U.S. judge rules Cuban spy can stay in Cuba if U.S. citizenship renounced

By Tom Brown

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Cuban spy on probation after 13 years behind bars in the United States can remain in Cuba, where he returned on a court-approved visit last month, if he renounces his U.S. citizenship, a federal judge in Miami ruled on Friday.

Rene Gonzalez, 56, one of what Cuba calls its "Five Heroes," returned to the communist island temporarily on April 22 to attend a memorial service for his deceased father.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard granted Gonzalez's request for the visit on condition that he return to Florida by next Monday.

In her ruling Friday, however, she said the U.S. government had raised no objection to a subsequent motion filed by Gonzalez's lawyer saying he would formally renounce his U.S. citizenship if he was allowed to serve out the remainder of his probation in Cuba.

The judge ordered that Gonzalez has until May 16 to obtain a "certificate of loss of nationality" from the U.S. State Department. If he failed to do so he would be required to return to the United States to complete his probation, she wrote.

The Chicago-born Gonzalez, who holds dual U.S.-Cuban citizenship, had first made the offer to drop his U.S. citizenship early last year, his lawyer said.

"If defendant voluntarily renounces his United States citizenship ... then defendant shall serve the remainder of his supervised-release term in Cuba on a non-reporting basis, and shall not return to the United States," Lenard wrote.

Gonzalez could not be reached for immediate comment. But his U.S. attorney, Philip Horowitz, said his client was happy with the judge's decision.

"It took a long time but the government finally accepted his offer," Horowitz said. "The government has made it very clear they don't want him to be a U.S. citizen," he added.

Lenard had also granted Gonzalez's request to visit a critically ill brother in Cuba in March of last year. Gonzalez returned to the United States after that visit.

Similarly, jailed American contractor Alan Gross has requested that Cuban President Raul Castro allow him a temporary return to the United States to visit his mother, who has inoperable lung cancer.

Gonzalez was convicted in 2001 of conspiring to spy on Cuban exile groups and U.S. military activities in Florida as part of an espionage ring known as the "Wasp Network."

One of his co-defendants is serving a double life sentence for his part in the shooting down of two U.S. planes in 1996 flown by an exile group that dropped anti-government leaflets over Havana.

The case of the so-called Cuban Five is little known outside the Cuban exile community in the United States but is a major issue in Cuba where the government repeatedly says they were wrongly convicted and demands their release.

Havana maintains the agents were only collecting information on Cuban exile groups planning actions against the island 90 miles from Key West, Florida.

Gonzalez was the first of the five to be released from jail when he finished his sentence in 2011, but he was ordered to stay in the United States for a three-year probation period that ends in October of next year.

Cuba has hinted at a possible swap of the Cuban Five for Gross, who is serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba for illegally installing Internet networks for Cuban Jewish groups. He was working for a U.S. program that Cuba considers subversive.

The United States has rejected the idea of any possible swap, however.

(Reporting by Tom Brown; Additional reporting by David Adams; Editing by Eric Beech)

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American journalist held in Syria believed to be in detention center

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The family and employer of James Foley, a U.S. journalist missing in Syria since November, say they now believe he is being held by the Syrian government in a detention center near the capital, Damascus.

That conclusion follows a five-month investigation by Foley's family and his employer, GlobalPost, and was announced on Friday in an article posted on the news organization's website.

"With a very high degree of confidence, we now believe that Jim was most likely abducted by a pro-regime militia group and subsequently turned over to Syrian government forces," GlobalPost CEO and President Philip Balboni said, according to the article.

He went on to say that GlobalPost believes Foley was being held in a prison or detention facility "in the Damascus area."

Foley is believed to have been kidnapped in November of last year in northwest Syria, soon after he crossed the Turkish border by car.

He has worked in the Middle East for the past five years, for GlobalPost and other news organizations, according to a website set up by his family, freejamesfoley.org .

Two years ago, while on assignment for GlobalPost in eastern Libya, Foley was arrested and held for 44 days.

The two-year-old uprising against four decades of Assad family rule has been led by Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, and sectarian clashes and alleged massacres have become increasingly common in a conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people.

(Reporting By Edith Honan; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Beech)

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Obama says U.S. watching 'crackdowns' on Venezuela opposition

(Reuters) - The United States is watching "crackdowns on the opposition" in Venezuela, President Barack Obama said in a television interview aired on Friday when asked if he considered newly elected Nicolas Maduro to be the country's legitimate president.

Maduro, elected in April by a narrow margin, earlier this year accused the United States of seeking to kill opposition leader Henrique Capriles to stir chaos and spark a coup. Maduro's mentor and predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, was one of the world's most vocal critics of the United States.

"I think that the entire hemisphere has been watching the violence, the protests, the crackdowns on the opposition," Obama said in the interview with Univision News during a trip to Mexico. "I think our general view has been that it's up to the people of Venezuela to choose their leaders in legitimate elections."

Opposition-led protests the day after the April 14 vote turned violent and, according to the government, caused nine deaths. Maduro accused Capriles of trying to start a coup against him.

The opposition says officials exaggerated the violence, and some of the deaths were caused by common crime. It accuses the government of persecuting state employees who voted for Capriles, and arresting some activists, in what it calls a wave of repression.

"Our approach to the entire hemisphere is not ideological. It's not rooted back in the Cold War. It's based on the notion of our basic principles of human rights and democracy and freedom of press and freedom of assembly. Are those being observed?" Obama said.

"There are reports that they have not been fully observed post-election," he added. "I think our only interest at this point is making sure that the people of Venezuela are able to determine their own destiny free from the kinds of practices that the entire hemisphere generally has moved away from."

Obama held up Mexico's peaceful transition from a conservative to a centrist government last year, and flagged examples in Colombia, Chile and Peru.

The United States angered Maduro when it last month held back recognition of his narrow victory over Capriles.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Mark Felsenthal; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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Obama says does not foresee sending U.S. troops to Syria

By Mark Felsenthal and Steve Holland

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday he does not foresee a scenario in which he would send U.S. ground troops to Syria and outlined a deliberate approach to determining whether the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in a 2-year civil war.

Obama insisted that the United States has not ruled out any options in dealing with Syria as the United States investigates whether the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons.

But Obama, who has spent much of his presidency winding down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, made clear he was not inclined to send troops to Syria, saying "I do not foresee" such a scenario.

Leaders in the region that he has consulted on this issue agree with him, Obama said.

If Syria is found to have used chemical weapons, however, Obama will be under pressure to take some action beyond what the United States is already doing. The Obama administration is considering sending lethal aid to Syrian rebels.

Obama, who has come under fire from some critics in Washington who contend he has a muddled approach to Syria, insisted the United States is not standing by even as it waits for a chemical weapons ruling.

"We're not waiting," he said. "We are working to apply every pressure point that we can on Syria."

The United States has said it has "varying degrees of confidence" that chemical weapons have been used by Syria's government, which violates a "red line" that Obama had established against such action.

At his news conference with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, Obama said more evidence is bound to turn up if Syria is continuing to use chemical weapons.

"If in fact there is the kind of systematic use of chemical weapons inside of Syria, we expect we are going to get additional further evidence and at that point we will absolutely present that to the international community," Obama said.

Any additional steps taken by the United States, he said, will be based on the "facts on the ground" in Syria and what is in the best interests of the American people and U.S. national security."

He stressed he would not be pressured prematurely into a deeper intervention into Syria.

"I'm going to make those decision based on the best evidence and after careful consultation, because when we rush into things, when we leap before we look, then not only do we pay a price but oftentimes we see unintended consequences on the ground. So it's important that we do it right," Obama said.

Privately, U.S. officials predict it will be weeks before any conclusion is reached about whether Syria used chemical weapons. Syria denies using chemical weapons.

Obama administration officials have not specified what "physiological" evidence they have that Syrian forces used sarin but U.S. government sources said it included samples of blood from alleged victims, and of soil.

Obama has repeatedly shied away from deep U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict, which erupted in 2011 and has killed 70,000 people and created more than 1.2 million refugees.

A New York Times/CBS News poll released on Tuesday found that 62 percent of Americans believe the United States has no responsibility to do something about the fighting between Assad's forces and anti-government rebels.

Only 39 percent of respondents said they were following the Syrian violence closely, indicating that it is not among U.S. citizens' top concerns.

(Editing by Sandra Maler and Bill Trott)

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Israel has conducted airstrike in Syria: U.S. official

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel has conducted an airstrike in Syria, apparently targeting a building, a U.S. official said on Friday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to elaborate. CNN quoted two unnamed U.S. officials as saying Israel most likely conducted the strike "in the Thursday-Friday time frame" and that Israel's warplanes did not enter Syrian airspace.

CNN said the officials did not believe Israel had targeted a chemical weapons facility. CBS News cited U.S. sources as saying Israel targeted a warehouse.

There was no official confirmation. Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told Reuters, "I'm not aware of any attack right now."

A White House spokeswoman referred questions on the CNN report to the Israeli government. The Pentagon declined comment.

In Jerusalem, an Israeli military spokeswoman said, "We do not comment on reports of this kind."

A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington said, "We cannot comment on these reports, but what we can say is that Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, especially to Hezbollah in Lebanon." Hezbollah fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006.

The CNN report said that during the time frame of the attack, the United States had collected information showing Israeli warplanes overflying Lebanon.

In January this year, Israel bombed a convoy in Syria, apparently hitting weapons destined for Hezbollah, according to diplomats, Syrian rebels and security sources in the region.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton, Arshad Mohammed and Phil Stewart in Washington, and Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Lou Charbonneau at the United Nations, Writing by Sandra Maler; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Dozens dead as Assad's forces storm coastal village

By Erika Solomon

BEIRUT (Reuters) - State forces and militias loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stormed the coastal village of Baida on Thursday, killing at least 50 people including women and children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The pro-opposition monitoring group said the final death toll was likely to exceed 100. Many of those killed appeared to have been executed by shooting or stabbing, it said, and other bodies were found burned.

Activist reports on the killings could not be independently verified as the Syrian government restricts access for independent media.

Hours earlier, rebels had attacked a busload of pro-Assad militiamen, known as shabbiha, killing at least six and wounding 20. In response, government forces and shabbiha surrounded Baida and nearby Maqreb, near the city of Banias, and pummeled them with mortar fire before raiding Baida.

Assad's forces have mounted a string of attacks reaching from the capital Damascus and the central city of Homs out to the Mediterranean coast, homeland of the Alawite minority sect to which Assad himself belongs.

The two-year uprising against four decades of Assad family rule has been led by Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, and sectarian clashes and alleged massacres have become increasingly common in a conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people.

Baida was the site of one of the first sectarian clashes, when Alawite shabbiha fighters attacked Sunni street protesters in the first few months of the uprising, killing several people. The city of Banias and surrounding villages are a largely Sunni pocket surrounded by Alawite towns.

"The fate of dozens of residents is still unknown," said the British-based Observatory, which collates reports from a network of activists across Syria.

"Several homes were also destroyed by regime forces and loyalist gunmen from the surrounding Alawite villages. Information is still scarce because phone and internet lines have been cut."

ASSAD ADVANCING

State forces and loyalist militias appear to have made substantial gains in recent weeks, seizing several suburbs outside Damascus and recapturing territory in Homs, birthplace of the armed insurgency.

Fighters and activists said pro-Assad forces had retaken a central district of Homs on Thursday, driving a wedge between two pockets of rebel resistance. The Observatory said the attack had been supported by Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah coordinators.

Shi'ite Iran and Hezbollah have denied sending forces to fight alongside Assad's troops, but Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been increasingly open about the group's presence in Syria, where he says it is defending Lebanese and Shi'ite communities from attack by Sunni Muslim rebels.

The recapture of Wadi al-Sayeh, which links the besieged rebel stronghold of Khalidiyah to the opposition-held old city, appears to be one of a series of focused counter-offensives that mark a shift from the indiscriminate campaigns seen earlier in the conflict.

Homs sits on the main road connecting Assad's Damascus powerbase with the Alawite-dominated coast.

Assad's forces also seized the town of Qaysa on the eastern edge of Damascus on Thursday, part of a steady move north from the airport on the city's southeastern edge that aims to lock down the eastern approaches to the city and close off weapons supplies from the Jordanian border.

A call issued by several activists in the area warned the disparate rebel forces to pull together or face defeat.

"If you do not unite under one flag, the regime is going to hunt you down, one brigade after another," it said.

(Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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FBI releases photos of three men from Benghazi attack site

May 1 (Reuters) - Post position for Saturday's 139th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs after Wednesday's draw (listed as barrier, HORSE, jockey, trainer) 1. BLACK ONYX, Joe Bravo, Kelly Breen 2. OXBOW, Gary Stevens, D. Wayne Lukas 3. REVOLUTIONARY, Calvin Borel, Todd Pletcher 4. GOLDEN SOUL, Robby Albarado, Dallas Stewart 5. NORMANDY INVASION, Javier Castellano, Chad Brown 6. MYLUTE, Rosie Napravnik, Tom Amoss 7. GIANT FINISH, Jose Espinoza, Tony Dutrow 8. GOLDENCENTS, Kevin Krigger, Doug O'Neill 9. OVERANALYZE, Rafael Bejarano, Todd Pletcher 10. PALACE MALICE, Mike Smith, Todd Pletcher 11. ...

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Tear gas fired as Egyptian Islamists target security HQ

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces fired tear gas to disperse a small group of hardline Islamist protesters who were attempting to scale the walls of the state security headquarters in a Cairo suburb late Thursday night.

Around 2,000 protesters from several Salafi Islamist groups had staged a protest earlier on Thursday night outside the security headquarters against what they said was a return to the force's pre-revolution methods.

After security forces fired tear gas, the remaining protesters, some of whom had also attempted to break into a nearby police officers' club, left the area.

The protest points to lingering suspicion harbored by the hardliners about security agencies used against them by ousted President Hosni Mubarak, and which, they say, Islamist President Mohamed Mursi has been unable to reform.

The protesters, some waving the black-and-white al Qaeda flag, chanted slogans against Mursi and accused him of building a security apparatus no different from the old one.

Earlier, at the height of the protest, no police presence was visible outside the security headquarters, where protesters tore down Interior Ministry flags and erected several al Qaeda flags and set off fireworks.

A small group had earlier on Thursday evening attempted to break down a door on the headquarter's perimeter but gave up before causing damage to the door. A Jewish Star of David was drawn by some protesters on the wall's perimeter.

The Salafi groups had issued a statement earlier in the day saying state security organs had returned to "criminal practices" such as summoning citizens for investigation, threatening the achievements of the 2011 uprising.

Egypt dissolved the feared and hated state security apparatus, which had been used by Mubarak's administration to crush political opposition, including Islamists who were repressed under the old guard, the month after he was toppled.

It was replaced by a new National Security Force, which the Interior Ministry promised would serve the nation without interfering in the lives of citizens or their right to exercise their political views.

The protesters had marched from a nearby mosque after evening prayers. Some chanted to onlookers in apartments on streets clogged by the march "come down from your houses, state security is Mubarak".

The system of law and justice has been a major stumbling block in post-Mubarak Egypt. A rift between the Islamist rulers and the judiciary, which Islamists see as controlled by Mubarak loyalists, is steadily widening amid a broader struggle over the future character of the country.

Earlier on Thursday, an Egyptian judge referred a complaint filed by a police spokesman against popular hardline Islamist cleric Hazem Salah Abu Ismail to the state security prosecution, setting a hearing for Saturday to begin the investigation.

State newspaper Al-Ahram reported that the complaint called for Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim to arrest Abu Ismail on charges of "terrorizing police officers" after Abu Ismail urged his supporters to attend Thursday's protest.

The police spokesman's complaint added that such demonstrations hindered officers in their work to protect national security.

(Reporting by Abdelrahman Youssef and Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Maggie Fick and Tom Perry; Editing by Alison Williams and David Brunnstrom)

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Guatemala declares emergency in four towns to quell mining protests

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala declared an emergency in four southeastern towns on Thursday, suspending citizens' constitutional rights in an area where deadly protests over a proposed silver mine have erupted in recent weeks.

Guatemalan President Otto Perez announced the move in an effort to quell protests targeting the mine belonging to Canadian miner Tahoe Resources Inc. Two people have been killed in the demonstrations.

The company's security guards shot and wounded six demonstrators on Saturday, said Mauricio Lopez, Guatemala's security minister.

The next day, protesters, who say the Escobal silver mine near the town of San Rafael Las Flores will contaminate local water supplies, kidnapped 23 police officers, Lopez said.

One police officer and a demonstrator were killed in a shootout on Monday when police went to free the hostages, said Lopez.

"I am not going to allow this to continue," Perez told reporters. "We have conducted a six-month investigation in this area with the attorney general's office for various criminal activities."

Police and military raided the four towns on Thursday, arresting 15 people suspected of kidnapping, weapons theft and destruction of private property.

Tahoe said in a statement it regretted the injuries to protesters caused by rubber bullets, but denied any responsibility for the deaths.

"Our investigation has shown that only non-lethal measures were taken by our security," the company said.

The 30-day "state of emergency" will suspend citizens' rights to bear arms and assemble peacefully. It also gives authorities the power, without a warrant, to search residents suspected of crimes.

Mining in Guatemala accounts for about 2 percent of gross domestic product. The country's largest gold mine, the Marlin mine owned by Canada's Goldcorp Inc, is expected to produce up to 200,000 ounces this year.

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu; Writing by Mike McDonald; Editing by Gabriel Stargardter and Peter Cooney)

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North Korea could reach U.S. with nuclear arms: Pentagon

By David Alexander

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea's continuing development of nuclear technology and long-range ballistic missiles will move it closer to its stated goal of being able to hit the United States with an atomic weapon, a new Pentagon report to Congress said on Thursday.

The report, the first version of an annual Pentagon assessment required by law, said Pyongyang's Taepodong-2 missile, with continued development, might ultimately be able to reach parts of the United States carrying a nuclear payload if configured as an intercontinental ballistic missile.

North Korea launched a multi-stage rocket that delivered a satellite into orbit in December, an advance that "contributes heavily" to the country's development of a long-range ballistic missile capability, the report said.

It is also continuing to refine its atomic weapons capability, including with a nuclear detonation in February, and is capable of conducting "additional nuclear tests at any time," the report said.

"These advances in ballistic-missile delivery systems, coupled with developments in nuclear technology ... are in line with North Korea's stated objective of being able to strike the U.S. homeland," the report said.

"North Korea will move closer to this goal, as well as increase the threat it poses to U.S. forces and allies in the region, if it continues testing and devoting scarce regime resources to these programs," it said.

The document characterized North Korea as one of the biggest U.S. security challenges in the region because of its effort to develop nuclear arms and missiles, its record of selling weapons technology to other countries and its willingness to "undertake provocative and destabilizing behavior."

The report comes at a sensitive time in the region, with friction between Washington and Pyongyang only now beginning to ease following two months of increasingly shrill rhetoric that seemed to edge the Korean peninsula close to war.

Tensions between the two countries rose sharply after North Korea put the satellite into space in late December and conducted the nuclear test in February. The test triggered new U.N. sanctions, which led to a barrage of threats from Pyongyang.

North Korea went so far as to warn of nuclear strikes on the United States and South Korea, as its new leader, Kim Jong-un, marked his first year in office following the death of his father.

The U.S. and South Korean militaries went ahead with a long-scheduled military exercise despite the threats and Washington sending stealth bombers and other planes to the region in a show of force.

North Korea signed a deal to get rid of its nuclear program in exchange for aid in 2005 but later backed out of the pact and now says it will not give up its atomic weapons program.

The United States has firmly rejected North Korean demands that it be recognized as a nuclear-armed state. Washington has stepped up its diplomacy with China over the issue.

(Reporting By David Alexander; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

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