Latest News

LA police Lt. Andrew Neiman says the officers were deployed in response to Christopher Dorner's written threats to department officials in a rambling 14-page manifesto.

The Daily Breeze in Torrance also reports (http://bit.ly/YWhBLi ) that there was another police shooting nearby involving another pickup truck, but the driver wasn't hurt.

Authorities say Dorner has implicated himself in the killing of two people in Irvine over the weekend. He's also the suspect in the overnight killing of a police officer and critical wounding of another cop.

Police did not say how seriously the people in Torrance were injured.

Nearly 100 Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest against Chinese rule since 2009 across a large swathe of ethnically Tibetan regions, with most of them dying from their injuries.

In the past few months, the government has begun a new tactic to discourage the protests, detaining and jailing people it deems to have incited the burnings.

The latest detentions took place in the northwestern province of Qinghai, where police detained 70 "criminal suspects", 12 of whom were formally arrested, meaning they will be charged, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"Police will exert more efforts to thoroughly investigate the cases and seriously punish those who incite innocent people to commit self-immolation," it quoted Lu Benqian, Qinghai's deputy police chief, as saying.

China has repeatedly denounced exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and overseas Tibetan groups for fomenting the self-immolations.

"The Dalai Lama clique masterminded and incited the self-immolations," Lu said. "Personal information, such as photos of the victims, were sent overseas to promote the self-immolations."

"A few individuals with a strong sense of extreme nationalism showed sympathy with the self-immolators and followed their example," Lu said.

"The self-immolation cases were influenced by the separatism of the Dalai Lama clique, as the Dalai Lama has prayed for self-immolators and Tibetan separatists overseas flaunt them as 'heroes'."

Beijing considers Nobel peace laureate the Dalai Lama, who fled from China in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule, a violent separatist. The Dalai Lama says he is merely seeking greater autonomy for his Himalayan homeland.

He has called on China to investigate the self-immolations. He has said he is not encouraging them but has called them "understandable".

China has defended its iron-fisted rule in Tibet, saying the remote region suffered from dire poverty, brutal exploitation and economic stagnation until 1950, when Communist troops "peacefully liberated" it.

Tibetan areas in China have been largely closed to foreign reporters, making an independent assessment of the situation there hard.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel)

The E.C.B. left its main rate at 0.75 percent, where it has been since July. Recent surveys of business sentiment have raised expectations that the euro zone could be slowly recovering, although there is also concern that the rising value of the euro against the dollar could undercut the fragile gains.

Recent data have supported the E.C.B. view that the euro zone will emerge from recession later this year. New orders to German industry rose 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.

But the recovery is threatened by the rising value of the common currency, which could hurt exports by making euro zone products more expensive for foreign buyers. In recent weeks, the euro has risen substantially against the dollar, to the highest levels in a year.

Few analysts had expected the E.C.B. to shift its monetary policy Thursday. Some predict that the benchmark rate could stay at its present level for an extended period as the euro zone slowly returns to growth.

"We expect interest rates to be on hold at 0.75 percent until 2017 and only significant changes in the economic environment would trigger a change one way or the other," Marie Diron, senior economic adviser to the consulting firm Ernst & Young, said in an e-mail before the decision.

Although there was no change in rates, the E.C.B. news conference later Thursday afternoon could prove eventful. Mario Draghi, the E.C.B. president, is likely to face questions about whether the bank will respond to the appreciation of the euro, which was up again midday Thursday, to nearly $1.36. Back in July it was trading just above $1.21.

A stronger euro means that products ranging from cars to wine become more expensive abroad, putting European producers at a disadvantage to foreign competitors.

Analysts do not expect Mr. Draghi to take steps to devalue the euro, but he could remind his counterparts at other central banks outside the euro zone of their promise not to start a currency war. If the value of one currency goes up, another currency must come down, making exchange-rate manipulation by central banks a zero-sum game that economists believe is counterproductive.

Mr. Draghi is also likely to face numerous questions about problems at the Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which has required a €3.9 billion bailout by the Italian government. Mr. Draghi was governor of the Bank of Italy, responsible for bank supervision, during the period when Monte dei Paschi was getting in trouble several years ago.

Mr. Draghi's supporters have pointed out that there was a deliberate attempt by that bank's previous management to conceal the extent of their losses, and that the Bank of Italy did not have the authority to prevent Monte dei Paschi managers from making foolish decisions. Part of the bank's problems stem from its acquisition of regional bank Antonveneta in 2008 for €9 billion, a price considered much too high even at the time.

But at the very least, the case of Monte dei Paschi has illustrated the limits of bank supervision, and called into question whether the E.C.B. will be able to do a better job than national supervisors when it begins assuming supreme regulatory authority over banks in the course of this year.

The problems at Monti dei Paschi bank have also been exploited by Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy, as he attempts a comeback in elections at the end of this month. Mr. Berlusconi has run a populist campaign promising to undo some of the economic changes made by his successor, Mario Monti.

Italian politics aside, international investors are concerned about the new jitters the debacle could create in euro zone bond markets, which have calmed considerably lately.

"A government may well be formed on a platform that rejects some, if not most, of the Monti government's fiscal reforms," Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York, wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. "As uncertainty grows, the bond markets are becoming increasingly unsettled."

"I move about like an ordinary person — that's my style," said Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. "My fate is in the hands of God, not America."

"I move about like an ordinary person — that's my style," said Mr. Saeed, a burly 64-year-old, reclining on a bolster as he ate a chicken supper. "My fate is in the hands of God, not America."

Mr. Saeed is the founder, and is still widely believed to be the true leader, of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group that carried out the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, in which more than 160 people, including six Americans, were killed. The United Nations has placed him on a terrorist list and imposed sanctions on his group. But few believe he will face trial any time soon in a country that maintains a perilous ambiguity toward jihadi militancy, casting a benign eye on some groups, even as it battles others that attack the state.

Mr. Saeed's very public life seems more than just an act of mocking defiance against the Obama administration and its bounty, analysts say. As American troops prepare to leave Afghanistan next door, Lashkar is at a crossroads, and its fighters' next move — whether to focus on fighting the West, disarm and enter the political process, or return to battle in Kashmir — will depend largely on Mr. Saeed.

At his Lahore compound — a fortified house, office and mosque — Mr. Saeed is shielded not only by his supporters, burly men wielding Kalashnikovs outside his door, but also by the Pakistani state. On a recent evening, police officers screened visitors at a checkpoint near his house, while other officers patrolled an adjoining park, watching by floodlight for intruders.

His security seemingly ensured, Mr. Saeed has over the past year addressed large public meetings and appeared on prime-time television, and is now even giving interviews to Western news media outlets he had previously eschewed.

He says that he wants to correct "misperceptions." During an interview with The New York Times at his home last week, Mr. Saeed insisted that his name had been cleared by the Pakistani courts. "Why does the United States not respect our judicial system?" he asked.

Still, he says he has nothing against Americans, and warmly described a visit he made to the United States in 1994, during which he spoke at Islamic centers in Houston, Chicago and Boston. "At that time, I liked it," he said with a wry smile.

During that stretch, his group was focused on attacking Indian soldiers in the disputed territory of Kashmir — the fight that led the military's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate to help establish Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1989. But that battle died down over the past decade, and Lashkar began projecting itself through its charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which runs a tightly organized network of hospitals and schools across Pakistan.

The Mumbai attacks propelled Lashkar-e-Taiba to notoriety. But since then, Mr. Saeed's provocations toward India have been largely verbal. Last week he stirred anger there by suggesting that Bollywood's highest-paid actor, Shah Rukh Khan, a Muslim, should move to Pakistan. In the interview, he said he prized talking over fighting in Kashmir.

"The militant struggle helped grab the world's attention," he said. "But now the political movement is stronger, and it should be at the forefront of the struggle."

Pakistan analysts caution that Mr. Saeed's new openness is no random occurrence, however. "This isn't out of the blue," said Shamila N. Chaudhary, a former Obama administration official and an analyst at the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. "These guys don't start talking publicly just like that."

What it amounts to, however, may depend on events across the border in Afghanistan, where his group has been increasingly active in recent years. In public, Mr. Saeed has been a leading light in the Defense of Pakistan Council, a coalition of right-wing groups that lobbied against the reopening of NATO supply routes through Pakistan last year. More quietly, Lashkar fighters have joined the battle, attacking Western troops and Indian diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan, intelligence officials say.

The question now is what will happen to them once American troops leave. One possibility is a return to Lashkar's traditional battleground of Kashmir, risking fresh conflict between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India.

But a more hopeful possibility, floated by some Western and Pakistani officials, is that Mr. Saeed would lead his group further into politics, and away from militancy.

"When there are no Americans in Afghanistan, what will happen?" said Mushtaq Sukhera, a senior officer with the Punjabi police who is running a fledgling demobilization program for Islamist extremists. "It's an open question."

A shift could be risky for Mr. Saeed: Some of his fighters have already split from Lashkar in favor of other groups that attack the Pakistani state. And much will depend on the advice of his military sponsors.

For their part, Pakistan's generals insist they have abandoned their dalliance with jihadi proxy groups. In a striking speech in August, the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said the country's greatest threat came from domestic extremism. "We as a nation must stand united against this threat," he said. "No state can afford a parallel system of governance and militias."

Five years of near-continuous battle against the Pakistani Taliban along the Afghan border, where more than 3,300 members of Pakistan's security forces have been killed in the past decade, has affected army thinking, some analysts believe. Senior officers have lost colleagues and relatives, softening the army's singular focus on India.

"This is a changed army," said Shaukat Javed, a former head of the Intelligence Bureau civilian spy agency in Punjab Province. "The mind-set has changed due to experience, and pressure."

But for all that, there is ample evidence that parts of the military remain wedded to jihadi proxies. In Waziristan, the army maintains close ties to the Haqqani Network, a major player in the Afghan insurgency. In western Baluchistan Province, it has used Sunni extremists to quell an uprising by Baluch nationalists — even though the same extremists also massacre minority Shiites.

And Mr. Saeed's freedom to roam around Lahore — and, indeed, across Pakistan — suggests some generals still believe the "good" jihadis are worth having around.

Western intelligence officials say Lashkar's training camps in northern Pakistan have not been shut down. One of those camps was the training ground of David C. Headley, an American citizen recently sentenced to prison by an American court for his role in the Mumbai attacks.

"There's a strategic culture of using proxies," said Stephen Tankel, an American academic and author of a book on Lashkar-e-Taiba. "And if that's the tool you're used to grabbing from the toolbox, it can be hard to let go."

For all his apparent ease, Mr. Saeed has to walk a tightrope of sorts within the jihadi firmament. His support of the state puts him at odds with the Pakistani Taliban, which, he claims, are secretly supported by America and India — a familiar refrain in the right-wing media. "They want to destabilize Pakistan," he said.

But that position leaves Mr. Saeed vulnerable to pressure from fighters within his own ranks who may still have Taliban sympathies. Western security officials say Lashkar has already suffered some defections in recent years..

"If he continues in this direction, the issue is how many people he can bring with him," Mr. Tankel said.

But ultimately, he added, much depends on the Pakistani Army: "The army can't dismantle these groups all at once, because of the danger of blowback. So for now they are putting them on ice. It's too early to tell which way they will ultimately go."

The New York Times Company reported a big jump in fourth-quarter profit on Thursday, largely because of gains from asset sales.

Net income was $176.9 million, or $1.14 a share, a 200 percent increase from $58.9 million, or 39 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.

The results were aided by a $164.6 million gain on the sale of the company's stake in Indeed.com, a jobs search engine, and the sale of the About Group, the online resource company, which closed on the first day of the fourth quarter for $300 million. The sale of the About Group resulted in a total gain of $96.7 million, or $61.9 million after taxes.

Income from continuing operations rose to $117 million, compared with $51 million in the period a year earlier.

Total revenue for the quarter rose 5.2 percent, to $575.8 million. Over all, the company's advertising revenue declined 3.1 percent. Print advertising at the company's newspapers, which include The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The International Herald Tribune, shrank by 5.6 percent and digital advertising revenue across the company rose by 5.1 percent. Circulation revenue grew 16.1 percent.

For the entire year, the Times Company reported net income of $133 million, or 87 cents a share, compared with a loss of $39.7 million, or 26 cents a share, in the previous year.

Income from continuing operations rose to $159.7 million in 2012 from $51.9 million in 2011, or $1.04 per share up from 34 cents in 2011. Total revenue rose 1.9 percent, to $1.99 billion.

The past year marked the first time that circulation revenue surpassed advertising revenue. Circulation revenue grew by 10.4 percent, to $952.9 million, mainly from the growth in digital subscriptions and the rise in print circulation prices. Advertising for the year declined 5.9 percent, to $898.1 million.

The number of paid subscribers to the Web site, e-reader and other digital editions of The Times and The International Herald Tribune reached about 640,000 at the end of the fourth quarter, a 13 percent increase from the third quarter of 2012. Digital subscriptions to The Boston Globe and BostonGlobe.com also grew, by 8 percent, to about 28,000 subscribers.

"The demonstrated willingness of users here and around the world to pay for the high quality journalism for which The New York Times and the company's other titles are renowned will be a key building block in the strategy for growth, which we are currently developing and which I will have much more to say about later in the year," said Mark Thompson, the president and chief executive of the Times Company.

The company expects advertising revenue to remain sluggish in the first quarter of 2013 and total circulation revenue to grow by "mid-single digits." The company said in its release that it "expects to benefit from its digital subscription initiatives as well as from the print circulation price increase at The New York Times implemented in the first quarter of 2013." The company also said it expects its first-quarter operating costs to decline.

The results followed several difficult quarters during which the company tried to streamline operations and expand its digital and video presence. In early December, The Times said the newsroom needed to contribute to the company's cost-cutting efforts and announced it was seeking 30 managers to accept buyout packages. The company also allowed employees represented by the Newspaper Guild to volunteer for buyout packages.

In a memo that Jill Abramson, the executive editor, wrote to the staff last week, she said that she had received enough volunteers that layoffs were kept to a handful. She also announced plans to restructure the masthead. On Wednesday, the paper also announced that it had hired Rebecca Howard from the AOL Huffington Post Media Group to become the new general manager of the video production unit.

"We are working with State now to identify specific locations for the new detachments," Mr. Panetta said referring to the State Department in prepared remarks at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Sep. 11 attack on an American compound in Benghazi, Libya, which led to the deaths of J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador, and three other Americans.

The Marines have guard units at 152 diplomatic compounds, but did not have one in Benghazi when the assault occurred.

Mr. Panetta said that the role of the Marines detachments would be expanded beyond protecting classified information at the compounds.

"This could include expanded use of nonlethal weapons, and additional training and equipment, to support the Embassy Regional Security Officer's response options when host nation security force capabilities are at risk of being overwhelmed," Mr. Panetta said.

Mr. Panetta said that the Pentagon was not able to respond more quickly to the Benghazi episode because it had not received an intelligence alert about an impending attack.

"The Department of Defense was prepared for a wide range of contingencies, but unfortunately there were no specific indications of an imminent attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi," Mr. Panetta told the committee. "Without adequate warning, there was not enough time given the speed of the attack for armed military assets to respond."

When the attack began, the Pentagon had no forces that could be rapidly sent to Benghazi or to protect diplomatic outposts in Tunisia, Egypt or Algeria that might also have come under assault on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The closest AC-130 gunship was in Afghanistan. There are no armed drones thought to be within range of Libya. There was no Marine expeditionary unit — a large seaborne force with its own helicopters — in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Africa Command, whose area of operation includes North Africa, also did not have on hand a force able to respond rapidly to emergencies — a Commanders' In-Extremis Force, or C.I.F., as it is known. Every other regional command had one at the time, but the Africa Command shared one with the European Command, and it was on an exercise in Croatia at the time.

In his prepared remarks, Mr. Panetta did not address the question of whether the Africa Command had requested any of these forces to be on hand on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Nor did it say whether Mr. Panetta or Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had given any thought to moving forces to the region as a precaution before the attacks in September last year.

In a section of his prepared remarks labeled "Lessons Learned," Mr. Panetta recommended helping host nations better defend American compounds, improving intelligence and adding more Marine units.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and the chairman of the committee, noted that Congress had passed legislation that called for a review of Marine security guard program. "The Marine Corps did not have an element in Benghazi as it was not an embassy, but a temporary mission facility," Mr. Levin said, outlining the need for a review.

"The four Americans our nation lost last September were the very best expression of what it means to be an Americans," Mr. Levin said. "We honor their sacrifice, and in their name will do everything we can to prevent a repetition of Benghazi's loss."

People placed flowers at the site outside his home where opposition leader Chokri Belaid was killed the day before on Thursday in Tunis.

News reports on Thursday said the country's dominant Ennahda Party had rejected the plan to dissolve the government, as proposed Wednesday by Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali.

"The prime minister did not ask the opinion of his party," Abdelhamid Jelassi, Ennahda's vice president was quoted as saying in news agency dispatches. "We in Ennahda believe Tunisia needs a political government now. We will continue discussions with others parties about forming a coalition government."

The reported statement appeared to inject a new element of political tension into an already fraught and fragile situation.

Residents of Tunis said hundreds of protesters — far fewer than on Wednesday — took to the streets on Thursday while the French embassy said on its Web site it would close its schools in the capital on Friday and Saturday for fear of renewed outbursts of violence.

France is the former colonial power in Tunisia and has traditionally had a strong diplomatic presence here.

In the southern mining city of Gafsa, The Associated Press reported, citing a local radio station, riots broke out and police fired tear gas at demonstrators who threw stones at the police. The city is known as a powerful base of support for the slain politician, Chokri Belaid.

Some reports also spoke of tear gas being fired in the capital as protesters again converged on the interior ministry in what has been depicted as the worst crisis since the so-called Arab Spring first took root in Tunisia more than two years ago.

Fresh unrest loomed with the prospect on Friday of a general strike agreed by Labor leaders on the same day as the funeral of Mr. Belaid, likely to be a highly emotive event in its own right.

Additionally, Friday, the Muslim holy day, has been associated with unrest and protest since the beginning of the revolts that overthrew or challenged dictatorial regimes across the Arab world and North Africa. Mr. Belaid was one of Tunisia's best-known human rights defenders and a fierce critic of the ruling Islamist party.

His killing placed dangerous new strains on a society struggling to reconcile its identity as a long-vaunted bastion of Arab secularism with its new role as a proving ground for one of the region's ascendant Islamist parties.

The explosion of popular anger, which led to the death of a police officer in the capital, posed a severe challenge to Ennahda, which came to power promising a model government that blended Islamist principles with tolerant pluralism.

Mr. Belaid was shot and killed outside his home in an upscale Tunis neighborhood as he was getting into his car on Wednesday morning. The interior minister, citing witnesses, said that two unidentified gunmen had fired on Mr. Belaid, striking him with four bullets.

The killing, which analysts said was the first confirmed political assassination here since the overthrow of the autocratic leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, was a dark turn for the country that was the birthplace of the Arab uprisings of two years ago. It resonated in countries like Egypt and Libya that are struggling to contain political violence while looking to Tunisia's turbulent but hopeful transition as a reassuring example.

"Confronting violence, radicalism and the forces of darkness is the main priority for societies if they want freedom and democracy," Amr Hamzawy, a member of Egypt's main secular opposition coalition, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. "Assassinating Chokri Belaid is warning bell in Tunisia, and in Egypt, too."

The response by Tunisian officials was being closely watched. President Moncef Marzouki cut short an overseas trip to deal with the crisis. Mr. Jebali, the prime minister, called the killing a "heinous crime against the Tunisian people, against the principles of the revolution and the values of tolerance and acceptance of the other."

Bowing to the outrage, he said cabinet ministers would be replaced with technocrats not tied to any party until elections could be held.

The announcement, which had been expected for months, held out the promise that Tunisia might continue to avoid the political chaos that has plagued its neighbors. Since the uprising, the country has held successful elections, leading to a coalition government merging Ennahda and two center-left parties. An assembly writing the country's constitution has circumscribed the role of Islamic law, allowing Tunisia to avoid the arguments over basic legal matters that have led to protracted unrest in Egypt.

The struggle over identity here has taken a different form, as hard-line Islamists have pressured Ennahda to take a more conservative path. Secular groups have faulted Ennahda as failing to confront the hard-liners, or for secretly supporting them. The restructuring does not completely loosen Ennahda's hold on political power.

The authorities have not announced any arrests in connection with Mr. Belaid's killing, saying only that witnesses said the gunmen had appeared to be no more than 30 years old. Among Mr. Belaid's colleagues and relatives, suspicions immediately fell on the hard-line Islamists known as Salafists, some of whom have marred the transition with acts of violence, including attacks on liquor stores and Sufi mausoleums.

Mr. Belaid, a leading member of Tunisia's leftist opposition alliance, criticized the governing party for turning a blind eye to criminal acts by the Salafists, and had received a string of death threats for his political stands, his family said.

In a chilling prelude to his death, in a television interview on Tuesday, Mr. Belaid accused Ennahda of giving "an official green light" to political violence. Separately, he accused "Ennahda mercenaries and Salafists" of attacking a meeting of his supporters on Saturday.

His wife, Besma Khalfaoui, blamed Ennahda and told Tunisia's state news agency that the authorities had ignored her husband's pleas for protection during four months of death threats.

On Wednesday, as news of the killing spread, thousands poured into the streets in the capital and other cities. A crowd gathered in front of the interior ministry, a massive building that is still a hated symbol of Mr. Ben Ali and his security services, to express anger at the new government. "Resignation, resignation, the cabinet of treason," people shouted.

Riot police officers fired tear gas into the crowds and plainclothes security officers beat protesters, witnesses said, in scenes that recalled the uprising two years ago. In other cities, protesters attacked Ennahda's offices.

The party vigorously denied any role in the killing, but the damage to its reputation seemed difficult to repair.

Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, said the assassination was a blow to the aspirations of Islamist parties taking the reins in democratic transitions in the region, most notably in Egypt and Tunisia. In Egypt, he said, the Islamists have failed to build consensus and trust, relying instead on a narrow majoritarianism. In Tunisia, he said, they built a coalition with liberals but failed to take a stand against more hard-line Islamists competing for support on their right.

"Facing down extremists — Islamists find that very difficult," Mr. Shaikh said.

In Tunisia, he said, the extremists included not only Salafis but more militant actors closer to Al Qaeda. "They have not been very quiet in terms of their intentions, and yet Ennahda has not taken them on," he said.

In Tunisia, some hoped that the killing would serve as a warning not just about the dangers of political violence, but also about the authorities' refusal to confront it. Amna Guellali, a Human Rights Watch researcher based in Tunis, said the group had documented numerous attacks on activists, journalists and political figures by various groups, including the Salafis.

"The victims filed complaints to local tribunals, but never heard anything back," she said. "There is a trend of impunity. This impunity can lead to emboldening" attackers.

"Yesterday, Chokri called for a national dialogue to confront political violence," she said. "This just adds to the tragedy."

Monica Marks reported from Tunis, Kareem Fahim from Cairo and Alan Cowell from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Mayy El Sheikh from Cairo, David D. Kirkpatrick from Antakya, Turkey, and Brian Knowlton from Washington.