Romney 'to release tax returns'

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22 January 2012 Last updated at 17:19 GMT Mr Romney has emphasised his success as a venture capitalist US Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has said he will release recent tax returns on Tuesday.

Mr Romney, the early favourite in primary elections, appeared embarrassed during the South Carolina campaign by the issue of how much tax he paid.

Last week he said he in effect paid 15%, less than most working Americans.

Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary on Saturday by an unexpectedly wide margin, beating the former Massachusetts governor by 40% to 28%.

The candidate winning South Carolina has gone on to win the Republican nomination in each election since 1980.

Two other candidates, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, polled 18% and 13% respectively.

'Full fair taxes'

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Mr Romney said the question of tax had become a distraction for his campaign, and he wanted to re-focus on the main issues.

"I will release my tax returns for 2010, which is the last returns which were completed, on Tuesday of this week," he said.

Continue reading the main story Thought to be worth $190-250mFamily received at least $9.6m in income from Jan 2010 to Sept 2011Investments worth up to $32m in offshore holdingsAt least six funds set up in Cayman Islands tax haven, according to AP"And I will also release at the same time an estimate for 2011 tax returns."

"I know people will try and find something, but we pay full fair taxes and I'm sure people will find it's a substantial amount," he added.

Correspondents say Mr Romney has campaigned on the strength of his success as an entrepreneur, but as a wealthy patrician figure he is regarded negatively by some conservatives.

He is a multi-millionaire with three homes and lives mainly on income from his investments, for which only 15% tax is payable.

He has been criticised for describing payments totalling $373,000 (£240,000) in a year for paid speeches as "not very much" money.

Mr Romney had led the Republican field since November and appeared to have won the first two contests of the campaign, in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But the Iowa caucus result was overturned in a recount which gave a narrow victory to Mr Santorum.

Battleground state Continue reading the main story And Mr Gingrich, who polled poorly in both Iowa and New Hampshire, appeared to find his stride in South Carolina, attacking Mr Romney over his business and tax records.

BBC North America editor Mark Mardell, in South Carolina, says a Gingrich win is important, because all along the story of this race has been the search by conservatives for an alternative to Mr Romney.

It is just possible they have settled on Mr Gingrich, and at the very least such a result will puncture the sense that eventually Mr Romney will triumph, our correspondent adds.

The contest for the next state, Florida, is now seen as crucial, being a major battleground state in the US general election, with a diverse electorate and where a lot of money will be spent campaigning.

Primaries and caucuses will be held in every US state over the next few months to pick a Republican nominee before the eventual winner is anointed at the party convention in August to take on Democratic President Barack Obama in November.

Source BBC

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An 'Overwhelmed' Amanda Knox Returns Home—Will Seattle Embrace Her?

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Amanda Knox (R) acknowledges the cheers of supporters while her mother Edda Mellas comforts her on October 4, 2011 in Seattle.

Stephen Brashear / Getty Images

Amanda Knox dreamed of going home. Now she's there. She touched down in Seattle late Tuesday and was greeted by family, friends and a whole lot of reporters.

Knox landed at about 5:08 p.m. local time in Seattle on a British Airways flight from London and her family held an immediate press conference outside of Sea-Tac Airport, where the 24-year-old Knox made her first public comments since leaving Italy.

After wiping away tears—and having her family remind her to speak in English, not Italian—and while a crowd at the press conference outside of the airport shouted “welcome home, Amanda,” Knox made her first public appearance on American soil.

“I'm really overwhelmed right now,” she said to the hundreds who came to watch see her. “I was looking down from the airplane and it seemed like everything wasn't real. What is important to me is to say thank you to everyone who has believed in me."

“My family's the most important thing to me right now and I just want to go and be with them.”

(LIST: Top 9 Tweets About the Amanda Knox Verdict)

From there, her family swept her away to the West Seattle neighborhood where both her parents, who are divorced, still live.

The city of Seattle seems to have locked on to the Amanda Knox story, avidly choosing to embrace its native daughter. There were various signs of support in her neighborhood, including a blue sign with “Welcome Home!” in yellow lettering on the home of her father, Curt Knox, and another on a local record store marquee.

Throughout the city, including the schools she attended, the responses were equally warm. At an assembly on Monday at Explorer West Middle School, where Knox was a model student at the private school and even had a scholarship named in her honor, students cheered after the acquittal verdict was announced in Italy. Claudia Rose, the school's admissions director, told the Seattle P-I that “we've always stood behind her and her family. I can't wait to talk to her. I just can't wait.”

(MORE: Amanda Knox is Free, but Italy Isn't Really Pleased)

Students and staff at Knox's alma matter, Seattle Preparatory, a private Jesuit school in the city, have spent years supporting her with fundraisers and care packages, so the mood there was plenty celebratory. And her hometown college, the University of Washington, also in Seattle, where she was a student studying writing and foreign languages when she decided to study abroad, students and staff couldn't stop talking excitedly about the verdict. Some on campus even supported Amanda T-shirts to support her.

(MORE: Three Countries, Three Different Portrayals)

If Facebook is any indicator, tears and joy were the norm for Seattleites following the case and the Italian appeals court's Oct. 3 decision to overturn her earlier conviction for the death of Meredith Kercher, her British roommate while in Italy.

Knox's real friends, the ones who started the Friends of Amanda group, stood in the limelight too, with Tom Wright, one of the group's leaders, reading a statement that says they welcome her back with “open arms and open hearts” and that Amanda deserves “all the joy and warmth and fun” of normal life.

(LIST: Who's Who in the Italian Murder Trial)

A 'normal' life is probably a long way off for Knox. Which begs the question: How will she handle her fame? Will she hide away, or will she venture out into the community she long called home? That decision rests in her hands— surely a welcome change after four years behind bars.

WATCH: Amanda Knox Reacts as Her Sentence is Overturned

Tim Newcomb is a contributor for TIME. Find him on Twitter at @tdnewcomb. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

"(The Rapture will) be finished out on Oct. 21, that's coming very shortly. That looks like it will be ... the final end of everything."

— HAROLD CAMPING, giving an update on when the Rapture, an event he says started on May 21, will finish (via Christian Post)

It's one of those great movie plot twists that left us all in shock — and 4-year-old Faris shows he's no exception to the rule. Read More

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Germany returns Namibian skulls

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30 September 2011 Last updated at 13:59 GMT The Namibian delegation attended a service in Berlin Namibian tribal leaders are visiting Berlin to collect the skulls of 20 compatriots who died under Germany's colonial rule in the early 1900s.

German scientists took the heads to perform experiments seeking to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans over black Africans.

The skulls were uncovered three years ago in medical archive exhibits.

A ceremony is being held in the German capital to return the remains in what is seen as gesture of reconciliation.

"We have come first and foremost to receive the mortal human remains of our forefathers and mothers and to return them to the land of their ancestors," Ueriuka Festus Tjikuua, a member of the Namibian delegation, told reporters.

Continue reading the main story

In the 1880s, Germany acquired present-day Namibia, calling it German South-West Africa. In 1904 the Herero, the largest of about 200 ethnic groups, rose up against colonial rule killing more than a 120 civilians.

The German response was ruthless. Gen Lothar von Trotha signed a notorious extermination order against the Herero, defeated them in battle and drove them into the desert, where most died of thirst. Of an estimated 65,000 Herero, only 15,000 survived. It is thought about 10,000 Nama people also died.

In 1985, a UN report classified the events as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South-West Africa, and therefore the earliest attempted genocide in the 20th Century. In 2004, Germany's ambassador to Namibia expressed regret for what happened.

The skulls belong to 20 people who died after an uprising against their German colonial rulers more than 100 years ago.

They were among hundreds who starved to death after being rounded up in camps.

Some of the dead had their heads removed and of these, about 300 were taken to Germany, arriving between 1909 and 1914.

The skulls gathered dust in German archives until three years ago when a German reporter uncovered them at the Medical History Museum of the Charite hospital in Berlin, and at Freiburg University in the south-west.

German researchers believe the skulls belong to 11 people from the Nama ethnic group and nine from the Herero.

They were four women, 15 men and a boy.

'Nazi forerunner'

Mr Tjikuua said the mission intended to "extend a hand of friendship" to Germans.

Namibians, he said, wished to encourage a dialogue "with the full participation and involvement of the representatives of the descendants of those that suffered heavily under dreadful and atrocious German colonial rule".

The conflict dates back nearly a century

Charite spokeswoman Claudia Peter said the purported research on the skulls performed by German scientists had been rooted in perverse racial theories that later planted the seeds for the Nazis' genocidal ideology.

"They thought that they could prove that certain peoples were worth less than they were," she told AFP news agency.

"What these anthropologists did to these people was wrong and their descendants are still suffering for it."

The German foreign ministry praised co-operation between the German and Namibian sides over the skull repatriation as "excellent".

Germany has consistently refused to pay reparations to its former colony, pointing out that it does give the country development aid.

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President Saleh returns to Yemen amid gunfire, blasts

1 of 5. Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh points during an interview with selected media, including Reuters, in Sanaa in this May 25, 2011 file photo. Saleh returned to Yemen on September 23, 2011, state television reported, after spending three months in Saudi Arabia recovering from a June assassination attempt.
Credit: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah/Files
By Erika Solomon and Mohammed Ghobari
SANAA | Fri Sep 23, 2011 3:48am EDT
SANAA (Reuters) - President Ali Abdullah Saleh returned to Yemen on Friday after three months in Saudi Arabia recovering from an assassination attempt and was greeted by the sound of gunfire and explosions across the capital.
Deeply unpopular, the president had faced protests against his three-decade rule since January and his return, first reported by state television and confirmed by Reuters, raises the risk of all-out civil war in the volatile Arabian Peninsula country.
Violence in the capital Sanaa, which had been escalating this week as loyalist troops clashed with forces backing a mass protest movement, is expected to intensify.
"We're definitely going to have an escalation of violence, but let him come back," said Mohammed al-Asl, a protest organizer. "We want him to come back and be tried for his crimes."
Yemeni state television reported his return, saying, "Ali Abdullah Saleh, President of the Republic, returned this morning to the land of the nation safely after a trip for treatment in Riyadh that lasted more than three months."
Within minutes of the announcement, loud bursts of gunfire and explosions were heard echoing through the capital. There were also fireworks.
The death count from five days of violence has risen to more than 100. Since the revolt against Saleh began eight months ago, about 450 people have been killed.
Protesters are expected to flow onto the streets of the ancient capital of Sanaa during Friday prayers, demanding an end to Saleh's 33-year rule.
The United States, Saudi Arabia and other powers fear al-Qaeda's Yemen wing could exploit the growing lawlessness in the nearly failed state. Al Qaeda militants have already seized cities in a Yemeni province just east of a key oil shipping channel in recent months.
"This is an ominous sign, returning at a time like this probably signals he intends to use violence to resolve this. This is dangerous," said Abdulghani al-Iryani, a political analyst and co-founder of the Democratic Awakening Movement.
"His people will feel that they are in a stronger position and they will refuse to compromise. Basically this means the political process is dead in the water."
ENTRENCHED
All week, gun battles and shelling between state troops and soldiers backing the protest movement shook areas near "Change Square," the name demonstrators have given the street where thousands have camped out for eight months.
Protesters, inspired by uprisings across the Arab world, marched into parts of the city controlled by pro-Saleh forces on Sunday and were met by heavy gunfire. The clashes escalated when troops loyal to army defector General Ali Mohsen joined in on the side of the protesters.
Heavy explosions and gunfire were heard in Hasaba on Thursday, a neighborhood of Sanaa where the powerful anti-Saleh tribal leader Sadeq al-Ahmar lives, residents said.
"Everyone is afraid this is going to lead to more violence...but we won't accept the continuation of this dictatorship, no matter the price," said youth protest group organizer Manea al-Mattari.
Snipers said to be lurking on the upper floors of buildings killed four protesters and wounded at least 14 around Change Square, a doctor at the square's clinic said. Angry protesters set fire to a house where they believed snipers were hiding, while medics set up a blood donation campaign for the wounded.
A guard at the house of an opposition figure also died when Saleh loyalists attacked his house.
Negotiations on a peaceful transfer of power have stalled, and the U.N.'s Yemen envoy said the country on the south end of the Arabian Peninsula would be torn apart unless a political solution is reached soon between Saleh's camp and his foes.
Before his return, Saleh had been in nearby Saudi Arabia recovering from wounds suffered in a June assassination attempt, leaving Yemen in a tense political limbo.
Diplomats had been pushing for a transfer of power plan, which they said Yemeni politicians were just days away from finalizing when the latest fighting erupted.
Saleh has on three occasions backed out of a plan brokered by Gulf neighbors for him to step down. Yemenis eager to get on with their lives said they feared that negotiators did not have much time left before violence spiraled out of control.
A truce called by Yemen's vice president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi earlier this week broke down in just a matter of hours, highlighting the need for a political breakthrough.
A government spokesman said that the vice president was still involved in power transfer talks.
"The return of the President will not affect his giving the VP the authority to negotiate over the operational mechanism and signing the Gulf initiative and conducting elections," Deputy Information Minister Abdo al-Janadi told Al Jazeera television.
Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary General Abdbullatif al-Zayani flew into Sanaa this week to try and resurrect the deal but left after two days with nothing to show for his efforts.
(Writing by Reed Stevenson; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Rosalind Russell)

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