The Lede Blog: Accounts of a Siege in Syria Differ on Rebel YouTube Channels and British Television

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As my colleagues Liam Stack and Hania Mourtada reported, Syrian activists said last week that members of a pro-government militia known as the shabiha had massacred dozens of civilians this month in the village of Aqrab, northwest of the city of Homs, just outside the town of Houla.

What made the claim of a massacre in the village unusual were the accounts of witnesses, identified as survivors of the atrocity on rebel YouTube channels, who said that the victims were Alawites — members of the same minority sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, as President Bashar al-Assad and most members of the shabiha militia. In a civil war that has turned more sectarian over time, the claim that an Alawite militia had killed Alawite civilians, supposedly to keep them from being slaughtered by Sunni Muslim rebels instead, stood out.

Finding out what exactly happened in Aqrab is particularly difficult because, while the Syrian government denied that any massacre had taken place there, independent reporters have been unable to get into the town. Then too, it is hard to know how much weight to give to the extraordinary witness testimony posted on YouTube, since it appears to have been recorded under the watch of the rebel Free Syrian Army in the nearby town of Houla. A massacre in that town in May, blamed on the shabiha, brought global condemnation on the Assad government.

Shakeeb al-Jabri, a Syrian activist and journalist in neighboring Lebanon, noted on the day that the first reports of a massacre emerged there were wildly different accounts of what had taken place and how many people were killed.

Late last week, however, Alex Thomson of Britain’s Channel 4 News managed to travel to the outskirts of Aqrab, where he interviewed three people who claim to have escaped from the village to government-controlled territory. All three blamed Sunni rebels, not the pro-Assad Alawite militia, for the killing of Alawites in their village.

Restrictions on independent reporting inside Syria remain in place, but Mr. Thomson’s report, which was produced without the presence of any government minders, suggests that there might have been no massacre at all.

A video report from Syria broadcast by Britain’s Channel 4 News on Friday.

In a blog post introducing his report, Mr. Thomson acknowledges the difficulty of saying for sure who is telling the truth:

What follows is a series of eyewitness accounts which runs almost entirely against the version of what happened here which has gone global from rebel propaganda Web sites. We do not say what follows is the truth. But we can say it is the first independently observed story of Aqrab from the first outside journalist to reach this area.

We interviewed three key eyewitnesses in three separate locations. They could not have known either of our sudden arrival, nor did they know the identities of the other two eyewitnesses.

What is striking is that their accounts entirely corroborate each other, to the last detail. And their accounts are further backed up by at least a dozen conversations with other Alawites who had fled from Aqrab.

What happened, according to the witnesses who spoke to Mr. Thomson, is that hundreds of civilians from the village were trapped in one building, under siege from the rebels, for more than a week. The witnesses told Mr. Thomson, “the rebels wanted to take the women and children to al-Houla to use them as human shields against bombardment from government forces, and they believed they would kill the remaining men.”

Although negotiations to free all of the prisoners failed, the witnesses said, a number of people were released before some were killed and others were taken to Houla.

Responding to critics of his reporting on Twitter, Mr. Thomson said that his crew was not escorted by the government and stressed that none of the people he spoke with knew that the others had been interviewed. He added that all of what they said was “corroborated by more than 10 other off-camera interviews.”

He also noted that it was hard to understand, if there had been a massacre in Aqrab, why there was “not a scrap of video to back their story” on the rebel YouTube channels. “Invariably when there’s a massacre, the rebels put the bodies out on YouTube and make a song and dance about it. If the government really did massacre up to 250 people from President Assad’s own Alawite sect, YouTube would be 10 feet deep in rebel videos, of the bodies, of the funerals, of the carnage.”

As Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch told The Los Angeles Times, “”There are various narratives there, and we don’t have enough to have a conclusion yet.” He observed on Twitter that only an independent investigation could clear away the mystery, but that seems unlikely to happen while fighting is still going on in the area.

While the exact nature of the violence in Aqrab remains unclear, Hassan Hassan observed in a commentary for The National, it is striking that about 3,000 Alawites are said to remain in the village with 10,000 Sunnis, given the fierce sectarian warfare all around them. “Alawites are often portrayed as invariably sticking with the regime for survival,” Mr. Hassan wrote. “This is not accurate. Many Alawites are caught in the middle, just as are so many others in Syrian society. Twenty-one months into the violence, Alawites were still living alongside Sunnis in Aqrab — something worth considering.”

Not far from the village in northern Syria, Al Jazeera reported this week that several hundred residents of an Alawite village in northern Syria’s Idlib Province were forced to flee when a rebel brigade called Jubhat al-Nusra, which calls itself a Qaeda affiliate and has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, took control.

An Al Jazeera video report on Islamist fighters taking control of a village in northern Syria this week.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donating $500 million in stock to Silicon Valley charity

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SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday he is donating nearly $ 500 million in stock to a Silicon Valley charity with the aim of funding health and education issues.


Zuckerberg donated 18 million Facebook shares, valued at $ 498.8 million based on their Tuesday closing price. The beneficiary is the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a non-profit that works with donors to allocate their gifts.






This is Zuckerberg’s largest donation to date. He pledged $ 100 million in Facebook stock to Newark, New Jersey, public schools in 2010, before his company went public earlier this year. Later in 2010, he joined Giving Pledge, an effort led by Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO Warren Buffett to get the country’s richest people to donate most of their wealth. His wife, Priscilla Chan, joined with him.


In a Facebook post Tuesday, Zuckerberg, 28, said he’s “proud of the work” done by the foundation that his Newark donation launched, called Startup: Education, which has helped open charter schools, high schools and others.


With the latest contribution, he added, “we will look for areas in education and health to focus on next.” He did not give further details on what plans there may be for funds.


“Mark’s generous gift will change lives and inspire others in Silicon Valley and around the globe to give back and make the world a better place,” said Emmett D. Carson, CEO of the foundation.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Prince William and Kate Lunch with the Royal Family

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By Simon Perry





12/19/2012 at 09:30 AM EST







The Duchess and Duke of Cambridge


REX USA


It's been a busy pre-Christmas week for William and Kate.

Wednesday brought a festive lunch with Queen Elizabeth and other members of the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace, following Tuesday's lunch with their household – a menu of turkey and roast vegetables, though Kate, having dealt with morning sickness, sipped soft drinks, the restaurant said.

Still, she has felt better in recent days, and made a surprise appearance to present awards at Sunday's BBC's Sports Personality of the Year show.

Meanwhile, Royal Air Force Search and Rescue helicopter pilot William spent the weekend in Anglesey, North Wales.

Per tradition, the Queen will head to Sandringham, her estate in Norfolk, in the next day or so. It is remains to be seen if William and Kate will join her and most of the royal family for the festivities, as they did last year.

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Experts: Kids are resilient in coping with trauma

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WASHINGTON (AP) — They might not want to talk about the gunshots or the screams. But their toys might start getting into imaginary shootouts.


Last week's school shooting in Connecticut raises the question: What will be the psychological fallout for the children who survived?


For people of any age, regaining a sense of security after surviving violence can take a long time. They're at risk for lingering anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder.


But after the grief and fear fades, psychiatrists say most of Newtown's young survivors probably will cope without long-term emotional problems.


"Kids do tend to be highly resilient," said Dr. Matthew Biel, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.


And one way that younger children try to make sense of trauma is through play. Youngsters may pull out action figures or stuffed animals and re-enact what they witnessed, perhaps multiple times.


"That's the way they gain mastery over a situation that's overwhelming," Biel explained, saying it becomes a concern only if the child is clearly distressed while playing.


Nor is it unusual for children to chase each other playing cops-and-robbers, but now parents might see some also pretending they're dead, added Dr. Melissa Brymer of the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.


Among the challenges will be spotting which children are struggling enough that they may need professional help.


Newtown's tragedy is particularly heart-wrenching because of what such young children grappled with — like the six first-graders who apparently had to run past their teacher's body to escape to safety.


There's little scientific research specifically on PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, in children exposed to a burst of violence, and even less to tell if a younger child will have a harder time healing than an older one.


Overall, scientists say studies of natural disasters and wars suggest most children eventually recover from traumatic experiences while a smaller proportion develop long-term disorders such as PTSD. Brymer says in her studies of school shootings, that fraction can range from 10 percent to a quarter of survivors, depending on what they actually experienced. A broader 2007 study found 13 percent of U.S. children exposed to different types of trauma reported some symptoms of PTSD, although less than 1 percent had enough for an official diagnosis.


Violence isn't all that rare in childhood. In many parts of the world — and in inner-city neighborhoods in the U.S., too — children witness it repeatedly. They don't become inured to it, Biel said, and more exposure means a greater chance of lasting psychological harm.


In Newtown, most at risk for longer-term problems are those who saw someone killed, said Dr. Carol North of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who has researched survivors of mass shootings.


Friday's shootings were mostly in two classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary School, which has about 450 students through fourth-grade.


But those who weren't as close to the danger may be at extra risk, too, if this wasn't their first trauma or they already had problems such as anxiety disorders that increase their vulnerability, she said.


Right after a traumatic event, it's normal to have nightmares or trouble sleeping, to stick close to loved ones, and to be nervous or moody, Biel said.


To help, parents will have to follow their child's lead. Grilling a child about a traumatic experience isn't good, he stressed. Some children will ask a lot of questions, seeking reassurance, he said. Others will be quiet, thinking about the experience and maybe drawing or writing about it, or acting it out at playtime. Younger children may regress, becoming clingy or having tantrums.


Before second grade, their brains also are at a developmental stage some refer to as magical thinking, when it's difficult to distinguish reality and fantasy. Parents may have to help them understand that a friend who died isn't in pain or lonely but also isn't coming back, Brymer said.


When problem behaviors or signs of distress continue for several weeks, Brymer says it's time for an evaluation by a counselor or pediatrician.


Besides a supportive family, what helps? North advises getting children back into routines, together with their friends, and easing them back into a school setting. Studies of survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks found "the power of the support of the people who went through it with you is huge," she said.


Children as young as first-graders can benefit from cognitive-behavioral therapy, Georgetown's Biel said. They can calm themselves with breathing techniques. They also can learn to identify and label their feelings — anger, frustration, worry — and how to balance, say, a worried thought with a brave one.


Finally, avoid watching TV coverage of the shooting, as children may think it's happening all over again, Biel added. He found that children who watched the 9/11 clips of planes hitting the World Trade Center thought they were seeing dozens of separate attacks.


___


EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.


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Wall Street edges up, tech shares gain

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In the aftermath of Friday's Newtown school shooting, we've heard tales mostly horrifying and occasionally heroic, from surviving witnesses and mourning citizens alike, but this one lies somewhere in between, all the more unshakeable. One six-year-old Sandy Hook student played dead in her first-grade classroom, her family pastor said late Sunday, with the kind of quick thinking that ended up saving her life but now leaves her with the unshakeable memories of watching all her classmates being shot and killed. ...
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Pentagon to Reimburse Pakistan $688 Million

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WASHINGTON — The Pentagon quietly notified Congress this month that it would reimburse Pakistan nearly $700 million for the cost of stationing 140,000 troops on the border with Afghanistan, an effort to normalize support for the Pakistani military after nearly two years of crises and mutual retaliation.




The biggest proponent of putting foreign aid and military reimbursements to Pakistan on a steady footing is the man President Barack Obama is leaning toward naming as secretary of state: Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has frequently served as an envoy to Pakistan, including after the killing of Osama bin Laden, and was a co-author of a law that authorized five years and about $7.5 billion of nonmilitary assistance to Pakistan.


The United States also provides about $2 billion in annual security assistance, roughly half of which goes to reimburse Pakistan for conducting military operations to fight terrorism.


Until now, many of these reimbursements, called coalition support funds, have been held up, in part because of disputes with Pakistan over the Bin Laden raid, the operations of the C.I.A., and its decision to block supply lines into Afghanistan last year.


The $688 million payment — the first since this summer, covering food, ammunition and other expenses from June through November 2011 — has caused barely a ripple of protest since it was sent to Capitol Hill on Dec. 7.


The absence of a reaction, American and Pakistani officials say, underscores how relations between the two countries have been gradually thawing since Pakistan reopened the NATO supply routes in July after an apology from the Obama administration for an errant American airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November 2011.


Mr. Kerry’s nomination would be welcomed in Pakistan, where he is seen as perhaps the most sympathetic to Pakistani concerns of any senior lawmaker. He has nurtured relationships with top civilian and military officials, as well as the I.S.I., Pakistan’s most powerful intelligence agency.


But if he becomes secretary of state, Mr. Kerry will inherit one of the hardest diplomatic tasks in South Asia: helping Pakistan find a role in steering Afghanistan toward a political agreement with the Taliban. As the United States, which tried and failed to broker such an agreement, begins to step back, Pakistan’s role is increasing.


For a relationship rocked in the past two years by a C.I.A. contractor’s shooting of two Pakistanis, the Navy SEAL raid that killed Bin Laden and the accidental airstrike, perhaps the most remarkable event in recent months has been relative calm. A senior American official dealing with Pakistan said recently that “this is the longest we’ve gone in a while without a crisis.”


Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, said, “Pakistan-United States relations are settling down to a more stable trajectory.”


The interlude has allowed the United States to reduce the huge backlog of NATO supplies at the border — down to about 3,000 containers from 7,000 when the border crossings reopened — and to conduct dry runs for the tons of equipment that will flow out of Afghanistan to Pakistani ports when the American drawdown steps up early next year.


Moreover, the two sides have resumed a series of high-level meetings — capped by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s meeting this month with top Pakistani officials in Brussels — on a range of topics including counterterrorism, economic cooperation, energy and the security of Pakistan’s growing nuclear arsenal.


Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, concurred. “There’s greater convergence between the two countries than there has been in eight years,” she said. “It’s been a fairly quick kiss and make up, but it’s been driven by the approaching urgency of 2014, and by their shared desire for a stable outcome in the region.”


The one exception to the state of calm has been a tense set of discussions about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. United States officials have told their Pakistani colleagues that Islamabad’s move to smaller, more portable weapons creates a greater risk that one could be stolen or diverted. A delegation of American nuclear experts was in Pakistan last week, but found that the two countries had fundamentally divergent views about whether Pakistan’s changes to its arsenal pose a danger.


Declan Walsh contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.



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Iran leader gets the clicks with Facebook rumor

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Facebook page purportedly created by Iran‘s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attracted nearly 10,000 followers on Tuesday although the site’s content and style raise serious questions about its authenticity.


Iranian authorities had no immediate comment on the site, which apparently went online last week but only recently gained prominence among social media watchers. Despite the possibility that it is a hoax, the page has generated at least 170 comments — laudatory and derogatory, and nearly all in Farsi — that highlight the deep political divisions in Iran and possibly opposition fervor from expatriate Iranians.






One post compared Khamenei to a celebrated ruler of ancient Persia, Cyrus the Great, who significantly expanded the Persian empire 2,500 years ago.


Another wrote: “Mr. Khamenei, how are you visiting this page? With proxy?”


It was a reference to Iran’s blocking of Facebook and many other Western social media sites, and the efforts to bypass the restrictions using proxy server links from outside Iran.


The U.S. State Department said Monday it will keep tabs on the page, but had no comment on whether it was genuine or not. Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland joked that Washington is curious how many “likes” the Khamenei page receives.


But much about the page — including an informal photo of Khamenei riding in a car — suggested it was not sanctioned by Iran’s top leader. It is also highly unlikely that Khamenei would endorse a banned outlet such as Facebook.


The Net is not unknown territory for Iranian leaders, however. Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and others have official websites. Also, some senior Iranian clerics issue religious opinions by email.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Gossip Girl's Identity Revealed in Series Finale!

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TV News






By Aaron Parsley





12/18/2012 at 09:20 AM EST



Did you figure it out?

The series finale of Gossip Girl, which aired Monday on the CW, had it all: two weddings (Blair marries Chuck; Serena marries Dan), two stunning wedding gowns (powder blue, beaded Elie Saab Couture on B, and a gold and white strapless Georges Chakra Couture on S), cameo appearances by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Rachel Bilson and Kristen Bell (as themselves, reading the roles of Blair and Serena from a script written by Dan), the return of Jenny Humphrey (briefly!) and the reveal of Gossip Girl's identity. And it's not Dorota.

The person behind the mysterious blog that has kept tabs on the Upper East Side's elite was not a girl at all – it was Brooklyn's very own Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley).

Dropping Bell's trademark voice, the real Gossip Girl explained in a typical, if more masculine, voiceover:

"The Upper East Side was like something from Fitzgerald or Thackeray – teenagers acting like adults, adults acting like teenagers, guarding secrets, spreading gossip all with the trappings of truly opulent wealth. And membership into this community was so elite you couldn't even buy your way in. It was a birthright – a birthright that I didn't have. And my greatest achievements would never earn it.

"All I had to compare it to was what I read in books. But that gave me the idea: I wasn't born into this world ... maybe I could write myself into it. I overheard enough conversations to mimic the voice of the Constance girls, but every writer needs his muse and it wasn't until that photo of Serena in the white dress that I knew I had something strong enough to actually create a legend and launch a website.

"Within weeks I was getting dozens of emails with stories about Upper East Siders, so I posted them anonymously. And then I got more. Before long it was a monster. Everyone was sending tips ... When Serena came back from boarding school, I wrote my first post about me, Lonely Boy, the outsider, the underdog. I might have been a joke but at least people were talking about me."

How did the others react? With shock and disbelief. Dorota asked for vodka.

"Gossip Girl ruined our lives," Blair (Leighton Meester) said. "He schemed and lied and spread horrible stories."

But Serena (Blake Lively) found acceptance: "What he did was ... write a love letter," she said. "And not just to me, to all of us. It made me realize that I don't want to run away, that you guys are my family. I belong here. And so does Dan."

"I guess that means it's all over now," Blair said. "That we can all grow up and move on."

"Yeah," added Dan, "Gossip Girl's dead."

Xo, xo!

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Wall Street edges up at open on "cliff" optimism

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In the aftermath of Friday's Newtown school shooting, we've heard tales mostly horrifying and occasionally heroic, from surviving witnesses and mourning citizens alike, but this one lies somewhere in between, all the more unshakeable. One six-year-old Sandy Hook student played dead in her first-grade classroom, her family pastor said late Sunday, with the kind of quick thinking that ended up saving her life but now leaves her with the unshakeable memories of watching all her classmates being shot and killed. ...
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In Spain, Having a Job No Longer Guarantees a Paycheck

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Working but Waiting:
The Times’s Suzanne Daley reports on struggling Spanish workers who have avoided losing their jobs but often face weeks or months without paychecks.







VALENCIA, Spain — Over the past two years, Ana María Molina Cuevas, 36, has worked five shifts a week in a ceramics factory on the outskirts of this city, hand-rolling paint onto tiles. But at the end of the month, she often went unpaid.




Still, she kept showing up, trying to keep her frustration under control. If she quit, she reasoned, she might never get her money. And besides, where was she going to find another job? Last month, she was down to about $130 in her bank account with a mortgage payment due.


“On the days you get paid,” she said at home with her disabled husband and young daughter, “it is like the sun has risen three times. It is a day of joy.”


Mrs. Molina, who is owed about $13,000 by the factory, is hardly alone. Being paid for the work you do is no longer something that can be counted on in Spain, as this country struggles through its fourth year of an economic crisis.


With the regional and municipal governments deeply in debt, even workers like bus drivers and health care attendants, dependent on government financing for their salaries, are not always paid.


But few workers in this situation believe they have any choice but to stick it out, and none wanted to name their employers, to protect both the companies and their jobs. They try to manage their lives with occasional checks and partial payments on random dates — never sure whether they will get what they are owed in the end. Spain’s unemployment rate is the highest in the euro zone at more than 25 percent, and despite the government’s labor reforms, the rate has continued to rise month after month.


“Before the crisis, a worker might let one month go by, and then move on to another job,” said José Francisco Perez, a lawyer who represents unpaid workers in the Valencia area. “Now that just isn’t an option. People now have nowhere to go, and they are scared. They are afraid even to complain.”


No one is keeping track of workers like Mrs. Molina. But one indication of their number can be seen in the courts, which have become jammed with people trying to get back pay from a government insurance fund, aimed at giving workers something when a company does not pay them.


In Valencia, Spain’s third-largest city, the unemployment rate is 28.1 percent and the courts are so overwhelmed that processing claims, which used to take three to six months, now takes three to four years.


Since the start of the crisis in 2008, the insurance fund has paid nearly a million workers nationally back pay or severance. In 2007, it paid 70,000 workers. It is on track to pay more than 250,000 this year, and experts say the figures would be much higher if not for the logjam in the courts.


Often the unpaid workers, like Mrs. Molina, whose company is now in bankruptcy proceedings, hope their labor will keep a struggling operation afloat over the long run. Unemployment benefits last only two years, they point out, and they wonder what they would do after that. But in the meantime, they cannot even claim unemployment benefits. And no amount of budgeting can cover no payment at all.


Beatriz Morales García, 31, said she could not remember the last time she went shopping for herself. A few years ago, she and her husband, Daniel Chiva, 34, thought that they had settled into a comfortable life, he as a bus driver and she as a therapist in a rehabilitation center for people with mental disabilities. His job is financed by the City of Valencia, and hers by the regional government of Valencia.


They never expected any big money. But it seemed reasonable to expect a reliable salary, to take on a mortgage and think about children. In the past year, however, both of them have had trouble being paid. She is owed 6,000 euros, nearly $8,000. They have cut back on everything they can think of. They have given up their landline and their Internet connection. They no long park their car in a garage or pay for extra health insurance coverage. Mr. Chiva even forgoes the coffee he used to drink in a cafe before his night shifts. Still, the anxiety is constant.


“There are nights when we cannot sleep,” he said. “Moments when you talk out loud to yourself in the street. It has been terrible, terrible.”


Mrs. Morales said it was particularly hard to watch other mothers in the park with their children while she must leave her own toddler to go to work, unsure she will ever get paid.


“We are working eight hours, and we’re suffering more than people who are not working,” she said.


The couple’s pay has been so irregular that they are having a hard time even keeping track of how much they are owed, because small payments show up sporadically in their account.


Rachel Chaundler contributed reporting.



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