Violence flares in Cairo as Egyptians vote

CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamists attacked the offices of an Egyptian opposition party newspaper on Saturday, security sources said, as people voted on a new constitution intended to pull the country out of a growing political crisis.

The newspaper of the Wafd party in Cairo was targeted with petrol bombs and birdshot, the sources said, in the latest of a series of violent incidents surrounding a divisive referendum designed to pave the way to national elections next year.

The attack came as officials began counting votes after polling stations closed at 11 p.m. (1600 ET).

Official results will not come until after a second round of voting in remaining areas of the country next Saturday, but conflicting claims were already emerging from the rival camps.

A spokesman for the opposition National Salvation Front said it had indications that 60-65 percent of voters in Cairo and other cities had rejected the new constitution, while President Mohamed Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood allies said that after 1 million votes had been counted, 72.5 percent were in favor.

Mostafa Shafik, managing editor at Wafd's newspaper, which is located next to the party headquarters, said his offices had been damaged.

"The attackers used Molotov cocktails to enter, which left minor areas burned," he said.

A Reuters photographer saw a dozen or so cars damaged inside the Wafd headquarters' grounds, their windows broken. Glass was also broken in the headquarters, but he saw no immediate signs of fire damage. Two people appeared to have been injured.

Wafd blamed followers of Hazem Abu Ismail, a Salafist preacher, for the attack, but he used his Facebook page to deny involvement.

Violence in Cairo and other cities has marred the run-up to the referendum. Several party buildings belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party have been burned in protests.

Rival factions armed with clubs, knives and swords fought in the streets of Alexandria on Friday. Opposition supporters trapped a Muslim preacher inside his mosque after he backed a "yes" vote in favor of the constitution.

ANGRY DEMONSTRATIONS

President Mursi provoked angry demonstrations when he issued a decree last month expanding his powers and then fast-tracked the draft constitution through an assembly dominated by his Muslim Brotherhood group and its allies. At least eight people were killed in clashes last week outside the presidential palace.

His liberal, secular and Christian opponents say the constitution is too Islamist and tramples on minority rights. Mursi's supporters say the charter is needed if progress is to be made towards democracy nearly two years after the fall of military-backed strongman Hosni Mubarak.

"The sheikhs (preachers) told us to say 'yes' and I have read the constitution and I liked it," said 53-year-old Adel Imam as he queued to vote in Cairo on Saturday. "The country will move on."

Turnout was high enough for voting to be extended by four hours in Cairo and some other cities.

In order to pass, the constitution must be approved by more than 50 percent of voters who cast ballots. A little more than half of Egypt's electorate of 51 million are eligible to vote in the first round in Cairo and other cities.

Rights groups reported some abuses, such as polling stations opening late, officials telling people to vote "yes", bribery and intimidation.

But Gamal Eid, head of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, which is monitoring the vote, said nothing reported so far was serious enough to invalidate the referendum.

TRANSITION

Christians, making up about 10 percent of Egypt's 83 million people and who have long complained of discrimination, were among those waiting at a polling station in Alexandria to oppose the basic law. They fear Islamists, long repressed by Mubarak, will restrict social and other freedoms.

"I voted 'no' to the constitution out of patriotic duty," said Michael Nour, a 45-year-old Christian teacher in Alexandria. "The constitution does not represent all Egyptians."

Howaida Abdel Azeem, a post office employee, said: "I said 'yes' because I want the destruction the country is living through to be over and the crisis to pass."

Islamists are counting on their disciplined ranks of supporters and the many Egyptians who may fall into line in the hope of ending turmoil that has hammered the economy and sent Egypt's pound to eight-year lows against the dollar.

Mursi was among the early voters after polls opened at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT). He was shown on television casting his ballot shielded by a screen and then dipping his finger in ink - a measure to prevent people voting twice.

The second round will be held in other regions on December 22 because there are not enough judges willing to monitor all polling stations after some said they would boycott the vote.

Egyptians are being asked to accept or reject a constitution that must be in place before a parliamentary election can be held next year to replace an Islamist-led parliament dissolved in June. Many hope this will lead Egypt towards stability.

If the constitution is voted down, a new assembly will have to be formed to draft a revised version, a process that could take up to nine months.

The army has deployed about 120,000 troops and 6,000 tanks and armoured vehicles to protect polling stations and other government buildings. While the military backed Mubarak and his predecessors, it has not intervened in the present crisis.

(Writing by Edmund Blair and Giles Elgood; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Russia arrests opposition leaders at banned rally

MOSCOW: Russian police on Saturday arrested several opposition leaders, including well-known blogger Alexei Navalny, as hundreds of people packed a central Moscow square in defiance of an official ban to protest Vladimir Putin's rule.

Scores of Muscovites, many holding white roses, defied the authorities by turning up at Lubyanka Square, the seat of the FSB security services, despite temperatures of minus 14 degrees C (seven degrees F) and warnings that the unsanctioned rally would be broken up.

Navalny, possibly the most charismatic figure in the protest movement against the Russian president, was detained a day after investigators launched a new criminal probe against him for suspected fraud. patisserie

"It's raving mad. (They) simply snatched me from the crowd," Navalny tweeted from inside a police van.

Besides Navalny, police also arrested Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of leftist group the Left Front, and activists Ilya Yashin and Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of Putin's late mentor Anatoly Sobchak.

"Looks like I am a very dangerous criminal," Sobchak quipped on Twitter.

The prominent figures arrested all noted on Twitter that the police vans holding them had been equipped with webcams to keep close watch on their behaviour.

Police put the turnout at around 500 people, half of them journalists and bloggers, but an AFP correspondent said the real number of the protesters appeared to be significantly higher.

People laid white lilies, carnations and chrysanthemums at the Solovetsky Stone, a monument to victims of Stalin-era purges adorning the square, as a helicopter hovered overhead.

One hour into the rally, the monument was blanketed by piles of flowers.

"Our authorities are repressive," one protester, 48-year-old businessman Andrei Genin, told AFP, sporting a white ribbon, the symbol of the opposition movement against Putin.

City authorities had earlier banned an opposition march through the city, and the opposition Coordination Council had urged Russians to simply turn up at Lubyanka Square.

On the eve of the protest, Russian authorities launched a second major investigation against Navalny, accusing the protest leader and his brother Oleg of embezzling 55 million rubles ($1.8 million, 1.4 million euros) from a trading company.

Navalny, who has already been charged with embezzlement in an earlier case in which he faces up to 10 years in prison, vowed to press ahead with his political activism.

In a separate event, his supporters convened in the Russian capital to establish a new political party that would represent the interests of middle-class urbanities, the backbone of the anti-Putin protests.

Dubbed "The Popular Alliance", the party will promote the "middle class and the European choice", activist Leonid Volkov told Echo of Moscow radio, noting that Navalny himself would not be an official member.

The opposition movement is hoping to maintain momentum despite internal divisions between liberals, leftists and nationalists and the authorities' tough crackdown on dissenters since Putin's return to the Kremlin in May.

Even supporters admit that the euphoria that marked the first opposition protests that erupted after fraud-tainted parliamentary polls last December has largely died down.

Up to 120,000 people gathered near the Kremlin walls at the peak of the protests last winter, a huge number for a country that lost its taste for street politics after the turbulent 1990s.

The last major rally, in September, drew around 14,000 people, according to police, though the opposition argued many more had shown up.

Weeks after his inauguration, Putin signed off on a raft of laws that critics have attacked as a bid to quash dissent.

Scores of activists now face jail time for taking part in a May 6 protest on the eve of Putin's inauguration and for alleged plans to overthrow the Russian strongman with the help of foreign sponsors.

Ahead of Saturday's rally, Moscow prosecutors delivered a warning to leading activists, while police urged Russians to refrain from "provocations".

Smaller rallies were held in several cities across Russia.

Sixty people held a 40-minute march in Tomsk in western Siberia despite temperatures of minus 35 degrees C, a representative of the Solidarnost (Solidarity) movement, Ksenia Fadeyeva, told AFP.

Fourteen people marched in the city of Krasnoyarsk in eastern Siberia, police said.

- AFP/de

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Interaction key to end Kudankulam-like stir: IAEA chief

KORIYAMA (FUKUSHIMA): UN nuclear watchdog IAEA chief Yukiya Amano on Saturday called for 'better communication and higher transparency' in dealing with Kudankulam-like protests. Even as he sought to distance himself from both sides — protesters as well as votaries of nuclear power —the director-general said that the issue of spent N-fuel, which is at the core of protests in India, was one of the lessons the world learnt from the accident at Fukushima Daiichi N-plant in Japan last year.

Amano was talking exclusively to TOI here on the sidelines of the Fukushima ministerial conference that saw many smaller countries pleading for nuclear power generation to deal with rising fossil fuel prices and climate change issues. The conference, which was presided over by Japanese foreign minister Koichiro Gemba, was held to strengthen N- safety worldwide.

"I don't have any particular comment on opposition to nuclear power anywhere, or those who support it, but if I can give a recommendation, we need to share both good news and bad news to be able to get a better understanding of the problem," he told TOI, replying to a query about protests in India that have delayed the commissioning of the first unit at Kudankulam.

"Communication is one of the areas where we need to improve and IAEA has been organizing meetings of global experts to look into this. We have to explain complicated things in a simple manner and it is only through better communication and higher transparency that we can achieve this," he added.

Amano admitted that the safety aspect of the spent N-fuel was a very important issue. The government's 'success' in acquiring reprocessing rights from Russia has become a millstone around its neck as this prevents it from sending the spent or used fuel back to Russia. The government painstakingly maintains that it considers spent fuel an asset that is used to produce electricity.

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

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Conn. Shooter Adam Lanza: Quiet, Bright, Troubled

Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who killed 20 kids and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school Friday, was very bright, say neighbors and former classmates, but he was also socially awkward and deeply troubled.

"[Adam] was not connected with the other kids," said family friend Barbara Frey. A relative told ABC News that Adam was "obviously not well."

READ full ABC News coverage of the Connecticut shootings.

On Friday morning, Lanza shot his mother Nancy in the face at the home they shared in Newtown, and then drove her car to Sandy Hook Elementary School. Dressed in black combat gear, he broke a window at the school, which had recently had a new security system installed, and within minutes had shot and killed six adults and 20 schoolchildren between the ages of five and 10.

The shooting stopped when Lanza put a bullet in his own head. Multiple weapons were found at the scene, including two semiautomatic handguns registered to his mother. A Bushmaster rifle registered to Nancy was discovered outside in the car.

Long before Lanza's spree, however, residents of Newtown had noticed that tall, pale boy was different, and believed he had some kind of unspecified personality disorder.

"Adam Lanza has been a weird kid since we were five years old," wrote aneighbor and former classmate Timothy Dalton on Twitter. "As horrible as this was, I can't say I am surprised."

In school, Lanza carried a black briefcase and spoke little. Every day, he wore a sort of uniform: khakis and a shirt buttoned up to the neck, with pens lined up in his shirt pocket.

Newtown School Massacre: 20 Children, 7 Adults Dead Watch Video

Newtown Teacher Kept 1st Graders Calm During Massacre Watch Video

A former classmate in his 10th grade honors English class, Olivia DeVivo, says he "was always very nervous and socially awkward."

She told ABC News that "he didn't really want to be spoken to" and that when teachers would call on him "it appeared physically difficult for him to speak."

Lanza avoided public attention and had few, if any, friends. He liked to sit near the door of the classroom to make a quick exit.

He even managed to avoid having his picture in his high school yearbook. Instead of his portrait, the space reserved for Adam Lanza says "Camera Shy." And unlike most in his age group, he seems to have left little imprint on the internet – no Facebook page, no Twitter account.

Lanza's parents Peter and Nancy Lanza married in New Hampshire in 1981, and had two sons, Adam and his older brother Ryan, who is now 24 and lives in New Jersey.

The Lanzas divorced in 2009 after 28 years of marriage due to "irreconcilable differences." When they first filed for divorce in 2008, a judge ordered that they participate in a "parenting education program."

Adam was 17 at the time of the divorce. He continued to live in Newtown with his mother. His father now lives in his Stamford, Connecticut with his second wife.

Peter Lanza, who drove to northern New Jersey to talk to police and the FBI, is a vice president at GE Capital and had been a partner at global accounting giant Ernst & Young.

Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24, has worked at Ernst & Young for four years, apparently following in his father's footsteps and carving out a solid niche in the tax practice. He too was interviewed by the FBI. Neither he nor his father is under any suspicion.

"[Ryan] is a tax guy and he is clean as a whistle," a source familiar with his work said.

Police had initially identified Ryan as the killer. Ryan sent out a series of Facebook posts saying it wasn't him and that he was at work all day. Video records as well as card swipes at Ernst & Young verified his statement that he had been at the office.

Two federal sources told ABC News that identification belonging to Ryan Lanza was found at the scene of the mass shooting. They say that identification may have led to the confusion by authorities during the first hours after the shooting.

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U.S., rebels urge gloomy Moscow to help oust Assad

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's rebel leadership and the United States seized on Russian pessimism over President Bashar al-Assad's future to urge Moscow to help push its ally into ceding power and end the battles closing in around his capital.

"We want to commend the Russian government for finally waking up to the reality and acknowledging that the regime's days are numbered," the U.S. State Department spokeswoman said after a senior Kremlin envoy conceded publicly on Thursday that Assad's opponents could win the 20-month-old civil war.

"The question now is, will the Russian government join those of us in the international community who are working with the opposition to try to have a smooth democratic transition?" U.S. spokeswoman Victoria Nuland added in Washington.

In Marrakech, where his new coalition won recognition from other international powers as the legitimate leadership of Syria, rebel political leader Mouaz al-Khatib said he believed Russia, ally and arms supplier to the Assad dynasty since Soviet times, was looking for ways out of its support for a lost cause.

"I believe that the Russians have woken up and are sensing that they have implicated themselves with this regime, but they don't know how to get out," al-Khatib told Reuters. He held them "particularly responsible" for helping Assad with arms but said Moscow need not "lose everything" in Syria if it changed tack.

Under President Vladimir Putin, wary since last year's Libyan war of what Russia sees as a Western drive to use the United Nations to overthrow national leaders it dislikes, Russia has blocked U.N. efforts to squeeze Assad, who has also had strong support from his long-time sponsor Iran.

But Mikhail Bogdanov, a deputy foreign minister and the Kremlin's special envoy for Middle East affairs, was quoted as saying in Moscow: "One must look the facts in the face."

"Unfortunately, the victory of the Syrian opposition cannot be ruled out." The Syrian government, he said, was "losing control of more and more territory" and Moscow was preparing to evacuate Russian citizens if necessary.

Nuland said Bogdanov's comments demonstrated that Moscow now "sees the writing on the wall" on Syria and said Russia should now rally behind U.N. efforts to prevent a wider bloodbath.

"They can withdraw any residual support for the Assad regime, whether it is material support (or) financial support," she said. "They can also help us to identify people who might be willing, inside of Syria, to work on a transitional structure."

DIPLOMACY

International envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who has met Russian and U.S. officials twice in the past week, is seeking a solution based on an agreement reached in Geneva in June that called for the creation of a transitional government in Syria.

But Russia has repeated warnings that recognition of al-Khatib's coalition, notably by the United States, is undermining diplomacy, and rejected U.S. contentions that the Geneva agreement sent a clear message that Assad should step down.

Nuland said the Brahimi meetings could lay the framework for a political structure to follow Assad:

"We've said all along to the Russians that we are concerned that the longer that this goes on, and the longer it takes us to get to an alternative political path for Syria, the only path is going to be the military one and that is just going to bring more violence.

"We all ought to be working together."

Bogdanov, whose government has suggested that Assad himself should be allowed to see through a transition he has promised, suggested the rebels and their allies were set on a military solution and he gave little hint of detente with Washington.

"The fighting will become even more intense and (Syria) will lose tens of thousands and, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of civilians," Bogdanov was quoted as saying. "If such a price for the removal of the president seems acceptable to you, what can we do? We, of course, consider it absolutely unacceptable."

The head of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said elsewhere: "I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse."

A U.S. official said: "Assad probably still believes that Syria is his and illusions can die hard. But Assad and those closest to him have got to be feeling the psychological strain of fighting a long war that is not going their way."

DAMASCUS BATTLES

But Al-Khatib, who played down Western concerns of sectarian Sunni Islamists in rebel ranks, warned that the fighting was far from over, even as it has begun to rattle the heart of Assad's power in Damascus. On Wednesday, a car bomb killed at least 16 people in a nearby town which is home to many military families.

"The noose is tightening around the regime," al-Khatib said.

"(But) the regime still has power. People think that the regime is finished, but it still has power left, but it is demoralized and however long it lasted its end is clear."

Day and night, Damascenes can hear the thunderous sound of bombardment aimed at rebel-held and contested neighborhoods.

The city's streets have now turned into a labyrinth of checkpoints and road blocks, with several major roads permanently closed off to traffic by concrete barriers.

"We escape from one place and trouble follows," said one grandmother, Um Hassan, as she described to Reuters her family's flight from one neighborhood to another as fighting seeps into the capital. "I don't know where we can keep running to."

Nonetheless, al-Khatib played down demands for their allies to provide heavier weaponry - a request long resisted by governments wary of anti-aircraft missiles and other hardware reaching Islamist rebels who might turn them against the West.

"The Syrian people ... no longer need international forces to protect them," he said, not specifying whether he meant a no-fly zone, arms supplies or other military support.

The opposition chief said he was willing to listen to proposals for Assad to escape with his life - "The best thing is that he steps down and stops drinking the blood of the Syrian people" - and outlined three scenarios for a change of power:

Al-Khatib ruled out the Russian proposal suggesting Assad hand over power to a transitional government while remaining president, saying it was "disgraceful for a slaughtered nation to accept to have a killer and criminal at its head".

The British-based Syrian Observatory said war planes bombed rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus on Thursday and artillery was hitting Daraya and Moadamiyeh, southwestern areas near the centre where rebels have been fighting for a foothold.

Syria has relied on war planes and helicopters to bombard rebel districts but Damascus denied accusations by U.S. and NATO officials that it had fired Scud missiles in recent days. The foreign ministry said the long-range missiles were not used against "terrorist groups," a term it uses for the rebels.

At least 40,000 people have been killed in Syria's uprising, which started in March 2011 with street protests which were met with gunfire by Assad's security forces, and which spiraled into the most enduring and destructive of the Arab revolts.

(Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman in Moscow and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Michael Roddy) For an interactive look at the uprising in Syria, please click on http://link.reuters.com/rut37s

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Football: Wenger lucky to avoid sack, says Wright

LONDON: Arsenal legend Ian Wright claims Gunners manager Arsene Wenger is lucky to still have a job because any other boss would have been sacked for going so long without success.

Wright, one of the club's all-time greats, has added his voice to the growing criticism of Wenger in the aftermath of Tuesday's humiliating League Cup quarter-final defeat at Bradford.

Wenger, 63, has not delivered a trophy since the FA Cup in 2005 and the dismal display against League Two minnows Bradford, which ended with a penalty shoot-out loss, has only increased Wright's belief that the Frenchman is losing his fight to stop Arsenal sliding into obscurity.

Wright, who played under Wenger at the end of his seven-year spell with Arsenal, claims his former boss is now living off past glories that will take years to recapture.

"I wouldn't say 'surely he has to go', but it is a unique position he's in because I think any manager in any country in any world with a record like this and no prospect of light at the end of the tunnel, they would've been gone," Wright told Absolute Radio's RocknRoll Football show.

"People are holding onto the fact to what Arsene has done, and people are saying he is going to tarnish what he has done, but I don't think that will ever happen.

"However, it is a long way back. I feel there are a lot of deluded Arsenal fans who are out in the wilderness still saying 'in Arsene we trust' and stuff like that."

Wenger is rightly regarded as Arsenal's greatest ever manager after leading the club to three Premier League titles, four FA Cup and a Champions League final during his 16-year reign, as well introducing an eye-catching style of play that became the envy of the rest of Europe for several years.

But there has been a gradual disintegration of Wenger's squad in recent years, with the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri and Robin van Persie all making moves to more successful clubs.

Wright, who lost his status as Arsenal's record goalscorer to Thierry Henry, believes Wenger needs to be more honest about the state of his squad rather than continually defending the indefensible.

"You hear him doing interviews afterwards saying, 'I have got a great team with a great spirit', but we are not seeing that," Wright added.

"He does not tell the truth for me, he does not say what is happening.

"What is going on? Have you got any money to spend or haven't you? Is it the fact the board are giving you the money and you are not spending? Is that too hard a question to answer for Arsenal?"

-AFP/ac

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Sushil Kumar Shinde, Rehman Malik operationalise new visa regime

NEW DELHI: Travel between India and Pakistan will become easier with the operationalisation of a new visa regime on Friday that allows multi-city visas for up to five cities, visitor visas for two years for senior citizens and children below 12 years, visa on arrival for senior citizens, and group tourist visa, besides exempting specified categories of businessmen from police reporting.

The visa agreement was operationalised by home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and visiting Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik, both of whom agreed that it would promote people-to-people contact between the two countries. The visa agreement was signed by the two sides on September 8. Malik said the new visa agreement was not only historic but a step forward for peace.

Outlining the key features of the new visa regime, Shinde said visas can now be granted for five places as against the earlier restriction of three cities. Visitor visas can be issued for up to two years where the applicant is above 65 years of age, where a national of one country is married to a national of the other country and children below 12 years accompanying their parents.

Senior citizens (above 65 years of age) can now avail of visa on arrival, to be issued at Attari/Wagah post for 45 days with a single entry. This will, however, take effect only from January 15, 2013.

In a move aimed at promoting economic ties between the neighbours, business visa norms have been eased, with businessmen with income above 5 million Pakistani rupees or having an annual turnover above 30 million Pakistani rupees now exempt from police reporting.

Indians and Pakistanis can travel to each other's country in groups comprising 10-50 members. The groups, organized by approved tour operators and travel agents, will be issued group tourist visas for 30 days. Group visas will, however, be issued from March 15, 2013.

Entry and exit from different designated check-posts has been allowed, if indicated in the application, though a person can exit from Attari/Wagah on foot only if he had also made the entry on foot from the same check-post.

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

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Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

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More Than 20, Mostly Kids, Killed at Grade School

More than two dozen people, mostly elementary school children, were shot and killed at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school this morning, federal and state sources tell ABC News.

The massacre involved two gunmen at a Connecticut school this morning, prompting the town of Newtown to lock down all of its schools and draw SWAT teams to the school, authorities said today.

State Police confirm that one shooter is dead. A second gunman is apparently at large. Car-to-car searches are underway.

It's unclear how many people have been shot, but 25 people, mostly children are dead, multiple federal and state sources tell ABC News. That number could rise, officials said.

It is the worst shooting in a U.S. elementary school in recent memory.

The shooting comes just three days after masked gunman Jacob Roberts opened fire in a busy Portland, Ore., mall killing two before turning the gun on himself.

Today's shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, about 12 miles east of Danbury.

Watch State Police News Conference Live at 1 p.m. at ABCNews.com

State Police received the first 911 call at 9:41a.m. and immediately began sending emergency units from the western part of the state. Initial 911 calls stated that multiple students were trapped in a classroom, possibly with a gunman, according to a Connecticut State Police source.

Shannon Hicks/The Newtown Bee

Connecticut School Shooting: 3 Victims Hospitalized Watch Video

Connecticut School Shooting: 1 Gunman Confirmed Dead Watch Video

A photo from the scene shows a line of distressed children being led out of the school.

LIVE UPDATES: Newtown, Conn., School Shooting

While some students have been reunited with their parents on the school's perimeter, one group of students remains unaccounted for, according to a source with a child in the school.

The school is kindergarten through fourth grade.

CLICK HERE for more photos from the scene.

Three patients have been taken to Danbury Hospital, which is also on lockdown, according to the hospital's Facebook page.

"Out of abundance of caution and not because of any direct threat Danbury Hospital is under lockdown," the statement said. "This allows us simply to focus on the important work at hand."

Newtown Public School District secretary of superintendent Kathy June said in a statement that the district's school were locked down because of the report of a shooting. "The district is taking preventive measures by putting all schools in lockdown until we ensure the safety of all students and staff."

State police sent SWAT team units to Newtown.

All public and private schools in the town are on lockdown.

"We have increased our police presence at all Danbury Public Schools due to the events in Newtown. Pray for the victims," Newtown Mayor Boughton tweeted.

State emergency management officials said ambulances and other units were also en route and staging near the school.

A message on the school district website says that all afternoon kindergarten is cancelled today and there will be no mid-day bus runs.

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