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CANBERRA, Australia ? Danish Crown Prince Frederik and his Australian-born wife, Crown Princess Mary, have arrived in the national capital to meet Australia's leaders during their official weeklong visit.
The couple were guests of honor at a lunch at Parliament House on Tuesday after a private meeting with Prime Minister Julia Gillard in her office.
The couple and their four children landed in Australia on Saturday and spent the next two days in Sydney, where they met in a nightclub during the 2000 Olympics.
Since their last official visit as guests of the Australian government in 2005, the couple have made private visits to Australia in 2006 and 2008.
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Jefferson Siegel / AP
Jose Pimentel, 27, right, represented by attorney Joseph Zablocki, left, is arraigned at Manhattan criminal court on Sunday.
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A day after her son was arraigned on charges of plotting to bomb police stations and post offices, the mother of alleged al-Qaida sympathizer Jose Pimentel apologized to New Yorkers and praised authorities.?
"I didn't raise my son in that way," Carmen Sosa said, speaking to reporters outside her Manhattan home. "I feel bad about this situation."
The New York Police Department "handled it well," she added.
Sosa said Pimentel was raised Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam in 2004.?Read more from the Associated Press here.
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CANBERRA, Australia ? Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Monday that the Australian military training mission in Afghanistan could be completed before the 2014 target date, after an Afghan army commander told a newspaper that Australian troops should be withdrawn immediately.
Gillard's speech to Parliament raises the possibility that the Australian troop withdrawal could begin within the next three years.
Gillard said her government had no timetable for the Australian military's primary objective of training an Afghan National Army brigade to take responsibility for security in Uruzgan province.
"But given the progress we now see, it may well be complete before the end of 2014," she said.
The commander of the Afghan troops being trained by the Australians, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Zafar Khan, told The Age newspaper in an interview published Monday that the mentors should go immediately, leaving behind modern equipment including mine detectors, night vision goggles and medical evacuation helicopters.
"Three years is too much time for the Australians to stay here," Zafar told the newspaper through an interpreter at his Tarin Kowt headquarters in Uruzgan.
He could not immediately be contacted by The Associated Press on Monday for comment.
Australia has 1,550 troops in Afghanistan, the largest force provided by any country outside NATO. Thirty-two Australian soldiers have been killed in the conflict.
Australia's military deployment in Afghanistan maintains bipartisan political support, but opinion polls show the popularity of the commitment among the Australian public is plummeting with the rising death toll.
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DETROIT ? Matthew Stafford shook off a couple of early interceptions, then went about leading the Detroit Lions to yet another memorable comeback.
The Lions quarterback matched a career-best with five touchdown passes, the final one a 7-yarder to Brandon Pettigrew with 2:32 left, and the Lions rallied for a 49-35 win over the Carolina Panthers on Sunday.
"We were killing ourselves with turnovers," he said. "We knew that we'd be able to score in the second half if we could just keep our hands on the ball."
The Lions (7-3) scored five second-half touchdowns and became the first NFL team to win three games in a season after trailing by at least 17 points.
"We can get as hot as any team in the league," Detroit coach Jim Schwartz said.
The Panthers (2-8) led by 17 points in the second quarter, and had a 27-14 lead at halftime.
"This is a team loss," Carolina coach Ron Rivera said. "You play the second half the way we did, you're going to get beat."
Detroit now can look ahead to its next game, on Thanksgiving at home against undefeated Green Bay.
"Against Green Bay, you can't make the mistakes we did," Schwartz said.
Against Carolina, though, the Comeback Cats were able to overcome their early turnovers with a barrage of touchdown passes by Stafford. The Lions scored 21 straight points to take a 35-27 lead early in the fourth quarter, but couldn't put the game away until the final minutes.
Carolina tied it with 4:59 left on quarterback Cam Newton's 6-yard run and 2-point conversion pass to Steve Smith.
Stafford then started the game-winning drive with a 30-yard completion to Calvin Johnson and capped it with his sharp pass to Pettigrew in the end zone on a third-down play.
The Lions sealed the win when Newton threw an interception on the Panthers' first play after the ensuing kickoff and the No. 1 pick in the 2011 NFL draft finished with a season-high four interceptions.
Newton was 22 of 38 for 280 yards with a TD pass and also ran for two scores.
"It was as if we were just trying to hold on," Newton said. "You can't do that to a team like this."
Minnesota and Dallas found that out early this season. The Lions trailed the Vikings and Cowboys by 20-plus points on the road and came back to win each game during their 5-0 start.
Stafford, selected No. 1 overall in the 2009 draft, bounced back from his rough start Sunday to finish 28 of 36 for 335 yards.
"It's just like being a shooting guard," Lions receiver Nate Burleson said. "Once he hit a couple shots, you could see it in his eyes. He was in the huddle winking at guys."
It helped that Stafford had somebody to do something with handoffs.
Kevin Smith gave the Lions a surprising boost on the ground, running for a career-high 140 yards and scoring a career-best three touchdowns two weeks after he was sitting on a couch without a job when his former team gave him a shot.
"There are a lot of great stories in the NFL, but you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a better one right now than Kevin Smith," Schwartz said.
When Detroit looked like it was trying to set up a field goal to take a 10-point lead, Smith took a handoff and ran 19 yards for a TD with two minutes left to finish off the Lions' 35-point second half.
"I knew that in this league, if you are available and you have talent, you'll get a chance," Smith said.
The Panthers were determined to make someone other than Johnson ? with 11 TD catches coming in ? beat them. Once Stafford figured that out, he flourished. He connected with five different targets ? none named Johnson ? for scores and settled for short passes instead of long ones.
Stafford had TD passes of 28 yards to Kevin Smith, 3 yards to Titus Young, 16 yards to Burleson, 17 yards to Tony Scheffler and 7 yards to Pettigrew.
"When Matt knows he can throw a short pass to one of our receivers or running backs, they can get yards after the catch, it gives you a lot of confidence as a quarterback," Schwartz said.
The Lions turned the ball over on their first three drives, then pulled within three points when Smith ran for 43 yards and turned a screen pass into a 28-yard TD on back-to-back plays in the second quarter.
Detroit quickly lost the momentum when Panthers rookie Kealoha Pilares returned the ensuing kickoff 101 yards for a score to put Carolina up 17-7 early in the second quarter.
The Lions overcame eight penalties, some that extended drives for Carolina, to avoid a loss that would've hurt their playoff positioning.
Detroit had lost two straight at home and three of four overall and appeared to be headed toward another setback until Stafford started clicking and its defense began slowing down the Panthers.
Notes: Panthers TE Jeremy Shockey (ribs), LB Dan Connor (shoulder) and Lions DL Lawrence Jackson (thigh) and Willie Young (ankle) were inactive. ... Detroit previously ruled out RB Jahvid Best, who hasn't played since Oct. 16 because of a concussion. ... Carolina is winless on the road this season. ... Smith's previous career high in rushing yards was 112 as a Detroit rookie in 2008 at Carolina.
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Posted: 3:20 pm Mon, November 21, 2011
By Chris?Newmarker
Tags: construction, Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office, Minnesota?s Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit, Tim Pawlenty
David Kelliher, director of public policy and community relations at the Minnesota Historical Society, touts the job creation benefits of the Minnesota Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit during a Monday news conference in the former Minneapolis North Branch Library. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)
State?s construction industry gets a little lift from 14 projects
Minnesota?s Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit appears to be producing construction jobs and helping a bit to keep the beleaguered industry from becoming a relic of the past itself.
As of June 30, 14 projects had preliminary approval to take advantage of the tax credit, according to a report released Monday by the Minnesota Historical Society and the University of Minnesota Extension. Developers expect the projects to create 1,808 construction jobs ? and a total of 2,948 jobs when indirect and induced jobs are counted.
That?s in line with the 1,500 to 3,000 construction jobs a year that the Minnesota Historical Society and the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota predicted would be created when former Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed the tax credit into law in 2010.
The tax credit is creating construction jobs at the same time that the industry appears to be improving after years of decline. Last month, Minnesota posted its first 12-month gain in construction jobs since April 2006, according to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development.
?We certainly like to think that this provision, this historic preservation tax credit, has a little something to do with that,? said David Kelliher, director of public policy and community relations at the Minnesota Historical Society.
The credit covers up to 20 percent of qualifying rehabilitation expenses; that?s on top of a federal tax credit that can cover another 20 percent. The state tax credit is scheduled to sunset in 2015, but supporters say job creation is reason enough for the state Legislature to keep it going.
Minnesota?s construction industry remains in a state of ?depression,? with more than 50,000 jobs lost between 2006 and 2011, so every bit helps, said David Semerad, chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors of Minnesota.
The report says developers plan to spend an estimated $343 million on the 14 projects, with $250 million going toward rehabilitation expenses that qualify for the tax credit. Total economic impact is expected to be $451 million ? about $9.20 for every dollar of the $49.1 million of tax credits going toward the 14 projects.
Besides the 14 projects mentioned in the report, there are an additional 14 that have since applied and another handful of developments are considering it, said Britta Bloomberg, deputy head of the Minnesota Historical Society. Contrast that with 2009, when only two Minnesota developments were seeking the federal tax credit.
Steve Elliott, the Historical Society?s director and chief executive officer, described the state tax credit program as a ?resounding success? during a Monday morning news conference. Elliott was speaking at the unheated former Minneapolis North Branch Library, a 118-year-old, roughly 13,200-square-foot building at 1834 Emerson Ave. N. that is a shell of what it used to be.
The nonprofit Emerge Community Development has preliminary approval for a $560,000 tax credit to help it fund a $4.8 million renovation of the 118-year-old building. Emerge would like to turn the building into a job training center. (Submitted rendering: Paul Gates Architect)
Preliminary approval for a $560,000 tax credit has helped Emerge Community Development with fundraising for a $4.8 million renovation it is planning at the former library, which Emerge officials would like to turn into a job training center. (Paul Gates Architect is the project?s designer, and Emerge plans to seek construction bids soon.)
Emerge is accepting the tax credit in the form of a grant, an option under the 2010 law, said Mike Wynne, the group?s president and chief executive officer. Wynne didn?t have job creation estimates. But he said the career training mission of the center means that the location should help to increase employment for decades to come.
?The tax credit has made it possible to gain momentum to raise the money to revitalize this historic building,? Wynne said.
Tax credits are also going toward much larger undertakings, including Sherman Associates? $132 million renovation of Riverside Plaza in Minneapolis and United Properties? $40 million renovation of the Ford Center in Minneapolis.
Thirty states ? including Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, Missouri and Kansas ? already had similar programs in place when Minnesota approved its tax credit.
Historical tax credits, however, interfere with what would be naturally taking place in the real estate market, said Phil Krinkie, president of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota. Historic preservation groups might tout job creation figures, but what?s to say the jobs wouldn?t be created anyway with more general tax cuts?
?I?m all for historic preservation, but historic preservation has to fit into what the market is,? Krinkie said.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Hezbollah has partially unraveled the CIA's spy network in Lebanon, severely damaging the intelligence agency's ability to gather vital information on the terrorist organization at a tense time in the region, former and current U.S. officials said.
Officials said several foreign spies working for the CIA had been captured by Hezbollah in recent months. The blow to the CIA's operations in Lebanon came after top agency managers were alerted last year to be especially careful handling informants in the Middle East country.
Hezbollah's longtime leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, boasted in June on television he had unmasked at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of the organization, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group closely allied with Iran.
Though the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon officially denied the accusation, American officials concede that Nasrallah wasn't lying and the damage spread like a virus as Hezbollah methodically picked off the CIA's informants.
To be sure, some deaths are to be expected in these shadowy spy wars. It's an extremely risky business and people get killed. But the damage to the agency's network in Lebanon has been greater than usual, several former and current U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about security matters.
The Lebanon crisis is the latest mishap involving CIA counterintelligence, defined as the undermining or manipulating of the enemy's ability to gather information. Former CIA officials have said the once-essential skill has been eroded as the agency shifted from outmaneuvering rival spy agencies to fighting terrorists. In the rush for immediate results, former officers say, tradecraft has suffered.
The most recent high-profile example was the suicide bomber who posed as an informant and killed seven CIA employees and wounded six others in Khost, Afghanistan, in December 2009.
Last year, then-CIA director Leon Panetta said the agency had to maintain "a greater awareness of counterintelligence." But eight months later, Nasrallah let the world know he had bested the CIA, demonstrating that the agency still struggles with this critical aspect of spying and sending a message to those who would betray Hezbollah.
It remains unclear whether anyone has been or will be held responsible in the wake of this counterintelligence disaster or whether the incident will affect the CIA's ability to recruit assets in Lebanon.
CIA officials were warned their spies in Lebanon were vulnerable. Those told include the chief of the unit that supervises Hezbollah operations from CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and the head of counterintelligence.
Former and current intelligence officials are waiting to see how CIA Director David Petreaus, who took the helm in September, will handle this fiasco. While in the military, the retired four-star developed a reputation for exacting standards and holding people accountable.
"Gen. Petraeus will definitely take care of the failings of his organization. He will deal with it head on and not try to bury it under the carpet," said retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor, the general's former executive officer in Iraq.
In response to AP's questions about what happened in Lebanon, a U.S. official said Hezbollah is a complicated enemy, responsible for killing more Americans than any other terrorist group before September 2001. The agency did not underestimate the organization, the official said.
The CIA's toughest adversaries, like Hezbollah and Iran, have for years been improving their ability to hunt spies, relying on patience and guile to exploit counterintelligence holes.
In 2007, for instance, when Ali-Reza Asgari, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, disappeared in Turkey, it was assumed that he was either killed or defected. In response, the Iranian government began a painstaking review of foreign travel by its citizens, particularly to places like Turkey where Iranians don't need a visa and could meet with foreign intelligence services.
It didn't take long, a Western intelligence official told the AP, before the U.S., Britain and Israel began losing contact with some of their Iranian spies. In this instance, the Iranians used travel and expense records to figure out who was selling the foreign intelligence services information about its nuclear program.
The State Department last year described Hezbollah as "the most technically capable terrorist group in the world," and the Defense Department estimates it receives between $100 million and $200 million per year in funding from Iran.
Backed by Iran, Hezbollah has built a professional counterintelligence apparatus that Nasrallah ? whom the U.S. government designated an international terrorist a decade ago ? proudly describes as the "spy combat unit." U.S. intelligence officials believe the unit, which is considered formidable and ruthless, went operational around 2004.
Using the latest commercial software, Nasrallah's spy-hunters unit began methodically searching for traitors in Hezbollah's midst. To find them, U.S. officials said, Hezbollah examined cellphone data looking for anomalies. The analysis identified cellphones that, for instance, were used rarely or always from specific locations and only for a short period of time. Then it came down to old-fashioned, shoe-leather detective work: Who in that area had information that might be worth selling to the enemy?
The effort took years but eventually Hezbollah, and later the Lebanese government, began making arrests. By one estimate, 100 Israeli assets were apprehended as the news made headlines across the region in 2009. Some of those suspected Israeli spies worked for telecommunications companies and served in the military.
Back at CIA headquarters, the arrests alarmed senior officials. The agency prepared a study on its own vulnerabilities, U.S. officials said, and the results proved to be prescient.
The analysis concluded that the CIA was susceptible to the same analysis that had compromised the Israelis, the officials said.
CIA managers were instructed to be extra careful about handling sources in Lebanon. A U.S. official said recommendations were issued to counter the potential problem.
But it's unclear what preventive measures were taken by the Hezbollah unit chief or the officer in charge of the Beirut station. Former officials say the Hezbollah unit chief is no stranger to the necessity of counterintelligence and knew the risks. The unit chief has worked overseas in hostile environments like Afghanistan and played an important role in the capture of a top terrorist while stationed in the Persian Gulf region after the attacks of 9/11.
"We've lost a lot of people in Beirut over the years, so everyone should know the drill," said a former Middle East case officer familiar with the situation.
But whatever actions the CIA took, they were not enough. Like the Israelis, bad tradecraft doomed these CIA assets and the agency ultimately failed to protect them, an official said. In some instances, CIA officers fell into predictable patterns when meeting their sources, the official said.
This allowed Hezbollah to identify assets and case officers and unravel at least part of the CIA's spy network in Lebanon. There was also a reluctance to share cases and some files were put in "restricted handling." The designation severely limits the number of people who know the identity of the source but also reduces the number of experts who could spot problems that might lead to their discovery, officials said.
Nasrallah's televised announcement in June ? he called the U.S. Embassy in Beirut a "den of spies" ? was followed by finger-pointing among departments inside the CIA as the spy agency tried figure out what went wrong and contain the damage.
The fate of these CIA assets is unknown. Hezbollah treats spies differently, said Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism and intelligence expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies who is writing a book about the terrorist organization
"It all depends on who these guys were and what they have to say," Levitt said. "Hezbollah has disappeared people before. Others they have kept around."
Who's responsible for the mess in Lebanon? It's not clear. The chief of Hezbollah operations at CIA headquarters continues to run the unit that also focuses on Iranians and Palestinians. The CIA's top counterintelligence officer, who was one of the most senior women in the clandestine service, recently retired after approximately five years on the job.
She is credited with some important cases, including the recent arrests of Russian spies who had been living in the U.S. for years.
Officials said the woman was succeeded by a more experienced operations officer. That officer has held important posts in Moscow, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Balkans ? key frontlines in the agency's spy wars with foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations.
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Associated Press Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.
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Contact the Washington investigative team at DCInvestigations(at)ap.org
Follow Apuzzo and Goldman at http://twitter.com/mattapuzzo and http://twitter.com/goldmandc
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