Dollar rises above 100 yen for 1st time in 4 years

TOKYO (AP) — The dollar soared above 100 yen for the first time in more than four years Friday, driven by aggressive credit-easing aimed at reviving Japan's sluggish economy and improved U.S. economic figures.

The U.S. dollar rose as high as 101.30 yen, the first time since April 2009 that the greenback has traded above 100 yen. The move lifted Japanese stocks to their highest level in more than five years.

The weaker yen is a boon to Japan's major auto and electronics exporters. The government said the yen's fall signaled that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policy mix of increased public spending and aggressive monetary easing, dubbed "Abenomics," was proving successful. Kick-starting the economy has been Abe's top priority since he took office late last year.

"With Abenomics, we hope that the Japanese economy will grow and can contribute to the global economy," said Yoshihide Suga, the chief Cabinet spokesman. "It's better that stocks are high than low. We believe this is a sign that our policies are progressing well."

Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average jumped 2.9 percent to 14,607.54, its highest close since January 2008.

The central bank's monetary easing, and expectations it will help reverse persistent deflation, have helped drive the value of the yen down by more than 20 percent against the dollar since October, when it was trading at around 78 yen.

The yen's sustained fall has riled some of Japan's trading partners but generally won support from leaders of other major economies eager to see the world's third-biggest economy recover from two decades of stagnation. Abe has pushed both fiscal and monetary stimulus strategies to help Japan end a long bout of deflation and support domestic demand.

Japanese officials have fought accusations that Tokyo may be manipulating its currency to give its exporters a boost, and so far international financial institutions generally have backed Abe's approach.

"The yen's value is at a reasonable level, since the accommodative plan of the Bank of Japan is quite ambitious," Naoyuki Shinohara, deputy director of the International Monetary Fund, told reporters in Tokyo. "The easy monetary policy will cause the currency to depreciate. That is axiomatic," he said.

Optimism about the U.S. economy also lifted the dollar after several positive indicators were released. The Labor Department said Thursday that unemployment claims fell to the lowest level in more than five years. And last week, figures showed that the U.S. economy had added 165,000 jobs in April, lowering the unemployment rate fell to 7.5 percent.

"Worries began to grow that U.S. economy wasn't doing so well, but in May the figures improved. So with concerns about the U.S. easing, the dollar is rising," said Takuya Kanda, a currency analyst at Gaitame.com Research Institute in Tokyo.

"If U.S. economy improves, and the Bank of Japan's aggressive easing continues ... that will lead to further dollar strength and yen weakness," said Kanda, who predicts the dollar will rise to 110 yen this year.

A weaker yen helps Japan's key exporters by boosting overseas earnings when repatriated and by making goods produced within Japan for export more affordable in markets abroad. However, it raises costs in yen terms of the imported crude oil and natural gas that resource-scarce Japan must rely on to keep its industries humming and power its cities.

Japan's long robust trade surpluses have turned to deficits in the past two years, after demand for imports of oil and gas rose due to the closure of nuclear power plants following the March 2011 tsunami.

The current account balance, which includes financial flows, has remained positive. However the current account surplus fell to 4.3 trillion yen ($43 billion), its lowest level ever, in the fiscal year that ended March 31, down 43.6 percent from a year earlier, according to data released Friday.

The central bank, under its new governor Haruhiko Kuroda, has vowed to double the monetary base through purchases of government bonds to meet a 2 percent inflation target within the next two years.

By joining the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks in flooding the economy with cash, the Bank of Japan hopes to get corporations and consumers to begin spending more and end a long malaise.

But Abenomics faces risks, too, including the impact of increased public spending on Japan's already enormous national debt and whether higher inflation will also push up interest rates, raising borrowing costs.

"I think Abenomics is being evaluated well so far," Kanda said. "But people will be watching closely how his policies will unfold and impact the broader economy."

Shinohara, the IMF official, said he believed Japan's financial markets would adjust after a period of volatility brought on by its massive monetary easing, but he expressed concern over the country's burgeoning public debt, which is more than twice the size of its economy and double the average for other industrial economies.

"The IMF's mission is to watch for risk factors, and the fiscal stimulus is of concern because it must be accompanied by a credible plan for fiscal consolidation."

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Uruguay general gets 28 years in prisoner's murder

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Uruguay has convicted an active general for dictatorship-era human rights violations for the first time. Gen. Miguel Dalmao was sentenced to 28 years in prison for the death of a communist professor.

The general's defense lawyer told The Associated Press on Thursday that he has already appealed Wednesday's verdict, saying the evidence was "invented" and calling it unacceptable that his client is being blamed for the crimes of a bygone era.

"This is speculation, 40 years later," Miguel Langon said while visiting Buenos Aires. "A criminal trial is completely different than a historical study. You have to have proof. ... These kinds of generalized statements can serve for a general analysis of the dictatorships of the Southern Cone, but against an individual? It just can't be."

Dalmao was a 23-year-old lieutenant in 1974, and was in charge of the jail where Nibia Sabalsagaray, a 24-year-old literature professor and communist activist, was taken from her Montevideo apartment. Hours later, she was dead.

Dalmao claimed she had committed suicide, hanging herself with a handkerchief from an iron peg in the wall that was just 4 inches (10 centimeters) above her head. The military that ran Uruguay from 1973-1985 agreed.

But Judge Dolores Sanchez dismissed the suicide claim, citing physical and psychological autopsies that showed evidence of torture and found that Sabalsagaray was optimistic and combative, not the type to kill herself.

Dalmao won't go to prison soon despite Wednesday's conviction. Now in his mid-60s, he's been hospitalized for months with a heart infection.

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Vieques ponders future 10 years after Navy left

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Thousands of activists on Wednesday celebrated the anniversary of the U.S. Navy's departure from the Puerto Rican island of Vieques 10 years ago, despite concerns that progress has been slow in cleaning up and developing a place many hoped would flourish.

With the military's departure, the decades-long practice bombing of Vieques stopped, and the island has become one of the more exclusive tourist destinations in the Caribbean.

But the cleanup of the bombing range on an island the Navy once called its "crown jewel" of live-fire training is expected to take another decade, and the mayor of Vieques noted the island of roughly 10,000 people still has no hospital to treat illnesses ranging from cancer to asthma that local residents blame on military activity.

Mayor Victor Emeric said Vieques is battling an unemployment rate of nearly 20 percent and depends on a crippled ferry system that serves as the primary link to the main island of Puerto Rico.

"Time passed and everyone forgot about us," said Emeric, who was born and raised in Vieques. "None of the development that we expected has occurred."

George Withers, a senior fellow with the non-governmental Washington Office on Latin America, recently published a report calling on the U.S. to respond more aggressively to the cleanup and other problems in Vieques. He said the lack of care for ongoing health problems remain big concerns.

"The overall impact on the quality of life for the people of Vieques has not really improved in the 10 years since the Navy left," he said. "They created a toxic legacy on their island."

The island was once a cause celebre, with people such as singer Ricky Martin, actor Edward James Olmos and politician Jesse Jackson joining hundreds of other protesters to demand that the Navy leave Vieques after an errant 500-pound bomb killed a security guard in April 1999.

But after the Navy left on May 1, 2003, interest in helping boost the island's economy waned, said Emeric, blaming both the U.S. and local government.

Even the domain of the island's official government website, which translates to "Vieques Revival," is up for sale. Emeric said many local residents are still trying to find their economic footing as they seek to develop land formerly under naval control.

He dismissed criticism that American investors are the only ones reaping economic benefits, saying, "Many North Americans are here because the Viequenses themselves sold them the land."

Of the 23,000 acres (9,300 hectares) that the Navy began to use for target practice in the early 1940s, 4,000 acres (1,619 hectares) have been awarded to Vieques municipality, 3,100 acres (1,255 hectares) went to the U.S. Department of the Interior and about 800 acres (324 hectares) to the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust.

The Navy has so far cleaned 2,540 acres (1,028 hectares), with the operation expected to run through at least 2025 in one of the Navy's most extensive rehabilitation efforts, budgeted at some $350 million.

"The Navy considers Vieques to be its highest priority in the munitions cleanup program," said Dan Waddill, who is managing the process. "Vieques gets by far the most effort and the highest amount of funding."

Waddill oversees 55 employees who work Monday through Friday cleaning 15,000 acres (6,070 hectares) of the former bombing range, mostly in the island's east. He noted that two-thirds of the workers are from Vieques.

He suggested it will be impossible to find all of the abandoned munition parts.

"We don't expect to leave anything behind that people might come into contact with, but there are layers of safety that prevent that kind of contact just in case something happens to be missed," said Waddill. "When you're covering a large area ... that's just life. Sometimes you don't find everything."

In late March, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry issued a long-awaited report stating it found no proof that residents had been sickened by substances left behind by bombs and other munitions, identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as TNT, napalm, depleted uranium, mercury and lead. The report was rejected by thousands of Vieques residents, many of whom filed a lawsuit, later dismissed, that accused the U.S. government of causing illnesses by leaving harmful residues on the land.

Withers noted in his report that the Navy fired more than 300,000 munitions in Vieques from the mid-1940s to 2003, taking control of 77 percent of the land.

So far, the Navy has removed 17 million pounds of scrap metal and destroyed more than 38,000 munition items on land, according to Navy spokesman Jim Brantley.

The next step is to clear munitions underwater. Navy officials are mapping the area to determine where munitions are located, a process that will take up to 18 months, Waddill said.

"We expected that to take longer than the land cleanup," he said, adding that officials have to protect endangered coral species. "It takes time to do this kind of work safely."

Puerto Rico's Secretary of Government Ingrid Vila said the U.S. territory will push to ensure the remaining land be cleaned and returned to Vieques municipality.

Vila said officials also want to revive a 2003-2004 plan aimed at boosting the island's economy, including reopening a Vieques government office charged with economic development.

Tourism remains the island's main economic engine, with hotel occupancy growing from 41 percent to 56 percent in the past two fiscal years, according to Puerto Rico's tourism company. The number has dropped slightly so far this fiscal year.

Vila noted that a middle school is to open in Vieques in coming weeks, and that Puerto Rico's health secretary is meeting with officials in Vieques to discuss community needs.

"Vieques has to be a priority," Vila said as she met with community leaders celebrating the Navy's departure. "It cannot become relevant only when there's an anniversary."

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Antarctic Melt Has Increased Tenfold Over Past 1,000 Years

Summer ice melt has increased tenfold over the last millennium in the Antarctic Peninsula, with most of the melt occurring during the last several decades in conjunction with global warming, new research suggests.

Rapid melt can destabilize glaciers and ice shelves (the tongues of glaciers that float on the ocean), suggesting that there could be some dramatic collapses and a resulting increase in sea levels if the melting continues.

"What that means is that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed to a level where even small increases in temperature can now lead to a big increase in summer ice melt," study co-author Nerilie Abram, a researcher at the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survey, said in a statement.

The ice melt in the Antarctic Peninsula, located in the northeastern part of the continent, is almost certainly caused by human-induced climate change, said study co-author Eric Steig, an Earth and space sciences professor at the University of Washington. The peninsula is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet, and other recent research has shown that the melt season there is longer than it used to be.

To study the historic Antarctic climate, the study team drilled a 1,194-foot-long (364 meters) ice core from James Ross Island, near the northeastern tip of Antarctica.

The core provided insight into historic temperatures in Antarctica, and contained visible layers where summer snow melted and then refroze. The thickness of these layers revealed the extent of melt in the region over the past 1,000 years.

That summer melt is now at the highest levels seen over the past millennium. And while the temperature increased gradually for the first several hundred years, snowmelt dramatically increased in the latter half of the 20th century, Abram said in the statement.

The findings, detailed in the April 14 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, suggest that the Antarctic Peninsula may now be particularly vulnerable to climate change.

The picture from an ice core drilled in West Antarctica is less clear. Similar large temperature spikes have been seen in the past there, but the picture is more complex and the exact causes are harder to tease out. It is possible that increased snowmelt there may be due to the El Niño weather pattern in the 1990s, the study authors said.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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Mauritania jails Canadian for two years for terrorist conspiracy

NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - A 24-year-old Canadian man held in Mauritania was sentenced to two years in prison for terrorist conspiracy in the West African state, according to judicial documents seen by Reuters.

According to the court documents, Aaron Yoon, from London in the Canadian province of Ontario, was sentenced last July by a Nouakchott criminal court to two years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of 5 million ouguiyas ($18,000).

A local security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Yoon was arrested in late December 2011 as he prepared to join Islamist fighters in northern Mali, together with some young Mauritanians.

His trial was not made public and his detention only recently came to light. It highlights, however, how a number of people with Western nationalities has passed through the desert nation to join al Qaeda-linked fighters in neighboring Mali.

The court documents said Yoon declared he was recruited by an Islamist named Mohammed El-Hafed, who made him listen to jihadi tapes and then asked him to join the camps.

Yoon told Mauritanian authorities he arrived in Mauritania via Morocco to study Arabic and Koran, attracted by the prestigious reputation of its religious schools.

Mauritania is renowned for its religious scholars and the quality of its koranic schools, attracting Muslims from around the world.

Last week, Canadian authorities confirmed the identities of two other English-speaking nationals from London, Ontario who took part in a mass hostage taking in January on a natural gas facility in Algeria. Investigators believe the attack was led by notorious al Qaeda militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

About 70 people, including the two Canadians, died when Algerian troops stormed the In Amenas desert gas plant. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police identified the two as Xristos Katsiroubas and Ali Medlej.

Canadian media reported that Yoon attended school with the two dead men and that he was raised a Catholic before converting to Islam at high school. Canadian reports said Katsiroubas had converted from the Greek Orthodox faith to Islam.

(Reporting by Laurent Prieur; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Canada posts worst monthly job losses in more than four years

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada posted its worst monthly jobs loss in more than four years in March, another sign the economy is struggling to cope with weak foreign markets and a strong Canadian dollar.

Canada shed 54,500 positions in March, more than wiping out the 50,700 jobs that were added in February, Statistics Canada said on Friday. Market operators had expected a modest gain of 8,500 jobs.

It was the biggest monthly jobs loss since February 2009, when the economy shed 69,300 positions. The March unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent from 7.0 percent.

"This was a lot weaker than expected ... so far this year it is pointing to weakening employment relative to strong gains in the second half of last year," said Paul Ferley, assistant chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada.

The economy's continuing challenges mean there is little pressure on the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates from near-record lows. "It's going to keep the Bank of Canada cautious," Ferley said.

Overnight index swaps, which trade based on expectations for the central bank's key policy rate, showed that after the data traders increased their bets, albeit still small, on a rate cut in late 2013.

In January, the central bank forecast first-quarter economic growth of 2.3 percent, which now looks overly optimistic.

"The employment numbers did seem to be defying gravity up until March and were not lining up with the underlying growth numbers," said Doug Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets. "We knew one of them had to give way and it looks as if employment has given way."

Adding to the gloom were trade figures for February that showed Canada's deficit increased to C$1.02 billion on both lower exports and higher imports. Traders had expected a surplus of C$200 million.

In a contrary signal, the pace of purchasing activity jumped more than expected in March. The seasonally adjusted Ivey Purchasing Managers Index rose to 61.6 from 51.1 in February, higher than the analysts' forecast of 52.4.

The Canadian dollar weakened against its U.S. counterpart after the March employment data in both nations came in far weaker than expected.

The Canadian currency fell to C$1.0207 to the U.S. dollar, or 97.97 U.S. cents, down from Thursday's North American session close of C$1.0123 to the U.S. dollar, or 98.78 U.S. cents, after the data was released.

On average, about 8,600 jobs per month have been lost in Canada since January. This trend could pose a political challenge for the Conservative government, which likes to boast Canada has the most impressive economic record of any Group of Seven nation.

The official opposition New Democrats said Ottawa's focus on keeping costs under control is wrong and called for more infrastructure spending.

"We need the stimulus now," said Peggy Nash, the party's finance spokeswoman. The office of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty did not respond to a request for comment.

Almost all the job losses were in full-time positions. The manufacturing sector, particularly affected by the strong Canadian dollar and struggling customers, lost 24,200 jobs.

"This helps to reconcile some of the difference between some of the slowing economic activity with the labor market that had previously been a lot stronger than we would have anticipated," said David Tulk, chief Canada macro strategist at TD Securities.

Employment also fell in the public administration and accommodation and food services sectors. Private sector employment dropped by 85,400 positions, while the number of self-employed grew by 38,700.

The average hourly wage of permanent employees was 2.1 percent higher in March 2013 than in March 2012, down from the 2.2 percent year-on-year advance recorded in February 2013.

In the February trade figures, exports shrank by 0.6 percent while imports edged up by 0.1 percent.

Exports to the United States - which took 73.8 percent of all Canadian exports in February - dropped by 1.1 percent, while imports grew by 0.8 percent. As a result, Canada's trade surplus with the United States fell to C$3.40 billion in February from C$3.90 billion in January.

($1=$1.01 Canadian)

(Additional reporting by Andrea Hopkins, Allison Martell and Euan Rocha; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Nick Zieminski and Peter Galloway)

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Sri Lankan mass grave dates back 25 years

MATALE, Sri Lanka (AP) — A judge announced Wednesday that more than 150 human skulls and bones recovered from a mass grave were buried there about 25 years ago, strengthening suspicion that they belonged to suspected Marxist rebels killed at the time.

Magistrate Chathurika de Silva told a court in the central town of Matale that tests show the skeletal remains found inside the premises of a government hospital dated to between 1987 and 1990. During that period, thousands of men and women suspected of having ties to the rebels disappeared after being arrested by security forces.

De Silva did not explain the cause of death but declared the mass grave a crime scene.

The military could not be contacted immediately for comment.

Workers found human remains while doing construction on part of the hospital land last December. The skeletons had been buried in neat rows, five or six stacked on top of one another totaling 154.

Claims were made initially that the bodies belonged to those killed in an epidemic in the 1940s or a mudslide. However, hospital authorities did not have any records off bodies buried on the premises.

The Marxist group People's Liberation Front, which led two uprisings, claimed that the bodies may belong to comrades killed by security forces. The bodies of many young men and women arrested by paramilitaries were found burning by the roadside or floating in rivers at the time.

The Marxists were mostly Sinhalese, the country's majority ethnic community.

Sri Lankan forces are also accused of killing scores of civilians and captured rebels at the end of a quarter-century civil war with ethnic minority Tamil separatists.

The United Nations Human Rights Council last week passed a resolution urging Sri Lanka to investigate war crimes allegations against both government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels.

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S.Africa: Nigerian 2010 bomb suspect gets 24 years

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A South African court sentenced a Nigerian to 24 years in prison on Tuesday after finding him guilty of masterminding twin car bombings in Nigeria.

Henry Okah was found guilty in January for the October 2010 bombing in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, that killed at least 12 people and wounded three dozen during a celebration to mark the country's 50 years of independence.

The South African Press Association reported that Judge Neels Claassen of the High Court in Johannesburg announced Okah's jail sentence, which includes 12 years in prison for each bombing and 13 years for threats made to the South African government after his October 2010 arrest. The 13 years will be served concurrently with the 24 years.

Okah was a leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, which claimed responsibility for the blasts.

The group accused Nigeria's government of failing to alleviate poverty in the delta, even though it earns billions of dollars from the region's oil. In 2006, militants from groups like MEND started a wave of attacks targeting foreign oil companies, including bombing their pipelines, kidnapping their workers and fighting with security forces.

When Okah was convicted, Judge Claassen had said the state had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt and the Nigerian's failure to testify meant the evidence was uncontested. Okah was found guilty on 13 counts of terrorism.

Okah, who had been living in South Africa, said the case against him was politically motivated.

In 2008, he was arrested in Angola and extradited to Nigeria, where he was accused of treason and terrorism and linked to a gunrunning scandal involving high-ranking military officials. His arrest and trial sparked an escalation in MEND attacks.

That violence ebbed in 2009 with a government-sponsored amnesty program promising ex-fighters monthly payments and job training. However, few in the delta have seen the promised benefits and scattered kidnappings and attacks continue. And MEND itself, once a powerful, media-friendly militant group in the region, has seen its influence wane since the amnesty.

Charges against Okah were dropped and he was freed in July 2009 as part of an amnesty program.

MEND had issued statements threatening to attack South African interests in Nigeria because of Okah's prosecution in South Africa.

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Ex-Guatemala strongman on trial after 30 years

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — There is no smoking gun in the case files, no direct order from Guatemala's then military dictator to carry out the slaughter of civilians during one of the bloodiest phases of the country's long civil war.

In its absence, with trial set to start Tuesday, prosecutors hope to painstakingly prove through a detailed recreation of the military chain of command that Gen. Efrain Rios Montt must have had knowledge of the massacres of Mayan Indians and others in the Guatemalan highlands. Because he held absolute power over the U.S.-backed military government, his failure to stop the slaughter is proof of his guilt, prosecutors and lawyers for victims say.

Survivors and relatives of victims have sought for 30 years to bring punishment for Rios Montt, now 86, who is the first Latin American strongman to stand trial on genocide charges in his own country. For international observers and Guatemalans on both sides of the war, the trial could be a turning point in a nation still wrestling with the trauma of a conflict that killed some 200,000 people.

"So much time has passed and we haven't gotten justice. What I want is that they put him in prison. It isn't revenge; it's justice," said Antonio Caba, who was 11 when soldiers arrived in his highlands village in 1982, killing 95 Mayas and driving countless others into the countryside without food or clothing. His 2-month-old sister and grandmother died of malnutrition.

"I ask him, 'What type of weapon were the children carrying, the women and old people your army massacred?' All we want is justice," said Caba, who is scheduled to testify at the trial.

Rios Montt seized power in a March 23, 1982, coup, and ruled until he himself was overthrown just over a year later. Prosecutors say that while in power he was aware of, and thus responsible for, the slaughter by subordinates of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayas in San Juan Cotzal, San Gaspar Chajul and Santa Maria Nebaj, towns in the Quiche department of Guatemala's western highlands.

Those military offensives were part of a brutal, decades-long counterinsurgency against a leftist uprising that brought massacres in the Mayan heartland where the guerrillas were based.

Prosecutors and advocates for victims have built their case on thousands of green folders stuffed with military documents, victims' testimony and ballistic and forensic examinations of more than 800 sets of human remains, mostly women or children.

"There's an enormous amount of evidence against Rios Montt," said Edgar Perez, a lawyer for the victims. "Obviously, the world has never seen a case in which genocide was explicitly authorized."

Rios Montt's lawyer, Francisco Palomo, disagrees. "The evidence shows that serious things happened, of course. The point here is, who is responsible for those things? We think he's innocent. At the hearings there hasn't been a single fact that links him to it directly."

Being tried with Rios Montt are Jose Rodriguez Sanchez, a former high-ranking member of the military chiefs of staff; Hector Mario Lopez Fuentes, minister of defense under Rios Montt; and Luis Enrique Mendoza, former vice minister of defense who is a fugitive from justice.

The few times Rios Montt spoke during days of pre-trial hearings, he stared straight ahead and addressed the court in a strong voice. But except for denying genocide occurred, he limited his answers to simple refusals to address questions that might incriminate him. He is being held under house arrest.

The most important evidence are the plans for three counterinsurgency campaigns known as Victory 82, Operation Sofia and Firmness 83 and after-action reports linked to mass killings. Almost all of the military plans were classified "secret" but were leaked to victims' lawyers.

The plan for Victory 82 created a force made up of riflemen, paratroopers and combat engineers directed to operate in a part of the highlands known as the Ixil triangle and report its actions to the chief of staff of the army, part of the military leadership along with Rios Montt.

Military experts testifying for the victims have said this description of the chain of command makes it obvious that the military chief of staff and other high commanders including Rios Montt could have halted the massacres.

The Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation carried out more than 60 studies to identify some 800 sets of human remains from the area that will be evidence in the trial.

"The great majority of victims were women or children, who suffered violent deaths without putting up a defense. In some cases there were massacres, executions and people dying as they were fleeing, from hypothermia and hunger," said the foundation's executive director, Jose Suasnavar.

Mayas were treated as an internal enemy because they were seen as lending support to the enemy, according to the indictment against Rios Montt.

In the plan's Annex C, the army chief of staff said that "the great masses of indigenous people in the nation's highlands have echoed the proclamations of subversion, whose rallying cries are the lack of land and immense poverty ... they see the army like an invading enemy."

The Operation Sofia file contains direct orders from co-defendant Lopez Fuentes, said Kate Doyle, a senior analyst at National Security Archive, a Washington-based nonprofit group that works to make classified documents public. The plan was leaked to her by an unspecified source in March 2009.

The file includes maps and sketches of sites for operations, internal communications from the operation commander to commanders in the field, hand-written reports on operations and intelligence reports.

The third plan, Firmness 83, describes the training and recruitment of the notorious Civil Autodefense Patrols, which were made up of civilians armed by the military and have been accused of participating in hundreds of slayings alongside the army.

Guatemalan prosecutors have had success using indirect evidence against current and former members of the military.

Three officers were convicted of the 1998 slaying of Roman Catholic Archbishop Juan Jose Gerardi even though it was not proven they were directly involved in the bludgeoning death. Prosecutors showed the actual killers were connected to higher-ups by orders that flowed down the chain of command.

"It's a fact that there are people who plan, people who organize, and people who execute," said Nery Rodenas, director of the Office of Human Rights at the Guatemalan Archbishop's Office.

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Recovery slow as Japan marks 2 years since tsunami

TOKYO (AP) — Amid growing dissatisfaction with the slow pace of recovery, Japan marked the second anniversary Monday of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that left nearly 19,000 people dead or missing and has displaced more than 300,000.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that the government intends to make "visible" reconstruction progress and accelerate resettlement of those left homeless by streamlining legal and administrative procedures many blame for the delays.

"I pray that the peaceful lives of those affected can resume as soon as possible," Emperor Akihito said at a somber memorial service at Tokyo's National Theater.

At observances in Tokyo and in still barren towns along the northeastern coast, those gathered bowed their heads in a moment of silence marking the moment, at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, when the magnitude 9.0 earthquake — the strongest recorded in Japan's history — struck off the coast.

Japan has struggled to rebuild communities and to clean up radiation from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, whose reactors melted down after its cooling systems were disabled by the tsunami. The government has yet to devise a new energy strategy — a central issue for its struggling economy with all but two of the country's nuclear reactors offline.

About half of those displaced are evacuees from areas near the nuclear plant. Hundreds of them filed a lawsuit Monday demanding compensation from the government and the now-defunct plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, for their suffering and losses.

"Two years after the disasters, neither the government nor TEPCO has clearly acknowledged their responsibility, nor have they provided sufficient support to cover the damages," said Izutaro Managi, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

Throughout the disaster zone, the tens of thousands of survivors living in temporary housing are impatient to get resettled, a process that could take up to a decade, officials say.

"What I really want is to once again have a 'my home,' " said Migaku Suzuki, a 69-year-old farm worker in Rikuzentakata, who lost the house he had just finished building in the disaster. Suzuki also lost a son in the tsunami, which obliterated much of the city.

• 

Japan's Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko leave after attending the national memorial service for victims of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, in Tokyo March 11, 2013. Japan honoured the ... more 

Japan's Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko leave after attending the national memorial service for victims of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, in Tokyo March 11, 2013. Japan honoured the victims of its worst disaster since World War Two on Monday: the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis that killed almost 19,000 people and stranded 315,000 evacuees, including refugees who fled radiation from the devastated Fukushima atomic plant. REUTERS/Junji Kurokawa/Pool (JAPAN - Tags: DISASTER POLITICS ANNIVERSARY ROYALS) less 

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Further south, in Fukushima prefecture, some 160,000 evacuees are uncertain if they will ever be able to return to homes around the nuclear power plant, where the meltdowns in three reactors spewed radiation into the surrounding soil and water.

The lawsuit filed by a group of 800 people in Fukushima demands an apology payment of 50,000 yen ($625) a month for each victim until all radiation from the accident is wiped out, a process that could take decades. Another 900 plan similar cases in Tokyo and elsewhere. Managi said he and fellow lawyers hope to get 10,000 to join the lawsuits.

Evacuees are anxious to return home but worried about the potential, still uncertain risks from exposure to the radiation from the disaster, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986.

While there have been no clear cases of cancer linked to radiation from the plant, the upheaval in people's lives, uncertainty about the future and long-term health concerns, especially for children, have taken an immense psychological toll on thousands of residents.

"I don't trust the government on anything related to health anymore," said Masaaki Watanabe, 42, who fled the nearby town of Minami-Soma and doesn't plan to return.

Yuko Endo, village chief in Kawauchi, said many residents might not go back if they are kept waiting too long. Restrictions on access are gradually being lifted as workers remove debris and wipe down roofs by hand.

"If I were told to wait for two more years, I might explode," said Endo, who is determined to revive his town of mostly empty houses and overgrown fields.

A change of government late last year has raised hopes that authorities might move more quickly with the cleanup and reconstruction.

Since taking office in late December, Abe has made a point of frequently visiting the disaster zone, promising faster action and plans to raise the long-term reconstruction budget to 25 trillion yen ($262 billion) from 19 trillion yen (about $200 billion).

"We cannot turn away from the harsh reality of the affected areas. The Great East Japan Earthquake still is an ongoing event," Abe said at the memorial gathering in Tokyo. "Many of those hit by the disaster are still facing uncertainty over their futures."

The struggles to rebuild and to cope with the nuclear disaster are only the most immediate issues Japan is grappling with as it searches for new drivers for growth as its export manufacturing lags, its society ages and its huge national debt grows ever bigger.

Those broader issues are also hindering the reconstruction. Towns want to rebuild, but they face the stark reality of dwindling, aging populations that are shrinking further as residents give up on ever finding new jobs. The tsunami and nuclear crisis devastated local fish processing and tourism industries, accelerating a decline that began decades before.

Meanwhile, the costly decommissioning the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant could take 40 years as its operator works on finding and removing melted nuclear fuel from inside, disposing the spent fuel rods and treating the many tons of contaminated wastewater used to cool the reactors.

Following the Fukushima disaster, Japan's 50 still viable nuclear reactors were shut down for regular inspections and then for special tests to check their disaster preparedness. Two were restarted last summer to help meet power shortages, but most Japanese remain opposed to restarting more plants.

The government, though, looks likely to back away from a decision to phase out nuclear power by the 2030s. Abe says it may take a decade to decide on what Japan's energy mix should be.

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Associated Press writers Malcolm Foster and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Emily Wang in Kesennuma, Japan, contributed to this report.

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Guyana officials stay nearly 20 years in mandates

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — In colonial times, the governor of what was then called British Guiana would impose hefty fines on officials who refused to show up and do their jobs.

Today, the rugged South American country of Guyana has the opposite problem: Many city officeholders assumed their posts nearly 20 years ago and never left.

Political maneuvering has led both major parties to repeatedly delay municipal elections, which are supposed to be held every three years. This has frustrated Guyanese fed up being unable to hold officials accountable for corruption, shoddy municipal services, crumbling infrastructure and dwindling government budgets.

"This situation means that I am the longest serving mayor in local history by default," said 78-year-old Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green, who was appointed by the city council in 1994. "And I am not proud of it at all."

Even council members who have died or emigrated have not been replaced.

"It is supposed to be 15 of us, but time has taken its toll to such an extent that only seven of us are left now," said Jennifer Conway, who has been on the council of New Amsterdam, the country's second-largest city, since 1994. "Many have migrated to the U.S., two have resigned and some have died."

"Sometimes we have to postpone meetings because we can't make a quorum," she said.

They don't appear to be hanging on for profit, though there are some perks. As mayor, Green gets a $200 monthly stipend and a full-time staff, including bodyguards and drivers. Conway earns $50 a month. But the officials also don't seem to be getting much done. City services are plainly lacking in much of the impoverished nation of 741,000 people. Garbage often clogs the streets of a capital prone to flooding, and bribes are an accepted way of obtaining basic services, such as electrical power for a new home.

Green alleged that the ruling People's Progressive Party has undermined his efforts to generate revenue for garbage disposal, road repairs and other improvements by blocking funding at the Cabinet level.

Meanwhile, officials such as Green remain in office because of the same political paralysis that prevents action on numerous important issues in the largely undeveloped country. Legislators say they will not call elections until they first pass a set of municipal reforms, while voters blame the country's legendary bureaucracy and political infighting for delaying both the reforms and the elections.

"There is something within the Guyanese society that allows for tolerance. We become complacent to a plague of mediocrity," said Nigel Westmaas, a Guyana native and assistant professor at New York's Hamilton College.

Complicating matters, said Westmaas, Guyana has moved away from a British-based form of government toward one of its own creation, resulting in a byzantine local system. "Even people in government don't know how the system functions, much less how to repair it," he said.

Both the ruling party and Green's Partnership for National Unity have repeatedly called for new elections, but have just as frequently postponed them because they want to reform the roles of municipalities before elections are held. The debate about how municipalities should be reformed began in 1999, and it has since reached a stalemate.

"It has taken far too long, there's no doubt about that," said Rupert Roopnaraine, leader of the main opposition party. "It could be argued that there was not sufficient will on part of the government to push the reform through and make the necessary compromises."

Roopnaraine, whose party runs three of the six municipalities, said the reform process has been "torturous" and blamed a divisive Parliament for the delay.

"At the moment, there is no local democracy," he said. "These councils have been dysfunctional for a very, very, very long time."

Legislators in January introduced a bill calling for municipal elections to be held in December 2013 at the latest, but did not set a firm date.

President Donald Ramotar has said he cannot hold elections until Parliament approves the reforms including giving local governments more financial autonomy. Both sides have said that it makes no sense to hold polls with outdated laws. A committee formed to study the proposal, however, has been meeting for more than a year and has not yet presented a possible bill.

"It's been an issue for almost as long as I can remember," said David Carroll, democracy program director at The Carter Center in Atlanta, who has traveled to Guyana several times to monitor general elections.

There's now even international pressure to solve the city council problem.

Ambassadors from the U.S., Canada, Britain and the European Union recently issued a joint statement saying the situation has undermined the efficiency of municipalities and local democracy and is hampering Guyana's ability to attract foreign investors to a country rich in gold, diamonds and bauxite.

"While the people of Guyana are familiar with the reasons offered for repeated delays in holding local government elections, there is no valid justification for further delay," the ambassadors wrote in a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in January.

Westmaas said the two parties don't seem interested in holding elections.

"(It is) a collective embarrassment that democracy at the crucial level of the community has gone unfulfilled for so long, and that foreign diplomats have to provide pressure for something so logical and necessary," Westmass said.

The issue dominates conversations at almost every social event, said Clinton Urling, president of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, who complained that officials are not being held accountable for failure to deal with local problems while elections remain on hold.

"It's reached a point where it's boiled over. Everybody is so frustrated," Urling said.

Meanwhile, Guyanese wait and fume.

"It is more than despicable and beyond comprehension that elections have not been held," said Ivor Defreitas, a 54-year-old Georgetown teacher. "It is a pity we have to live with the same people for nearly two decades."

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Danica Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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