LONDON, Feb. 16--British Prime Minister Tony Blair urged London's mayor on Wednesday to apologize for making allegedly offensive remarks to a Jewish journalist, stepping into a row some fear could damage the city's bid to host the 2012 Olympics, AFP reported.
However, Mayor Ken Livingstone again refused to say sorry for comparing the journalist from the London Evening Standard newspaper to a concentration camp guard.
Blair noted that "a lot of us in politics get angry with journalists from time to time, but in the circumstances, and to the journalist because he was a Jewish journalist, yes he should apologize."
"Let's just apologize and move on--that's the sensible thing," Blair told a phone-in questioner on a talk show hosted by Britain's Channel Five television.

Tony Blair

Blair played a key role in the famously outspoken Livingstone's return to the Labour Party last year, despite the fierce objections of senior colleagues.
Livingstone had said on Tuesday that any call for an apology from Blair would be in vain.
"(When) I went back to the Labour Party he made it absolutely clear it was my job to do my job," the mayor said.
"He has no intention of making me foreign secretary and we have our respective roles. He is not there to manage me. He is not answerable to my mistakes or successes. We are judged separately and independently."
But Livingstone's political opponents warned that the lingering row could harm London's bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, currently being assessed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Ken Livingstone

"Given that the IOC is in town, every hour that goes by without an apology is another hour of damage to London's Olympic bid," said Bob Neill, leader of the London Assembly Conservative Party group.
The furore erupted last week when Livingstone was approached at a public function by a reporter from the London Evening Standard newspaper, which he considers hostile to him even though he was once its restaurant critic.
According to a tape transcript released by the paper, Livingstone first asked reporter Oliver Finegold if he was a "German war criminal", a reference to support offered in the 1930s to the British Union of Fascists by the Standard's sister paper, the Daily Mail.
When Finegold said he was Jewish and was offended by the comment, Livingstone responded by saying the reporter was "just like a concentration camp guard" and should not work for a daily with "a record of supporting fascism".

Defrocked priest Paul Shanley is led from court in handcuffs following his sentencing in Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge, Massachussetts, February 15. (Reuters Photo)

BOSTON, USA,
Feb. 16--Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, whose crimes shook the Roman Catholic Church, was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison on child rape charges Tuesday to a burst of applause from some of the many who accused him of molesting them, AP reported.
As a wobbly, 74-year-old Shanley was led away in handcuffs, one man called out mockingly, "Goodbye!"
Shanley will be eligible for parole after eight years. He was sent away despite warnings from some inmate advocates that the notorious child-molester would be a marked man behind bars and that prison could amount to a death sentence.
Judge Stephen Neel condemned the former priest for using his revered status to prey on a little boy. "It is difficult to imagine a more egregious misuse of trust and authority," he said.
Shanley, once known for a being a hip "street priest" who reached out to troubled children and homosexuals, was convicted last week of repeatedly raping and fondling a boy at his church during the 1980s.
His accuser, now a 27-year-old firefighter, said Shanley would pull him from Sunday morning catechism classes and molest him starting when he was 6 and continuing for six years. He said his repressed memories of the abuse came flooding back three years ago as the scandal unfolded.
In a statement read in court by a prosecutor, the accuser said: "I want him to die in prison, whether it's of natural causes or otherwise. However he dies, I hope it's slow and painful."
Shanley's lawyer, Frank Mondano, asked the judge to allow him to serve his sentence in a county jail rather than a more violent state prison. The judge refused. Another notorious pedophile priest, John Geoghan, was beaten and strangled in a Massachusetts prison in 2003, allegedly by a fellow inmate.
Mondano said the prosecution's case was built on "vilification, half-truths and lies." He plans to appeal.
Shanley became a central figure in the sex scandal in Boston after plaintiffs' attorneys forced the church to release his personnel records. The documents indicated he was transferred from parish to parish despite allegations of abuse.

MOSCOW, Feb. 16--President Vladimir Putin's government reforms, introduced nearly one year ago, have failed to make Russia better managed and should be reviewed, Reuters quoted a top Kremlin aide as saying in a newspaper interview on Wednesday.
"I think that the system we have now is far from being effective," Igor Shuvalov told Vedomosti business daily--a very rare public criticism of the reforms by a Kremlin official.
"Some say that the manageability (of Russia) has considerably worsened, that it has become more difficult to achieve results."
Shuvalov, 37, is seen as an influential liberal at the Kremlin, which is increasingly dominated by hardliners.
Last month, Putin made him his representative to the Group of Eight industrial nations (G8), a sensitive job that analysts say suggests he has the full confidence of the head of state.
Shortly before his reelection last March, Putin appointed little-known bureaucrat Mikhail Fradkov as prime minister, with specific instructions to speed up economic reform.
Putin also slashed the number of ministries to 14 from 23, ordering them to focus on strategic planning and drafting bills, and set up 58 new federal agencies to take charge of the day-to-day management of Russia.
But the new system has actually slowed down decision-making.
"The ministries have not handed over to the agencies management of federal property. And a number of them are doing the ministries' job by drafting laws," Shuvalov said.
Analysts say Fradkov's government has stalled on many key economic reforms, while the few that have been introduced, such as pension reform and abolition of Soviet-era social benefits, have ended in confusion and controversy.

Princess Diana

LONDON, Feb. 16--British police were gathering together the results of a new, improved reconstruction of the car crash in Paris that killed Princess Diana, the late wife of Prince Charles, AFP reported.
Photographers and surveyors, helped by the French police, used specialist laser equipment on Tuesday night to scan the Pont de l'Alma Tunnel, where the 1997 tragedy unfolded, police at Scotland Yard said.
The images will be converted into a three-dimensional computer model of the scene to be used in inquests into Diana's death as well as her partner Dodi Fayed, who also perished along with their driver Henri Paul.
The model, which will use new technology that was unavailable at the time, would "enhance understanding of the factors which may have contributed to the collision", a police spokesman said.
The tunnel was closed between 10:00 pm and 6:00 am on Wednesday while the work took place.
Diana died after the car she had been traveling in crashed in the underpass after leaving the Ritz Hotel in Paris on August 31, 1997. Britain launched a fresh inquiry last year to establish whether the crash, which sparked a wave of conspiracy theories, was an accident.
An official French report into the incident concluded that the cause had been a drunk chauffeur who was driving too fast and was not qualified to be behind the wheel of the powerful armored limousine. However Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Al Fayed, who lost his son in the crash, has insisted the death was the work of intelligence services worried about the princess's relationship with his son.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 16--Pakistani leaders began talks with Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh on Wednesday with expectations high that a peace process started a year ago will bear its first results, Reuters reported.
While no one is predicting any sudden solution to the longstanding dispute between the nuclear rivals over Kashmir, Singh is expected to agree to the start of a proposed bus service between the Indian and Pakistan sides of the divided Himalayan region.
On arrival in Islamabad on Tuesday, Singh said India was considering joining a huge project for a gas pipeline running from Iran via Pakistan to India, as well as one from the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Singh, in the first official bilateral visit by an Indian foreign minister for 16 years, called on President Pervez Musharraf and was due to meet Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz before holding talks with his counterpart, Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri.
An accord on the bus service, and agreement in principle on a project dubbed "the pipeline for peace" would go a long way to allay Pakistani impatience with India's more gradual approach.
India has put a host of confidence building measures (CBMs) on the table, but its past hesitancy over the bus and pipeline issues dismayed Pakistani leaders already disappointed that talks had barely scratched the surface on the core issue of Kashmir. "Even if they do not sign agreement, there are strong indications of progress on these two issues. These are very important CBMs which will improve the overall climate and further reduce tensions," said Talat Masood, a retired general and political commentator.
Pakistan is nurturing hopes that Singh may come up with some way out of an impasse over Pakistan's objections to a dam being built by India that Islamabad says will reduce the flow of water into its territory.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 16--International pressure mounted on Lebanon to find the killers of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri as this shocked nation prepared to bury the man credited with rebuilding post-civil war Lebanon and seen as quietly opposing Syrian influence in his country's affairs, AP reported.
A huge security operation has been organized for Hariri's funeral service, which will start Wednesday at his palace in a posh Beirut neighborhood and wind for nearly two miles through the capital to his burial place at the towering Mohammed Al-Amin mosque, the construction of which has been funded by the billionaire.
Tens of thousands of mourners are expected to attend the service which Hariri's political supporters and family have warned government officials not to attend. The funeral follows massive street demonstrations in Beirut on Tuesday and clashes between dozens of Hariri supporters and Syrian workers in the slain tycoon's home town of Sidon, southern Lebanon, that left five Syrians with minor injuries.
Many in Lebanon are blaming Syria for killing Hariri or at least having a hand in Monday's huge car bomb that killed 17 people, including the man who was this country's prime minister for 10 of 14 years following the 1990 end of the 15-year civil war. Syria denies the charge and has instead condemned the assassination.
Hariri resigned last year after opposing a Syrian-backed constitutional amendment that enabled his rival, the pro-Damascus Emile Lahoud, to extend his term as Lebanon's president.
An official from Lahoud's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said late Tuesday that no decision had been made on whether Lahoud would attend the service.
Washington announced it was recalling its ambassador from Syria amid speculation that Damascus--which the United States has long criticized for exerting too much control over Lebanon--had a hand in Hariri's killing.
The UN Security Council approved a statement calling on the Lebanese government "to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of this heinous terrorist act." Lebanon's interior minister suggested a suicide bomber aided by "international parties" may have been behind it.

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb. 16--Nepal's army chief has pledged to uphold human rights as security forces seek to crush a Maoist revolt following King Gyanendra's seizure of power, AFP reported.
International concern has been mounting over human rights abuses in the wake of the king's dismissal of the government and institution of emergency rule suspending civil liberties, including press freedom, 16 days ago.
"Regular instruction on human rights is given to the Royal Nepal Army commanders at every level," General Pyar Jung Thapa said, according to the state-run RSS media.
"Necessary action has been taken against those involved in violation of human rights regardless of their rank and will continue," he told a representative of London-based Amnesty International Tuesday, the agency said.
The United States, Britain, the European Union and India have summoned back their ambassadors to protest against the royal takeover and pressed for restoration of democratic rule.
The army chief's assurances came in the midst of a Maoist blockade of the capital, Kathmandu, launched over the weekend.
The blockade, enforced by threats of rebel violence rather than a physical show of force, has sent vegetable prices soaring as traffic entering the city has slowed to a trickle.
No comment was immediately available from Amnesty on the meeting with the army chief. But the Asian Human Rights Commission said earlier this month "the situation of Nepal was exceptionally bad even before the February 1 coup."