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Two European diplomats expelled from Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Two European diplomats who went to one of Afghanistan’s most volatile regions have been asked to leave Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the United Nations mission, said a U.N. employee traveled to the volatile southern province of Helmand on Monday along with a member of the European Union. Siddique said the Afghan government asked the U.N. employee to leave, claiming he was detrimental to national security.

Other officials told The Associated Press the Afghan government has asked a U.N. employee and a European Union employee to leave Afghanistan.

Siddique said the two officials had been talking to all people on the ground in Helmand to help ensure the country’s stability but denied they were talking to Taliban militants.

We don’t talk to the Taliban, full stop, Siddique said.

President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said the two were involved in some activities that were not their jobs.

We do not believe there is any basis for any U.N. official to need to leave the country, and we’re making this position clear to the government of Afghanistan, Siddique said.

We see this as a misunderstanding of what people were doing in Helmand, he said. There is a miscommunication between the authorities in Helmand province and the central government, and that’s what we’re trying to clear up.

Karzai’s spokesman earlier said two foreigners — apparently the U.N. and European Union officials — had been arrested.

But because the two have diplomatic immunity they were never technically arrested and instead have been asked to leave, officials told AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Siddique said one of those arrested is a Briton from Northern Ireland and the other is Irish. He said the U.N. was told that their presence was detrimental to the national security of the country.

No officials from the European Union could be reached for comment.

Siddique said the U.N. employee was assisting the government of Afghanistan with their delivery of governance in Helmand province.

He said the U.N. mission was optimistic the matter could be resolved without the U.N. official having to leave the country, though two other officials told AP the two would leave the country within 48 hours.

Helmand province has been the scene of the heaviest fighting between Taliban militants and NATO and Afghan forces this year. It is also the world’s largest poppy-growing region. British military forces operate throughout the province.

The Afghan government, and particularly Karzai, has voiced a growing interest in meeting with Taliban leaders to try to persuade them to join the government as a way to end the insurgency. One town in northern Helmand province — Musa Qala — fell to British, Afghan and U.S. forces earlier this month after being in Taliban hands since last February.

Afghan officials said at least one key militant leader decided to stop supporting the Taliban and instead aligned himself with the Afghan government, greatly assisting the battle to retake Musa Qala.
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Buffett pays $4.5B for Marmon

CHICAGO (AP) — Warren Buffett’s investment company announced Tuesday it will pay $4.5 billion for 60 percent of Marmon Holdings, a private company of more than 125 manufacturing and service businesses.

Berkshire Hathaway, based in Omaha, Nebraska, said it plans to acquire the remaining 40 percent of Marmon over the next five to six years depending on future earnings of Marmon, according to a statement released Tuesday by both companies.

Marmon is owned by trusts for the benefits of the Pritzker family of Chicago, the family that developed the Hyatt Hotel chain.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008. Before the closing, Marmon said it will make a substantial distribution of cash and certain assets to the selling shareholders, according to the statement.

Brothers Jay and Robert Pritzker acquired Marmon in 1953 when it was a small manufacturing operation in Ohio, according to the release. In 2002, Jay’s son Tom Pritzker took over as chairman.

Our transaction was done just the way Jay would have liked it to be done — no consultants or studies, Buffett said in the statement. I am pleased that over the next five to six years, we will be partnering and working … in continuing to build Marmon.

Billionaire investor Buffett is CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, which has more than 60 subsidiaries. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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American father, girl and pilot dead in Panama crash

Panama City, Panama (AP) — The bodies of a California businessman, his teenage daughter and the Panamanian pilot of a plane that crashed over the weekend were found Tuesday in Panama’s mountains, officials said. A 12-year-old American girl survived.

Michael Klein, 37, Talia Klein, 13, and pilot Edwin Lasso, 23, were found dead in a mountainous region of Panama known as Las Ovejas, about 270 miles west of the capital, the civil protection agency said.

Francesca Lewis, a friend of Talia’s who was traveling with the Kleins, survived and was hospitalized with hypothermia and multiple traumas, the agency said in a statement. The severity of her injuries was not immediately clear.

Aviation authorities said the cause of the crash was not yet known, but RPC radio reported that witnesses saw the plane flying at a very low altitude around noon Sunday amid buffeting winds.

The group’s plane disappeared en route from Islas Secas, off Panama’s Pacific coast, to the Chiriqui volcano, about 285 miles (460 kilometers) west of the capital, Panama City.

The flight normally would have taken about 45 minutes, but controllers lost contact with the craft at about noon on Sunday.

Klein was on vacation with the two girls at an eco-resort he owns in the Central American nation, said ex-wife Kim Klein in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. The three had been scheduled to return to Santa Barbara, California, on Monday, she said.

She traveled to Panama on Monday morning and had offered $25,000 to anyone who could locate it.

Rescue workers and volunteers combed a mountainous area of western Panama on Tuesday looking for the wreckage.

Dense tropical foliage, mountainous terrain and heavy rains had been making air and land searches in the Chiriqui province extremely difficult, Rolando Rodriguez said earlier Tuesday.

Michael Klein was the chief executive officer of Pacificore LLC, a Santa Barbara-based company that manages several hedge funds and founded two companies in the 1990s before becoming president and CEO of eGroups Inc., which was the world’s largest group e-mail communication service.

Yahoo Inc. purchased eGroups for $450 million in August 2000 and it is now known as Yahoo Groups.
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Welcome to the ‘Don’t Divorce Me Club’

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) — In the corner of a small Japanese restaurant, a dozen dark suited businessmen gathered at a large table.

Smoke hovered over the dinner and beer disappeared as quickly as it was poured.

At first glance, it looked like a typical Friday night post-work scene played out all over Tokyo’s taverns.

But then your eyes stop on a poster-sized sign propped up next to one of the middle-aged men. It reads:

Three Golden Rules of Love:

Thank you (say it without hesitation)

I am sorry (say it without fear)

I love you (say it without embarrassment)

All the men at the table stood up. Equally spaced out and still wearing their stiff black suits, they chanted in unison, I can’t win! I won’t win! I don’t want to win!

The chant was followed by a deep bow, a straightening of the backs, big smiles and a burst of applause. The meeting of the National Chauvinistic Husbands Association was underway.

If you’re confused at this point, don’t fret. The group is called the National Chauvinistic Husbands Association because it’s a club for bossy husbands who need help (a little lost in translation effect here).

So the title is appropriate for this group of men. In an abrupt about face from traditional Japanese relationships, the men are learning how to give their wives more respect.

More poster signs surrounded the men at the meeting:

Three Golden Rules of Renewing Family:

Let’s Listen

Let’s Write

Let’s Talk

Three Golden Rules for Extramarital Affairs:

I don’t do it

I am not doing it

I am not even thinking about it

And there’s even a system of ranking your husbandry in the club:

Rank 1: Love your wife after three years of marriage

Rank 2: Help with the household work

Rank 3: No extramarital affairs, or at least keep it a secret from her

Rank 4: Ladies first

Rank 5: Hold hands with your wife in public

Rank 6: Listen to what your wife has to say carefully and seriously

Rank 7: Solve issues between your wife and your mother

Rank 8: Say thank you without hesitation

Rank 9: Say I’m sorry without fear

Rank 10: Say I love you without embarrassment

The meeting was jovial and there was laughter at times. But the undercurrent was serious and taken to heart by the 4,700 members of this Japanese club.

They’re all acutely aware of a new law in Japan this year that entitles a wife filing for divorce to claim half her husband’s company pension.

That change led to a spike in divorces in the country, as some Japanese women, tired of their long-absent salarymen, decided they’re better off on their own.

But these men say they don’t want to be alone so they’ll change for their wives.

As the men talked in their support-group setting, you quickly became aware of how rare it is to see men, especially businessmen, so emotionally intimate.

One man confessed his typical Japanese workday (spanning 16 hours at times) was making his wife angry. The group leader warned he’s on the highway to divorce and he needs to put his wife before work.

Another man said he’s too Japanese and can’t seem to put his wife first. The group leader warned he’s too old-fashioned.

Another man, married 22 years, shared the fear that he’ll be alone in old age because his wife complains about his snoring. Heads around the table nodded up and down in sympathy.

I couldn’t help but ask, As an American, it seems so easy to hold hands or say ‘I love you.’ What’s so hard about your rules or rankings?

The group leader looked at me and said what’s hard about the seemingly simple rules is following them fully and changing your behavior. He said it’s easy saying it or doing it, but changing who you are and really believing it is quite another.

He also pointed out to me that the divorce rate in America is over 50 percent. In Japan, the rate is still below 10 percent. Maybe, he suggested, some of the ways the Japanese approach love and marriage isn’t so strange after all.

After the meeting, we followed a young man named Yohei Takayama home. He’d just been promoted to Rank 4.

He admitted that Rank 5, holding hands with his wife in public, was not going to be natural or easy. He and his wife have been married for two years. His wife said he’s been a member of the club for a year and a half and it’s changed their relationship dramatically.

Namely, she said, he helps more around the house, listens to her more, and understands she also has a career that exhausts her. What they’re growing into, she said, is a partnership. They went grocery shopping, and I noticed he carried the bags and helped her decide what to buy.

As they left the store to go home, he took her hand in his. It didn’t look like the most natural thing in the world for him, but he was trying. His wife smiled as they walked home. E-mail to a friend

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Iranian Jews find new homes in Israel

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Greeted by joyous relatives and a crowd of reporters, about 40 Iranian Jews landed in Israel on Tuesday, leaving behind their lives in the Islamic republic for new homes in the Jewish state.

Family members screamed in delight and threw candy at the newcomers as they emerged into the airport reception hall after a long bureaucratic procedure. No details about their route of exit from Iran were given.

I feel so good, said Yosef, 16. He and his brother Michael arrived with their parents and a sister and were greeted by their grandparents, who went to Israel six years ago.

I just saw all of my family. You can’t put that into words, Yosef said. The brothers declined to give their family name to protect relatives still in Iran.

The new arrivals were sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a charity that funnels millions of dollars from evangelical donors each year.

Its founder, Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein, said by telephone from Chicago, Illinois, that each immigrant received $10,000 because they left behind all their possessions and start in Israel with nothing, although many said at the airport that they were joining family already here.

Evangelical backers of Israel say they are following a biblical prophecy that the creation of a Jewish state here is a step toward the Messianic Age. Some Israeli critics saying their ultimate goal is to convert Jews to Christianity, which the evangelicals deny.

Michael, 15, said he told all his friends where he was going, and they wanted to come along.

I was scared in Iran as a Jew, he said.

No comment was available Tuesday from the Iranian government.

Iran’s Jewish community of about 25,000 people is protected by the country’s constitution and remains the largest in the Muslim Middle East. Synagogues, Jewish schools and stores operate openly in the capital, but Jews also report discrimination and increasing concerns about hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hostility toward Israel.

About 200 Iranian Jews arrived in Israel this year, more than any other year since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, said Michael Jankelowitz, spokesman for the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, which deals with immigration.

Benjamin Yakobi, 16, has lived in Israel seven years. As he waited for his cousin, he said Israel is safer than Iran.

Here we are all Jewish, and we are not worried that someone will do something, he said.

I’m in heaven, gushed Avraham Dayan, 63, as he waited for his son, daughter-in-law and grandson to arrive. He said he had not seen his 38-year-old son in 11 years, missing his son’s wedding and the birth of his grandson.

The newcomers were also mobbed by Israeli reporters and TV camera crews. Their arrival was the top story on the evening newscast of Israel’s Channel 2 TV. Television pictures broadcast locally did not show their faces, reflecting concern that publicity could lead to harm of Jews still in Iran.

Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli analyst whose family emigrated from Iran in the 1980s, said Jews are generally free to practice their religion inside Iran, but are increasingly concerned about the intensity of attacks on Israel by the Iranian press, which they view as bordering on anti-Semitism, he said.

But Eckstein warned that the situation facing Iranian Jews is critical because of the attitude of Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly called for the disappearance of Israel. Despite a recent U.S. intelligence report that found Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons program, Israel believes Iran is still trying to build a nuclear bomb.

By the time they realize it’s not going to blow over, it’ll be too late, Eckstein said. All it needs is a U.S. or Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program for them to come down strong on the local Jewish population.

In 2000, Iranian authorities arrested 10 Jews, convicted them of spying for Israel and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from four to 13 years. An appeals court later reduced their sentences under international pressure and eventually freed them.
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