It's already Dec. 21 in Europe, so where's doomsday?

MERIDA, Mexico Doomsday hour is here, at least in much of the world, and so still are we.

According to legend, the ancient Mayans' long-count calendar ends at midnight Thursday, ushering in the end of the world.

Didn't happen.

"This is not the end of the world. This is the beginning of the new world," Star Johnsen-Moser, an American seer, said at a gathering of hundreds of spiritualists at a convention center in the Yucatan city of Merida, an hour and a half from the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza.

"It is most important that we hold a positive, beautiful reality for ourselves and our planet. ... Fear is out of place."

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As the appointed time came and went in several parts of the world, there was no sign of the apocalypse.

Indeed, the social network Imgur posted photos of clocks turning midnight in the Asia-Pacific region with messages such as: "The world has not ended. Sincerely, New Zealand."

In Merida, the celebration of the cosmic dawn opened inauspiciously, with a fumbling of the sacred fire meant to honor the calendar's conclusion.

Gabriel Lemus, the white-haired guardian of the flame, burned his finger on the kindling and later had to scoop up a burning log that fell from the ceremonial brazier onto the stage.

Still, Lemus was convinced that it was a good start, as he was joined by about 1,000 other shamans, seers, stargazers, crystal enthusiasts, yogis, sufis and swamis.

"It is a cosmic dawn," Lemus declared. "We will recover the ability to communicate telepathically and levitate objects ... like our ancestors did."

Celebrants later held their arms in the air in a salute to the Thursday morning sun.

"The galactic bridge has been established," intoned spiritual leader Alberto Arribalzaga. "At this moment, spirals of light are entering the center of your head ... generating powerful vortexes that cover the planet."

Despite all the ritual and banter, few here actually believed the world would end Friday; the summit was scheduled to run through Sunday. Instead, participants said they were here to celebrate the birth of a new age.

A Mexican Indian seer who calls himself Ac Tah, and who has traveled around Mexico erecting small pyramids he calls "neurological circuits," said he holds high hopes for Friday.

"We are preparing ourselves to receive a huge magnetic field straight from the center of the galaxy," he said.

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Terry Kvasnik, 32, a stunt man from Manchester, England, said his motto for the day was "be in love, don't be in fear." As to which ceremony he would attend on Friday, he said with a smile, "I'm going to be in the happiest place I can."

At dozens of booths set up in the convention hall, visitors could have their auras photographed with "Chi" light, get a shamanic cleansing or buy sandals, herbs and whole-grain baked goods. Cleansing usually involves having copal incense waved around one's body.

Visitors could also learn the art of "healing drumming" with a Mexican Otomi Indian master, Dabadi Thaayroyadi, who said his slender hand-held drums are made with prayers embedded inside. The drums emit "an intelligent energy" that can heal emotional, physical and social ailments, he said.

During the opening ceremony, participants chanted mantras to the blazing Yucatan sun, which quickly burned the fair-skinned crowd.

Violeta Simarro, a secretary from Perpignan, France, taking shelter under an awning, noted that the new age won't necessarily be easy.

"It will be a little difficult at first, because the world will need a complete 'nettoyage' (cleansing), because there are so many bad things," she said.

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Boehner Pulls Plan B Option

In a surprise development late Thursday night, House Speaker John Boehner pulled his so-called "Plan B option" -- an extension of current tax rates for Americans making up to $1 million a year -- from the House floor, admitting that it did not have the support necessary to pass and leaving a resolution to the fiscal cliff in question.

"The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass. Now it is up to the president to work with [Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff," Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote in a statement. "The House has already passed legislation to stop all of the Jan. 1 tax rate increases and replace the sequester with responsible spending cuts that will begin to address our nation's crippling debt. The Senate must now act."

Immediately after the announcement that "plan B" had failed, Dow Jones Industrial futures traded down, with other stock indicators also signaling sharp losses and volatility for Friday morning's opening -- though stock futures generally are lightly traded in the evening. Indicators soon bounced off the initial lows but still signaled a rough start to the final trading session of the week.

In Washington, all legislative business has concluded for the week. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's office said that members could still return "after the Christmas holiday when needed" if a breakthrough is eventually reached.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

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The outlook for a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" by Christmas has reached a new low, with no clear path forward, though lawmakers and the White House maintained hope this week for a deficit-reduction compromise by the end of the year.

A senior aide to the speaker confirmed late Thursday evening that Boehner and Obama still have not spoken since Monday evening, when the speaker told the president that he would move ahead with his backup plan, although staff-level talks have continued behind the scenes.

"Speaker Boehner tried to play hardball by asking his members to vote for a tax increase. He learned the hard way that you must find a bipartisan solution," one senior House Democratic leadership aide said reacting to the developments. "Walking away has considerably weakened him and put the country literally on the precipice of the cliff."

Republicans had sought to act to avoid an income tax hike on 99 percent of Americans in 2013, and leverage new pressure on President Obama in the ongoing talks for a broader "cliff" deal.

Obama has threatened to veto the legislation, calling it counterproductive and the cuts burdensome for the middle class, and Reid, D-Nev., has promised not to bring it up for consideration in the Senate.

"'Plan B' ... is a multi-day exercise in futility at a time when we do not have the luxury of exercises in futility," said White House spokesman Jay Carney Thursday.

Democrats complained that the posturing on "plan B" distracted the focus from a broader bargain on taxes, spending, entitlement reforms and other measures that had begun coming into focus earlier this week.

Reid said the Senate would break for the Christmas holiday but return to Washington one week from Thursday. President Obama will not join his family in Hawaii on Friday as planned if the "cliff" is not resolved, an administration official said.

"If you look at Speaker Boehner's proposal and you look at my proposal, they're actually pretty close," Obama said Wednesday, appealing for a big "fair deal."

"It is a deal that can get done," he said. "But it cannot be done if every side wants 100 percent. And part of what voters were looking for is some compromise up here."

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Syrian rebels fight for strategic town in Hama province

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rebels began to push into a strategic town in Syria's central Hama province on Thursday and laid siege to at least one town dominated by President Bashar al-Assad's minority sect, activists said.

The operation risks inflaming already raw sectarian tensions as the 21-month-old revolt against four decades of Assad family rule - during which the president's Alawite sect has dominated leadership of the Sunni Muslim majority - rumbles on.

Opposition sources said rebels had won some territory in the strategic southern town of Morek and were surrounding the Alawite town of al-Tleisia.

They were also planning to take the town of Maan, arguing that the army was present there and in al-Tleisia and was hindering their advance on nearby Morek, a town on the highway that runs from Damascus north to Aleppo, Syria's largest city and another battleground in the conflict.

"The rockets are being fired from there, they are being fired from Maan and al-Tleisia, we have taken two checkpoints in the southern town of Morek. If we want to control it then we need to take Maan," said a rebel captain in Hama rural area, who asked not to be named.

Activists said heavy army shelling had targeted the town of Halfaya, captured by rebels two days earlier. Seven people were killed, 30 were wounded, and dozens of homes were destroyed, said activist Safi al-Hamawi.

Hama is home to dozens of Alawite and Christian villages among Sunni towns, and activists said it may be necessary to lay siege to many minority areas to seize Morek. Rebels want to capture Morek to cut off army supply lines into northern Idlib, a province on the northern border with Turkey where rebels hold swathes of territory.

From an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, Alawites have largely stood behind Assad, many out of fear of revenge attacks. Christians and some other minorities have claimed neutrality, with a few joining the rebels and a more sizeable portion of them supporting the government out of fear of hardline Islamism that has taken root in some rebel groups.

Activists in Hama said rebels were also surrounding the Christian town of al-Suqeilabiya and might enter the city to take out army positions as well as those of "shabbiha" - pro-Assad militias, the bulk of whom are usually Alawite but can also include Christians and even Sunnis.

"We have been in touch with Christian opposition activists in al-Suqeilabiya and we have told them to stay downstairs or on the lowest floor of their building as possible, and not to go outside. The rebels have promised not to hurt anyone who stays at home," said activist Mousab al-Hamdee, speaking by Skype.

He said he was optimistic that potential sectarian tensions with Christians could be resolved but that Sunni-Alawite strife may be harder to suppress.

SECTARIAN FEARS

U.N. human rights investigators said on Thursday that Syria's conflict was becoming more "overtly sectarian", with more civilians seeking to arm themselves and foreign fighters - mostly Sunnis - flocking in from 29 countries.

"They come from all over, Europe and America, and especially the neighboring countries," said Karen Abuzayd, one of the U.N. investigators, told a news conference in Brussels.

Deeper sectarian divisions may diminish prospects for post-conflict reconciliation even if Assad is ousted, and the influx of foreigners raises the risk of fighting spilling into neighboring countries riven by similar communal fault lines.

Some activists privately voiced concerns of sectarian violence, but the rebel commander in Hama said fighters had been told "violations" would not be tolerated and argued that the move to attack the towns was purely strategic.

"If we are fired at from a Sunni village that is loyal to the regime we go in and we liberate it and clean it," he said. "So should we not do the same when it comes to an Alawite village just because there is a fear of an all-out sectarian war? We respond to the source of fire."

President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Assad's main ally and arms supplier, warned that any solution to the conflict must ensure government and rebel forces do not merely swap roles and fight on forever. It appeared to be his first direct comment on the possibility of a post-Assad Syria.

The West and some Arab states accuse Russia of shielding Assad after Moscow blocked three U.N. Security Council resolutions intended to increase pressure on Damascus to end the violence, which has killed more than 40,000 people. Putin said the Syrian people would ultimately decide their own fate.

Assad's forces have been hitting back at rebel advances with heavy shelling, particularly along the eastern ring of suburbs outside Damascus, where rebels are dominant.

A Syrian security source said the army was planning heavy offensives in northern and central Syria to stem rebel advances, but there was no clear sign of such operations yet.

Rebels seized the Palestinian refugee district of Yarmouk earlier this week, which put them within 3 km (2 miles) of downtown Damascus. Heavy shelling and fighting forced thousands of Palestinian and Syrian residents to flee the Yarmouk area.

Rebels said on Thursday they had negotiated to put the camp - actually a densely packed urban district - back into the hands of pro-opposition Palestinian fighters. There are some 500,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants living in Syria, and they have been divided by the uprising.

Palestinian factions, some backed by the government and others by the rebels, had begun fighting last week, a development that allowed Syrian insurgents to take the camp.

A resident in Damascus said dozens of families were returning to the camp but that the army had erected checkpoints. Many families were still hesitant to return.

LEBANON BORDER POST TAKEN

Elsewhere, Syrian insurgents took over an isolated border post on the western frontier with Lebanon earlier this week, local residents told Reuters on Thursday.

The rebels already hold much of the terrain along Syria's northern and eastern borders with Turkey and Iraq respectively.

They said around 20 rebels from the Qadissiyah Brigade overran the post at Rankus, which is linked by road to the remote Lebanese village of Tufail.

Video footage downloaded on the Internet on Thursday, dated December 16, showed a handful of fighters dressed in khaki fatigues and wielding rifles as they kicked down a stone barricade around a small, single-storey army checkpoint.

Syrian Interior Minister Ibrahim al-Shaar arrived in Lebanon on Wednesday for treatment of wounds sustained in a bomb attack on his ministry in Damascus a week ago.

Lebanese medical sources said Shaar had shrapnel wounds in his shoulder, stomach and legs but they were not critical.

The Syrian opposition has tried to peel off defectors from the government as well as from the army, though only a handful of high-ranking officials have abandoned Assad.

The conflict has divided many Syrian families. Security forces on Thursday arrested an opposition activist who is also the relative of Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa, the Syrian Observatory said. The man was arrested along with five other activists who are considered pacifists, it said.

Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim who has few powers in Assad's Alawite-dominated power structure, said earlier this week that neither side could win the war in Syria. He called for the formation of a national unity government.

(Reporting by Erika Solomon; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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User revolt causes Instagram to keep old rules

SAN FRANCISCO: Instagram on Thursday tried to calm a user rebellion by nixing a change that would have given the Facebook-owned mobile photo sharing service unfettered rights to people's pictures.

"The concerns we heard about from you the most focused on advertising, and what our changes might mean for you and your photos," Instagram co-founder and chief Kevin Systrom said in a blog post.

"There was confusion and real concern about what our possible advertising products could look like and how they would work," he continued.

Protests prompted Instagram to stick with wording in its original terms of service and privacy policies regarding advertising and to do away with some changes that were to take effect in January, according to Systrom.

"You also had deep concerns about whether under our new terms, Instagram had any plans to sell your content," the Instagram chief said.

"I want to be really clear: Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did. We don't own your photos, you do."

Instagram on Tuesday backed off a planned policy change that appeared to clear the way for the mobile photo sharing service to sell pictures without compensation, after users cried foul.

Changes to the Instagram privacy policy and terms of service had included wording that appeared to allow people's pictures to be used by advertisers at Instagram or Facebook worldwide, royalty-free.

Twitter and Instagram forums buzzed over the phrasing, as users debated whether to delete their accounts before the new rules kicked in.

Originally proposed portions of the new policy that rankled users included "You hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the content that you post on or through the service."

The terms also stated that "a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos, and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."

Instagram said that the policy changes to take effect in January were part of a move to better share information with Facebook, which bought the company this year.

The original price was pegged at US$1 billion but the final value was less because of a decline in the social network's share price.

"I'm proud that Instagram has a community that feels so strongly about a product we all love," Systrom said while apologising to users and promising the offensive policy changes were gone.

-AFP/fl

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Apple reportedly pulls plug on project behind portable charger

The POP portable charging station.

The technology lab behind a Kickstarter-funded project to build a portable device charging station announced today it will refund its crowdfunded $139,170 to donors after Apple refused to license rights to its Lightning connector.

POP, a minimalist portable power station, was billed as "the intersection of charging design" and was expected to feature four retractable cords for charging a variety of devices, including iOS and
Android devices. The portable charging station featured a 26,000 mAh battery capable of charging 10 iPhones, according to Junior Edison, the company behind the effort.

In addition to its portable convenience, Junior Edison touted POP as a device that would aid survival when natural disasters kill power, offering many days of charging power for portable devices.

However, Apple was not charged over having its proprietary connector combined with micro-USB connectors, according to Junior Edison Jamie Siminoff.

"After applying to Apple (which is now required for Lightning), we learned that they are no longer willing to approve a product that uses the Lightning charger alongside any other charger (including their own 30-pin - seriously)," he said in a blog post on Kickstarter. "Just like that, POP could no longer fulfill its true promise."

CNET has contacted Apple for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

Unveiled in September, Lightning replaced the 30-pin adapters that date back to early iPods. Its key benefit is the smaller iPhone connector, which is 80 percent smaller than the previous connector. However, the new technology also represented a costly change for people who have multiple cables that they use in their
car, home, or at work.

Edison Junior video of the device:

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Like many other tragedies, scammers stalk Newtown

NEWTOWN, Conn. The family of Noah Pozner was mourning the 6-year-old, killed in the Newtown school massacre, when outrage compounded their sorrow.

Someone they didn't know was soliciting donations in Noah's memory, claiming that they'd send any cards, packages and money collected to his parents and siblings. An official-looking website had been set up, with Noah's name as the address, even including petitions on gun control.

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Noah's uncle, Alexis Haller, called on law enforcement authorities to seek out "these despicable people."

"These scammers," he said, "are stealing from the families of victims of this horrible tragedy."

It's a problem as familiar as it is disturbing. Tragedy strikes — be it a natural disaster, a gunman's rampage or a terrorist attack — and scam artists move in.

It happened after 9/11. It happened after Columbine. It happened after Hurricane Katrina. And after this summer's movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo.

Sometimes fraud takes the form of bogus charities asking for donations that never get sent to victims. Natural disasters bring another dimension: Scammers try to get government relief money they're not eligible for.

"It's abominable," said Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator, which evaluates the performance of charities. "It's just the lowest kind of thievery."

Noah Pozner's relatives found out about one bogus solicitation when a friend received an email asking for money for the family. Poorly punctuated, it gave details about Noah, his funeral and his family. It directed people to send donations to an address in the Bronx, one that the Pozners had never heard of.

It listed a New York City phone number to text with questions about how to donate. When a reporter texted that number Wednesday, a reply came advising the donation go to the United Way.

The Pozner family had the noahpozner.com website transferred to its ownership. Victoria Haller, Noah's aunt, emailed the person who had originally registered the name. The person, who went by the name Jason Martin, wrote back that he'd meant "to somehow honor Noah and help promote a safer gun culture. I had no ill intentions I assure you."

Alexis Haller said the experience "should serve as a warning signal to other victims' families. We urge people to watch out for these frauds on social media sites."

Consumer groups, state attorneys general and law enforcement authorities call for caution about unsolicited requests for donations, by phone or email. They tell people to be wary of callers who don't want to answer questions about their organization, who won't take "no" for an answer, or who convey what seems to be an unreasonable sense of urgency.

"This is a time of mourning for the people of Newtown and for our entire state," Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said in a statement this week. "Unfortunately, it's also a time when bad actors may seek to exploit those coping with this tragedy."

But scam artists know that calamity is fertile ground for profit, watered by the goodwill of strangers who want to help and may not be familiar with the cause or the people they're sending money to.

After the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., scammers asked for credit card donations for victims' families. After the 9/11 attacks, the North American Securities Administrators Association warned investors to be wary of Internet postings encouraging them to invest in supposed anti-terrorist technologies.

In 2006, the FBI warned about an email widely circulated after the Sago, W.Va., mine explosion, which claimed to be from a doctor treating one of the survivors and asking for donations to cover medical bills.

"As was learned after the tragic events of 9/11/01, the tsunami disaster, and more recently with Hurricane Katrina, unscrupulous cyber criminals have shown the desire and means to exploit human emotion by attempting to defraud the public when they are perceived to be most vulnerable," the FBI said at the time.

This fall, the police in Aurora, Colo., accused a local woman of trying to profit off the deadly movie theater rampage by a gunman who killed 12 people. The woman told people that she was the caretaker for a little girl named Kadence, whose mother had died in the shooting. The police said the child was made up. The scam unraveled when a donor got a phone call from what seemed to be a woman imitating a child's voice.

When the government doled out disaster aid after Hurricane Katrina, scammers asked for money to rebuild houses they never lived in or to pay benefits for relatives who never existed.

The government later set up the National Center for Disaster Fraud to try to root out such scams in the federal relief programs administered after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. It has since expanded its mandate to other disasters.

The cases brought since then by the Justice Department sketch a colorful picture of fraud:

— A woman who filed for small-business disaster benefits after the 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill, even though she'd sold the business before the accident.

— A judge and a commissioner in Texas who, after Hurricane Ike, were accused of awarding debris removal contracts to a company in return for kickbacks. The judge also commandeered a 155-kilowatt generator meant for the county to power his convenience store, according to the government.

— A pastor who submitted inflated claims to a government-funded program that reimbursed groups sheltering Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

Bob Webster, spokesman for the NASAA, knows the sad pattern.

"We know cons try to cash in on headlines, and any who would even think about stooping to capitalize on the tragedy in Newtown are the lowest of the low," he said.

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Obama Invokes Newtown on 'Cliff' Deal

Invoking the somber aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today appealed to congressional Republicans to embrace a standing "fair deal" on taxes and spending that would avert the fiscal cliff in 13 days.

"If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important," Obama said at a midday news conference.

"I would like to think that members of that [Republican] caucus would say to themselves, 'You know what? We disagree with the president on a whole bunch of things,'" he said. "'But right now what the country needs is for us to compromise.'"

House Speaker John Boehner's response: "Get serious."

Boehner announced at a 52-second news conference that the House will vote Thursday to approve a "plan B" to a broad White House deal -- and authorize simply extending current tax rates for people earning less than $1 million a year and little more.

"Then, the president will have a decision to make," the Ohio Republican said. "He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he could be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history."

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Unless Congress acts by Dec. 31, every American will face higher income tax rates and government programs will get hit with deep automatic cuts starting in 2013.

Obama and Boehner have been inching closer to a deal on tax hikes and spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. But they have not yet had a breakthrough on a deal.

Obama's latest plan would raise $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years, largely through higher tax rates on incomes above $400,000. He also proposes roughly $930 billion in spending cuts, including new limits on entitlement spending, such as slower annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.

Boehner has agreed to $1 trillion in new tax revenue, with a tax rate hike for households earning over $1 million. He is seeking more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, with significant changes to Medicare and Social Security.

The president said today that he remains "optimistic" about reaching a broad compromise by Christmas because both sides are "pretty close," a sentiment that has been publicly shared by Boehner.

But the speaker's backup plan has, at least temporarily, stymied talks, with no reported contact between the sides since Monday.

"The speaker should return to the negotiating table with the president because if he does I firmly believe we can have an agreement before Christmas," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a White House ally.

Schumer said Obama and Boehner are "not that far apart" in the negotiations.

"If they were to come to an agreement by Friday, they could write this stuff over the Christmas break and then we'd have to come back before the New Year and pass it," Schumer said.

Obama said he is "open to conversations" and planned to reach out to congressional leaders over the next few days to try to nudge Republicans to accept a "fair deal."

"At some point, there's got to be, I think, a recognition on the part of my Republican friends that -- you know, take the deal," he told reporters.

"They keep on finding ways to say no, as opposed to finding ways to say yes," Obama added. "At some point, you know, they've got take me out of it and think about their voters and think about what's best for the country."

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State Department security chief leaves post over Benghazi

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday its security chief had resigned from his post and three other officials had been relieved of their duties following a scathing official inquiry into the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Eric Boswell has resigned effective immediately as assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a terse statement. A second official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Boswell had not left the department entirely and remained a career official.

Nuland said that Boswell, and the three other officials, had all been put on administrative leave "pending further action."

An official panel that investigated the incident concluded that the Benghazi mission was completely unprepared to deal with the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

The unclassified version of the report, which was released on Tuesday, cited "leadership and management" deficiencies, poor coordination among officials and "real confusion" in Washington and in the field over who had the authority to make decisions on policy and security concerns.

"The ARB identified the performance of four officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau of (Near Eastern) Affairs," Nuland said in her statement, referring to the panel known as an Accountability Review Board.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted Boswell's decision to resign effective immediately, the spokeswoman said.

Earlier, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Boswell, one of his deputies, Charlene Lamb, and a third unnamed official has been asked to resign. The Associated Press first reported that three officials had resigned.

PANEL STOPS SHORT OF BLAMING CLINTON

The Benghazi incident appeared likely to tarnish Clinton's four-year tenure as secretary of state but the report did not fault her specifically and the officials who led the review stopped short of blaming her.

"We did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks," retired Admiral Michael Mullen, one of the leaders of the inquiry, told reporters on Wednesday.

The panel's chair, retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, said it had determined that responsibility for security shortcomings in Benghazi belonged at levels lower than Clinton's office.

"We fixed (responsibility) at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look for where the decision-making in fact takes place, where - if you like - the rubber hits the road," Pickering said after closed-door meetings with congressional committees.

The panel's report and the comments by its two lead authors suggested that Clinton, who accepted responsibility for the incident in a television interview about a month after the Benghazi attack, would not be held personally culpable.

Pickering and Mullen spoke to the media after briefing members of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed doors on classified elements of their report.

Clinton had been expected to appear at an open hearing on Benghazi on Thursday, but is recuperating after suffering a concussion, dehydration and a stomach bug last week. She will instead be represented by her two top deputies.

Clinton, who intends to step down in January, said in a letter accompanying the review that she would adopt all of its recommendations, which include stepping up security staffing and requesting more money to fortify U.S. facilities.

The National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which is expected to go to Congress for final approval this week, includes a measure directing the Pentagon to increase the Marine Corps presence at diplomatic facilities by up to 1,000 Marines.

Some Capitol Hill Republicans who had criticized the Obama administration's handling of the Benghazi attacks said they were impressed by the report.

"It was very thorough," said Senator Johnny Isakson. Senator John Barrasso said: "It was very, very critical of major failures at the State Department at very high levels." Both spoke after the closed-door briefing.

Others, however, took a harsher line and called for Clinton to testify as soon as she is able.

"The report makes clear the massive failure of the State Department at all levels, including senior leadership, to take action to protect our government employees abroad," Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Senator Bob Corker, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the new Congress is seated early next year, said Clinton should testify about Benghazi before her replacement is confirmed by the Senate.

Republicans have focused much of their firepower on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who appeared on TV talk shows after the attack and suggested it was the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated attack.

The report concluded that there was no such protest.

Rice, widely seen as President Barack Obama's top pick to succeed Clinton, withdrew her name from consideration last week.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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Australia customs upheaval over Sydney airport graft

SYDNEY: Australia announced an overhaul of its customs service on Thursday after eight people were arrested in a corruption investigation linked to an alleged drugs ring at Sydney airport.

"I am working on major structural and cultural reforms to Customs and will announce them next year," Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said.

"There is no place for corruption in our law enforcement agencies. Where it exists we have to weed it out."

The move follows the recent arrests of a customs officer, another from the quarantine service and six members of the public after a two-year probe. They have been charged with a range of offences including drug trafficking, receiving bribes and abuse of public office.

Police said the inquiry was continuing amid allegations that an "entrenched network" of corrupt customs officers at Sydney airport have been working with organised crime figures to import drugs.

A six-month investigation by Fairfax Media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said up to 20 officials were suspected of being involved in importing pseudoephedrine, cocaine, steroids and possibly weapons.

Australian Customs and Border Protection Service acting chief Michael Pezzullo said he was disappointed but not surprised by the revelations.

"We identified that we had a potential problem at Sydney International Airport and took appropriate investigative activity. This action continues," he said.

"We will review as required the role of workplace culture, management and leadership and take all necessary action to ensure the integrity of our workforce."

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus claimed that couriers were sent overseas to collect drugs before returning through customs with the help of people in "trusted positions".

"What has been alleged before the court so far is that the customs officers involved in this would meet drug couriers off a plane," he said.

"They would then walk them through the primary line of customs, and then out into the waiting halls."

He added that it would also be alleged that customs officials "played a role in organising the couriers themselves to go overseas and to actually facilitate their collection of the narcotics overseas".

- AFP/al

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Twitter temporarily turns out the lights on Anonymous account

Anonymous' Twitter account was temporarily shut down after it posted a tweet that broke the social network's rules.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Dara Kerr/CNET)

Twitter temporarily shuttered Anonymous' most popular account today, which caused a barrage of hate-tweets -- given that the hacker collective despises online censorship.

The account, @youranonnews, which now has more than 800,000 followers, went black around mid-day. The group claims the censorship had to do with a photo it posted regarding a campaign Anonymous has lodged against Westboro Baptist Church after church leaders announce plans to protest at the site of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre.

Once Anonymous' account was restored, the group posted an image of the letter it got from Twitter regarding the temporary suspension.

"Your account has been suspended for posting an individual's private information such as private email address, physical address, telephone number, or financial documents," the letter read. "It is a violation of the Twitter Rules to post the private and confidential information of others."

Apparently Anonymous' tweet said, "Sorry, Shirley isn't available at the moment," then had a link to a photograph that presumably revealed "Shirley's" private information. This tweet is no longer in Anonymous' Twitter feed.

The social network did not offer any further insight into the matter. A Twitter spokesperson told CNET that the company does not comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons.

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