Obama heads out on new jobs tour - first stop: Austin, Texas

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will travel on Thursday to Austin, Texas, the first stop in a new series of day trips designed to draw attention to policies and programs that help spur the economy, and build support for his economic policies, the White House said on Sunday.

In Austin, Obama will visit a high school and a technology company, and will talk with entrepreneurs and workers about proposals he made earlier this year to boost jobs and training.

Despite often saying that his top priority is creating more jobs, Obama's proposals have been overshadowed by debates over reforms to gun and immigration laws as well as efforts to reduce the deficit.

Unemployment in the United States fell to 7.5 percent last month, the lowest level since Obama took office.

"Things are getting better, but our economic recovery is not as strong as it could be and far too many middle class families are still struggling," said Josh Earnest, Obama's deputy press secretary.

"There are things Washington could be doing right now to help American businesses, schools and workers," he said, explaining the tours are designed to engage Americans and push Congress to act.

In February, Obama said he wanted to invest in manufacturing "hubs" around the country, spend $50 billion on roads, bridges and other infrastructure, and raise the minimum wage to $9 per hour from the current $7.25.

Most of the proposals require Congressional approval, but there have been few signs of broad support for the measures on Capitol Hill.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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Kerry heads to East Asia, seeks help on NKorea

LONDON (AP) — John Kerry had been secretary of state for little more than a week when North Korea tested a nuclear bomb.

He gathered top aides together for a morning meeting and asked for ideas, prompting a conversation about how to get China to join the United States in putting pressure on Pyongyang, according to a senior administration official who was present. The debate encapsulates America's struggle to come up with a strategy — based on sticks, carrots or a combination of both — to convince China to police its own backyard.

As Kerry heads to East Asia for his first time as America's top diplomat, some progress has been made in convincing Beijing, North Korea's biggest benefactor, to start getting tough with its neighbor. The question is whether it will make a difference.

North Korea's government agency said Thursday that it has "powerful striking means" on standby for a launch, amid speculation in Seoul and Washington that North Korea will test-fire a mid-range missile designed to reach the U.S. territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. It was the latest warning from the North, which launched a long-range rocket in December and conducted an underground nuclear test in February.

For years, Washington has been putting its hopes in Beijing to rein in the provocative behavior and combative rhetoric from North Korea. China has more leverage over the North than any other country, having massively boosted trade ties with the isolated regime in recent years and maintaining close military relations.

But the U.S. has been frustrated by the reaction from a government that in many ways has different priorities. China, analysts and officials often say, fears the implosion of North Korea's impoverished state and the regional instability that would cause far more immediate damage than the North's nuclear proliferation and missile program. And China remains wary of any enhanced U.S. involvement in its backyard.

"If anyone has real leverage over the North Koreans, it is China," U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress Thursday. "And the indications that we have are that China is itself rather frustrated with the behavior and the belligerent rhetoric of ... Kim Jong Un."

China's role in containing North Korea is expected to be front and center when Kerry arrives in Seoul on Friday. He then travels to Beijing and Tokyo.

At a meeting Wednesday in London, Kerry and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida "discussed the special role China can play in exerting pressure on the North Korean leadership," according to a State Department official who was present.

Kerry, the official added, stressed the need to "change the dynamic in North Korea, and he emphasized the importance of continuing to put pressure on North Korea with economic sanctions." The official wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the closed-doors meeting and demanded anonymity.

Kerry and the other foreign ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations "condemned in the strongest possible terms" Thursday the North's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

"They condemned DPRK's current aggressive rhetoric and confirmed that this will only serve to further isolate the DPRK," the final communique said, using the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "They urged the DPRK to engage in credible and authentic multilateral talks on denuclearization."

In recent weeks, Washington and Beijing have cooperated on new sanctions against the North and both have decried the increasing threats from Kim Jong Un's government, which have expanded to include talk of a nuclear strike against the United States. It is not believed to have such capacity, but the provocative rhetoric has officials around the world extremely worried.

At the State Department meeting after North Korea's Feb. 12 nuclear test, different ideas for how to bring about a new assertiveness from Beijing were tossed around, according to the senior U.S. official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the meeting and demanded anonymity.

One approach could be described best as the power of persuasion: Make the case to Chinese authorities, offered many times previously, that both the U.S. and China share a common interest in ensuring a stable Korean Peninsula, without the threat of nuclear war in the Asia-Pacific.

The other approach is more akin to the power of example: Show the Chinese what it means if they cannot control the North's behavior by beefing up U.S. defenses and sending more American military assets right into China's backyard.

Over the past few weeks, the Obama administration has applied doses of both, while keeping up diplomatic efforts. President Barack Obama called Chinese President Xi Jinping in mid-March to discuss North Korea.

Military maneuvers in South Korea have served as a reminder of the overwhelming deterrent force the U.S. and its ally maintain. The deployments also have sent a message to Beijing.

But the North's history of unpredictability means no one knows for sure what it will all mean, even if analysts say North Korea is unlikely to initiate any attack on South Korea like the one that started the Korean War in 1950, and is unlikely to target Japan or American interests in the region.

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AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report from Washington.

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Hamas shaves heads of Gaza youths with long hair

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Police in Hamas-ruled Gaza have started grabbing young men with long or gel-styled spiky hair off the streets, bundling them into jeeps, mocking them and shaving their heads, two of those targeted and a rights group said Sunday.

It is the latest sign that the Islamic militants are imposing their strict practices on the population.

Hamas has been slowly forcing its fundamentalist interpretation of the religion on already conservative Gaza since it overran the territory in 2007, but the new crackdown on long hair and tight or low-waist pants — in several cases accompanied by beatings — appears to be one of the most aggressive phases of the campaign so far.

The crackdown began last week, and two of those targeted told The Associated Press said they were rounded up in separate sweeps in Gaza City that included more than two dozen young men.

House painter Ayman al-Sayed, 19, had shoulder-length hair before police grabbed him and shaved his head Thursday.

"The only thing I want to do is leave this country," said al-Sayed, who despite his ordeal defiantly wore stylish but outlawed narrow-leg tan khakis Sunday. "I am scared. They just take you from the street without reason. I don't know what they are going to do next."

Hamas officials played down the campaign — a stance adopted in the past that allows the group to distance itself from a controversial crackdown while at the same time instilling fear in those it targeted.

Ziad al-Zaza, the deputy prime minister of Gaza, said the head-shaving "was a very limited, isolated behavior of the police and is not going to continue."

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights called on Hamas to investigate the "arbitrary detentions and violations of civil rights of civilians."

The hair crackdown came just days after the Hamas-run parliament in Gaza passed an education bill mandating separate classrooms for boys and girls from the age of nine.

Gender separation is already widely practiced in Gaza schools, as it is in the West Bank, where Hamas rival Mahmoud Abbas, the Western-backed Palestinian president, administers some areas.

Enshrining such separation in law marked another step forward in Hamas' campaign of imposing Islamic practice.

Since seizing Gaza from Abbas six years ago, Hamas has moved gradually in spreading its ultra-conservative version of Islam. It has issued rules restricting women or requiring them to cover up in the traditional Islamic dress of long robes and headscarves, but relented if met by protests.

Last month, the Hamas government barred girls and women from participating in a U.N.-sponsored marathon, prompting a U.N. aid agency to cancel the race. Hamas activists have also exerted social pressure to get all school girls to wear Islamic dress.

Al-Sayed, the house painter, and 17-year-old high school student Tareq Naqib said Sunday that they were targeted by police in separate incidents Thursday.

Al-Sayed said he had just finished his work in Gaza City and was waiting at an intersection for a shared taxi when a police jeep approached. Al-Sayed said he was thrown into the jeep with more than 10 others already squeezed into the back of the vehicle. He said policemen cursed them on the way to the police station.

There, the detainees were lined up, and a policeman began shaving their heads. He shaved two lines, from front to back and from one ear to the other, telling the young men they could finish the job at a neighborhood barber shop.

Those who resisted were beaten, al-Sayed said. He said he asked the policeman to finish the job of shaving so he wouldn't have to step outside with a partially shaved head.

A young man came into the police station, saying he was looking for his cousin, said al-Sayed. One of the officers grabbed the young man, who had his hair in gel-styled spikes, and shaved his head as well.

Naqib, the high school student, said he was seized outside his home and put in a police jeep along with four young men who had come to Gaza City from the southern town of Khan Younis.

On the way to the police station, police insulted them and warned them that Gaza is Islamic, said Naqib.

"They said, 'we want you to respect our tradition,'" Naqib said. "They made a cross on our heads and asked us to leave and finish the shaving at a barber shop."

Naqib's family is originally from Tunisia, and he said he wants to go back there after he finishes high school.

In another incident, a Gaza teen, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said he saw police beat three young men in downtown Gaza City for wearing tight, low-rise pants. The witness said the policemen beat the three with clubs on the backs of their knees and told passers-by watching the scene to move along.

Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas figure identified with the more pragmatic wing of the movement, said the police behavior is "absolutely wrong" and must stop. Hamas is often divided over such campaigns, but the pragmatists have been unable to stop the more zealous members.

Hamas is also competing with the even more fundamentalist Salafis, a movement that has gained in strength and popularity in Gaza in recent years. Salafis have criticized Hamas for not implementing Islamic law in Gaza quickly enough.

For Gaza's young generation, such crackdowns have meant a shrinking space of self-expression. In some, it sparked defiance. Mohammed Hanouna, an 18-year-old high school senior, said he started styling his hair with gel after his friends Ayman and Tareq were targeted by police.

On Sunday, he walked with them in the streets in a show of support, adding that he is not afraid of arrest. "I have nothing to lose except my hair," he said.

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Daraghmeh reported from Ramallah, West Bank.

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Gaza group: Hamas shaves heads for 'indecent' hair

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — A rights group says police in Hamas-ruled Gaza are arresting, beating and shaving the heads of young men who sport what they consider "indecent" hair styles.

Witnesses say those targeted wore their hair long or styled into tall spikes.

Since seizing Gaza in 2007, the Islamic militant Hamas has been slowly imposing its fundamentalist version of Islam on the already-conservative Gaza. This includes getting women to cover up with headscarves and long robes.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said Sunday that the latest crackdown is over hair styles. The group quotes a young man who says he was among 13 who were detained by police and had their heads shaved

Police spokesman Ayman Batniji says the police have shaved the heads of some detainees, but denies it's a campaign.

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Obama heads to Israel amid low expectations

By Crispian Balmer

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President Barack Obama arrives in Israel on Wednesday without any new peace initiative to offer disillusioned Palestinians and facing deep Israeli doubts over his pledge to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.

Making his first official visit here as president, Obama hopes to reset his often fraught relations with both the Israelis and Palestinians in a carefully choreographed three-day stay that is high on symbolism but low on expectations.

He will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hold separate talks in the occupied West Bank with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and address a skeptical Israeli public with a speech to students.

U.S. officials say he will try to coax the Palestinians and Israelis back to peace talks. He will also seek to reassure Netanyahu he is committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb and discuss ways of containing Syria's civil war.

However, the White House has deliberately minimized hopes of any major breakthroughs, a reversal from Obama's first four years in office when aides said he would only visit the Jewish state if he had something concrete to accomplish.

Workers have hung hundreds of U.S. and Israel flags on lampposts across Jerusalem, as well as banners that boast of "an unbreakable alliance," but the apparent lack of any substantial policy push has bemused many diplomats and analysts.

"This seems to me to be an ill-scheduled and ill-conceived visit," said Gidi Grinstein, president of the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based think tank.

"On the Iranian situation, Israel and the U.S.A. don't seem to have anything new to say to each other. On Syria, the Americans don't have a clear outlook, and on the Palestinian issue, they are taking a step back and their hands off."

NEW BEGINNINGS

With both Obama and Netanyahu just starting new terms and mindful that they will have to work together on volatile issues for years to come, they will be looking to avoid the kind of public confrontation that has marked past encounters.

Signaling the emphasis being placed on symbolic gestures, the U.S. president plans to inspect an Iron Dome anti-missile battery when his plane lands at around 12:30 p.m. (1030 GMT).

He departed the Washington area on Tuesday evening.

The White House has touted the U.S.-funded system, which has helped protect Israelis from Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza, as a prime example of Obama's commitment to Israel's security - a message likely to be rammed home during the trip.

Obama, accompanied by his new secretary of state, John Kerry, will hold lengthy talks with Netanyahu later on Wednesday, with Iran expected to top the agenda.

Israel and the United States agree that Iran should never get a nuclear bomb, dismissing Tehran's assertion that its atomic program is peaceful. However, the two allies are at odds over how fast the clock is ticking down on the need for preventative military action should diplomacy fail.

U.S. officials say Obama will urge further patience, with Washington worried that a threatened Israeli unilateral strike might drag the United States into another Middle East war.

Obama, who has said he is coming to listen, will fly on Thursday by helicopter the short distance between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah to meet Abbas.

Direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in 2010 over the issue of Jewish settlement building in the West Bank, and Abbas's allies have expressed bitter disappointment over the lack of fresh U.S. moves.

"It's not a positive visit," said Wasel Abu Yousef, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Abbas.

In Ramallah on Tuesday, Palestinian police scuffled with scores of demonstrators protesting against Obama's visit.

Although Netanyahu repeated this week that he was ready to make "a historic compromise" to achieve peace, his new Cabinet has several pro-settler ministers fervently opposed to halting settlements on land Palestinians want to establish their state.

Dennis Ross, Obama's former Middle East adviser, said the president was right to tread cautiously when peace prospects were dim and Israelis are more focused on what they see as greater threats presented by Iran and the war in neighboring Syria.

"What you don't want to do at a time when there's enormous disbelief on the part of both parties is to do something that will fail," Ross said.

(Writing by Crispian Balmer and Matt Spetalnick; additional reporting by Noah Browning in Ramallah; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Kenyan presidential election heads to nail-biting finish

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta's share of the vote slipped below 50 percent for the first time in the slow counting of results on Thursday, raising the prospect that the country could be headed for a divisive second round run-off.

Kenyatta's main rival, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, narrowed the gap to within three percentage points as votes from his stronghold were added to the tally.

Earlier on Thursday, Odinga's campaign team said some of the results of the election had been doctored and called for the vote count to be halted, remarks that could inflame public passions after a previously largely peaceful poll.

Kenyans have been anxiously awaiting the result since Monday, fearful of a repeat of a disputed outcome in the last election five years ago, which led to ethnic bloodshed that killed 1,200 people.

Kalonzo Musyoka, Odinga's running mate, said his party's challenge to the vote count was not a call for mass action and urged voters to stay calm and patient.

Kenyatta, son of Kenya's independence leader Jomo Kenyatta, has been indicted for crimes against humanity over the ethnic violence that followed the last election, posing a dilemma for Western allies if he wins.

He has been leading since the first tallies were tabulated earlier in the week, but his share of the vote has slipped from over 50 percent to just below it. If neither candidate wins more than half of votes, Kenyatta and Odinga must face each other in a run-off, penciled in for next month.

By 2035 GMT, with 7.23 million total votes tallied, Kenyatta had 3,522,127 or 48.7 percent, to Odinga's 3,299,391 or 46.07, according to a display by the electoral commission at the national tallying center.

About a quarter of votes had yet to be counted, representing 128 of 291 constituencies.

Despite technical glitches, international observers have in past days broadly said the vote and the count were transparent. But Odinga's running mate Musyoka, speaking earlier in the day when the tally still showed Kenyatta on course to win in a single round, said counting should be stopped.

"We as a coalition take the position the national vote tallying process lacks integrity and has to be stopped and re-started using primary documents from the polling stations," he told a news conference. "We have evidence the results we are receiving have been doctored."

Election officials said the count would not stop and the results could be delivered by Friday. The commission has up to seven days from Monday's vote to declare the outcome.

"The commission wishes to assure Kenyans that with the rigorous verification process in place, there is no room to doctor the results whatsoever by any election official," said Issack Hassan, chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

"We cannot stop tallying, this is a legal process..."

CALM STREETS

Kenyans have been hoping this vote would restore the country's status as one of Africa's most stable democracies after the electoral mayhem five years ago. Many have voiced determination not to take their differences to the streets but to turn to a reformed judiciary to resolve any new disputes.

Witnesses said areas in the capital Nairobi and Kisumu, a city in the west of Kenya where violence erupted after the 2007 vote, appeared calm shortly after Musyoka's comments.

"It is not a call to mass action," Musyoka said. "We must tell them (Kenyans) there will be no mass action. We are committed as a coalition to the principle of the rule of law."

The Kenyan shilling has been volatile against the U.S. dollar with each twist and turn of election, climbing when a clear result looked like it could emerge swiftly but weakening with the uncertainty of the slow count.

Kenyatta's coalition has also complained about the inclusion of rejected ballots in the vote count, although it has not called for a halt in counting. Both teams have also urged voters to be patient.

Kenyatta and his running mate, William Ruto, have both been charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for orchestrating the tribal blood-letting after the 2007 vote. They both deny the charges and say they will cooperate to clear their names, regardless of the election outcome.

Judges at the ICC agreed on Thursday to delay the start of Kenyatta's trial for crimes against humanity to July 9 from April 11, to give defense lawyers more time to prepare. That, at least, means the trial would not directly interfere with a potential second round of voting in April.

Musyoka questioned the sharp fall in the number of spoilt ballots counted as Kenya scrapped an electronic tallying system and switched to rely solely on a manual one. The amount of spoilt ballots could have a significant impact on the outcome, especially if the final tally remains close.

The election commission chairman Hassan said the original high figure for spoilt ballots was due to a computer error.

Authorities were forced to abandon an electronic counting system which had aimed to provide speedy provisional results but broke down. That has given time for both camps to complain over the process.

"LET'S MAINTAIN THAT PEACE"

Voting passed off broadly peacefully, and Kenyans have said they are determined to see it stay that way. Many businesses have stayed closed or kept stocks low as a precaution against the violence and looting that erupted last time.

The government on Thursday ordered all civil servants to report to work on Friday, after four days in which many had stayed away from their offices.

In Nairobi's Mathare slum, a flashpoint in the violence five years ago, residents played down any talk of bloodshed.

"I don't anticipate any violence. We are all Kenyans and there is no need to fight. We voted peacefully, let's maintain that peace," said Shadrack Otieno, a 37-year-old Odinga backer.

In Kisumu, the biggest city in Odinga's tribal heartland, businesses which had shut for voting started re-opening for the first time in four days. But some people suggested the quiet might not last.

"If this trend continues then we will protest in the streets," minibus taxi conductor Joseph Omwaru told Reuters, adding he believed there was rigging in Kenyatta's favor.

(Additional reporting by Richard Lough, Duncan Miriri and Yara Bayoumy in Nairobi, Drazen Jorgic in Mombasa and Hezron Ochiel in Kisumu; Writing by James Macharia and Edmund Blair; Editing by Peter Graff)

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