15 people killed as Yemeni troops fire on protesters

SANAA, Yemen — Uniformed soldiers killed 15 people Monday when they fired on a crowd of protesters demanding the ouster of longtime ruler President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Riot police moved on demonstrators with water cannons and pickups mounted with guns in the mountainous southern city of Taiz. They used tear gas to disperse them and then soldiers fired on them, witnesses said.

It was the second day demonstrators were fired on. On Sunday, one person was killed.

"More young people came today to join the protests after police attacked us yesterday," said Abdul Khadul, who witnessed the shootings. "Uniformed soldiers on rooftops fired on the youth after the riot police fired (tear) gas canisters."

Many demonstrators came from villages outside the city to join the protests. Demonstrators ran with the wounded to a nearby mosque, which was inundated with hundreds of activists suffering from inhalation of tear gas fumes, the witnesses said.

Plainclothes gunmen also opened fire on protesters in the Red Sea port of Hodeida after demonstrators took to the streets there. Yemen's official news agency, Saba News, denied that soldiers shot at protesters.

Saba News reported that the violence broke during clashes between supporters of the government and protesters. It said that anti-government protesters tried to storm government buildings and "forced police to open fire into the air and use tear gas to stop them."

Possible e-mail theft from Epsilon slams banks, retailers

With the possible theft of millions of e-mail addresses from an advertising company, several large companies have started warning customers to expect fraudulent e-mails that try to coax account login information from them.

Companies behind such brands as Chase, Citi and Best Buy said over the weekend that hackers may have learned their e-mail addresses because of a security breach at a Dallas-based company called Epsilon that manages e-mail communications.

The e-mail addresses could be used to target spam. It’s also a standard tactic among online fraudsters to send e-mails to random people, purporting to be from a large bank and asking them to login in at a site that looks like the bank’s site. Instead, the fraudulent site captures their login information and uses it to access the real account.

The data breach could make these so-called “phishing” attacks more efficient, by allowing the fraudsters to target people who actually have an account with the bank.

David Jevans, chairman and founder of the non-profit Anti-Phishing Working Group, said criminals have been moving away from indiscriminate phishing towards more intelligent attacks known as “spear phishing,” which rely on having more intimate knowledge of the victims.

“This data breach is going to facilitate that in a big way. Now they know which institution people bank with, they know their name and they have their e-mail address,” said Jevans, who is also the CEO of security company IronKey.

“You’re not going to see typical phishing where 90% of it ends up in spam traps and is easily detected. This is going to be highly targeted,” he added.

Among the affected companies are financial companies like Capital One Financial, Barclays Bank, U.S. Bancorp, Citigroup, Ameriprise Financial and JPMorgan Chase, and retailers like Best Buy, TiVo, Walgreen and Kroger.

The College Board, the not-for-profit organization that runs the SATs, also warned that a hacker may have obtained student e-mail addresses.

Walt Disney Co.’s travel subsidiary, Disney Destinations, sent e-mails warning customers on Sunday. Hotel chain Marriott International issued a similar warning.

Epsilon said Friday that its system had been breached, exposing e-mail addresses and customer names but no other personal information.

Epsilon, a unit of Alliance Data Systems, sends more than 40 billion e-mails annually and has more than 2,500 clients.

The scale of the data breach meant that many people got warnings from multiple companies over the weekend.

2nd child accused in NYC attack on Muslim girl

A 13-year-old girl has been arrested on hate crime charges and is accused of helping bully and attack a Muslim girl at their New York City middle school.

The girl is being charged as a juvenile, along with a 12-year-old boy who was arrested last week. She is charged with third-degree assault as a hate crime and attempted robbery. She is due in Family Court Tuesday.

Authorities say the two bullied and tormented a 13-year-old Muslim girl at the Staten Island school, calling her a terrorist and trying to steal from her.

They say the abuse culminated with the two trying to rip off her head scarf. The girl suffered minor injuries.

If convicted, the 13 year old faces 18 months in juvenile detention. School officials say disciplinary action is pending.

Japan's ocean radiation hits 7.5 million times legal limit

The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it had found radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and government officials imposed a new health limit for radioactivity in fish.

The reading of iodine-131 was recorded Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. Another sample taken Monday found the level to be 5 million times the legal limit. The Monday samples also were found to contain radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit.

The exact source of the radiation was not immediately clear, though Tepco has said that highly contaminated water has been leaking from a pit near the No. 2 reactor. The utility initially believed that the leak was coming from a crack, but several attempts to seal the crack failed.

On Tuesday the company said the leak instead might be coming from a faulty joint where the pit meets a duct, allowing radioactive water to seep into a layer of gravel underneath. The utility said it would inject "liquid glass" into gravel in an effort to stop further leakage.

Meanwhile, Tepco continued releasing what it described as water contaminated with low levels of radiation into the sea to make room in on-site storage tanks for more highly contaminated water. In all, the company said it planned to release 11,500 tons of the water, but by Tuesday morning it had released less than 25% of that amount.

Although the government authorized the release of the 11,500 tons and has said that any radiation would be quickly diluted and dispersed in the ocean, fish with high readings of iodine are being found.

Obama's announcement, made through an email and video sent to supporters, set in motion a plan to tap donors and raise as much as $1 billion, which would shatter the $750 million campaign finance record he set in 2008.

Five months after his Democrats were routed by Republicans in November congressional elections, Obama looks in fairly good shape for re-election when paired against any of a group of potential Republican challengers.

It is early yet. The economic recovery has picked up pace in recent weeks but could be slowed by rising gasoline prices or any number of unpredictable events in the next 18 months, such as an unexpected expansion of the Libya conflict.

The stubbornly high jobless rate was the leading factor in Republican victories last November and Americans weigh the state of their pocketbooks far more than anything else when they vote. The jobless rate has dropped a full percentage point to 8.8 percent in the last five months.



"If the economy does chug along the way it is now a lot of people may be more comfortable going with Obama," said Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri.

Obama urged supporters in a phone call on Monday evening to work to preserve his administration's policy initiatives, and he promised to work on issues such as energy and immigration reform over the next year.

"We can't go backwards," he said. "We have to preserve the progress that we've made and take it to the next level, and that means that we're going to have to mobilize."

Obama became the first black U.S. president in 2009, and scored big legislative victories when Congress approved reforms of healthcare and financial regulation laws last year. But the economy has been slow to recover from recession despite a stimulus package of more than $800 billion.

Obama's path to re-election will depend greatly on how he fares with independent voters, who were crucial to his 2008 victory but who abandoned Democrats last November.

The president has adopted a more centrist tone in recent months in response to that midterm election loss, emphasizing his desire to work with both Democrats and Republicans.

While the president is publicly trying to distance himself from politicking, his every move now will be viewed through a re-election prism, such as two trips he is taking this week to states that he won in 2008 and will need in 2012: Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Obama said in an email to supporters that he was filing papers to start his re-election bid in a formal way.

"So even though I'm focused on the job you elected me to do, and the race may not reach full speed for a year or more, the work of laying the foundation for our campaign must start today," he said in the email.

"WE AREN'T FINISHED"

He has been sounding the themes of his campaign in fund-raising speeches, telling Democratic loyalists, "the promise that we made to the American people has been kept. But we aren't finished. We've got more work to do."

Republicans acknowledge it will be a difficult task to defeat an incumbent Democratic president. Only two incumbents have been defeated in the last 30 years -- Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Republican George H.W. Bush in 1992.

"Obama's the favorite, but 18 months in advance, you'd be foolish to call anybody a lock," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia.

Several Republicans are willing to try, including former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, both of whom are planning campaigns.

Reacting to Obama's announcement, Pawlenty released a 35-second video of his own highlighting high unemployment, weakness in the housing market and surging federal debt.

"How can America win the future, when we're losing the present?" Pawlenty asks in the video. "In order for America to take a new direction, it's going to take a new president."

The Republican field is off to a slow start as potential candidates work quietly to build networks of donors and supporters and visit early voting states. By holding off on campaign announcements, they are saving money that will be needed in the months ahead.

Early polls show Obama leading potential Republican rivals. The first scheduled debate of the Republican nominating race was postponed last week from May until September because of a lack of candidates.

Events taking place now in Washington may play a role in the campaign battle to come. Republicans elected on pledges to cut government spending are attempting significant reductions that Democrats oppose.

If the two parties cannot find common ground, it could force a government shutdown that the White House says could hurt the nascent economic recovery.