MiamiHerald.com HOTEL COPIES: A copy of The Miami Herald will be delivered to your room. A credit of US$0.25 will be posted to your account if delivery is declined.
INTERNATIONAL EDITION
BY ELLEN BARRY
New York Times Service
MOSCOW — Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is rallying his electorate, making a rare campaign appearance before a packed outdoor stadium, evoking Russia’s historic battles against foreign invaders and telling the crowd that victory “is in our genes, in our genetic code.” Putin strode out in a ski parka and delivered a ferocious stem-winder, timed to an annual holiday Thursday that honors the “defenders of the fatherland” and less than two weeks before the presidential election on March 4, which he is almost certain to win. “We will defend her through all time and forever,” he said. “We will never allow anyone to interfere in our internal affairs, we will not allow someone to impose their will on us, because we have our own will! It has helped us to conquer! We are a victorious people! It is in our genes, in our genetic code!” The event at times appeared to pose an answer to a burgeoning anti-government protest movement, which Putin has cast as a U.S.-backed effort to undermine him. One placard read, “I will not sell my conscience to the ambassador, I will give my vote to Putin” — likely a reference to the U.S. ambassador, Michael McFaul, who has been accused on state-controlled television of attempting to foment revolution. “We call on everyone to unite around our country,” Putin said. “And we ask everyone not to look overseas, not to run to the left or to the side, and not to betray your homeland, but to be with us, work for Russia, and love her as we do — with our whole hearts. I ask you one more time: Do we love Russia? Yes.”
BY DAVID E. SANGER AND WILLIAM J. BROAD
New York Times Service
the “Chucky Seven” claims, as they are known in Ecuador, and has accused Encalada of being bought off by El Universo. ENCALADA The controversial libel case revolves around a scathing editorial that focused on the events of September 2010, when Correa was taken hostage briefly by protesting policemen. Four security officers
WASHINGTON — International nuclear inspectors reported on Friday that Iran was moving rapidly to produce nuclear fuel at a deep underground site that Israel and the United States have said is virtually invulnerable to attack. The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated that for the first time Iran had begun producing fuel inside the new facility in a mountain near the holy city of Qum. The agency’s inspectors found in their most recent visits that over the past three months Iran has tripled its production capacity for a type of fuel that is far closer to what is needed to make the core of a nuclear weapon. The report about progress at the new facility is likely to inflame the debate over whether Iran is getting closer to what Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, calls entering “zone of immunity.” The phrase refers to a vaguely-defined point beyond which Iran could potentially produce weapons fuel without fear of an air attack that could wipe out its facilities. U.S. officials insist that Iran’s progress has been halting at best, and the report also shows that despite Iran’s repeated boasts it is still having trouble deploying significant amount of next-generation equipment to make fuel. The United States also argues that Iran’s program has a number of vulnerabilities should it decide to develop a bomb. U.S. intelligence officials say they do not believe Iranian leaders have made that decision, though Israeli and British intelligence disagree. When U.S. President Barack Obama and other Western leaders first made public the discovery of the new facility in 2009 U.S. officials said they believed its exposure meant it would never be used. However, the report on Friday
• TURN TO ECUADOR, 4A
• TURN TO IRAN, 2A
• TURN TO PUTIN, 2A
Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks at a campaign rally at Luzhniki stadium in Moscow. JAMES HILL/NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE
Judge in Ecuador libel case flees country jwyss@MiamiHerald.com
BOGOTA — The $42 million criminal libel case against Ecuador’s El Universo newspaper keeps generating controversy and asylum seekers. On Thursday, Monica Encalada, an Ecuadoran judge who reviewed the case, said she was seeking the protection of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission after exposing what she called “bald corruption” in the judicial system. During a press conference in Bogota, Encalada said lawyers for Ecuador President Rafael Cor-
rea promised her $3,000 a month and steady work if she would rule against the newspaper. The libel case that Correa brought against an El Universo columnist and three executives was handled ultimately by Judge Juan Paredes. But when Paredes was questioned under oath on how he could turn a 150-page sentence so quickly, he said he relied on Encalada’s work. Facing a bank of microphones, Encalada called the magistrate a liar. While she acknowledged giving him a memory stick with part of the casework, none of that ma-
terial ended up in the final sentence, she said. She contends that Paredes later told her that the sentence was written by Correa’s legal team. El Universo says it has proof that the sentence was written on a pirated version of Microsoft Word registered to a fictitious “Chucky Seven.” According to El Universo’s lawyers, the document has hidden encoding that matches other sentences written by Correa’s lawyer Gutenberg Vera. The newspaper is suing Paredes for inserting false statements in a public document. The government has ridiculed
Mormons accused of baptizing Anne Frank BY BRIAN SKOLOFF AND MICHELLE RINDELS Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — A new claim has surfaced that the Mormon church has posthumously baptized a Holocaust victim, this time Anne Frank. The allegations come just a week after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apologized when it was brought to light that the parents of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal were posthumously baptized by church members at temples in Arizona and Utah in late January. Researcher Helen Radkey, a former Mormon who revealed the Wiesenthal baptisms, said this week she found Frank’s name in proxy baptism records dated Feb. 18, showing the ritual was performed in the Santo Domingo Temple in the Dominican Republic. The Mormon church almost immediately issued a statement, though it didn’t mention Frank by name. “The Church keeps its word and is absolutely firm in its commitment to not accept the names of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism,” the Salt Lake City-based • TURN TO BAPTISM, 2A
25PGA01.indd 1
Nations urge halt to attacks as Syria evacuations start BY STEVEN LEE MYERS
New York Times Service
AP FILE
Anne Frank was a Jewish teenager forced into hiding during the Holocaust and killed in a concentration camp.
RECORD NUMBER OF U.S. CITIZENS HAVE BACHELOR’S DEGREES, CENSUS SHOWS, 3A
MORE KORAN PROTESTS LEAVE 7 DEAD IN AFGHANISTAN, 6A
109TH YEAR I ©2012 THE MIAMI HERALD
Iran making nuclear fuel at protected facility, IAEA says
Putin rallies supporters ahead of presidential vote
BY JIM WYSS
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2012
BANK OF AMERICA BREAKS WITH FANNIE MAE, BUSINESS FRONT
sanctions and travel bans against President Bashar al Assad and his senior aides. They also pledged to provide millions of dollars worth of food and medicine to be distributed from border areas in Turkey, Jordan and, possibly, Lebanon. While intended to demonstrate international unity against Assad’s government, the meeting here underscored the deepening divisions over how to end a violent crackdown inside Syria that has now lasted nearly a year and resulted in thousands of deaths. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, pointedly expressed frustration that the world was not doing enough. And later in a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he said that arming Syria’s largely unorganized opposition was “an excellent idea,” though it was not on the agenda of Friday’s meeting. “Is it justice to offer aid and leave the Syrians to the killing machine?” he told the gathering, according to Al Arabiya television, a private Saudi-owned news channel. The United States and other nations have ruled out military
TUNIS, Tunisia — Leaders of more than 60 nations and international organizations called on Syria’s government on Friday to halt its attacks on rebellious cities to allow in humanitarian supplies and asked the United Nations to begin planning for a peacekeeper force, even as some evacuations began from a hard-hit neighborhood in the besieged city of Homs. The International Committee of the Red Cross said that the Syrian Red Crescent had begun evacuations of some women and children after three weeks of constant bombardment of Homs that has left the city with many wounded and desperate for food and medicine. Hicham Hassan, a Red Cross spokesman, said negotiations were continuing to remove two Western journalists wounded earlier this week from the neighborhood, Baba Amr. Another spokesperson said seven wounded people had already been taken from the area to a nearby hospital. The officials gathered here in Tunisia’s capital for the meeting called “friends of the Syrian people” said they would tighten • TURN TO SYRIA, 2A
HEAT TOO GOOD FOR LIN, KNICKS, SPORTS FRONT
INDEX THE AMERICAS............4A U.S. NEWS ...................5A OPINION........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES ..6B
2/25/2012 4:44:43 AM