Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant

On Facebook, he describes himself as a "wounded warrior...very wounded."

Brendan Marrocco was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, and doctors revealed Monday that he's received a double-arm transplant.

Those new arms "already move a little," he tweeted a month after the operation.

Marrocco, a 26-year-old New Yorker, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009. He had the transplant Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday.

Alex Marrocco said his son does not want to talk with reporters until a news conference Tuesday at the hospital, but the younger Marrocco has repeatedly mentioned the transplant on Twitter and posted photos.

"Ohh yeah today has been one month since my surgery and they already move a little," Brendan Marrocco tweeted Jan. 18.

Responding to a tweet from NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski, he wrote: "dude I can't tell you how exciting this is for me. I feel like I finally get to start over."

The infantryman also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.

The military sponsors operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Unlike a life-saving heart or liver transplant, limb transplants are aimed at improving quality of life, not extending it. Quality of life is a key concern for people missing arms and hands — prosthetics for those limbs are not as advanced as those for feet and legs.

"He was the first quad amputee to survive," and there have been four others since then, Alex Marrocco said.

The Marroccos want to thank the donor's family for "making a selfless decision ... making a difference in Brendan's life," the father said.

Brendan Marrocco has been in public many times. During a July 4 visit last year to the Sept. 11 Memorial with other disabled soldiers, he said he had no regrets about his military service.

"I wouldn't change it in any way. ... I feel great. I'm still the same person," he said.

The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins. It was the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States.

Lee led three of those earlier operations when he worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.

Marrocco's "was the most complicated one" so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms.

"The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration," he explained. "We're easily looking at a couple years" until the full extent of recovery is known.

While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the immune-suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand-transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well, and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.

Minimizing anti-rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term. Those risks have limited the willingness of surgeons and patients to do more hand, arm and even face transplants.

Lee has received funding for his work from AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a cooperative research network of top hospitals and universities around the country that the government formed about five years ago. With government money, he and several other plastic surgeons around the country are preparing to do more face transplants, possibly using the new immune-suppression approach.

Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been fitted with prosthetic legs and had learned to walk on his own.

He had been living with his older brother in a specially equipped home on New York's Staten Island that had been built with the help of several charities. Shortly after moving in, he said it was "a relief to not have to rely on other people so much."

The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.

Despite being in a lot of pain for some time after the operation, Marrocco showed a sense of humor, his father said. He had a hoarse voice from the tube that was in his throat during the long surgery and decided he sounded like Al Pacino. He soon started doing movie lines.

"He was making the nurses laugh," Alex Marrocco said.

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Associated Press Writer Stephanie Nano in New York contributed to this report.

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Online:

Army regenerative medicine:

http://www.afirm.mil/index.cfm?pageid=home

and http://www.afirm.mil/assets/documents/annual_report_2011.pdf

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Follow Marilynn Marchione at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP .

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US Mom Missing in Turkey Took Side Trips

Sarai Sierra, the New York mother who disappeared in Turkey while on a solo trip, took several side excursions out of the country, but stayed in contact with her family the entire time, a family friend told ABC News.

Turkish media reported today that police were trying to establish why Sierra visited Amsterdam and Munich. Police were also trying to establish the identity of a man Sierra, 33, was chatting with on the Internet, according to local media.

Rachel Norman, a family friend, said the man was a group tour guide from the Netherlands and said Sierra stayed in regular touch with her family in New York.

Steven Sierra, Sarai's husband, and David Jimenez, her brother, arrived in Istanbul today to aid in the search.

The men have been in contact with officials from the U.S. consulate in the country and plan to meet with them as soon as they open on Tuesday, Norman said.

After that, she said Sierra and Jimenez would meet with Turkish officials to discuss plans and search efforts.

Family of Sarai Sierra|AP Photo

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Sarai Sierra was supposed to fly back to the United States on Jan. 22, but she never showed up for her flight home.

Her two boys, ages 11 and 9, have not been told their mother is missing.

Sierra, an avid photographer, left New York on Jan. 7. It was her first overseas trip, and she decided to go ahead after a friend had to cancel, her family said.

"It was her first time outside of the United States, and every day while she was there she pretty much kept in contact with us, letting us know what she was up to, where she was going, whether it be through texting or whether it be through video chat, she was touching base with us," Steven Sierra told ABC News before he departed for Istanbul.

But when it came time to pick her up from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Sierra wasn't on board her scheduled flight.

Steven Sierra called United Airlines and was told his wife had never boarded the flight home.

Further investigation revealed she had left her passport, clothes, phone chargers and medical cards in her room at a hostel in Beyoglu, Turkey, he said.

The family is suspicious and said it is completely out of character for the happily married mother, who met her husband in church youth group, to disappear.

The U.S. Embassy in Turkey and the Turkish National Police are involved in the investigation, WABC-TV reported.

"They've been keeping us posted, from my understanding they've been looking into hospitals and sending out word to police stations over there," Steven Sierra said. "Maybe she's, you know, locked up, so they are doing what they can."

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French seal off Mali's Timbuktu, rebels torch library

GAO, Mali (Reuters) - French and Malian troops retook control of Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, on Monday after Islamist rebel occupiers fled the ancient Sahara trading town and torched several buildings, including a library holding priceless manuscripts.

The United States and the European Union are backing a French-led intervention in Mali against al Qaeda-allied militants they fear could use the West African state's desert north as a springboard for international attacks.

The recovery of Timbuktu followed the swift capture by French and Malian forces at the weekend of Gao, another major town in Mali's north that had been occupied by the alliance of jihadist groups since last year.

The two-week-old mission by France in its former Sahel colony, at the request of Mali's government, has driven the Islamist rebels northwards out of towns into the desert and mountains.

Without a shot being fired, 1,000 French soldiers and paratroopers and 200 Malian troops seized Timbuktu airport and surrounded the town on the banks of the Niger River, looking to block the escape of insurgents.

In both Timbuktu and Gao, cheering crowds turned out to welcome the French and Malian troops.

A third town in Mali's vast desert north, Kidal, had remained in Islamist militant hands. But Malian Tuareg MNLA rebels, who are seeking autonomy for their northern region, said on Monday they had taken charge in Kidal after Islamist fighters abandoned it.

A diplomat in Bamako confirmed the MNLA takeover of Kidal.

A French military spokesman said the assault forces at Timbuktu were avoiding any fighting inside the city to protect the cultural treasures, mosques and religious shrines in what is considered a seat of Islamic learning.

But Timbuktu Mayor Ousmane Halle told Reuters departing Islamist gunmen had four days earlier set fire to the town's new Ahmed Baba Institute, which contained thousands of manuscripts.

UNESCO spokesman Roni Amelan said the Paris-based U.N. cultural agency was "horrified" by the news of the fire, but was awaiting a full assessment of the damage.

Ali Baba, a worker at the Ahmed Baba Institute, told Sky News in Timbuktu more than 3,000 manuscripts had been destroyed. "They are bandits. They have burned some manuscripts and also stole a lot of manuscripts which they took with them," he said.

Marie Rodet, an African history lecturer at Britain's School of Oriental and African Studies, said Timbuktu held one of the greatest libraries of Islamic manuscripts in the world.

"It's pure retaliation. They (the Islamist militant rebels) knew they were losing the battle and they hit where it really hurts," Rodet told Reuters. "These people are not interested in any intellectual debate. They are anti-intellectual."

ISLAMISTS "ALL FLED"

The Ahmed Baba Institute, one of several libraries and collections in Timbuktu containing fragile documents dating back to the 13th century, is named after a Timbuktu-born contemporary of William Shakespeare and houses more than 20,000 scholarly manuscripts. Some were stored in underground vaults.

The French and Malians have encountered no resistance so far in Timbuktu. But they will now have to comb through a labyrinth of ancient mosques, monuments, mud-brick homes and narrow alleyways to flush out any hiding fighters.

The Islamist forces comprise a loose alliance that groups Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) with Malian Islamist group Ansar Dine and AQIM splinter MUJWA.

They have retreated in the face of relentless French air strikes and superior firepower and are believed to be sheltering in the rugged Adrar des Ifoghas mountain range, north of Kidal.

The MNLA Tuareg rebels who say they now hold Kidal have offered to help the French-led offensive against the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamists. It was not clear, however, whether the French and Malians would steer their offensive further towards Kidal, or hold negotiations with the MNLA.

FRANCE: MALI "BEING LIBERATED"

The world was shocked by Timbuktu's capture in April by Tuareg fighters, whose separatist rebellion was later hijacked by Islamist radicals who imposed severe sharia (Islamic law).

Provoking international outrage, the Muslim militants - who follow a more radical Salafist brand of Islam - destroyed dozens of ancient shrines in Timbuktu sacred to Sufi Muslims, condemning them as idolatrous and un-Islamic.

They also imposed a strict form of Islamic law, or sharia, authorizing the stoning of adulterers and amputations for thieves, while forcing women to go veiled.

On Sunday, many women among the thousands of Gao residents who came out to celebrate the rebels' expulsion made a point of going unveiled. Other residents smoked cigarettes and played music to flout the bans previously imposed by the rebels.

Hundreds of troops from Niger and Chad have been brought to Gao to help secure the town.

"Little by little, Mali is being liberated," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told France 2 television.

Speaking at a news conference in Paris, French President Francois Hollande said French troops would take a step back once the job of retaking key towns was complete, and Malian and other African troops would take over the task of hunting the rebels.

"They are the ones who will go into the northern part, which we know is the most difficult because that's where the terrorists are hiding," Hollande said.

As the French and Malian troops thrust into northern Mali, African troops for a U.N.-backed continental intervention force for Mali, expected to number 7,700, are being flown into the country, despite severe delays and logistical problems.

Outgoing African Union Chairman President Thomas Boni Yayi of Benin scolded AU states at a weekend summit in Addis Ababa for their slow response to assist Mali while former colonial power France took the lead in the military operation.

Burkina Faso, Benin, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Niger and Chad are providing soldiers for the AFISMA force. Burundi and other nations have pledged to contribute.

AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra said these regional troops could play a useful "clean-up" role once the main military operations against the Islamist rebels end.

Speaking in Addis Ababa on Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the U.N. was "actively considering" helping the troop-contributing African countries with logistical support.

(Additional reporting by Richard Valdmanis in Sevare, Mali, Bate Felix and David Lewis in Dakar, Maria Golovina in London, Alexandria Sage, Vicky Buffery and Emmanuel Jarry in Paris, Tiemoko Diallo in Bamako, Abdoulaye Massalatchi in Niamey, Richard Lough and Aaron Masho in Addis Ababa; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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Govt to tighten law to better protect timeshare consumers

SINGAPORE: The government is tightening safeguards and plugging loopholes in the law to better protect consumers in timeshare deals.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) said on Monday that it is making the changes because timeshare businesses continue to account for the most number of consumer complaints.

The number of timeshare cases totalled 389 in 2010 and 358 in 2011, according to the Consumers Association of Singapore.

MTI said an increasing number of businesses has moved from selling conventional timeshare -- which is the right to use a timeshare accommodation for a specified period -- to selling holiday club memberships.

These club memberships involve an advance payment for the right to obtain holiday benefits, such as discounted accommodation and airfares.

MTI said such holiday clubs essentially offer a similar product to timeshare, but they are not subject to the cooling-off period under the law as they do not fall under the current definition of "regulated contract".

Consumers are not given the opportunity to assess whether a holiday club can offer the purported discounts.

There is also a lack of transparency about important features in timeshare and holiday club contracts, including the rights of the consumer and the obligations of the timeshare seller.

Thus MTI is proposing changes to the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) (Cancellation of Contracts) Regulations.

A key change is in the definition of "regulated contract". This will be expanded to include "long-term holiday product contracts" to close the current loophole where certain timeshare operators deliberately modify their business model to escape the requirements under the law.

This will also give consumers of holiday clubs the same protection as timeshare contracts, such as a five-day cooling-off period.

No money is to be collected during the cooling-off period. MTI said this will increase the protection and reduce the incentives for errant businesses to force a sale.

It will also remove the risk of losing, as well as the inconvenience of recovering the money paid, when consumers decide to cancel the deal during the cooling-off period.

MTI wants to hear from the public and welcomes feedback and views over the next five weeks till March 1.

- CNA/al

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Rajnath Singh meets Jagadish Shettar, says no crisis in Karnataka

NEW DELHI: Karnataka chief minister Jagadish Shettar met BJP president Rajnath Singh on Monday to discuss the political situation the southern state following the decision of 13 MLAs, loyal to BS Yeddyurappa, to quit.

Talking to reporters after the meeting, Rajnath Singh said: "There is no crisis in Karnataka. Our government will complete its term."

Describing his meeting as a courtesy call, Shettar said: "This is just a courtesy call. I came here to wish Rajnath ji for his selection as party's president and to seek his blessings."

The meeting comes in wake of Rajnath Singh making clear to Jagadish Shettar last Friday not to compromise on the BJP's principles even if it threatens the survival of the government in the southern state.

Thirteen MLAs loyal to Karnataka Janata Party chief Yeddyurappa had gone in a delegation last Wednesday to meet Speaker K G Bopaiah to submit their resignation from Assembly membership.

As Bopaiah was not present, they had later submitted copies of their resignation letters to Governor H R Bhardwaj.

In the 225-member Karnataka Assembly, BJP has a strength of 117 excluding the Speaker and requires 113 for a simple majority. Congress has 71 members and JDS 26. There are seven Independents and two vacancies. One member is nominated.

(From inputs from PTI)

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CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West

New government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.

Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.

There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.

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CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

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'Barrier of Bodies' Trapped Nightclub Fire Victims

A fast-moving fire roared through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, within seconds filling the space with flames and a thick, toxic smoke that killed more than 230 panicked partygoers who gasped for breath and fought in a stampede to escape.

It appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.

Firefighters responding to the blaze at first had trouble getting inside the Kiss nightclub because bodies partially blocked the club's entryway.

Witnesses said a flare or firework lit by band members started the blaze in Santa Maria, a university city of about 260,000 people. Officials at a news conference said the cause was still under investigation — though police inspector Sandro Meinerz told the Agencia Estado news agency the band was to blame for a pyrotechnics show and that manslaughter charges could be filed.

Television images showed black smoke billowing out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who had attended a university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at windows and hot-pink exterior walls to free those trapped inside.

Bodies of the dead and injured were strewn in the street and panicked screams filled the air as medics tried to help. There was little to be done; officials said most of those who died were suffocated by smoke within minutes.

Germano Roratto/AFP/Getty Images

Brazil Nightclub Fire: Nearly 200 People Killed Watch Video

Within hours a community gym was a horror scene, with body after body lined up on the floor, partially covered with black plastic as family members identified kin.

Outside the gym police held up personal objects — a black purse, a blue high-heeled shoe — as people seeking information on loved ones looked crowded around, hoping not to recognize anything being shown them.

Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a hard time getting inside the club because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance."

Teenagers sprinted from the scene after the fire began, desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms. Many of the victims were under 20 years old, including some minors.

"There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic, and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead," survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network.

The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, Silva said.

Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit flares that started the conflagration.

"The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward," she said. "At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread."

Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. "and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning"

"It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It's harmless, we never had any trouble with it.

"When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working"

He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.

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Nightclub fire kills 233 in Brazil

SANTA MARIA, Brazil (Reuters) - A nightclub fire killed at least 233 people in southern Brazil on Sunday when a band's pyrotechnics show set the building ablaze and fleeing partygoers stampeded toward blocked exits in the ensuing panic.

Most of those who died were suffocated by toxic fumes that rapidly filled the crowded club after sparks from pyrotechnics used by the band for visual effects set fire to soundproofing on the ceiling, local fire officials said.

"Smoke filled the place instantly, the heat became unbearable," survivor Murilo Tiescher, a medical student, told GloboNews TV. "People could not find the only exit. They went to the toilet thinking it was the exit and many died there."

Firemen said one exit was locked and that club bouncers, who at first thought those fleeing were trying to skip out on bar tabs, initially blocked patrons from leaving. The security staff relented only when they saw flames engulfing the ceiling.

The tragedy in the university town of Santa Maria in one of Brazil's most prosperous states comes as the country scrambles to improve safety, security and logistical shortfalls before the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics, both intended to showcase the economic advances and first-world ambitions of Latin America's largest nation.

In Santa Maria, a city of more than 275,000 people, rescue workers and weary officials wept alongside family and friends of the victims at a gymnasium being used as a makeshift morgue.

"It's the saddest, saddest day of my life," said Neusa Soares, the mother of one of those killed, 22-year-old Viviane Tolio Soares. "I never thought I would have to live to see my girl go away."

President Dilma Rousseff cut short an official visit to Chile and flew to Santa Maria, where she wept as she spoke to relatives of the victims, most of whom were university students.

"All I can say at the moment is that my feelings are of deep sorrow," said Rousseff, who began her political career in Rio Grande do Sul, the state where the fire occurred.

It was the deadliest nightclub fire since 309 people died in a discotheque blaze in China in 2000 and Brazil's worst fire at an entertainment venue since a disgruntled employee set fire to a circus in 1961, killing well over 300 people.

'BARRIER OF THE DEAD'

Local authorities said 120 men and 113 women died in the fire, and 92 people are still being treated in hospitals.

News of the fire broke on Sunday morning, when local news broadcast images of shocked people outside the nightclub called Boate Kiss. Gradually, grisly details emerged.

"We ran into a barrier of the dead at the exit," Colonel Guido Pedroso de Melo, commander of the fire brigade in Rio Grande do Sul, said of the scene that firefighters found on arrival. "We had to clear a path to get to the rest of those that were inside."

Pedroso de Melo said the popular nightclub was overcrowded with 1,500 people packed inside and they could not exit fast.

"Security guards blocked their exit and did not allow them to leave quickly. That caused panic," he said.

The fire chief said the club was authorized to be open, though its permit was in the process of being renewed. But he pointed to several egregious safety violations - from the flare that went off during the show to the locked door that kept people from getting out.

"The problem was the use of pyrotechnics, which is not permitted," Pedroso de Melo said.

The club's management said in a statement that its staff was trained and prepared to deal with any emergency. It said it would help authorities with their investigation.

One of the club's owners has surrendered to police for questioning, GloboNews TV reported.

When the fire began at about 2:30 a.m., many revelers were unable to find their way out in the chaos.

"It all happened so fast," survivor Taynne Vendrusculo told GloboNews TV. "Both the panic and the fire spread rapidly, in seconds."

Once security guards realized the building was on fire, they tried in vain to control the blaze with a fire extinguisher, according to a televised interview with one of the guards, Rodrigo Moura. He said patrons were trampled as they rushed for the doors, describing it as "a horror film."

Band member Rodrigo Martins said the fire started after the fourth or fifth song and the extinguisher did not work.

"It could have been a short circuit, there were many cables there," Martins told Porto Alegre's Radio Gaucha station. He said there was only one door and it was locked. A band member died in the fire.

CELL PHONES STILL RINGING

TV footage showed people sobbing outside the club before dawn, while shirtless firefighters used sledge hammers and axes to knock down an exterior wall to open up an exit.

Rescue officials moved the bodies to the local gym and separated them by gender. Male victims were easier to identify because most had identification on them, unlike the women, whose purses were left scattered in the devastated nightclub.

Piles of shoes remained in the burnt-out club, along with tufts of hair pulled out by people fleeing desperately. Firemen who removed bodies said victims' cell phones were still ringing.

The disaster recalls other incidents including a 2003 fire at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, that killed 100 people, and a Buenos Aires nightclub blaze in 2004 that killed nearly 200. In both incidents, a band or members of the audience ignited fires that set the establishment ablaze.

The Rhode Island fire shocked local and federal officials because of the rarity of such incidents in the United States, where enforcement of safety codes is considered relatively strict. After the Buenos Aires blaze, Argentine officials closed many nightclubs and other venues and ultimately forced the city's mayor from office because of poor oversight of municipal codes.

The fire early on Sunday occurred in one of the wealthiest, most industrious and culturally distinct regions of Brazil. Santa Maria is about 186 miles west of Porto Alegre, the capital of a state settled by Germans and other immigrants from northern Europe.

Local clichés paint the region as stricter and more organized than the rest of Brazil, where most residents are a mix descended from native tribes, Portuguese colonists, African slaves, and later influxes of immigrants from southern Europe.

Rio Grande do Sul state's health secretary, Ciro Simoni, said emergency medical supplies from all over the state were being sent to the scene. States from all over Brazil offered support, and messages of sympathy poured in from foreign leaders.

(Additional reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal, Gustavo Bonato, Jeferson Ribeiro, Eduardo Simões, Brian Winter and Guido Nejamkis.; Writing by Paulo Prada and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Todd Benson, Kieran Murray and Christopher Wilson)

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Latin America, Europe back free trade

SANTIAGO: European and Latin American leaders pledged here Saturday to shun protectionism and boost their strategic partnership to foster free trade.

Some 60 countries are represented at the summit between the 27-member European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Set up in Caracas in December 2011 at the behest of Venezuela, CELAC groups all nations from across the Americas except the United States and Canada and aims to boost regional trade and integration.

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, the two-day summit's host, opened the session with a call for a new "strategic alliance to achieve sustainable development."

And indeed participants unanimously adopted a summit statement extolling their "strategic partnership to achieve sustainable development."

They also reiterated their commitment "to avoid protectionism in all its forms" and to "favour an open and non-discriminatory, ruled-based multilateral trade system."

"We firmly reject all coercive measures of unilateral character with extra-territorial effect that are contrary to international law and the commonly accepted rules of free trade," the statement said.

The leaders also pledged to continue working together "toward a new international financial architecture."

And they backed concrete actions to bolster law enforcement cooperation "to dismantle criminal organizations, all within the full respect of human rights and international law."

There was also support for the convening of a special UN General Assembly session on the global drug problem.

The leaders also gave a nod to "the universality and indivisibility of human rights as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

It was the seventh summit between the two blocs but the first since the creation of CELAC. The two sides agreed to hold the next EU-CELAC summit in Brussels in 2015.

The EU is the biggest outside investor in Latin America, accounting for three percent of direct foreign investment in CELAC or $385 billion in 2010.

EU officials noted that the figure exceeds the combined investment in China, Russia and India.

"We need a strong political commitment to rein in protectionism and promote liberalization," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told a meeting of business chiefs leaders shortly before the political summit's opening.

Powerful German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom the Chilean press has dubbed "Europe's boss," called for "cooperation without barriers to trade."

"The dynamic development of this entire region shows that we, within the EU, must strive to ensure we are not left behind, to improve our competitiveness, reduce our debt. We cannot live on the backs of future generations," she added.

The Europeans are particularly keen on securing the speedy conclusion of a free trade pact between the EU and the South American trading bloc Mercosur.

Negotiations have so far stumbled over differences on agriculture -- notably Europe's subsidies to its farmers, which undermine Latin America's efforts to sell its own products.

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, who has taken some protectionist measures, said that the EU-Mercosur negotiations, launched in 2004, must restart on a "new basis" that can clear the way for a deal.

"The negotiations with the EU cannot be based on decisions made in 2004. We need new premises, first among all Mercosur members, not just between Brazil and Argentina," she said after a bilateral session with Rousseff.

Kirchner suggested establishing an ad hoc Mercosur panel to come up with new proposals and make a new offer to the EU later this year.

Meanwhile, a Venezuelan minister said here that President Hugo Chavez has beaten a severe respiratory infection that occurred after his latest cancer surgery in Cuba.

"The respiratory infection has been overcome, although there still is some degree of breathing difficulty that is being treated appropriately," Communications Minister Ernesto Villegas said on the sidelines of a EU-CELAC summit.

Chavez, who had surgery on December 12, has not been seen in public since he left Caracas for surgery at a hospital in Cuba.

Monday, the 33 CELAC leaders will hold their own summit here, with Cuba taking over chairmanship from Chile for one year. They are hoping to overcome ideological and economic differences to foster greater regional integration.

The meeting will seal Cuba's full regional reintegration and mark a major diplomatic coup for 81-year-old President Raul Castro. Cuba, the only non-democratic Communist-ruled country in the Americas, has been under a US economic embargo since 1962.

- AFP/fa

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Freedom of expression finds voices at literature festival

JAIPUR: To the Kashmiri, the British, the Scot and the Indian, freedom of speech and expression mean different things. Yet, on Saturday, their contexts coalesced at the Jaipur Literature Festival, where the debate circled around the ways in which governments and private interests reacted to free expression, especially on the World Wide Web. In a well-debated session panelists and the audience also agreed there was a need to rewrite many existing laws.

Author Basharat Peer spoke about the insidious ways in which censorship works in Kashmir; from the sound of tapped phones and policemen in civilian clothes keeping tabs on press conferences to government, systematically, cutting off the economic lifeline of an information dissemination agency by stopping government advertisements. "Last year, for instance, the government jailed an author for downloading a Pakistani paper. It was a conscious attempt to create a threat perception; a censor of sorts," he said.

Journalist Shoma Chaudhary agreed, adding that freedom of expression was in "serious jeopardy" in India. Calling herself an "Absolutist" Chaudhary defended the right to offend sensibilities, adding there was an urgent need to ensure absolute freedom of expression in art. "If you disagree with the songs Yo Yo Honey Singh sings, the answer is not to ban him. Instead, don't allow him the commercial success he has today. Don't endorse the product, but allow every artist to express themselves the way they want to."

Having examined the history and culture of censorship in Russia, Orlando Figes, the British historian of Russia, said free expression was also in danger, especially under authoritarian governments. Referring to Russia, Figes quoted a government research in 2010 that suggested that the Russians were happy with the quasi-government bodies controlling the process of information dissemination. "In my opinion, free expression is only relevant when it is combined with the right to protest and indulge in activism."

The perils of censorship, Scottish environmental activist John Burnside said, are not limited to some parts of the world alone. Speaking of Britain and Scotland, Burnside talked of private vested interests that ran governments in less visible ways. "Typically, when you begin investigating certain companies, they send out specious legal threats in an attempt to threaten you into silence. In a more overt manner, all the data on my laptop was melted after it was hacked." In less obvious and more insidious way, Burnside also spoke about how libraries were controlled. He said: "What books are available and the ones that are left out also make a significant study in censorship."

With the audience entering the debate demanding self-regulation and an end to anonymity on the Internet, Chaudhary said there was a need to throw open to debate Article 19 (2) of the Indian Constitution, which imposes "reasonable restrictions" on the freedom of speech and expression.

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