Palestinian PM hospitalized with abdominal pain

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A government spokesman says Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has been hospitalized with an abdominal infection.

Jamal Zakout says the 61-year-old Fayyad felt pain in his abdomen Monday while at his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Zakout says Fayyad went to Ramallah Hospital for tests and was admitted, but it was unclear whether he would spend the night.

A source close to Fayyad, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to discuss the medical diagnosis, says the prime minister had an infected pancreas.

Fayyad suffered a heart attack two years ago while visiting family in the United States.

Since 2007, Fayyad has been prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, the self-rule government that administers parts of the West Bank.

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6,000 Syrians killed in March, deadliest month yet

BEIRUT (AP) — March was the bloodiest month yet in Syria's 2-year-old conflict with more than 6,000 documented deaths, a leading anti-regime activist group said Monday, blaming the increase on heavier shelling and more violent clashes.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the increased toll is likely incomplete because both the Syrian army and the rebel groups fighting the government often underreport their dead in the civil war.

"Both sides are hiding information," Abdul-Rahman said by phone from Britain, where his group is based. "It is very difficult to get correct info on the fighters because they don't want the information to hurt morale."

The numbers, while provided by only one group, support the appraisal of the conflict offered by many Syria watchers: The civil war is largely a military stalemate that is destroying the country's social fabric and taking a huge toll on civilians.

The increase also reflects the continuing spread of major hostilities to new parts of Syria. While clashes continue in Aleppo, Damascus and Homs, Syria's three largest cities, rebels have launched an offensive in recent weeks to seize towns and army bases in the southern province of Daraa, largely with the help of an influx of foreign-funded weapons.

The Observatory, which works through a network of contacts in Syria, said those killed in March included similar numbers of combatants on both sides: 1,486 rebels and army defectors and 1,464 soldiers from the Syrian army.

But the number of civilians killed exceeded them both: 2,080 total for the month, including 298 children and 291 women.

In addition, there were 387 unidentified civilians and 588 unidentified fighters, most of them foreigners fighting with the rebels, bringing the March total to 6,005, Abdul-Rahman said.

He criticized the international community for not doing more to stop the bloodshed, which he said could increase.

"If there is no solution, we think the numbers will get worse in the coming months," he said.

The March toll surpassed what had previously been the deadliest month, August 2012, when airstrikes, clashes and shelling killed more than 5,400 people, Abdul-Rahman said.

His total death toll for the conflict through the end of March was 62,554, a number he acknowledged as incomplete, suggesting the true figure could be twice as high.

Besides the underreporting of dead fighters by both sides, he mentioned the tens of thousands of missing persons and captives held by the regime and the rebels. The fate of these people is rarely uncovered, he said.

He also said more than 12,000 pro-government gunmen known as "shabiha," along with government informers may have been killed by the opposition and never reported.

The constant stream of new reports, in addition to the lack of free access to much of the country, makes full investigations impossible.

"Since there are more dying every day, it is very hard to go back and document those who died before," Abdul-Rahman said, calling for an independent international investigation inside Syria.

The Observatory's numbers are not as high as those given by the United Nations.

On Feb. 18, a U.N.-appointed Commission of Inquiry on Syria issued a 131-page report saying about 70,000 people had been killed in the conflict. The report compiled and corroborated death reports from a number of different sources.

The U.N. has not updated its number since.

The Syrian government does not provide regular death tolls for the conflict. Syrian officials did not immediately comment on the reported death toll.

Assad's regime describes the conflict as a foreign conspiracy to weaken the country carried out by terrorists on the ground.

In an attempt to boost that argument and rally regime supporters, Assad's wife, Asma, broke her long silence on the events shaking the country in a video shown on Syrian TV stations over the weekend and posted on the Internet.

In the professionally produced 14-minute video, she was seen greeting, hugging and kissing women who were described as the mothers of Syrian soldiers killed in battle.

The video, titled "With Your Soul, Protect the Jasmine," said it was filmed during a reception on Mother's Day, which is celebrated in much of the Arab world on March 21. Asma Assad, dressed casually and speaking in Arabic, thanked the mothers for their sacrifice.

"Instead of fearing for yourselves, fearing for your lives, you feared for all of Syria," she said. "Instead of your children fearing only for you, they feared for all the mothers in the country. They went to protect the country knowing that Syria, the homeland, is the mother of all."

When she finished her speech, a girls' choir broke into a patriotic song.

The video, which was posted Friday on the official Facebook page of the president's office, is the first time Asma has spoken out in public since the start of the conflict. Her silence had prompted some to speculate that the British-born first lady disapproved of the regime's violent crackdown on the opposition.

She appeared briefly at a pro-regime rally in January 2012, smiling with her children as her husband said the "conspiracy" against Syria was in its final stage.

A month later, she accompanied her husband to a polling station during a referendum on a new constitution, but did not speak.

In recent weeks, the president's office has published photos of her visiting the children of people killed in the civil war.

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Associated Press writer Zeina Karam contributed reporting from Beirut.

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Trial of former New Orleans mayor delayed until October

(Reuters) - The federal public corruption trial of former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, which was scheduled to start in late April, has been delayed until October after a joint request by prosecutors and defense attorneys, a court order filed on Monday said.

Nagin, who had chided federal officials for their slow response after Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans, was accused in a grand jury indictment in January of taking kickbacks in exchange for city contracts.

The joint request for more time had said, "The nature of the present prosecution is complex and involves an extensive amount of electronic and documentary discovery."

The 21-count indictment included charges of bribery, money laundering, conspiracy and tax violations. Nagin, who now lives in Texas, pleaded not guilty to all charges in February before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan.

The trial had been scheduled to start on April 29, but was moved to October 7 under the order dated April 1 signed by U.S. District Judge Helen G. Berrigan.

Nagin was a little-known businessman when he won election in 2002 after wooing voters with promises to think outside the box and rid City Hall of patronage. He served eight years as mayor.

In 2005, after Katrina struck and several levees crumbled, Nagin's desperate plea for federal officials to "get off your asses" and help was heard worldwide. He was widely criticized after the storm for overseeing a halting recovery.

New Orleans has a history rich with political intrigue, but Nagin is the first mayor to face criminal charges.

(Reporting by David Bailey; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)

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Hamas re-elects Mashaal as its leader

CAIRO (AP) — Hamas on Monday re-elected longtime leader Khaled Mashaal, capping a year of secret internal elections, officials in the Islamic militant group said.

The Qatar-based Mashaal, 56, is a veteran politician with close ties to regional powers Qatar, Egypt and Turkey. He has been key to Hamas' attempts to break out of its political isolation following its violent takeover of Gaza in 2007.

Mashaal's re-election could revive stalled reconciliation efforts between Hamas and political rival Mahmoud Abbas, the Western-backed Palestinian president. The Hamas takeover of Gaza left Abbas with only parts of the West Bank, and the rival camps have become increasingly entrenched in their respective territories since 2007.

Two Hamas officials said Mashaal ran unopposed and was re-elected by a majority in the movement's Shura Council, which is believed to have about 60 members. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret procedure.

Hamas began holding internal elections a year ago, a secretive process spread over several countries, shrouded in mystery and beset by logistics problems.

Hamas has four components — activists in Gaza, in the West Bank, in exile and those imprisoned by Israel. Each of the four groups chooses local leaders as well as delegates to the Shura Council. This council selects a decision-making political bureau and the head of that body — the stage that was wrapped up in Cairo on Monday.

Mashaal became head of the movement in 1996 and will now lead it for another four years.

He is seen as a member of the more pragmatic wing of Hamas, in connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He and others in Hamas insist the movement will not recognize Israel and renounce violence — Western conditions for dealing with Hamas.

He has suggested he could accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel, though he has not said if such a state would end the conflict, or only be an interim step to an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine, including what is now Israel.

Mashaal has also come out in support of so-called popular resistance against Israeli occupation, a term Palestinians used for marches and stone-throwing protests. In the past, Hamas gunmen and suicide bombers have killed hundreds of Israelis in attacks.

Mashaal pushed for reconciliation with Abbas in his previous term, but was blocked by Hamas hardliners in Gaza who fear a unity deal will give Abbas a new foothold in Gaza and weaken Hamas' grip on the territory.

Last year, Mashaal and Abbas, who have cordial relations, reached a deal whereby Abbas would head an interim government of technocrats in the West Bank and Gaza. This government would have paved the way for general elections.

However, the deal never got off the ground because of opposition from Hamas leaders in Gaza and senior figures in Abbas' Fatah movement.

Last week, the emir of Qatar proposed holding a reconciliation conference in Egypt in the coming weeks to set up a timetable for forming the interim government and holding elections.

___

Laub reported from Ramallah, West Bank.

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Italy's 10 'sages' try to help form government

ROME (AP) — Ten "wise men" will try to do what Italy's bickering politicians haven't been able to accomplish since inconclusive elections in late February — figure out a formula to help form a new government fast for the recession-mired nation as financial markets impatiently await an end to the impasse.

President Giorgio Napolitano created the panel of experts last week after center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani failed to form a governing coalition with wide support in Parliament, and the 10 members will have their first meeting with him at the Quirinal Presidential Palace on Tuesday, which coincides with the resumption of financial trading after the long Easter weekend.

Napolitano has referred to the group as working committees, while the media and other politicians immediately dubbed them the "10 wise men."

Bersani's forces won the lower Chamber of Deputies in the elections, but fell short of controlling the Senate. He refused the offer of archrival Silvio Berlusconi, the former center-right premier whose coalition finished runner-up, to form a "grand coalition" government. And the third bloc in the gridlocked political puzzle, the anti-establishment, anti-euro newcomer, 5-Star Movement headed by comic Beppe Grillo, refused to back anybody but themselves for the job of governing Italy.

The panel, including lawmakers, professors and a central bank official, will try to devise a reform agenda that a broad spectrum of parties can embrace, especially electoral and economic reforms, in a bid to avoid new elections soon.

They're hardly impartial. Several of them have been lawmakers in either Bersani's or Berlusconi's parties. Another panel member is a minister in the caretaker government of Mario Monti, who was appointed in late 2011 to replace Berlusconi as premier as Italy veered toward the abyss of the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis.

European Union and central banking officials credit Monti with keeping Italy from succumbing to the crisis. But voters resoundingly rejected his harsh medicine for financial recovery — higher taxes, slashed government spending and tightening the generous national pension system. Monti's new centrist movement finished a poor fourth in the balloting, as Italians tired of making financial sacrifices that weren't coupled with measures to jumpstart the economy and reduce soaring unemployment.

But while Napolitano's goal in setting up the panel was to help find common ground among potential government coalition partners, about the only thing politicians seemed to agree about it was they were skeptical about what it could accomplish.

"Either a political government is born" quickly or, "we do what comes naturally in a democracy, return to the polls," Berlusconi ally Maurizio Gasparri said. "Let hope it's not just a delaying tactic" to put off new elections, Gasparri told Sky TG24 TV Monday in a phone interview. Berlusconi, on trial in Milan in criminal cases which he says are part of a campaign by leftist sympathizers to end his political career, could try again for a comeback if elections are called soon.

A veteran Radical party leader and former European Union commissioner, Emma Bonino, echoing a common criticism, said the panel was hardly representative of Italians — for starters, there were no women, she noted. "Can you imagine if the president picked 10 women? Everybody would have said, 'There's something wrong here,'" Bonino said wryly on Radio Radicale.

Bonino, touted by some to be a potential successor to Napolitano after his own term runs out next month, sounded pessimistic that the panel could come up with a formula that could unite Italy's squabbling parties. "I can remember many commissions of 'sages' in my long political career. And the results have never been very brilliant," she said.

Also skeptical was a 5-Star Movement senator, Paola Nugnes. "It still isn't clear to me what these 'wise men" have to do, and how they'll operate," she said on Facebook.

But a pro-Monti politician, Giuliano Cazzola, brushed off the skepticism.

"The only judgment on President Napolitano's action that counts will be given tomorrow by the markets," Cazzola said in a statement. "The rest is just chatter."

If the main parties fail to unite their forces behind a reform program in Parliament, Napolitano can ask a non-political figure to try to head a "government of purpose," created to last a few months or just long enough to adopt electoral reforms to improve the chances that Italy won't emerge paralyzed again by inconclusive results at the ballot box. Napolitano urged such reform for most of his seven years in office, but proposals to change the electoral law, as well as other political reform, such as reducing the number of lawmakers and eliminating state funding for political parties, went nowhere in Parliament.

One name mentioned as a possible premier for such a government of specific scope is Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, a highly respected non-partisan figure.

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Pope visits St. Peter's tomb under Vatican

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Monday took an emotional, close-up look at the tomb of Peter, the church's first pontiff, buried beneath St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican said.

By doing so, Francis became the first pontiff to visit the necropolis, where pagans and early Christians were buried, since extensive archaeological excavations were conducted at the ancient site decades ago, the Vatican said.

The 45-minute "visit of devotion to the tomb of St. Peter" was private, the Vatican said, but it later released a video of it.

The basilica was built over the location where early Christians would gather in secret, at a time of persecution in ancient Rome, to pray at an unmarked tomb believed to be that of Peter, the apostle Jesus chose to lead his church.

The Vatican first said Francis would pray at Peter's tomb, but later said he prayed instead in the basilica.

The new pope "paused in silent prayer, in profound and emotional meditation" in the Clementine Chapel in the vast basilica that is "the closest place (in the basilica) to the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles," it said.

During a tour of the necropolis conducted by its director and an Italian cardinal, the pope "climbed up a bit, got closer to the place where the tomb of St. Peter lies, exactly under the central altar and the dome of the basilica," the Vatican said.

Francis walked down the entire main street of the ancient city of the dead, the statement said. The streets of the necropolis are similar to those of ancient Rome, only they are flanked by tombs instead of shops and apartments.

The Vatican said Francis walked to the necropolis entrance from the hotel on the Vatican grounds where he lives, took the tour and later — after paying homage at the tombs of several popes in another underground level known as the grottoes, including Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul I — strolled back to his residence.

The underground excursion was a sharp departure from how popes in past years often spent the day after Easter, known in Italy as "little Easter." Those pontiffs would head to Castel Gandolfo, the Vatican palace in the Alban Hills, a short drive from Rome.

But that oasis of sprawling gardens and strolling paths in the quaint hill town is occupied by the predecessor of Francis, Benedict XVI, who spent the last hours of his papacy there before becoming the first pope in 600 years to retire. Benedict is staying in Castel Gandolfo until a monastery at the Vatican in Rome can be readied for him.

Many Italians spend "little Easter" by having a picnic lunch in the countryside or in city parks, and Francis told Romans and tourists who gathered in St. Peter's Square at noon Monday to see him to "have a good lunch." Francis said he was praying that Easter would inspire the faithful so that "hatred gives way to love, lies to truth," and that it would especially comfort those in "most need of trust and hope."

He spoke to them from the studio window of the apartment in the Apostolic Palace overlooking the square. Benedict and popes before him lived there, but so far Francis, who stresses simplicity, has declined to move into the quarters.

Instead, he has continued to stay at the Vatican hotel, where, as Buenos Aires archbishop, he stayed with fellow cardinals to elect Benedict's successor. They chose him, Jorge Bergoglio, the first pontiff from South America.

St. Peter's mission was to continue to preach the message of Jesus and reach more souls. Francis, as a Jesuit, is steeped in the evangelizing mission of the church, and the necropolis tour brings him back to the origins of the church in its simplest years as a community of Christians professing their faith in defiance of the crackdown by Roman emperors.

Peter himself was among the Christian martyrs during Nero's reign. He is believed to have been crucified, head down, on the Vatican hill.

Constantine, the first Christian emperor, had an early basilica built on the slopes of the Vatican Hill, burying the pagan and Christian cemetery — necropolis means 'city of the dead' — that surrounded Peter's burial site.

The current basilica, named after St. Peter, was constructed over the earlier basilica that was deemed unsafe and demolished in the late 15th century.

The Baroque master architect Bernini designed the bronze canopy over the central altar over the spot of Peter's burial site. The current basilica was planned as an awe-inspiring monument that would project the image of a powerful church.

Under popes of the last century, extensive excavations were carried out of the sprawling necropolis. In 1965, archaeologists said they had found the bones of Peter in an area near an ancient Greek inscription saying "Peter is here."

Part of a nearby necropolis came to light in 2003 during construction of a parking lot.

A few years ago, the Vatican unveiled the largest and most luxurious of the pagan tombs under St. Peter's Basilica, that of a family of former slaves.

Guided tours of the necropolis, upon appointment, have been one of the most sought-after attractions for tourists to the Vatican.

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Iranian tourists in Egypt showcase warming ties

LUXOR, Egypt (AP) — More than 50 Iranian tourists arrived by boat to the ancient city of Luxor on Monday as part of a rare visit that showcases how much ties between the two countries have warmed since Islamist President Mohammed Morsi came to power last year.

Diplomatic relations were frozen for decades after Egypt signed the 1979 peace treaty with Israel and Iran went through the Islamic Revolution. But Morsi has been reaching out to Tehran since he came to power in June 2012.

Morsi broke barriers by visiting Tehran after his June election, marking the first visit by an Egyptian leader in more than three decades. Months later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Cairo to attend a conference of Islamic nations.

There is a new bilateral deal to promote tourism and improve relations between the regional heavyweights. And the group of Iranian tourists arrived on some of the first commercial flights between the two countries in 30 years, according to a security official.

Their movements will be restricted, including a ban on visiting Egypt's capital, following objections from some ultraconservative Sunni Muslims to receiving visitors from Shiite Iran.

Members of the Salafi movement in Egypt, like other Sunni hardliners around the region, consider Shiites heretics, and fear Iran is trying to spread its practices among Sunnis.

A visiting Iranian official was heckled by Salafi protesters last week as he tried to make his way to a conference organized by the Sunni world's most prestigious learning institute, al-Azhar, briefly stopping the meeting.

The Iranian tourists will only be allowed to visit certain areas, such as ancient cities and Red Sea resorts like Sharm el-Sheikh. Cairo has several Shiite shrines that the tourists will not be visiting.

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs said in a news conference in Cairo on Monday that tourists from his country don't have a religious agenda and that they are coming to Egypt to support its economy.

"Iran has no agenda to manage Egyptian mosques," he said. "Iranian and Egyptian relations are at the best."

The group reached Luxor late Monday in a tourist boat coming down the Nile from the southern city of Aswan. The docking area, opposite a major security station in the city, was heavily guarded.

They are expected to spend the night on the boat. The group is visiting ancient Egyptian sites in Luxor, including the famed open-air Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings where Tutankhamen's tomb lies. They will spend a night in the city after already having spent nearly two days in another ancient southern city, Aswan.

Luxor resident Wael Ibrahim said that his union of tour guides is happy to welcome the Iranians to Egypt, where tourism has been devastated following two years of turmoil and protests around the country.

Thousands of people who work in the tourism industry have lost their jobs, affecting the country's already weakened economy.

Bakri Abdul-Jalil, who owns shops in Luxor that sell trinkets and other souvenirs, said that other regional tensions have not stopped tourists from coming to Egypt.

"All are welcome to Egypt. Other tourists, like Israelis coming to the Sinai Peninsula, do not need a (prior) visa and no one is objecting to that," he said.

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