Honduras mediator chosen

Honduras mediator chosen

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Showing more flexibility, Honduras’ interim government on Tuesday backed the appointment of a high-profile mediator for negotiations and softened its stance on prosecuting a president ousted by a coup.

Roberto Micheletti, who took over after the June 28 coup that toppled President Manuel Zelaya and has resisted international pressure to reinstate him, applauded the announcement that Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has agreed to mediate efforts to end the standoff.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that Arias would take part after meeting privately in Washington with Zelaya, who was seized by Honduras’ army and flown out of the country after the courts and Congress accused him of violating the constitution.

Zelaya — who flies to Costa Rica today — said he too has accepted Arias’ appointment.

Exile blames China in riots

WASHINGTON — An exiled Uighur leader accused by China of inciting ethnic violence said Tuesday the Chinese government is responsible for the rising tensions.

Rebiya Kadeer, president of the Uyghur American Association, said during a rally in downtown Washington that peaceful Uighur demonstrators have been targeted in China as part of the government’s ongoing repression in the region.

“I’m not responsible,” Kadeer said through a translator. “The Chinese authorities instigated the violence.”

Chinese officials have accused Kadeer of inciting the riots between Muslim Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese, in which at least 156 people have been killed. The riots broke out Sunday in China’s oil-rich Xinjiang region.

Appeals denied in GM case

NEW YORK — A bankruptcy judge late Tuesday denied a motion by a group who claim they were injured as the result of defective General Motors products to directly appeal GM’s asset sale to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, and skip making their case to district court.

U.S. Judge Robert Gerber also denied a separate motion from a group with asbestos-related claims against the automaker to put the sale on hold pending a district court appeal. Judge Gerber didn’t detail in court why he was denying the motions, saying he would issue a written ruling later in the evening.

It’s unlikely that a higher court will take action on the appeals before GM’s sale closes.

Government Web sites hit

WASHINGTON — The Associated Press has learned that a widespread computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime.

Officials say the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and the Transportation Department’s Web sites were all down at varying points over the weekend and into this week. Some were still experiencing problems or delays Tuesday evening.

Officials familiar with the outage, which is called a denial-of-service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack.

GAO finds security gaps

WASHINGTON — A congressional report says investigators smuggled bomb-making materials into federal buildings past the police agency charged with protecting those buildings and found numerous other gaps in security.

The Government Accountability Office says investigators carried bomb-making materials past security at 10 federal buildings. Security at 9,000 federal buildings around the country is provided by the Federal Protective Service.

Once GAO investigators got the materials inside the buildings, the report says, they constructed explosive devices and carried them around inside the buildings.

The report was made available to The Associated Press in advance of a hearing scheduled today before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Health-overhaul setback

WASHINGTON — Senate Democratic leaders rebelled Tuesday against a proposed tax on health-insurance benefits, raising fresh doubts about the prospects for bipartisan legislation on President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

The discontent surfaced as the White House and Vice President Joe Biden readied a triumphant announcement for today that the nation’s hospitals had agreed to give up $155 billion in future Medicare and Medicaid payments to help defray the cost of legislation Obama wants.

Combined dispatches