Abdullah Ocalan Announces ceasefire

Diyarbakir, Turkey (Reuters)-a jailed Kurdish Leader Abdullah Ocalan, announced a cease-fire Thursday and asked the militants to put down arms and withdraw from Turkey's territory.

The announcement raises hopes for an end to three decades of conflict between Kurdish militants and the Government of Turkey that has killed tens of thousands of people, the AFP report.

"We are at a stage where the weapons must be silenced," Ocalan said in a letter written from his prison island that strangled and be read to a broad audience in the majority Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Southeast Turkey,, by a member of the Kurdish Parliament.

"We are at a stage where our armed elements should be withdrawn from Turkey," said the leader of the Kurdistan Workers ' Party (PKK), adding that it was time for political struggle is carried out.

This appeal was submitted to coincide with the time the Kurdish new year or Newroz, and hundreds of thousands of people gathered to celebrate in Diyarbakir.

The announcement of the Armistice that shut down secret peace talks over the past few months between Turkey and Ocalan's intelligence.

Officials started negotiations with Turkey on Ocalan last October, with the main purpose of disarming rebels who use bases in Iraq as a place to launch attacks against security forces in the southeastern region of Turkey.

According to a plan that covered government and Ocalan Ankara, PKK would end hostilities and withdraw fighters from Turkey-warriors as the beginning of disarmament, in exchange for greater rights for Kurds established in the Constitution.

The fugitive Ocalan was arrested in Kenya on February 15, 1999 in a secret operation Turkey after he was exiled from Syria, where he was based for a decade to organize much of the PKK.

The initial verdict against Ocalan death sentence converted to life imprisonment sentence on a prison island off the coast of Istanbul since 2002.

Each year the Kurdish demonstrators clashed with police to protest Turkey's arrest of their leader.

Turkey, the EU and the u.s. considers the Kurdistan Workers ' Party (PKK) as a terrorist organization.

Turkey's military launched air attacks and ground operations are limited to the northern Iraq since August 2011 following the wave of attacks, the PKK guerrillas after the traffic-jammed a ceasefire before.

The PKK launched attacks from their hiding places in the remote mountains of Iraq as part of their war to gain greater rights and autonomy for the Kurdish population.

More than 40,000 people have died since the PKK took up arms in 1984. (M014)

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Raul Castro announces his retirement in 2018

Raul Castro.(REUTERS/Javier Galeano)

Havana (Reuters)-Cuban Leader Raul Castro announced on Sunday that he will step down from power after his second term as President ends in 2018.

Castro made the announcement in a speech that was broadcast nationwide shortly after Cuba's National Assembly chose him for a second five-year term as Chairman at the opening session of the new Parliament.

In one surprising move, Parliament recently voted young stars as his first Vice President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, 52 year old who is a member of the political Bureau, who rose through the ranks of the party in the provinces to become a successor may be the most celebrated by Castro.

Diaz-Canel will replace Castro if he can't run full term task.

Raul Castro, 81, who replaced his ailing official as President in 2008, has repeatedly called for senior leaders to hold office for no more than two times of the 5-year term.

He will soon start his second term.

At 2018 Castro will age 86 years. (AK)

Editors: B Kunto Wibisono

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Obama Announces Troop Withdrawal, Declares End to Iraq War

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Friday declared an end to the Iraq war, one of the longest and most divisive conflicts in U.S. history, announcing that all American troops would be withdrawn from the country by year's end.

Obama's statement put an end to months of wrangling over whether the U.S. would maintain a force in Iraq beyond 2011. He never mentioned the tense and ultimately fruitless negotiations with Iraq over whether to keep several thousand U.S. forces in Iraq as a training force and a hedge against meddling from Iran or other outside forces.

Instead, Obama spoke of a promise kept, a new day for a self-reliant Iraq and a focus on building up the economy at home.

"I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year," Obama said. "After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over."

[Check out our editorial cartoons on President Obama.]

Obama spoke after a private video conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and he offered assurances that the two leaders agreed on the decision.

The U.S. military presence in Iraq stands at just under 40,000. All U.S. troops are to exit the country in accordance with a deal struck between the countries in 2008 when George W. Bush was president.

Obama, an opponent of the war from the start, took office and accelerated the end of the conflict. In August 2010, he declared the U.S. combat mission over.

"Over the next two months our troops in Iraq, tens of thousands of them, will pack up their gear and board convoys for the journey home," Obama said. "The last American soldier will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high, proud of their success and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops."

More than 4,400 American military members have been killed since the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in March 2003.

The Associated Press first reported last week that the United States would not keep troops in Iraq past the year-end withdrawal deadline, except for some soldiers attached to the U.S. Embassy.

In recent months, Washington had been discussing with Iraqi leaders the possibility of several thousand American troops remaining to continue training Iraqi security forces.

Throughout the discussions, Iraqi leaders refused to give U.S. troops immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, and the Americans refused to stay without that guarantee.

Moreover, Iraq's leadership has been split on whether it wanted American forces to stay.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the turmoil in the Middle East.]

When the 2008 agreement requiring all U.S. forces to leave Iraq was passed, many U.S. officials assumed it would inevitably be renegotiated so that Americans could stay longer.

The U.S. said repeatedly this year it would entertain an offer from the Iraqis to have a small force stay behind, and the Iraqis said they would like American military help. But as the year wore on and the number of American troops that Washington was suggesting could stay behind dropped, it became increasingly clear that a U.S. troop presence was not a sure thing.

The issue of legal protection for the Americans was the deal-breaker.

Pulling troops out by the end of this year allows both al-Maliki and Obama to claim victory.

Obama kept a campaign promise to end the war, and al-Maliki will have ended the American presence and restored Iraqi sovereignty.

The president used the war statement to once again turn attention back to the economy, the domestic concern that is expected to determine whether he wins re-election next year.

"After a decade of war the nation that we need to build and the nation that we will build is our own, an America that sees its economic strength restored just as we've restored our leadership around the globe."

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College Board Announces Changes to AP Chemistry Course

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The College Board announced today that it has revised its Advanced Placement Chemistry and Spanish courses. The new courses will go into effect starting fall 2013.

Trevor Packer, senior vice president for the AP program at the organization said in a statement that the courses were redesigned to “represent the best practices in their disciplines.”

For chemistry, that means less of an emphasis on in-class lectures and more time spent doing lab work, something College Board president Gaston Caperton said the nonprofit organization was hoping to do with many of its STEM courses.

“We are in the process of shifting the focus of AP science courses to emphasize not just what students know, but what they can do—the process and practice of science," he said at U.S. News’s Making Science Cool event last month.

[Learn about potential new AP STEM courses.]

The new AP chemistry was redesigned by a group of educators and scientists around the nation and was funded by the National Science Foundation to “promote a balance between developing solid content knowledge and applying that knowledge to the practice of chemistry,” according to the announcement.

“In moving away from the lecture-and-demonstration model toward a more hands-on, interactive approach to studying chemistry,” the announcement says. “The course also enables students to take risks, apply inquiry skills, and direct and monitor their own progress.”

More than 122,000 students at some 8,000 high schools enroll in AP Chemistry, making it the 11th most popular AP course.

A redesigned AP biology course curriculum will go into effect in fall 2012.

Have something to share? Send news and submissions to stem@usnews.com.

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