A Very Pregnant Looking Jessica Simpson Visits The Airport
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MESA, Ariz. (AP) ? Like just about everyone in the Phoenix area, Jen Pollock has lost several neighbors to foreclosure and short sales. And, like hundreds of thousands of others in Arizona, Pollock and her husband are upside down on their mortgage, owing about twice as much as their suburban house is now worth.
They don't want to walk away from it. They just wish someone would let them renegotiate their mortgage.
"The banks keep telling us they won't talk to us unless we miss some payments. But that would ruin our credit," said the 36-year-old mom as her son climbed around a north Phoenix playground.
Asked if she was upset by the lack of solutions being offered by presidential candidates for the housing crisis, she said she doesn't pay much attention to politics.
Across America, despite the hundreds protesting for limited government or more government action, a broad swath of the middle class hit hard by the crash in housing prices is quietly resigned, given up on seeing any relief ? particularly from politicians.
"No one's come up with the answer," said Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, who hosted President Barack Obama in 2009 when the president launched his first foreclosure relief plan.
"People are just holding on and thinking that as life generally is, somehow this thing will work its way out. I think they have zero confidence in the politicians' ability to work it out for them," said Smith, a Republican leading a Republican-dominated suburb.
Obama unveiled another relief plan Monday in Las Vegas, the nation's foreclosure capital. The new plan eases eligibility for people like Pollock to qualify for new loan terms. But banks are not required to participate, leaving many questions about whether the plan will be any more effective than the other measures that have been offered up over the past four years.
"Most of the programs have been based on ideas of reducing your monthly payments for a period of time," said Jay Butler, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business who has closely tracked the housing and foreclosure crisis in Arizona. "I think a lot of these ideas started in the Bush administration with the idea that was going to be relatively short-lived, one or two years, and things would get back to great and glorious. And none of that has happened."
And many of those programs, Butler said, are not being used by the people who really need them.
"It's difficult to understand programs," he said. "Who do you contact? The loan servicer? The lender? They might not even have the mortgage anymore. Then you have all these scams going on. ... It's sort of like this snowball running down the crest. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and sooner or later it just runs you over."
Housing, Butler said, is just part of the issue.
"Food and energy prices went up. People are not getting pay raises. A lot of people who have jobs find health care and pension costs going up, so net take-home pay is going down," he said. "So it's just sort of like you are getting hammered."
And that makes it far too complex for politicians to put their arms around.
At the Republican presidential candidates' debate in Las Vegas last week, a property owner asked the candidates what specifically they would do to fix the housing crisis. The discussion on the stage quickly dissolved into bickering about who supported Obama's economic stimulus package.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has released an Internet ad chastising Obama for the housing crisis in Nevada, said government programs to fix the crisis haven't worked. A day earlier, he told a local newspaper the crisis needs to run its course and hit bottom.
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann sympathized with mothers who are in a foreclosure crisis, but none of the candidates offered an answer.
The Democratic National Committee unveiled a television ad Monday, set to run in Arizona, attacking Romney's statements to the Las Vegas newspaper. And Arizona Democratic Chairman Andrei Cherny said that while voters are resigned, he expects Obama to make more announcements on the housing issue in coming months.
But Butler says there is not much more they can do.
"Politicians get too much credit when it's good and too much blame when it's bad," he said.
One of his colleagues, real estate professor Mark Strapp, said that while Obama seems to be trying to fix past wrongs that sent the help to the wrong people, Republicans will probably continue to ignore the issue because they don't want to alienate Wall Street.
"They don't want to deal with it because there is not an easy solution," Strapp said.
When the housing crisis first hit his city, Smith said about 8 percent of the housing stock in Mesa was empty ? about 12,000 homes. While fewer for-sale and foreclosure signs dot the landscape now, he those numbers have held steady for about four years now.
A former builder, Smith says most of his friends from that business have been out of work for three years. Most have lost their homes and spent all their savings. Now they are just scraping by.
Are they even talking about presidential politics?
"Not really. Maybe some are," Smith said. "But they've lost so much hope in what Washington can do. They are so turned off by the posturing, the bickering, the partisanship, that it's not even worth talking about."
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VAN, Turkey (Reuters) ? More than 100 people were confirmed killed and hundreds more feared dead Sunday when a powerful earthquake hit southeast Turkey, flattening buildings and leaving survivors crying for help from under the rubble.
As a cold night fell, survivors and emergency workers battled to pull hundreds of people believed to be buried under debris in the city of Van and town of Ercis, where a student dormitory collapsed.
Residents in Van joined in a frantic search, using hands and shovels and working under floodlights and flashlights, hearing voices of people buried alive calling from under mounds of broken concrete in pitch darkness and freezing temperatures.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who traveled by helicopter to the area to see firsthand the scale of Turkey's worst earthquake in a decade, told a nationally televised news conference at least 138 people had been killed -- 93 in Van city center and 45 in Ercis. The toll was expected to rise.
"The most important problem now is in the villages close to Van city center because the buildings are made of adobe. They are more vulnerable to quakes. I must say that almost all buildings in such villages are destroyed."
He said people were still trapped under rubble but gave no figure. An official at the Van provincial crisis center told Reuters up to 600 people had been injured and 300-400 were missing, feared buried beneath rubble of collapsed buildings.
The quake struck at 6:41 a.m. EDT.
More accounts of dead bodies and destruction emerged from smaller settlements across the remote area near the Iranian border, most of them left without electricity or phone access.
BODIES
"The death toll is rising. Rescue teams are taking out dead bodies all the time," Reuters photographer Osman Orsal said in Ercis, a town of 100,000 some 100 km (60 miles) north of Van where a student dormitory collapsed.
In Van, a bustling and ancient city on a lake ringed by snow-capped mountains and with a population of 1 million, cranes were used to shift rubble of a crumpled six-storey apartment block where bystanders said 70 people were trapped.
"We heard cries and groaning from underneath the debris, we are waiting for the rescue teams to arrive," Halil Celik told Reuters as he stood beside the ruins of a building that had collapsed before his eyes.
"All of a sudden, a quake tore down the building in front of me. All the bystanders, we all ran to the building and rescued two injured people from the ruins."
At another site, three teenagers were believed trapped under a collapsed building. People clambered over the masonry, shouting: "Is there anyone there?"
An elderly rescue worker sat sobbing, his exhausted face covered in dust. Police tried to keep onlookers back. Ambulance crews sat waiting to help anyone dragged out of the debris.
There were reports of more bodies being pulled from rubble in hamlets outside Van. One village chief told NTV broadcaster: "Nobody has reached us, we have received no medical aid, the tents they sent are plain canvas. We are freezing."
No information was available on the fate of a 10th century Armenian church on Akdamar Island -- one of the last relics of Armenian culture in Turkey, which was recently reopened by the government as a peace gesture toward Armenia.
Kandilli Observatory general manager Mustafa Erdik told a news conference he estimated hundreds of lives had been lost. "It could be 500 or 1,000," he added. He said he based his estimate on the 7.2 magnitude of the earthquake, the strongest since 1999, and the quality of construction.
A nurse at a public hospital in Ercis said hospital workers were attending the wounded in the hospital garden because the building was badly damaged.
"We can't count dead or injured because we're not inside the hospital. There should be more than 100 dead bodies left next to the hospital. We left them there because it's dark and we didn't want to step on bodies," Eda Ekizoglu told CNN Turk.
The cabinet was expected to discuss the quake Monday.
"A lot of buildings collapsed, many people were killed, but we don't know the number. We are waiting for emergency help, it's very urgent," Zulfukar Arapoglu, mayor of Ercis, told news broadcaster NTV.
"We need tents urgently and rescue teams. We don't have any ambulances, and we only have one hospital. We have many killed and injured."
Turkey's Red Crescent said one of its teams was helping to rescue people from a student residence in Ercis. It had sent 1,200 tents, more than 4,000 blankets, stoves and food supplies, along with two mobile bakeries.
More than 70 aftershocks rocked the area, further unsettling residents who ran into the streets when the initial quake struck. Television pictures showed rooms shaking and furniture toppling as people ran from one building.
DAZED
Students gathered around a camp fire in Van's center and told journalists bread prices on the black market had more than quadrupled. Dazed survivors wandered past vehicles crushed by falling masonry.
Anatolian news agency reported that 200 prisoners escaped from Van's prison after the quake, but 50 returned after seeing their families.
The quake's epicenter was at the village of Tabanli, 20 km north of Van city, Kandilli said.
International offers of aid poured in from NATO, China, Japan, the United States, Azerbaijan, European countries and Israel, whose ties with Ankara have soured since Israeli commandoes killed nine Turks during a raid on an aid flotilla bound for the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip in 2010.
Erdogan thanked al the governments who had offered help, but said Turkey could handle the disaster relief efforts without assistance.
Serzh Sarksyan, the president of Turkey's longtime regional rival Armenia, phoned Turkey's President Abdullah Gul to offer his condolences.
Major geological fault lines cross Turkey and there are small earthquakes almost daily. Two large quakes in 1999 killed more than 20,000 people in northwest Turkey.
An earthquake struck Van province in November 1976, with 5,291 confirmed dead. Two people were killed and 79 injured in May when an earthquake shook Simav in northwest Turkey.
(Additional reporting by Seda Sezer, Ece Toksabay and Seyhmus Cakan, writing by Ibon Villelabeitia and Daren Butler; editing by Andrew Roche and Matthew Jones)
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"Officials in Harrisburg have canceled the city`s annual holiday parade because organizers haven`t raised enough money."
NBC.Philadelphia.Com
Harrisburg requires special events to pay for themselves, and in these tough economic times very few folks have money to pay for a parade.

I hope that more municipalities will follow the fine example of Harrisburg and require organizers of holiday parades to pay for the cost of the parade themselves. The government shouldn`t be subsidizing religious events, even though it`s Santa riding on a float and not Jesus, it`s still nominaly a Christian event.
If a city pays for a Christmas parade, it should also pay for a Passover parade, and a Kwanzaa parade. Let`s nip this foolishness in the bud, and ban holiday parades.
We don`t need a city sanctioned Christmas parade to get into the holiday spirit. Enough already, it`s not even Halloween yet, and you can`t walk a block downtown without seeing Christmas decorations.
Will somebody please organize a parade celebrating the spirit of Scrooge?
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/No-Ride-for-Santa--132300333.html
Follow Robert Paul Reyes on Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertpaulreyes
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What's happened in the business of video games this past week ...
QUOTE | "Wii U is not quite next generation." - Michael Pachter, Wedbush Securities analyst, talks in a new Q&A about the Wii U, Microsoft vs. Sony, NBA 2K12, and how Xbox Live TV might be a competitive edge against Sony.
QUOTE | "The $60 paid game is not going away." - EA Playfish London GM John Earner sees all games going social but he believes there will always be a market, even if limited, for triple-A console gaming.
QUOTE | "RPG AI is stalled." - Associate professor Noah Wardrip-Fruin and other experts on AI talk about the state of AI in games and where it's headed.
STAT | $2 billion ? The worldwide revenue that research firm EEDAR expects to be generated by DLC sales by the end of next year, as the number of HD console owners downloading content steadily rises.
QUOTE | "Steve Jobs made some great game platforms without really trying." - Electronic Arts and Digital Chocolate founder Trip Hawkins talks about what Steve Jobs meant to the game industry.
QUOTE | "We expect Sony to be first to market." - Responding to rumors that Microsoft will launch 'Xbox Next' by the end of 2013, RW Baird analyst Colin Sebastian noted that, if anything, Sony's more likely to bring out PS4 first.
QUOTE | "The killer console will be your mobile device." - Kakul Srivastava of developer Tiny Speck discusses a future where gaming predominantly takes place on browsers and mobile devices.
QUOTE | "Sony does brilliant hardware." - EA COO Peter Moore comments on the upcoming PlayStation Vita, but at the same time he questions what the role of dedicated handheld gaming is at this point.
QUOTE | "Rockstar only scratching the surface." - Rockstar's Dan Houser talks about the big potential he still sees in open-world gaming despite having developed so many games in the genre.
STAT | 500,000 ? The number of copies Atlus' Catherine managed to sell in Japan and overseas, proving to be a hit for the publisher, given the niche nature of the game.
QUOTE | "Our big audacious goal to have 1 billion fans." - Rovio North American general manager Andrew Stalbow talks about building out way beyond Angry Birds to become a "next generation media company."
(Image from Ariwasabi/Shutterstock)
Source: http://kotaku.com/5852295/this-week-in-the-business-wii-u-is-not-quite-next-generation
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NEW YORK (Reuters) ? An upcoming reissue of the classic Rolling Stones album "Some Girls" will include a recently discovered track which will also be released as a single.
"No Spare Parts," which was recorded in Paris and was recently discovered by producer Don Was for inclusion on the new editions of "Some Girls" due out on November 21, tells the story of a trip from Los Angeles to San Antonio.
It features Mick Jagger on electric piano, Keith Richards on acoustic piano, Ron Wood on pedal steel guitar, Charlie Watts on drums and Bill Wyman on bass, Universal Republic Records said Thursday.
The label said the song, first recorded by Chris Kimsey in early 1978, features a "country guitar twang, subtle groove and soulful storytelling," describing it as "a powerful and poignant acoustic tune."
"Some Girls," a 1978 release that featured "Miss You" and "Beast of Burden," went a long way toward reestablishing
the Stones' then-flagging youthful appeal. It reached No. 1 on the U.S. charts and No. 2 in the United Kingdom.
"No Spare Parts" is slated for a world premiere on October 20 on the "Ken Bruce" show on BBC Radio 2, and will be available the same day on U.S. platforms beginning at 10 a.m.
(Reporting by Chris Michaud; editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ? The Obama administration delivered a blunt warning Thursday that the United States will do what it must to go after militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, whether Pakistan helps or not.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton led an unusually large U.S. delegation for two days of talks with civilian and military leaders who have resisted previous U.S. demands to take a harder tack against militants who attack American soldiers and interests in Afghanistan.
The large U.S. contingent was meant to display unity among the various U.S. agencies, including the CIA, Pentagon and State Department, with an interest in Pakistan. CIA chief David Petraeus and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey joined Clinton, who said the team would "push Pakistan very hard."
There were cordial handshakes and greetings among the large U.S. and Pakistani delegation gathered at the office of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani as the first of two evening meetings began. Pakistan's foreign minister, Army chief and intelligence head were expected to see their U.S. counterparts Thursday.
Clinton arrived in Islamabad from Afghanistan, where she told Pakistan it must be part of the solution to the Afghan conflict. She said the U.S. expects the Pakistani government, military and intelligence services to take the lead in fighting Pakistan-based militants and also in encouraging Afghan militants to reconcile.
"Our message is very clear," Clinton said. "We're going to be fighting, we are going to be talking and we are going to be building ... and they can either be helping or hindering, but we are not going to stop."
The meetings focused on the recurrent U.S. demand that Pakistan launch its own offensive against a lethal Taliban affiliate known as the Haqqani network. It operates on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border; U.S. officials claim Pakistan either tolerates or supports the group's activities.
A senior U.S. official said Thursday's four hours of meetings were "extremely frank" and "very detailed" but declined to offer details.
In a statement, Gilani's office said the discussion was "cordial and frank." But it also suggested Pakistan was unhappy with the message push by recalling statements denying U.S. allegations of links between Pakistan and militants.
"Disagreements between the coalition partners in the war on terror should not undermine strategic relationship which is so vital for the promotion of mutual interests of the two countries," the statement quoted Gilani as saying.
U.S. military leaders have told the Pakistanis that if Islamabad does not act against the Haqqanis, the U.S. will.
"We must send a clear, unequivocal message to the government and people of Pakistan that they must be part of the solution, and that means ridding their own country of terrorists who kill their own people and who cross the border to kill people in Afghanistan," Clinton said.
Pakistan has deployed 170,000 soldiers to its eastern border with Afghanistan and more than 3,000 soldiers have died in battles with militants. So Pakistani leaders bristle at U.S. criticism that they have not done enough or that they play a double game ? fighting militants in some areas, supporting them in others where they might be useful proxies in a future conflict with India.
A new offensive unleashed in recent days by the U.S.-led coalition against the Haqqani network in Afghanistan has added a sense of urgency to the talks in Pakistan.
Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, described the offensive during an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press as a "high intensity sensitive operation." He would not give a precise location or other details.
For more than three decades, the Haqqani network, led by patriarch Jalaluddin Haqqani, has maintained a headquarters in Pakistan's Miran Shah district of North Waziristan. The United States has had some recent successes killing at least two top Haqqani commanders in drone attacks.
Senior U.S. officials said the CIA was given a clearer green light to go after the Taliban affiliate in its Pakistani stronghold after the attack on a military base in Wardak, Afghanistan, that wounded 77 American soldiers. The Sept. 10 attack, blamed on the Haqqanis, helped convince Clinton that the U.S. should take decisive action against the network, two officials said.
Clinton and other U.S. officials had worried that CIA pressure on the network, primarily through drone strikes, would make its leaders less likely to support peace efforts between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Washington has had contact with some within the Haqqani network, including Ibrahim Haqqani, the brother of Jalaluddin, according to several Afghan and U.S. officials.
That same worry has held up an expected U.S. announcement that the Haqqani network will be placed on a list of terrorist groups subject to U.S. punishment. That move is now expected within a few weeks, two officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are not complete.
The U.S. and NATO consider the Taliban affiliate to be the single greatest enemy in Afghanistan, and they accuse Pakistan of providing the group safe havens. There are also recent allegations that Pakistan has sent rocket fire into Afghanistan to provide cover for insurgents crossing the border.
Pakistan has denied aiding the Haqqanis. An increasingly angry Pakistani military has refused to carry out an offensive in the North Waziristan tribal region, saying it would unleash a tribal-wide war that Pakistan could not contain.
In Little Rock, Ark., on Thursday former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said the relationship between Pakistan and the United States was at its lowest point and plagued by "total mistrust."
Musharraf said the Pakistani military was guilty of "terrible negligence" in allowing Osama bin Laden to go undetected before he was killed in a U.S. raid. He also said Pakistan hadn't done enough to target the Haqqani network.
But Musharraf said U.S. officials are wrong to accuse Pakistan of aiding militants.
"Pakistan is a victim and not a perpetrator of terrorism," Musharraf said.
U.S. officials in Washington and elsewhere say the broader message for Thursday's meeting was that the U.S. still wanted to have a strategic relationship with Pakistan. The gathering was also meant to dispel any mixed messages from U.S. officials.
Dempsey's predecessor as Joint Chiefs chairman, now-retired Adm. Mike Mullen, angered Pakistan and took U.S. colleagues by surprise when he told Congress last month that Pakistan's spy agency supported and encouraged attacks by the Haqqani network militants, including the massive truck bombing in Wardak.
He told lawmakers that the network "acts as a veritable arm" of Islamabad's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI, and said Pakistan is "exporting violence" and threatening any success in Afghanistan.
___
Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon, and Adam Goldman and Anne Gearan in Washington and Nomaan Merchant in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. speaks during a news conference to urging the passage of the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011, on Capitol Hill in Washington. He is joined by Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Ill., right, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., second from right, and others. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. speaks during a news conference to urging the passage of the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011, on Capitol Hill in Washington. He is joined by Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Ill., right, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., second from right, and others. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Despite a campaign-style push this week by President Barack Obama, the Senate on Thursday killed a pared-back jobs legislation aimed at helping state and local governments avoid layoffs of teachers and firefighters.
Obama's three-day bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia ? states crucial to his re-election race next year ? didn't change any minds among Senate Republicans, who used delaying tactics to scuttle Obama's latest jobs measure just as they killed his broader $447 billion jobs plan last week.
The 50-50 vote fell well short of the 60 needed to pass. The White House says the $35 billion measure would "support" almost 400,000 education jobs for one year. Republicans call that a temporary "sugar high" for the economy.
Obama and his Democratic allies are acting like they've found a winning issue in repeatedly pressing popular ideas such as infrastructure spending and boosting hiring of police officers and firefighters. The sluggish economy and lower tax revenues have caused many teachers' jobs to be cut over the past several years.
"For the second time in two weeks, every single Republican in the United States Senate has chosen to obstruct a bill that would create jobs and get our economy going again," Obama said in a statement after the vote. "Every American deserves an explanation as to why Republicans refuse to step up to the plate and do what's necessary to create jobs and grow the economy right now."
After the failure of the jobs measure last week, Democrats vowed to try to resurrect it on a piece by piece basis, even though the strategy doesn't seem to have any better chance of success. But Democrats are trying to win a political advantage through repeated votes.
They're also pressing for passage of a poll-tested financing mechanism ? a surcharge on income exceeding $1 million.
An AP-GfK poll taken Oct. 13-17 found 62 percent of respondents favoring the surcharge as a way to pay for jobs initiatives. Just 26 percent opposed the idea.
Republicans say the president is more interested in picking political fights with them than seeking compromise. Still, they don't seem to be afraid of a politically weakened Obama. Not a single Republican backed the president in last week's vote
"The fact is we're not going to get this economy going again by growing the government. It's the private sector that's ultimately going to drive this recovery," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said. "Look, if big government were the key to economic growth, then countries like Greece would be booming right now."
According to the AP-GfK poll, Obama's party has lost the faith of the public on handling the economy. In the new poll, only 38 percent said they trust Democrats to do a better job than Republicans in handling the economy, the first time Democrats have fallen below 40 percent in the poll. Some 43 percent trust the Republicans more.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, speaking the day after Obama returned from bus tour, said the president's jobs plan has the advantage of providing an immediate kick to the economy.
"The Republicans don't have proposals that would help the economy grow or help it create jobs now," Carney said. "That's the comparison."
Republicans also want to roll back government regulations that they say choke job growth. They backed free-trade pacts with South Korea, Colombia and Panama that were ratified this month. They also back extending tax breaks for businesses that buy new equipment and favor offering a $4,800 tax credit to companies that hire veterans.
Democrats and the White House, meanwhile, are confident that other elements of Obama's larger jobs bill, including extending cuts in Social Security pension taxes, will pass. A 2 percentage point payroll tax cut enacted last year expires at the end of the year. Obama has proposed cutting it by an additional percentage point and extending the cut to the first $5 million of a company's payroll.
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The Dalai Lama gestures as he leads a prayer session in Dharmsala, India, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011. The prayer session was to remember Tibetans who immolated themselves since March this year protesting Chinese rule in Tibet. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)
The Dalai Lama gestures as he leads a prayer session in Dharmsala, India, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011. The prayer session was to remember Tibetans who immolated themselves since March this year protesting Chinese rule in Tibet. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)
Exiled Tibetan nuns and monks participate in a prayer session for peace and as a tribute to Tibetans who died in recent self-immolations, in Katmandu, Nepal, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011. The Dalai Lama on Wednesday fasted and led prayers in honor of nine Tibetans who set themselves on fire in apparent protest against China's tight grip over Buddhist practices in Tibet. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi)
Tibetan exiles, with faces painted in the Tibetan flag colors, participate in a rally to express solidarity with the plight of the people in Tibet, in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011. Tibetan spiritual leader The Dalai Lama on Wednesday fasted and led prayers in honor of nine Tibetans who set themselves on fire in apparent protest against China's tight grip over Buddhist practices in Tibet. (AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal)
The Dalai Lama, right, leads a prayer session as Tibetan spiritual leader Karmapa, left, looks on in Dharmsala, India, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011. The prayer session was to remember Tibetans who immolated themselves since March this year protesting Chinese rule in Tibet. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)
The Dalai Lama gestures as he leads a prayer session in Dharmsala, India, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011. The prayer session was to remember Tibetans who immolated themselves since March this year protesting Chinese rule in Tibet. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)
DHARMSALA, India (AP) ? The Dalai Lama fasted and led prayers Wednesday to honor nine Tibetans who set themselves on fire in protest against Chinese rule, while Beijing criticized the Tibetan spiritual leader's support as inciting "terrorism in disguise."
The 90-minute-long service at the Dalai Lama's Tsuglakhang Temple, in the northern Indian town where he lives in exile, focused on the monks, former monks and a nun who have self-immolated since March in a restive Tibetan area of western China that has been under martial law-type police controls.
Aged in their late teens and twenties, at least five died of their injuries, while the condition of the other four is not known.
At the service, the Dalai Lama led rhythmic prayers for the dead and suffering as Tibetans tended butter lamps. The newly elected prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Lobsang Sangay, urged China to stop its tight controls on religion in Tibet and called on the United Nations to send fact-finding teams to the Himalayan region.
"We would like to appeal to the Chinese government to immediately stop its repressive policies in Tibet, and to resolve the issue of Tibet through peaceful means," Sangay said.
The prayers in Dharmsala were one of several services held in honor of the Tibetans. Taiwan had them too. In New Delhi, Tibetans protested after a prayer service. Elsewhere, Tibetans and supporters posted messages on Twitter promising to fast for the day. The Dalai Lama's daylong fast was his first since 2008 when Tibetans across western China staged protests in the largest rebellion against Chinese rule in nearly a half-century.
The commemorations underscored how the immolations served to draw attention to the situation in Aba, a Tibetan community which has been a flashpoint for Tibetan unrest. Chinese troops fired on protesting Tibetans in 2008. Since then the area has resembled an armed encampment with riot squads, checkpoints and purges of monasteries ? measures the Tibetans who set themselves on fire were protesting.
In Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned the immolations anew Wednesday but directed special criticism at the Dalai Lama and the prayer services, saying that such support would be an incitement akin to terrorism.
"In the wake of the incidents, overseas Tibet independence forces and the Dalai Lama group did not criticize the cases but on the contrary glorified such cases and incited more people to follow suit," the spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said at a daily news briefing. "As we know, such splittist activity at the cost of human life is violence and terrorism in disguise."
The lashing out at exiled Tibetans was typical for the Chinese government, which accuses the Dalai Lama of encouraging separatism but rarely acknowledges how its policies may be contributing to unrest.
"Anything they don't like in Tibet is somehow stirred up by the Dalai Lama, and in a sense they seem to not want to take any responsibility for what appear to be spontaneous expressions of deep concern by these young people," said Michael Davis, a law professor at Hong Kong University who writes about Tibet.
Human Rights Watch has said that tightened security has led to a six-fold increase in spending on police, prisons and other parts of the public security apparatus in Aba has risen six-fold since 2002.
In attempts to rein in a Buddhist clergy seen as supportive of Tibetan independence, Beijing has put limits on the numbers of monks and nuns and forced clerics to denounce the Dalai Lama. The attack on religion, a central feature of Tibetan life, makes Tibetans more uneasy at a time that members of the Han Chinese majority are migrating to the region in greater numbers.
Besides the Dalai Lama, many other senior Tibetan clerics fled Chinese rule, establishing monasteries and schools in exile that retain links to the communities they once presided over. Also attending Wednesday's prayer services was Kirti Rinpoche, the exiled head of the Kirti monastery, which has been at the center of troubles in Aba.
In recent days, he has given implied approval of the immolations, saying that sacrificing one's life to defend one's Buddhist beliefs is not considered violent.
"Throughout your successive rebirths, never relax your vigilance in upholding the truth of the Buddha's excellent teaching for a single moment, even at the cost of your own life," Kirti Rinpoche said, citing a Buddhist master, in remarks released by the International Campaign for Tibet, a Washington-based lobbying group.
Simmering troubles at Kirti monastery boiled anew in March when a 21-year-old monk, Phuntsog, set himself on fire on a main street. Authorities imposed a lock-down and launched new indoctrination campaigns on the monastery, causing large numbers of monks to leave, some on their own and others forcibly, according to accounts by exiled Tibetans and support groups.
An anonymous letter from an exiled Tibetan from Aba, also known as Ngaba, and released by the International Campaign said that more than 100 monks and other locals have disappeared and that the immolations were a response to the repressive conditions.
"In short, the occurrence of suicide as protest in Ngaba is because many people there cannot see how to go on living," the letter said. "To have to relinquish our ethnic-national identity and culture is to relinquish the point of living for Tibetans, so the present repressive and punitive policies are literally tearing out the hearts of the Ngaba people."
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Associated Press writers Gillian Wong and Alexa Olesen in Beijing contributed to this report.
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