the temple and lost a brother in the October clashes, said it would normally be full of local Buddhist pilgrims at this time of year.

But its halls are almost empty, its guest book filled with, on average, one or two foreign visitors a day.

Asked if Muslims had ever visited before the violence began, he shook his head with disgust.

Never.

"If they came in here now," he said, pausing to tighten his right hand as if it were a knife about to slice meat, "chop, chop, chop."

As he spoke, the Canadians walked out of one of the temple's stone doors, one by one. They then climbed to the top of a nearby hill beside Shittaung, pulled out bottles of mineral water, and watched the sun sink beneath the hills.

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Betfair pulls out of Greece over permits row

LONDON (Reuters) – Online gambling exchange Betfair said it would withdraw from the Greek market until there was greater clarity on gaming regulation in the country.

Betfair, which has not yet applied for a permit to operate in Greece, questioned the cost and conditions attached to permits required by gaming firms to trade in the country.

“According to legal advice received, the value of these permits is unclear and we consider the gambling legislation in the country to be inconsistent with European law,” Betfair said on Monday.

“The associated fiscal conditions attached to these permits, which may include payment of taxes on historical revenues, make the market economically unattractive.”

Earlier this month the Greek Gaming Commission said gambling firms operating in Greece without a permit would face financial penalties and criminal sanctions.

Betfair said it believes there are “significant issues with the legality of this decision” by the Greek Gaming Commission.

It added that it was disappointed the European Commission had not moved to prevent what Betfair calls “protectionist behavior.”

Earlier this month Betfair, which launched 12 years ago and operates an exchange system that allows gamblers to bet against each other rather than the bookmaker, withdrew its online sports betting exchange in Germany because of a tax levied on stakes on sports events from July 2012.

The European Commission last month said it was not proposing EU-wide legislation to regulate online gambling.

Prior to Betfair’s decision to withdraw from the market, it had been expected to generate 13 million pounds ($ 20.81 million) of revenue from the Greek market in the current financial year.

($ 1 = 0.6246 British pounds)

(Reporting by Rhys Jones; editing by James Davey)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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