Syria's Assad in rare visit as rockets hit capital

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad made a rare public appearance on Wednesday, visiting a Damascus power station, while two bombs exploded near the city center and wounded 15 people, Syria's state news agency reported.

SANA said the blasts were caused by two improvised explosive devices which went off on Khalid Bin Walid street and the nearby Bab Mesalla Square. It said the bombs were planted by "terrorists," a term the government uses to describe rebels fighting to topple the Syrian leader.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights however said the Bab Mesalla explosions were due to rockets that fell in the area. It said initial information indicated that there were casualties, but the number could not be obtained immediately.

There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy in the reports.

The Observatory said police sealed off Bab Mesalla, which has restaurants, shops and a main public transportation station linking Damascus with the southern provinces of Daraa and Sweida.

In the other incident, the Observatory said a bomb exploded near police headquarters on Khalid Bin Walid Street. It said several people, including children, were wounded in the blast.

No other details were immediately available.

Assad's visit to the power station came just a day after a powerful bomb hit the capital.

A broadcast on Syria's state television showed Assad speaking to staff on the occasion of International Workers Day, or May Day, at the Umayyad Electrical Station in the Tishrin Park district. Similar still images also appeared on a page used by the Syrian presidency on the popular social network Facebook.

"They want to scare us, we will not be scared ... They want us to live underground, we will not live underground," Assad was shown on TV, telling a group of workers who gathered around him.

"We hope that by this time next year we will have overcome the crisis in our country," he added.

At least 14 people were killed in Tuesday's blast, the second in the heart of the capital in two days. Rebels seeking to topple Assad have been trying to create a supply line from Jordan, so that arms bought by Saudi Arabia and Qatar can be shipped in for assaults on the city they hope to capture.

The television showed Assad, confident and wearing a dark business suit, talking with workers and shaking their hands. Later he is shown surrounded by the staff in a garden.

Meanwhile, the Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition, in its first public response, rebuked the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, a day after he said that Syrian rebels will not be able to defeat Assad's regime militarily.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah had warned that Syria's "real friends," including his Iranian-backed militant group, could intervene on the government's side if the need arises.

The coalition said it hoped Hezbollah would stay out of the Syrian war, and urged Lebanon to "control its borders and urgently stop, through all available means, the military operations attributed to Hezbollah in areas close to the Syrian border."

It also blamed Assad's regime for "destroying" religious Muslim and Christian sites.

Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite Muslim group, is known to be backing Syrian government forces in Shiite villages near the Lebanese border against the mostly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Assad. But Nasrallah's comments were the strongest indication yet that his group is ready to intervene more substantially on the side of Assad's embattled regime.

"You will not be able to take Damascus by force and you will not be able to topple the regime militarily. This is a long battle," Nasrallah said, addressing the Syrian opposition. "Syria has real friends in the region and in the world who will not allow Syria to fall in the hands of America or Israel or the Takfiris."

Takfiris is a term used to refer to followers of an al-Qaida-like extremist ideology.

Hezbollah and Iran are close allies of Assad. Rebels have accused both of them of sending fighters to assist Syrian troops trying to crush the 2-year-old anti-Assad uprising, which the U.N. says has killed more than 70,000 people.

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Associated Press writer Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

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EU considers action, Pope weighs in, after Bangladesh disaster

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) - The European Union is considering trade action against Bangladesh, which has preferential access to EU markets for its garments, to pressure Dhaka to improve safety standards after a building collapse killed more than 400 factory workers.

Pope Francis condemned the conditions of workers who died in the disaster as "slave labor", while in Dhaka several thousand workers rallied to mark Labour Day, some calling for capital punishment for those responsible for the tragedy.

"The owner of the building ... should be hanged to death and compensation should be given to the injured and those who died," said labor leader Moshrefa Mishu. "A healthy and safe atmosphere should be made in the factories."

Duty-free access offered by Western countries and low wages have helped turn Bangladesh's garment exports into a $19 billion a year industry, with 60 percent of clothes going to Europe.

Any action by the EU on Bangladesh's duty-free and quota-free access would require the agreement of all member states and could take more than a year to implement.

"The European Union calls upon the Bangladeshi authorities to act immediately to ensure that factories across the country comply with international labor standards ...," the 27-nation bloc said in a statement issued by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht.

In the United States, prominent Democrats Sander Levin and George Miller wrote a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to facilitate the development of a concrete plan of action to address the range of issues relating to working conditions and worker rights in the garment sector in Bangladesh.

The death toll from the collapse last week of the illegally built Rana Plaza in Dhaka's commercial suburb of Savar rose to 411 on Wednesday, and about 40 unidentified victims were buried. One woman at the cemetery collapsed into tears when she recognized the body of her sister by her dress.

"SHOT ACROSS THE BOWS"

With local anger growing over the country's worst industrial accident, a delegation from the International Labour Organisation met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka to offer support and press for action to prevent any more such incidents.

The EU had already urged Bangladesh to adhere to ILO standards in January after two earlier factory fires, including one last November in which 112 people died.

A European Union official said the latest EU statement, issued late on Tuesday, was "a shot across the bows". "We want to turn up the diplomatic heat on them and get them to sit down and discuss this with us." [ID:nL6N0DI0QH]

About 3.6 million people work in Bangladesh's garment industry, making it the world's second-largest apparel exporter behind China. The industry employs mostly women, some of whom earn as little as $38 a month.

The Bangladeshi prime minister warned factory owners they would have to take care of their workers. "You will have to ensure workers' fair wages, allowances and other rights ... you must look after their workplace safety if you want to do business," she told a discussion forum.

Pope Francis added to pressure for change in his toughest remarks on workers' rights since his election on March 13, an indication he plans to make social justice a plank of his pontificate.

"Living on 38 euros ($50) a month - that was the pay of these people who died. That is called slave labor," Francis said in a private impromptu sermon at his personal morning Mass in his residence, Vatican Radio reported.

There were about 3,000 people inside the complex, which was built on a swamp, when it collapsed. About 2,500 people have been rescued, many injured, but many remain unaccounted for.

"Why are they taking so much time to pull out bodies?" asked a grief-stricken father who, like many others, has been waiting on the streets near the collapsed factory, hoping for information about his son.

Police said DNA samples of the bodies buried on Wednesday had been preserved, so tests could be done if relatives came forward later.

The building's owner Mohammed Sohel Rana and his father, Abdul Khalek, are among eight people arrested so far, and police are seeking a fifth factory boss, Spanish citizen David Mayor, although it was unclear whether he was in Bangladesh at the time of the accident.

EU IS BIGGEST MARKET

The factory collapse was the third deadly incident in six months to raise questions about worker safety and labor conditions in the poor South Asian country, which relies on garments for 80 percent of its exports. Clothes made in five factories inside the Rana Plaza building were produced for retailers in Europe and Canada.

In the year to June 2012, Bangladesh's garment exports to the EU rose to $11.37 billion from $10.52 billion a year earlier, according to Bangladesh's commerce ministry. Germany is the main EU market at $3.4 billion, followed by the UK at $2.13 billion, Spain at $1.71 billion and France at $1.27 billion.

Bangladesh's next biggest garment export market is the United States, which accounts for 23 percent, or $4.53 billion.

"The EU is presently considering appropriate action, including through the Generalised System of Preferences - through which Bangladesh currently receives duty-free and quota-free access to the EU market," Ashton and de Gucht said.

"The sheer scale of this disaster and the alleged criminality around the building's construction is finally becoming clear to the world."

The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), an umbrella organization that brings NGOs, unions and brands together to try to improve working conditions, said retailers, major brands and the suppliers who own the factories would have to contribute towards factory inspections.

"Bangladeshi companies who supply to our retailers need to be pricing in operating a decent factory, a safe factory and paying proper wages," ETI director Peter McAllister told Reuters.

"And then the retail world needs to recognize that the real cost of having sustainable businesses are going to be higher," he said, adding that he thought retailers would accept slightly higher prices if all outlets agreed to the changes.

Following a private emergency meeting of Canadian retailers, the Retail Council of Canada said on Tuesday it would develop a new set of guidelines. That meeting brought together retailers including Loblaw, Sears Canada Inc and Wal-Mart Canada, to discuss how to deal with the tragedy.

Loblaw Executive Chairman Galen Weston said the company would take further action "to address the situation" following the collapse of the building, where some of its "Joe Fresh" garments were made, although he did not offer specifics.

Representatives of some 45 companies, including Gap Inc, H&M, J.C. Penney, Nike Inc, Wal-Mart, Britain's Primark, Marks & Spencer and Tesco, and Li & Fung, met officials from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association in Dhaka this week to discuss worker and plant safety.

Primark and Loblaw have promised to compensate the families of garment workers killed while making their clothes.

(Reporting by Susan Taylor, Neha Alawadhi, Serajul Quadir and Ruma Paul; Writing by Paul Tait and Michael Perry; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Andrew Hay and Neil Fullick)

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Justice Dept to appeal morning-after case

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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Syrian president showing renewed confidence

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad and his allies are showing renewed confidence that the momentum in the civil war is shifting in their favor, due in part to the rapid rise of al-Qaida-linked extremists among the rebels and the world's reluctance to take forceful action to intervene in the fighting.

His invigorated regime has gone on the offensive — both on the ground and in its portrayal of the conflict as a choice between Assad and the extremists.

Several factors appear to have convinced Assad he can weather the storm: Two years into the uprising against his family's iron rule, his regime remains firmly entrenched in Damascus, the defection rate from the military has dwindled, and key international supporters Russia and China are still solidly on his side.

Moreover, the regime has benefited from the fallout created by audio distributed last month in which the head of the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra group, one of the most powerful and effective rebel groups in Syria, pledged allegiance to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

There are signs of Assad's renewed confidence.

After dropping largely out of sight following an hour-long speech at the Opera House in central Damascus in January, Assad has appeared in two TV interviews in the past month. His wife, Asma, appeared in public in March for the first time in months, surrounded by women and children for a function honoring mothers.

"I can say, without exaggeration, that the situation in Syria now is better than it was at the beginning of the crisis," Assad said in an interview with state-run broadcaster Al-Ikhbariya on April l7.

"With time, people became more aware of the dangers of what was happening. ... They started to gain a better understanding of the real Syria we used to live in and realized the value of the safety, security and harmony, which we used to enjoy," he added.

On Wednesday, a smiling Assad made another rare public appearance, visiting a Damascus power station just a day after a bombing in the capital and two days after his prime minister escapade an assassination attempt.

Syrian TV showed Assad, looking confident and wearing a dark business suit, chatting with workers and shaking their hands on May Day.

"They want to scare us, we will not be scared. ... They want us to live underground, we will not live underground," Assad was shown telling a group of workers gathered around him in a garden.

Since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011, Assad's regime has tried to portray the movement as being driven by what it called terrorists and foreign-backed mercenaries. The government responded with a brutal military crackdown that led many to take up arms to fight back. Gradually, the rebellion turned into an armed insurgency, drawing in radicalized elements and foreign fighters from other countries.

Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist group by the U.S., has emerged as one of the most potent fighting forces.

Assad's regime has seized on the recording of Nusra Front's leader pledging allegiance to al-Qaida as proof it is fighting terrorists, prompting some members of the Syrian opposition to claim the audio was faked by the government to tarnish their movement.

"The regime is trying, and succeeding unfortunately, in brainwashing some segments of society into thinking that they are their protectors and whoever follows will massacre them," said opposition figure Kamal Labwani.

Many Syrians acknowledge feeling more secure under Assad.

A Christian Syrian tailor who fled last month to Lebanon said at least Assad was a known quantity. He said people fled when "heavily armed and bearded gunmen" from an anti-Assad group arrived in his hometown last month, setting up roadblocks and checking people's IDs. The tailor insisted on identifying himself only as Amin, his first name, for fear of reprisals from the regime or its opponents.

Despite losing large swaths of territory in northern and eastern Syria, Assad's military has retained his firm grip on Damascus, his seat of power, and key coastal areas. In recent weeks, his troops have made advances, pushing back rebels in parts of the Damascus suburbs and some areas where rebels regularly fire mortars on the capital.

Inspecting the site of a car bombing Tuesday in Damascus, Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar told reporters the attacks in the capital were in response to the "victories and achievements scored by the Syrian Arab Army on the ground against terrorism." Al-Shaar himself escaped a bomb that targeted his convoy in December.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which closely monitors the civil war, said the number of defections from the military as well as political circles has gone "significantly down" in recent months. Those who are now fighting are considered the "hard-core regime supporters" who will stay until the end, he said.

Syrians opposed to Assad accuse him of encouraging and planting extremists in the ranks of the rebellion, including releasing hundreds of jihadis from prison early in the uprising, knowing full well that they were bound to take up arms against it.

Ammar Abdulhamid, a Washington-based Syrian pro-democracy activist and director of the Tharwa Foundation, said that while the regime has probably lost control over these cells by now, their presence has helped it achieve its goal.

They can now point to these cells and their activities to bolster their message of "either us or the terrorists."

The Assad dynasty has long tried to push a secular and nationalist identity in Syria while flirting with extremists when it suited it. In 2003, the Syrian regime was known to be providing safe passage to jihadis to enter Iraq to fight U.S. forces.

"This is a game that the Assad regime has perfected by now. They create the problem and then they offer their services to the world to solve that problem," said Randa Slim, a research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Still, the extremists' role in the civil war has raised alarm among Syrians and officials in the West. Their presence has been among the chief reasons behind international reluctance to arm the rebels.

Allegations that the regime used chemical weapons have not triggered an international response, despite President Barack Obama's earlier assertion that use of such weapons would be a "game-changer" and a "red line."

Obama said Tuesday that the evidence available does not yet merit the quick use of U.S. military power.

Russia and China, Assad's main allies, have stuck by him during the course of the uprising, as have his supporters in the region — Iran and Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group.

In a further boost, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech Tuesday that Syria's "real friends," including his Iranian-backed group, would intervene on the side of Damascus if needed.

Abdulhamid said that if groups like al-Nusra increase their profile in Syria, there will be a greater willingness among some Western leaders to listen to Assad's argument again.

"The mantra of 'Either us or the extremists' is slowly but surely regaining some of its popularity and relevance in decision-making circles in the West," he said.

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AP Interview: Sunni Iraq official criticizes force

BAGHDAD (AP) — The Sunni head of a committee established to investigate deadly clashes that erupted at a protest camp in Iraq last week said Wednesday that he believes excessive force was used by security forces as they tried to make arrests among anti-government demonstrators.

The April 23 clashes in the town of Hawija, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Baghdad, sparked a wave of violence across Iraq that has killed more than 230 people, posing the most serious threat to Iraq's stability since the last American troops left in December 2011.

Sectarian attacks and clashes have been on the upswing in Iraq, raising concerns of a return to the bloody fighting in the last decade that approached a state of civil war. Many from Iraq's Sunni minority say they are marginalized by and discriminated against by the Shiite-led government.

Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni, was named the head of a ministerial committee set up by Iraq's prime minister hours after the clashes broke out between government security forces and some of the protesters in Hawija.

"We have found that extra and extensive force was used, and it was not needed," he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Al-Mutlaq has in the past clashed with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose Shiite-led administration has been the target of more than four months of anti-government demonstrations. Al-Mutlaq continues to serve in the government, unlike several other senior Sunni officials who resigned in protest or were forced out of office.

The Defense Ministry said after the crackdown that 23 people, including three members of the security forces, were killed in the clashes.

Al-Mutlaq's office countered that investigators found evidence that 46 demonstrators, including minors, were killed. Several were shot in the chest or above, he said.

Al-Mutlaq said members of the military told investigators that Iraqi troops opened fire after one of their officers was killed. While he did not cast doubt on that account, he suggested that the military response was excessive.

"In any military, someone has to be responsible," he said. "To lose one soldier, or one officer, that does not mean that you kill such a huge amount of people," he added later.

Al-Mutlaq stopped short of assigning blame for the killings, saying it would likely be several weeks before his committee makes its full findings public, if at all.

The clashes in Hawija erupted four days after a checkpoint run by the police and army near the town came under attack. Militants seized a number of weapons before retreating into a crowd of protesters, according to the Defense Ministry.

The Defense Ministry said its forces tried to warn protesters to disperse before moving on the site, and they came under heavy fire as they tried to make arrests. It said some of the dead included militants tied to al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party, and weapons were recovered from the scene.

Gen. Mohammed al-Askari, a Defense Ministry spokesman, denied that excessive force was used at the Hawija camp.

"We gave them three days in order to allow us to search for wanted suspects and weapons, but our request was turned down. When our security forces advanced, they were attacked," he said when asked for comment Wednesday evening.

While the circumstances of what exactly happened at Hawija remain murky, international observers also question how the incident was handled.

"This was clearly a major fight in which many people died — not all of them armed," said a Western diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly and agreed to talk only on condition of anonymity.

"Bottom line, it looks like excessive force was used and a lot of unarmed people were killed. There were more people killed than there were arms," the diplomat added in an interview this week.

In the wake of the Hawija incident, gunmen have battled security forces in a number of towns, and attackers have detonated bombs in both Sunni and Shiite areas.

The violence continued Wednesday. A series of attacks claimed 14 lives.

A parked car bomb went off early in the morning in the Shiite-dominated Baghdad suburb of Husseiniya, killing four civilians, police said. Twelve people were wounded.

Around noon, another parked car bomb exploded near a group of anti-al-Qaida Sunni fighters near the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad.

The pro-government militiamen had gathered outside a military post to receive their salaries. The explosion killed three fighters and one civilian, wounding 15, police said.

In the evening, gunmen in five pickup trucks attacked Tarmiyah police station, sparking a half-hour gunbattle. Six policemen were killed, including the police station chief, and 10 other policemen were wounded, according to police. The gunmen withdrew after security reinforcements entered the town, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Baghdad.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

The violence that escalated after the Hawija clashes sharply raised Iraq's death toll last month. It hit 402 in April, according to an AP count, up from the previous month's toll of 254.

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Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin, Mohannad al-Saleh and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.

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At least 22 killed in Iraq attacks

By Kamal Naama

RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - At least 22 people were killed in attacks across Iraq on Wednesday, police and medics said, after weeks of intensifying violence that threatens all-out sectarian conflict.

Iraq has become increasingly volatile as the civil war in neighboring Syria strains fragile relations between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Tensions are at their highest since U.S. troops pulled out of the country more than a year ago.

In the north of the capital Baghdad, gunmen attacked a police station and occupied it after killing five policemen, medics and police said.

In the western province of Anbar, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives vest in a group of government-backed Sunni "Sahwa" fighters who were collecting their salaries, killing six in a town east of the city of Falluja, police sources said.

"I was there to get my monthly salary as usual, and there was no security measures because the situation was normal ... a person drove his car among us, and suddenly the explosion happened," said Sahwa fighter Rasheed Muslih.

"When I opened my eyes, there was nothing but smoke and several of my colleagues were killed and the others wounded."

The "Sahwa" (awakening) councils, or the Sons of Iraq as they came to be known, have come under increasing attack from Sunni militants who despise them as allies of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Sunnis have been protesting since December against Maliki, whom they accuse of marginalizing their minority sect and monopolizing power since U.S.-led troops toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Government concessions had begun to take the edge off but when security forces raided a protest camp in the town of Hawija on April 23 and more than 40 people were killed, clashes spread to other Sunni areas.

In Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, police said a roadside bomb killed four policemen. A car bomb in a Shi'ite district in northeastern Baghdad killed at least three people, police and hospital sources said. Another car bomb north of the city of Ramadi killed two policemen and wounded another 10.

Iraq is home to a number of Sunni Islamist insurgent groups including a local al Qaeda affiliate that has launched frequent attacks to undermine the Shi'ite-led government and provoke wider confrontation.

Violence is still well below its height in 2006-07, but provisional figures from rights group Iraq Body Count put violent deaths in April at more than 400 - the highest monthly toll since 2009. About 1,500 people have been killed this year.

In the northern city of Mosul, unidentified gunmen shot a prominent tribal leader in a market and an electoral candidate was also assassinated in a separate incident, police said.

KURDS END BOYCOTT

Iraq's power-sharing government has been all but paralyzed by disagreements between Sunnis, Shi'ites and ethnic Kurds, who run their own administration in the north of the country.

Kurdish ministers, who have boycotted government since March when parliament passed the 2013 budget without their consensus, said on Wednesday they would return to Baghdad, easing deadlock between the central government and the autonomous region.

A Kurdish delegation visited Baghdad earlier this week to address an ongoing row over land and oil, but there was no apparent breakthrough on that front.

Kurdistan, which has signed deals on its own terms with international oil firms, says it is owed more than 4 trillion Iraqi dinars ($3.5 billion). Baghdad rejects those contracts and has alloted the region a much smaller sum in the budget.

(Additional reporting by Ghazwan Hassan in Samarra, Kareem Raheem in Baghdad and Isabel Coles in Arbil; Writing by Suadad al-Salhy; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Britain's job market weaker than official data suggest - study

LONDON (Reuters) - A sharp rise in the number of people working less than they would like helps explain the apparent resilience of Britain's job market while the economy stagnates, according to a study published on Thursday.

British unemployment has risen from 5 percent in 2007 to just under 8 percent, well below the double-digit rates scaled during recession in the 1990s.

The study, co-authored by labour market economist and former Bank of England rate-setter David Blanchflower, shows nearly 10 percent of British workers wanted more hours than their employers would provide in 2012. In 2007, that figure stood at 5 percent, the same as the unemployment rate.

"The United States has suffered twice the increase in unemployment seen in Britain for half the drop in output," Blanchflower said. "The rise in underemployment in the UK is a big part of that puzzle."

The United States publishes a measure of underemployment which is seen as a useful indicator of slack in the economy.

Simon Kirby, UK economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research think-tank which published the study, urged Britain to do the same.

"Underemployment figures could be calculated easily from the existing Labour Force Survey," he said.

Britain's job market indicators may come under increasing scrutiny if the Bank follows the Federal Reserve in providing "forward guidance" on monetary policy.

The Fed has specified that rates will remain low until unemployment falls below a certain level. Chancellor George Osborne has asked the Bank to report back to him in August on the merits of adopting Fed-style guidance.

(Reporting by Christina Fincher; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

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