AP News in Brief

Snipers, shells, tanks terrorize key Libyan city; US mulls 'all options' in response

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - Moammar Gadhafi's snipers and tanks are terrorizing civilians in the coastal city of Misrata, a resident said, and the U.S. military warned Tuesday it was "considering all options" in response to dire conditions there that have left people cowering in darkened homes and scrounging for food and rainwater.

Heavy anti-aircraft fire and loud explosions sounded in Tripoli after nightfall, possibly a new attack in the international air campaign that so far has focused on military targets. But conditions have deteriorated sharply in Misrata, the last major city in western Libya held by the rebel force trying to end Gadhafi's four-decade rule. Residents of the city 125 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli, say shelling and sniper attacks are unrelenting. A doctor said tanks opened fire on a peaceful protest on Monday.

"The number of dead are too many for our hospital to handle," said the doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals if the city falls to Gadhafi's troops. As for food, he said, "We share what we find and if we don't find anything, which happens, we don't know what to do."

Neither the rebels nor Gadhafi's forces are strong enough to hold Misrata or Ajdabiya, a key city in the east that is also a daily battleground. But the airstrikes and missiles that are the weapons of choice for international forces may be of limited use.

"When there's fighting in urban areas and combatants are mixing and mingling with civilians, the options are vastly reduced," said Fred Abrahams, a special adviser at Human Rights Watch. "I can imagine the pressures and desires to protect civilians in Misrata and Ajdabiya are bumping up against the concerns about causing harms to the civilians you seek to protect."

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Obama says US efforts in Libya have saved lives, control of operation can be turned over soon

WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite squabbling among allies involved in the air assault in Libya, President Barack Obama said Tuesday he is confident the U.S. can hand over control of the operation to other nations in a matter of days.

The president, speaking in El Salvador, said the attack authorized by the United Nations late last week has already saved the lives of Libyans who would otherwise have been targeted by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi.

Responding to a question at a news conference on the final stop of a Latin American trip, the president also suggested the administration would not need to request funding from Congress for the air operations but would pay for them out of money already approved.

Obama spoke as administration officials briefed lawmakers in Washington about the military operation to date, and as the White House disclosed he would return home a few hours ahead of schedule on Wednesday.

Obama said he had spoken earlier with British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in hopes of quickly resolving a dispute over the transition of the military mission designed to create a no-fly zone over Libya to shield the civilian population.

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AP IMPACT: Yucca Mountain wouldn't be enough for 72K tons of spent nuclear fuel at US plants

The nuclear crisis in Japan has laid bare an ever-growing problem for the United States - the enormous amounts of still-hot radioactive waste accumulating at commercial nuclear reactors in more than 30 states.

The U.S. has 71,862 tons of the waste, according to state-by-state numbers obtained by The Associated Press. But the nation has no place to permanently store the material, which stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years.

Plans to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain have been abandoned, but even if a facility had been built there, America already has more waste than it could have handled.

Three-quarters of the waste sits in water-filled cooling pools like those at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex in Japan, outside the thick concrete-and-steel barriers meant to guard against a radioactive release from a nuclear reactor.

Spent fuel at Dai-ichi overheated, possibly melting fuel-rod casings and spewing radiation into the air, after Japan's tsunami knocked out power to cooling systems at the plant.

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Utility: Power lines hooked up, fuel pool cools in progress at Japanese nuclear plant

FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) - Workers at a leaking nuclear plant hooked up power lines to all six of the crippled complex's reactor units Tuesday, but other repercussions from the massive earthquake and tsunami were still rippling across the nation as economic losses mounted at three of Japan's flagship companies.

The progress on the electrical lines at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was a welcome and significant advance after days of setbacks. With the power lines connected, officials hope to start up the overheated plant's crucial cooling system that was knocked out during the March 11 tsunami and earthquake that devastated Japan's northeast coast.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. warned that workers still need to check all equipment for damage first before switching the cooling system on to all the reactor units - a process that could take days or even weeks.

Late Tuesday night, Tokyo Electric said lights went on in the central control room of Unit 3, but that doesn't mean power had been restored to the cooling system. Officials will wait until sometime Wednesday to try to power up the water pumps to the unit.

Emergency crews also dumped 18 tons of seawater into a nearly boiling storage pool holding spent nuclear fuel, cooling it to 105 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius), Japan's nuclear safety agency said. Steam, possibly carrying radioactive elements, had been rising for two days from the reactor building, and the move lessens the chances that more radiation will seep into the air.

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Yemen's president warns of civil war as opposition rejects offer to resign by year's end

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Yemen's U.S.-backed president, his support crumbling among political allies and the army, warned that the country could slide into a "bloody" civil war Tuesday as the opposition rejected his offer to step down by the end of the year. Tens of thousands protested in the capital demanding his immediate ouster, emboldened by top military commanders who joined their cause.

Ali Abdullah Saleh's apparent determination to cling to power raised fears that Yemen could be pushed into even greater instability. In a potentially explosive split, rival factions of the military have deployed tanks in the capital Sanaa - with units commanded by Saleh's son protecting the president's palace, and units loyal to a top dissident commander protecting the protesters.

The defection on Monday of that commander, Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a powerful regime insider who commands the army's 1st Armored Division, has been seen by many as a major turning point toward a potentially rapid end for Saleh's nearly 32-year rule.

The question is whether the Yemeni chapter of the uprisings sweeping the Middle East will read more like Egypt - where the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak set the country on a relatively stable, if still uncertain, move toward democracy - or like Libya, which has seen brutal fighting between armed camps.

Already, clashes broke out late Monday between Saleh's Republican Guard and dissident army units in the far eastern corner of the country. On Tuesday, Republican Guard tanks surrounded a key air base in the western Red Sea coastal city of Hodeida after its commander - Col. Ahmed al-Sanhani, a member of Saleh's own clan - announced he was joining the opposition.

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APNewsBreak: Email to Wis. governor initially opposed his plan to curb union bargaining rights

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Seeking a way to counter a growing protest movement, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker cited his email, confidently declaring that most people writing his office had urged him to eliminate nearly all union rights for state workers.

But an Associated Press analysis of the emails shows that, for close to a week, messages in Walker's inbox were running roughly 2-to-1 against his plans. The tide did not turn in his favor until shortly after desperate Democrats fled the state to stop a vote they knew they would lose.

The AP analyzed more than 26,000 emails sent to Walker from the time he formally announced his plans until he first mentioned the emails in public.

During that time, the overall tally ran 55 percent in support, 44 percent against. In the weeks since, Walker has continued to receive tens of thousands of emails on the issue.

The AP obtained the emails through a legal settlement with Walker's office, the result of a lawsuit filed by the news cooperative and the Isthmus, a weekly newspaper in Madison. The news organizations sued after the governor's office did not respond to requests for the emails filed under the state's open records law.

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SD governor signs bill requiring women to wait 72 hours for abortion, longest wait in nation

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) - South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed a law Tuesday requiring women to wait three days after meeting with a doctor to have an abortion, the longest waiting period in the nation.

Abortion rights groups immediately said they plan to file a lawsuit challenging the measure, which also requires women to undergo counseling at pregnancy help centers that discourage abortions.

Daugaard, who gave no interviews after signing the bill, said in a written statement that he has conferred with state attorneys who will defend the law in court and a sponsor who has pledged private money to finance the state's legal costs.

"I think everyone agrees with the goal of reducing abortion by encouraging consideration of other alternatives," the Republican governor said the statement. "I hope that women who are considering an abortion will use this three-day period to make good choices."

About half the states, including South Dakota, now have 24-hour waiting periods, but the state's new law is the first of its kind in having a three-day waiting period and requiring women to seek counseling at pregnancy help centers, said Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.

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Person familiar with 'GMA': Chris Brown trashed dressing room after Rihanna questions

NEW YORK (AP) - Chris Brown trashed his dressing room at "Good Morning America" and broke a window with a chair Tuesday after co-host Robin Roberts asked him about his attack on Rihanna, according to a person familiar with the show.

The person was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Security was called, but not police.

Brown was on the ABC morning show Tuesday to promote his new album, "F.A.M.E.," released the same day. During his interview with Roberts, she asked him about the 2009 attack on his then-girlfriend - preceding her questions by noting he had been "very good" about talking about the attack.

"It was very serious what you went through and what happened," she said. "How have you been able to ..."

A clearly agitated Brown tried to deflect the line of questioning, saying he was past that and wanted to focus on his new CD.

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Rapper Ja Rule pleads guilty to federal tax evasion charges in New Jersey

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Rapper and actor Ja Rule admitted Tuesday that he failed to pay taxes on more than $3 million in income, and he faces up to three years in prison.

The platinum-selling rapper, whose given name is Jeffrey Atkins, earned the money between 2004 and 2006 while he lived in Saddle River, an upscale community in northern New Jersey.

If the plea conditions are met, the government will dismiss two counts against him for unpaid taxes on about $1 million he earned in 2007 and 2008.

Atkins is scheduled to be sentenced June 13 on the three tax evasion charges. He faces up to one year in prison and $100,000 in fines on each count.

Five days before that, he is scheduled to report to prison in New York to serve a two-year sentence after pleading guilty in December to attempted criminal possession of a weapon.

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Bonds trial: In opening statements, lawyers argue whether slugger knew he was taking drugs

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Barry Bonds admits using steroids during his baseball career, his lawyer told a jury Tuesday. The catch is that Bonds' personal trainer misled him into believing he was taking flax seed oil and arthritis cream.

"I know that doesn't make a great story," Allen Ruby said during his opening statement at the home run leader's perjury trial. "But that's what happened."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Parrella called such claims "ridiculous and unbelievable" and portrayed Bonds as a liar during his first chance to present the government's position.

And so the crux of the criminal case against Bonds was laid before an eight-woman, four-man jury as the testimony phase of the trial got under way. Bonds has pleaded not guilty to four charges of lying to a grand jury in 2003 when he denied knowingly taking steroids and one count of obstruction.

Parrella started the day by saying Bonds lied to the grand jury even though the government promised not to prosecute him for drug use if he testified truthfully.