Washed It!

Prince William is engaged to longtime girlfriend Kate Middleton, Britain’s royal family announced Tuesday.

The 28-year-old heir to the throne and his fiancee will marry next year, royal aides said.
Announcement of the engagement had been rumored for weeks, as palace watchers looked ahead on the royal calendar and speculated that a marriage would have to take place sometime in 2011, sandwiched between other official royal activities.

Announcing the engagement now gives Buckingham Palace time to prepare for the most highly anticipated royal event since the lavish wedding of William’s parents, Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, in 1981.

The marriage will end bachelorhood for William and the hopes of young women around the world who have followed his every move and been charmed by his good looks and affable manner.

The prince and Middleton, who is also 28, met as students at the University of St. Andrews near Edinburgh, Scotland. Their relationship has been minutely dissected in the British tabloids, which have gleefully picked on Middleton’s middle-class background.

With no royal or aristocratic pedigree, Middleton will be the first commoner to marry an heir to the throne in centuries. Her parents are entrepreneurs who became millionaires from a mail-order party-supplies business, which has prompted some ridicule in a society where snobbishness can still be a prized trait.

Middleton’s mother, Carole, has been especially sneered at as a social climber who once worked as a flight attendant and who was caught on camera chewing gum during William’s graduation ceremony from military academy.

The couple have reportedly split up at various times over the years, but their closeness in recent times has led to speculation that marriage was imminent. Middleton’s parents were recently invited for a shooting party at the royal residence in Scotland, which was taken as a sign that a blending of the two families was in the offing.

William is second in line to the British throne, after Prince Charles. His low-key style and resemblance to his mother have made him a popular figure for a family battered by tragedy and scandal.

The prince’s aides said the pair became engaged while on vacation in Kenya last month. The wedding is expected to take place sometime in the spring or summer of next year. Royal watchers said that Westminster Abbey, where William’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, was married, is a likely venue.

After their wedding, the couple will live in northern Wales, where William will continue to serve in Britain’s air force.

Congratulations quickly began pouring in. British Prime Minister David Cameron said he was passed a note with news of the engagement during a Cabinet meeting and that, when he informed his colleagues, a cheer went up around the table.

Cameron later spoke with the prince by telephone — though whether he thanked William for providing some good news at a time when the British government is imposing a sweeping austerity plan is not known.

henry.chu@latimes.com
Prince William engaged to longtime girlfriend

For years in her native Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi has been known simply as “The Lady,” a pro-democracy stalwart and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has languished for years in an arbitrary solitary confinement imposed by the nation’s ruling military junta.

Although she was snatched from the public limelight, residents of the former Burma have always known this about the charismatic Buddhist activist, now 65: She would not be broken by the military generals she has long defied.

On Saturday, Suu Kyi proved them all right. She was finally released from the mildewing, two-story villa where she has spent much of her house arrest, spanning 15 of the last 21 years.

Whether in prison or not, supporters say, she has remained a quiet but defiant symbol of struggle against political repression for residents of the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

Always cutting a slight figure, the daughter of a national hero who had generations earlier campaigned for Burma’s independence from Britain endured personal hardship to uphold her political principals, often going years without seeing her husband or sons.

But as popes, presidents and activists called unsuccessfully for her release, she never wavered. Once asked if she thought her story had the makings of a Greek tragedy, she responded: “Don’t be silly. I don’t go in for melodrama.”

She later added: “I look upon myself as a politician. That’s not a dirty word, you know. Some people think that there is something wrong with politicians. Of course, there is something wrong with some politicians.”

Time and again, Suu Kyi showed her mettle since taking up the democracy struggle in 1988.

Spending much of her early life abroad, Suu Kyi had returned home that year just as street protests erupted against a quarter-century of military rule. The daughter of martyred independence leader Gen. Aung San, she quickly assumed a leadership role.

Then 44, she campaigned for the government to stage proper elections and became the first secretary general of the fledging National League for Democracy.

Explaining why she risked prison or worse by taking on the nation’s military, she responded: “I could not, as my father’s daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on.”

Her unsuccessful efforts to stop a brutal military suppression that killed thousands of protestors, repeatedly facing own armed soldiers, gained her worldwide notoriety, including the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, being proclaimed by the Nobel committee as “an outstanding example of the power of the powerless.”

But Suu Kyi’s sons, Alexander and Kim, accepted the award in Oslo on behalf of their mother who, seen as a threat by the country’s new military rulers, was detained in 1989 on national security charges.

She spent the next six years under house arrest at the family home at 54 University Avenue, enduring various periods in detention since then. Over the years, she has waged repeated hunger strikes to call attention to the military’s brutal repression of protesting students.

But Suu Kyi endured. When her husband, British scholar Michael Aris, died in London in March 1999, they had only seen each other a handful of times since her first house arrest a decade earlier.

Press reports have painted her life in captivity as austere. Rising each day at 4 a.m., she meditated, read and listened to one of five radios that were her only link to the outside world. She had no telephone, no television, no Internet. Her mail, if delivered at all, was heavily censored.

Once an accomplished pianist, Myanmar’s muggy equatorial heat long ago warped her instrument. Her only companionship: two long-serving, mother-and-daughter assistants.

Recent months have brought particular frustration. Suu Kyi was just a few weeks away from being released last year when she had an unexpected visit by an American, John Yettaw. She was found guilty of harboring anti-government elements and her sentence was extended.

At the time, one of her assistants told reporters: “It has been a hard life, she has sacrificed a lot. But she is used [to it] now. And she keeps working, waiting for the day she will be released.”

john.glionna@latimes.com
Suu Kyi outlasted her oppressors

At least 22 people were injured Sunday by an apparent suicide bombing in the heart of Turkey’s premier city, Istanbul, Turkish media reported.

The 10:30 a.m. explosion struck Taksim Square, a vast transportation and commercial hub that is the city’s busiest node. The apparent targets were police officers at a law enforcement substation at the square’s northern end. At least 10 of those injured were police, and two of the wounded face life-threatening injuries.

Istanbul police chief Huseyin Capkin said more bombs were found in the square, according to Turkey’s semi-official Anatolia news agency. Authorities barred all pedestrian and vehicular traffic to the square, popular with tourists, in case of more explosions.

In a statement broadcast on television, Capkın described the attacker as a male suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his torso who died in the blast. Turkish television showed the apparent body of the attacker covered with newspapers.

“We think the attacker attempted to enter a police bus and detonate the bomb inside, but the explosives went off earlier,” Capkin was quoted as saying.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bore the trademarks of Al Qaeda and associated Islamic militants. Turkey last week announced the detention of a dozen suspected Al Qaeda members in Istanbul and the eastern city of Van.

Al Qaeda-inspired militants killed dozens in 2003 attacks on the British consulate, two synagogues and a bank.

Turkey has long fought an on-and-off war against ethnic Kurdish miltants in its southeastern provinces but has been negotiating with representatives of the insurgents, the Kurdistan Workers Party. A unilateral ceasefire by the group, known by the abbreviation PKK, expired this weekend.

daragahi@latimes.com
Suicide bomber injures 22 in Turkey plaza

A trio of economics scholars, including an MIT professor whose nomination to the Federal Reserve board has been held up in the Senate, won the Nobel Prize in economics on Monday for their studies of markets and how mismatches between buyers and sellers can contribute to such problems as high unemployment.

Peter A. Diamond of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and fellow American Dale T. Mortensen, a professor at Northwestern University, will share the $1.5 million award with Christopher A. Pissarides, a British and Cypriot citizen who teaches at the London School of Economics.

The three men pioneered and developed models that help explain, among other things, why there are so many jobless people even as there are a large number of job openings — a problem that is particularly relevant today as the United States and other developed countries grapple with stubbornly high unemployment.

The U.S. jobless figure for September was reported Friday at 9.6%.

“The laureates’ models help us understand the ways in which unemployment, job vacancies and wages are affected by regulation and economic policy,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in announcing the prize.

“This may refer to benefit levels in unemployment insurance or rules in regard to hiring and firing,” the statement said. “One conclusion is that more generous unemployment benefits give rise to higher unemployment and longer search times.”

The idea that more-generous jobless benefits can provide a disincentive for workers to seek or take jobs has been hotly debated in the U.S. as policymakers have continued to face pressure to extend unemployment checks for millions of people.

Mortensen, in a conference call from Denmark, where he is currently a visiting professor at Aarhus University, said his models do show a negative effect of higher jobless benefits.

But he dismissed that as a major factor in the high unemployment, saying instead that the current job troubles are a function of the impaired financial markets.

“I really don’t think this is the time to worry about that,” Mortensen, 71, said of unemployment benefits.

The works of Diamond, who first developed a theoretical framework on “search markets” in the early 1970s, and Mortensen and Pissarides also offer insights into another ongoing debate among economists — whether the high unemployment today reflects structural deficiencies such as mismatches in skills or problems that are more cyclical in nature because of weak demand.

Some economists have argued the troubles are structural, suggesting that unemployment won’t be going back to the normal range of 5%, while others have emphasized that the terrible labor situation demands more substantial government stimulus to bolster demand for goods and services.

Diamond acknowledged that the process of improving the job market “is going to be slow and painful” for the whole economy and people looking for work. But he didn’t view it as a structural problem, suggesting more optimism for the future.

“I think the economy is very adaptive,” he said. “Workers and employers will adapt.”

Diamond, 70, who received his Ph.D. from MIT and has been a professor there since 1966, is considered by peers as a brilliant theorist whose works on social security systems are highly regarded.

Last spring he was nominated by President Obama to fill one of three vacancies on the Fed’s board. But while two other nominees to the Fed board were cleared recently, Diamond’s confirmation was effectively blocked by Senate Republicans.

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, questioned whether the MIT professor had enough practical experience to serve as a Fed governor.

Asked about the Fed nomination during a news conference at MIT, Diamond said he would not withdraw his candidacy but declined to comment further.

don.lee@latimes.com
Three share Nobel Prize in economics

Pope Benedict XVI arrived Thursday in Britain to an enthusiastic reception by fellow Roman Catholics and promptly warned the country not to let rampant secularism swamp or destroy its Christian roots.

“The United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society,” the pontiff said shortly after landing in Scotland to begin a four-day tour. “May it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate. Let it not obscure the Christian foundation that underpins its freedoms.”

The German-born pope cited the evils of Nazism as an example of the consequences of “atheist extremism.”

His exhortation, delivered at the British royal residence in Edinburgh, launched the first-ever state visit by a pope to this increasingly non-religious nation, which broke with Rome almost half a millennium ago under Henry VIII.

The current occupant of the throne, Queen Elizabeth II, was on hand to welcome the pontiff in a simple meeting Thursday morning that brought together two octogenarians who are both heads of state as well as leaders of their own separate strands of Christianity. The queen is the titular head of the Church of England.

Later, more than 100,000 well-wishers greeted Benedict as he traveled the streets of Edinburgh in his specially designed Popemobile, with his shoulders wrapped in a green Tartan scarf. Scattered protests made hardly a dent in the larger din of cheers and applause.

The pope also led tens of thousands of participants in an open-air Mass in Glasgow early Thursday evening under brilliant blue skies in the same park where his predecessor, John Paul II, met even larger, more rapturous crowds in 1982 on a pastoral visit.

That visit was generally more warmly received than this one, in part because of John Paul’s personal charisma and his status as a heroic crusader against communism. Benedict’s state visit, by contrast, has inspired strong opposition from human-rights activists, scientists, feminists, gay-rights advocates and critics of the Vatican’s response to widespread allegations of child molestation by priests and religious workers.

Speaking to reporters on the flight from Rome, Benedict acknowledged that the church had been too slow to remove abusive clerics and to protect their victims.

“The authority of the church wasn’t sufficiently vigilant and not sufficiently quick or decisive,” he said, adding: “How can we repair, what can we do to help these people overcome this trauma, find their lives again and find again the trust in the message of Christ?”

The pope is expected to meet with abuse victims during his visit. They and other critics say that the Vatican has been more concerned with damage limitation and covering up suspected abuse than with seeking justice for those subjected to it.

At his public appearances Thursday, the pontiff sounded one of the principal themes of his papacy and one of the clear goals of his visit to Britain, which is to call Europe back to Christian values and beliefs.

Expanding on his warning about the “aggressive forces of secularism” earlier in the day, Benedict urged attendees at the Mass in Glasgow to fight back against those “who now seek to exclude religious belief from public discourse … or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty.”

“Religion is in fact a guarantee of authentic liberty and respect, leading us to look upon every person as a brother or sister,” he said. “Society today needs clear voices which propose our right to live, not in a jungle of self-destructive and arbitrary freedoms, but in a society which works for the true welfare of its citizens and offers them guidance and protection.”

In many ways, the pope’s homily was a more diplomatic version of comments that landed one of his aides in trouble on the eve of the British visit. In an interview with a German journal, Cardinal Walter Kasper described Britain as a “Third World country” that is incubating an “aggressive new atheism.”

Kasper’s remarks made front-page headlines here. The Vatican hastily announced that the cardinal, who was scheduled to accompany Benedict to Britain, would not be coming but insisted that his withdrawal was due to ill health rather than the controversy his comments caused.

The pope is due to spend Friday and Saturday in London.

henry.chu@latimes.com
Pope Benedict XVI urges Britain not to let secularism overshadow Christianity

FBI agents helped identify six slain American medical volunteers whose bodies were flown to the Afghan capital on Sunday from the remote northeastern region where they had died in an ambush, the U.S. Embassy said.

Ten members of the charity group, who were providing eye-care and other health services to impoverished villagers in a rugged, isolated valley, were shot to death late last week as they tried to make their way back to Kabul. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, accusing the victims of preaching Christianity and spying for Western military forces.

The Christian organization sponsoring the mission, the International Assistance Mission, vehemently denied any proselytizing by the group and dismissed the notion that the doctors and those assisting them had spied for anyone.