EPA region head resigns after crucifixion comment - Reuters

WASHINGTON | Mon Apr 30, 2012 2:34pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A regional Environmental Protection Agency chief based in Dallas resigned on Monday after a 2010 comment surfaced in which he compared his enforcement of energy companies with crucifixion.

Al Armendariz, who was the chief of EPA's Region 6 office, sent a letter of resignation to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson late on Sunday, which she accepted on Monday.

"I have come to the conclusion that my continued service will distract you and the agency from its important work," Armendariz said in the letter.

A link to a video of a talk Armendariz had given in May 2010, in which he compared his strategy on energy companies that had broken the law to that of Romans taking over towns, had been circulated by lawmakers including Senator James Inhofe, a Republican.

The conquerors would "find the first five guys they saw and they'd crucify them," he could be heard saying in the video. "And that town was really easy to manage for the next few years."

The comment was made at a town council meeting in a small Texas town.

Republicans in the House of Representatives have battled the EPA this year, introducing bills that would slow or stop agency rules on pollution from power plants and oil and natural gas drilling.

The Republicans say the rules will lead to shutdowns and higher energy costs for consumers as they struggle to recover from the weak economy. The measures have faced an uphill battle in the Democratic-led Senate.

Still, as businesses and Republicans have complained, the EPA has delayed several of its rules. This month the EPA delayed until 2015 part of a rule that requires natural gas drillers that do hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to add equipment to tackle air pollution.

The Sierra Club, an environmental group that has fought the building of new coal plants, was unhappy with the resignation.

"The only people who will celebrate this resignation are the polluters who continue to foul Texas air and the politicians who serve those special interests," said Ken Kramer, the director of the Sierra Club in Texas.

(Reporting By Timothy Gardner; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Maureen Bavdek)

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Accused WikiLeaks leaker Manning faces trial in September - Reuters

FORT MEADE, MD | Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:09am EDT

FORT MEADE, MD (Reuters) - Bradley Manning, the U.S. intelligence analyst charged with leaking thousands of classified U.S. government cables to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, will face a court martial on September 21, a military judge said on Wednesday.

Manning is accused of downloading more than 700,000 classified or confidential files from the military while serving in Iraq, the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history.

Military judge Colonel Denise Lind said that military prosecutors and Manning's defense team had decided on a tentative trial schedule beginning September 21 and lasting through October 12. The trial will start more than two years after Manning was arrested.

The judge ruled against a motion filed by defense attorney David Coombs to dismiss all the charges because of what he called the prosecutor's intentional withholding of evidence needed to prepare Manning's defense.

"The court finds no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct," Lind said in a pre-trial hearing.

Manning faces 22 charges for downloading files from the military's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, while serving in the Army's 10th Mountain Division in Iraq.

One charge, of aiding the enemy, is a capital offense. The military court has said it would not seek the death penalty, but Manning could face life imprisonment if convicted.

Other charges against Manning include wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet and theft of public property.

(Reporting By Lily Kuo; Editing by David Storey)

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Sarkozy's odds improve but remain against him - Reuters

By Catherine Bremer

Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:47am EDT

n">(Reuters) - Strong support for far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the first round of France's presidential election has lifted Nicolas Sarkozy's hopes of clinching a second term, but he will struggle to win over enough of her voters to keep him in power.

Surveys show fewer National Front voters will rally behind the conservative Sarkozy in a runoff vote than did in the 2007 election, and as he shifts further rightwards on immigration and Europe he risks alienating the centrist voters he also needs.

Socialist Francois Hollande beat Sarkozy in Sunday's first round by 28.6 percent to 27.1 percent, but Le Pen stole the show with a 17.9 percent score, the biggest tally a far-right candidate has ever managed.

The nearly one in five who voted for her will be key for the runoff between Sarkozy and Hollande, but political analysts see the incumbent's ability to woo them limited by his European commitments and his need to keep centrists on board.

"It will be very difficult for Sarkozy to gather votes from both the National Front and the centre at the same time," said political scientist Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far right.

Le Pen called in her campaign for France to quit the euro currency and free itself from the ties of European economic policy. The message appealed to low-paid workers, the jobless and anxious young whites fed up with rife unemployment and calls for more austerity which they blame on European integration.

Camus said Sarkozy's strategy of raising red-flag issues such as Islam and immigration to appeal to far-right voters was having limited effect with people who want France out of the euro single currency.

Sarkozy has already gone a long way with campaign pledges to halve immigration and pull France out of Europe's open-border Schengen zone unless external frontiers are strengthened. But given his responsibilities as head of Europe's No. 2 economy, he would struggle to tell Le Pen voters what they want to hear on Europe.

"People are worried more today about the economic crisis, unemployment and purchasing power than immigration. Le Pen voters want the end of the euro and Europe and they know Sarkozy is attached to those things, and to economic liberalism," Camus said.

Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire, who has worked on Sarkozy's campaign, told Le Monde daily that it would be key for the second round to stick to a consistent line, and not try to target some pledges at the far right and others at the centre.

"If we want to convince far-right voters, we mustn't be offering them winks and nudges, we must show them that we are unbending on the values we defend," he said.

ANTI-SARKOZY SENTIMENT

The 2012 election has been seen as a referendum on Sarkozy's unpopular presidential style and his failure to bring down high unemployment as he promised during his 2007 campaign.

Opinion polls for the May 6 runoff show him 6-12 points behind Hollande, but analysts now see a much closer finish.

Sarkozy would need around 80 percent of Le Pen voters behind him to avoid defeat, according to analyst estimates and a Reuters calculator.

But surveys conducted during or after Sunday's first-round presidential vote found that between only 44 percent and 60 percent of Le Pen voters plan to switch to Sarkozy in round two.

With the far-left pulling behind Hollande, the only other large pool of voters up for grabs are supporters of centrist Francois Bayrou, who received 9.1 percent of the first round vote. Polls show them splitting in the second round.

One-third of Le Pen voters are expected to stay at home on May 6, so Sarkozy is looking at a much lower transfer of votes than in 2007, when 70 percent of far-right and 50 percent of centrist voters switched to him.

"To clinch it, he would need three-quarters of Le Pen votes and two-thirds of Bayrou votes, whereas he's looking at around half of Le Pen's voters and a third of Bayrou's," said analyst Frederic Dabi at pollster Ifop.

"The arithmetic is far from being right for Sarkozy."

Neither Bayrou nor Le Pen has yet called their supporters to back one or other candidate for the runoff.

With her eyes on a strong showing for the National Front in June parliamentary elections, Le Pen is keeping her distance from Sarkozy. National Front Vice-President Louis Alliot suggested Le Pen would not endorse either candidate.

"Based on the ideas in our program, neither one defends or develops them, so it seems unlikely," he said.

Hard leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who won 11 percent in the first round, is endorsing Hollande, and polls show at least 80 percent of his supporters will vote Socialist on May 6.

An Ipsos poll found 60 percent of Le Pen voters and 32 percent of Bayrou voters would back Sarkozy on May 6, while a Harris Interactive survey found 32 percent of Bayrou voters and only 44 percent of Le Pen voters switching to him.

"If this is what we see in two weeks' time, Nicolas Sarkozy is finished," said political analyst Roland Cayrol.

"To get 80 percent of Le Pen voters and two-thirds of Bayrou's is not at all what's in the opinion polls. It's not impossible but it would be remarkable," he said.

Sarkozy responded to Le Pen's record showing by immediately promising a greater focus on tightening border controls and stopping factories leaving France. On Monday, he hammered home pledges to get tough on immigration and crime.

"National Front voters must be respected," he told reporters as he left his campaign headquarters in Paris. "They voiced their view. It was a vote of suffering, a crisis vote. Why insult them? I have heard Mr. Hollande criticizing them."

Expect more of the same, said Christopher Bickerton, associate professor of international relations at Sciences Po university.

"Sarkozy talked about economic protectionism in his speech last night and his strategy for the next fortnight will be to push the same themes and use reassuring language for the 20 percent who voted Le Pen," he said.

"The National Front's high score has left things much more open, but the anti-Sarkozy sentiment is strong and it could still be powerful enough to drive him from power."

(Reporting By Catherine Bremer; Editing by Peter Graff)

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French voters frustrated on eve of election day - Reuters

1 of 4. A voter casts his ballot at a polling station in the first round of the 2012 French presidential election in Strasbourg, April 22, 2012. France goes to the polls on Sunday in the first round of its presidential election.

Credit: Reuters/Vincent Kessler

By Daniel Flynn and Geert De Clercq

PARIS | Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:11am EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - French voters voiced disillusionment on Saturday at a campaign that many said ignored the country's real problems, on the eve of a first-round vote expected to send President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist rival Francois Hollande to a runoff next month.

A day ahead of voting in mainland France, the first ballots were cast in overseas territories, from French Guiana on the northern shores of South America to the Pacific islands of Polynesia.

In France, the presidential campaign largely disappeared from the airwaves as the 10 candidates observed a one-day blackout imposed by law from midnight on Friday.

Final polls showed Hollande narrowly ahead of conservative Sarkozy for Sunday's first round and comfortably winning the May 6 runoff to become France's first Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995.

The prospect of record abstention loomed over Sunday's ballot, with many people complaining that none of the candidates appealed to them.

Under the banner "They Don't Represent Us", hundreds of young demonstrators marched through Paris.

"Not one of the candidate appears credible to me. Politics is controlled by finance," Duncan, a 19-year-old student, told Reuters as the protest converged on the stock exchange.

On the otherwise quiet streets of the capital, many passersby expressed frustration that mainstream candidates had not focused on the main challenges facing the euro zone's second largest economy, such as unemployment running at a 12-year high.

"The campaign has not been serious enough. The important issues have not been discussed," said Frederic Le Fevre, a self-employed businessman. "They've focused on childish arguments, throwing blame at each other."

Candidates argued for weeks about halal meat and the cost of a driving licence. Even the leading contenders tried to win the limelight with largely symbolic proposals, like Hollande's plan to scrap the word "race" from the constitution and Sarkozy's offer to bring monthly pension payments forward by eight days.

Frustration at mainstream parties was expected to boost radical candidates, such as far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Communist-backed Jean-Luc Melenchon, lying third and fourth in polls. The other big winner could be abstention with one poll suggesting almost a third of voters could stay at home.

"None of the candidates in this election represents us. I will not vote. It is the only possible act of rebellion," said one of the demonstrators at the stock market.

Hollande, mindful of an upset in 2002 when National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen knocked out Socialist Lionel Jospin in the first round, warned supporters against complacency at a closing rally on Friday.

"Nothing should be taken for granted," he said.

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Graphic on French polls r.reuters.com/was36s

French election online tinyurl.com/7hpt4vy

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RADICAL CANDIDATES FLOURISH

Polls in mainland France were due to open on Sunday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. (0600 to 1600 GMT), with voting stations in big cities open two hours longer. The first official results will be released after the last voting booths close at 8 p.m.

After trailing Hollande for months, Sarkozy had edged ahead in first-round voting intention polls for a few weeks, helped by his strong response to a shooting spree by an al Qaeda-inspired gunman who killed seven people in southwest France last month.

He lost that lead last week and polls on Friday showed Hollande winning the first round by 28 percent to 27, and taking the second by 55 percent to 45.

It would be the first time in France's Fifth Republic, founded in 1958, that an incumbent president has not finished top of the first round.

"If he comes second, we've had it," a close Sarkozy advisor told Le Monde newspaper.

Hollande has promised to raise taxes on large corporations and people earning more than 1 million euros a year to help pay for higher spending on education and pensions. With the euro zone in crisis, that prospect has placed France's strained finances in the spotlight.

The risk premium investors charge for holding French 10-year bonds over German Bunds rose to nearly 150 basis points in a possible foretaste of market jitters over an Hollande victory.

Investors think Hollande - who was catapulted to the Socialist candidacy by the arrest of former IMF chief and party favourite Dominique Strauss-Kahn - may face pressure to go beyond his centre-left programme if a resurgent hard left led by Melenchon holds the balance of power.

Strauss-Kahn was later cleared of criminal charges of sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid.

But with polls suggesting most Melenchon voters would vote Socialist on May 6, the second round is expected to be more of a battle for the middle ground, as both Hollande and Sarkozy try to reconnect with the roughly one-quarter of undecided voters.

"I don't know how to vote for," said Brice, a fish-seller in Paris. "I think it won't change anything whoever wins."

Olivier Milleron, who played the trumpet in the "They don't represent us" march, said he would still vote on Sunday.

"I think that it actually does matter whether we have a left-wing or right-wing government," he said.

(Additional reporting by Pauline Mevel; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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