Syria opposition leader rejects Moscow invitation

ALEPPO PROVINCE, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's opposition leader has rejected an invitation from Russia for peace talks, dealing another blow to international hopes that diplomacy can be resurrected to end a 21-month civil war.

Russia, President Bashar al-Assad's main international protector, said on Friday it had sent an invitation for a visit to Moaz Alkhatib, whose six-week-old National Coalition opposition group has been recognized by most Western and Arab states as the legitimate voice of the Syrian people.

But in an interview on Al Jazeera television, Alkhatib said he had already ruled out such a trip and wanted an apology from Moscow for its support for Assad.

"We have clearly said we will not go to Moscow. We could meet in an Arab country if there was a clear agenda," he said.

"Now we also want an apology from (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei) Lavrov because all this time he said that the people will decide their destiny, without foreign intervention. Russia is intervening and meanwhile all these massacres of the Syrian people have happened, treated as if they were a picnic."

"If we don't represent the Syrian people, why do they invite us?" Alkhatib said. "And if we do represent the Syrian people why doesn't Russia respond and issue a clear condemnation of the barbarity of the regime and make a clear call for Assad to step down? This is the basic condition for any negotiations."

With the rebels advancing steadily over the second half of 2012, diplomats have been searching for months for signs that Moscow's willingness to protect Assad is faltering.

So far Russia has stuck to its position that rebels must negotiate with Assad's government, which has ruled since his father seized power in a coup 42 years ago.

"I think a realistic and detailed assessment of the situation inside Syria will prompt reasonable opposition members to seek ways to start a political dialogue," Lavrov said on Friday.

That was immediately dismissed by the opposition: "The coalition is ready for political talks with anyone ... but it will not negotiate with the Assad regime," spokesman Walid al-Bunni told Reuters. "Everything can happen after the Assad regime and all its foundations have gone. After that we can sit down with all Syrians to set out the future."

BRAHIMI TO MOSCOW

Russia says it is behind the efforts of U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, fresh from a five-day trip to Damascus where he met Assad. Brahimi, due in Moscow for talks on Saturday, is touting a months-old peace plan for a transitional government.

That U.N. plan was long seen as a dead letter, foundering from the outset over the question of whether the transitional body would include Assad or his allies. Brahimi's predecessor, Kofi Annan, quit in frustration shortly after negotiating it.

But with rebels having seized control of large sections of the country in recent months, Russia and the United States have been working with Brahimi to resurrect the plan as the only internationally recognized diplomatic negotiating track.

Russia's Middle East envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who announced the invitation to Alkhatib, said further talks were scheduled between the "three B's" - himself, Brahimi and U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns.

Speaking in Damascus on Thursday, Brahimi called for a transitional government with "all the powers of the state", a phrase interpreted by the opposition as potentially signaling tolerance of Assad remaining in some ceremonial role.

But such a plan is anathema to the surging rebels, who now believe they can drive Assad out with a military victory, despite long being outgunned by his forces.

"We do not agree at all with Brahimi's initiative. We do not agree with anything Brahimi says," Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, told reporters at his headquarters there.

Oqaidi said the rebels want Assad and his allies tried in Syria for crimes. Assad himself says he will stay on and fight to the death if necessary.

In the rebel-held town of Kafranbel, demonstrators held up cartoons showing Brahimi speaking to a news conference with toilet bowls in front of him, in place of microphones. Banners denounced the U.N. envoy with obscenities in English.

DIPLOMATS IMPOTENT

Diplomacy has largely been irrelevant to the conflict so far, with Western states ruling out military intervention like the NATO bombing that helped topple Libya's Muammar Gaddafi last year, and Russia and China blocking U.N. action against Assad.

Meanwhile, the fighting has grown fiercer and more sectarian, with rebels mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority battling Assad's government and allied militia dominated by his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Still, Western diplomats have repeatedly touted signs of a change in policy from Russia, which they hope could prove decisive, much as Moscow's withdrawal of support for Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic heralded his downfall a decade ago.

Bogdanov said earlier this month that Assad's forces were losing ground and rebels might win the war, but Russia has since rowed back, with Lavrov last week reiterating Moscow's position that neither side could win through force.

Still, some Moscow-based analysts see the Kremlin coming to accept it must adapt to the possibility of rebel victory.

"As the situation changes on the battlefield, more incentives emerge for seeking a way to stop the military action and move to a phase of political regulation," said Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Meanwhile, on the ground the bloodshed that has killed some 44,000 people continues unabated. According to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, 150 people were killed on Thursday, a typical toll as fighting has escalated in recent months.

Government war planes bombarded the town of Assal al-Ward in the Qalamoun district of Damascus province for the first time, killing one person and wounding dozens, the observatory said.

In Aleppo, Syria's northern commercial hub, clashes took place between rebel fighters and army forces around an air force intelligence building in the Zahra quarter, a neighborhood that has been surrounded by rebels for weeks.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Dominic Evans in Beirut and Steve Gutterman and Alissa de Carbonnel in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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'Cliff' pessimism delivers US stocks another loss

NEW YORK: US stocks sank for a fifth straight day Friday, showing more doubts that politicians will be able to agree a deal to fix the fiscal cliff with only days before the year-end deadline.

Shares were cautiously lower for most of the day after President Barack Obama returned from his vacation early to try to broker a deal with Democrat and Republican congressional leaders in the White House.

But without any positive signs late in the day and the weekend looming, traders gave up and sold off at a stronger pace in the last half hour.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished off 158.20 points (1.21 percent) at 12,938.11.

The broad-market S&P 500 lost 15.67 (1.10 percent) to 1,402.43, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite shed 25.60 points (0.86 percent) to 2,960.31.

"In the end, fiscal-cliff concerns dominated. No deal meant more worry, and we sold off," said Ryan Detrick of Schaeffer's Investment Research.

All 30 Dow blue chips were in the red, led by Hewlett-Packard (-2.6 percent), which was pushed lower after the SEC said it was looking into its subsidiary Autonomy.

In November, HP accused Autonomy of fraudulent accounting that was uncovered only after its $10 billion purchase of the British software firm in 2011.

Also on the Dow, Exxon lost 2.0 percent and Chevron 1.9 percent.

A rare gainer for the day was embattled bookseller Barnes & Noble, which although reporting that its Nook e-reader had disappointing Christmas sales, got a 4.3 percent boost on the announcement that British publisher Pearson would take a five percent stake in its Nook unit for $89.5 million.

Herbalife, under attack for weeks from short-selling hedge funds, bounced back with a 3.9 percent gain.

Facebook, which opened more than 2.5 percent lower on a report by audience tracker AppData.com that some 3.5 million people had stopped using its photo-sharing app Instagram daily over the past week, regained ground to finish with a loss of just 0.5 percent.

Facebook acquired Instagram earlier this year. The original price was pegged at $1 billion but the final value was less because of a decline in the social network's share price.

Bond prices rose. The 10-year US Treasury yield slipped to 1.71 from 1.72 percent late Thursday, while the 30-year edged lower to 2.88 percent from 2.89 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.

-AFP/ac

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Women suffer big in India's state vs rebels war

NEW DELHI:
* Soni Sori, a tribal teacher in a government school in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, was arrested in October last year on charges of being a courier between the Maoists and Essar Group which has mining interests in the region. She alleged that she had been sexually assaulted by the Chhattisgarh police and a Kolkata hospital that examined her had found stones in her private parts and rectum.

* In November this year, Chhattisgarh police and CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) rescued two minor tribal girls who were allegedly gang-raped by Maoists in Bijapur, Bastar district.

* In July 2004, the rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama Devi in Imphal by Assam Rifles personnel had rocked the nation with several women's groups in Manipur coming out naked in the streets to protest. A few days back, Imphal witnessed mob violence over government's inaction on molestation of an actress by an NSCN (IM) cadre.

* On the night of February 23 and 24, 1991, personnel of the 4 Rajputana Rifles had raped about 30 women in Kunan Poshpora village in the border district of Kupwara in north Kashmir.

*A young girl in Jharkhand's insurgency-hit Khunti district had to flee a separatist camp after she was forced to sleep with five Naxalites every night, according to Baidyanath Kumar of the NGO Diya Seva Sansthan that had rescued her.

Even as the Delhi bus gang-rape case simmers, women in India's insurgency-hit areas —Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand or the North East — continue to be exploited sexually both by separatists and the security forces. Often, women endure sexual abuse in return for life of their families. Women in villages of border districts of Rajouri or Poonch in Jammu and Kupwara and Uri in Kashmir are known to submit to sexual exploitation by militants from across the border, besides giving them food and shelter, in return for the safety of their families. In fact, sources reveal that soldier husbands inform their wives in advance of their arrival on holidays so that the terrorists can move out of their homes in time.

In Naxalite-hit areas, many women end up being recruited in the cadres, where they are exploited sexually. Says Baidyanath Kumar, "The Naxals induct women by force for dual purpose. They serve as sex slaves and cook for them too." Shambhu Kumar, Ranchi ASP (Operations), adds, "99% of women Naxals, whether arrested or those who have surrendered complain of sexual harassment in the camps." Often, women are left with no choice — they either give into the state-sponsored vigilantes, Salwa Judum, or tag along with Maoist cadres.

Most often, cases of sexual crimes go unreported either due to remoteness of the location or victims choosing to stay silent out of fear or social stigma attached to such exploitation. Babloo Loitongbam, director of Imphal-based Human Rights' Alert, says, "In a conflict zone, targeting women's honour becomes a contest between the warring parties. And the reported cases of rape by army or the para-military forces in Manipur are just the tip of the iceberg. We have documented over 20 rape cases in the last few years but most go unreported." Even if the victim reports the crime, most of these cases remain unsolved and justice remains elusive.

Anjuman Ara Begum, a Guwahati-based law researcher, says that sexual crimes in armed conflicts are always treated with a 'forget and forgive' policy. "Security forces enjoy immunity as prior sanctions are required for initiating legal cases against them under Afspa (Armed Forces Special (Powers Act), 1958) and CrPC." Many states in the North East are under the Afspa.

— Reporting by Joseph John in Raipur, Oinam Sunil in Guwahati, M Saleem Pandit in Srinagar and Alok K N Mishra in Ranchi.

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."

"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

___

Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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Did the Exodus of Moses Really Happen?

In the Bible, he is called Moses. In the Koran, he is the prophet Musa.

Religious scholars have long questioned whether of the story of a prophet leading God's chosen people in a great exodus out of Egypt and the freedom it brought them afterwards was real, but the similarities between a pharaoh's ancient hymn and a psalm of David might hold the link to his existence.

Tune in to Part 2 of Christiane Amanpour's ABC News special, "Back to the Beginning," which explores the history of the Bible from Genesis to Jesus, on Friday, Dec. 28 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.

Christian scripture says Moses was content to grow old with his family in the vast deserted wilderness of Midian, and 40 years passed until the Bible says God spoke to him through the Burning Bush and told him to lead his people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. According to tradition, that miraculous bush can still be seen today enclosed within the ancient walls of St. Catherine's Monastery, located not far from Moses' hometown.

But there was another figure in the ancient world who gave up everything to answer the call from what he believed was the one and only true God.

Archaeologists discovered the remains of the ancient city of Amarna in the 1800s. Egyptologist Rawya Ismail, who has been studying the ruins for years, believes, as other archaeologists do, that Pharaoh Akhenaten built the city as a tribute to Aten, the sun.

Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

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She said it was a bold and unusual step for the pharaoh to leave the luxurious trappings of palace life in Luxor for the inhospitable landscape of Amarna, but it might have been his only choice as the priests from the existing religious establishment gained power.

"The very powerful Amun-Ra priests that he couldn't stand against gained control of the whole country," Ismail said. "The idea was to find a place that had never been used by any other gods -- to be virgin is what he called it -- so he chose this place."

All over the walls inside the city's beautiful tombs are examples of Akhanaten's radical message of monotheism. There is the Hymn to the Aten, which translates, in part, to: "The earth comes into being by your hand, as you made it. When you dawn, they live. When you set, they die. You yourself are lifetime, one lives by you."

PHOTOS: Christiane Amanpour's Journey 'Back to the Beginning'

Some attribute the writing of the hymn to Akhanaten himself, but it bears a striking resemblance to a passage that can be found in the Hebrew Bible: Psalm 104.

"If you compare the hymns from A to Z, you'll find mirror images to it in many of the holy books," Ismail said. "And if you compare certain parts of it, you'll find it almost exactly -- a typical translation for some of the [psalms] of David."

Psalm 104, written a few hundred years later, references a Lord that ruled over Israel and a passage compares him to the sun.

"You hide your face, they are troubled," part of it reads. "You take away your breath, they die, And return to dust. You send forth your breath, they are created, And you renew the face of the earth."

Like the psalm, the Hymn to Aten extols the virtues of the one true God.

"A lot of people think that [the Hymn to Aten] was the source of the [psalms] of David," Ismail said. "Putting Egypt on the trade route, a lot of people traveled from Egypt and came back to Egypt, it wasn't like a country living in isolation."

Ismail believes it is possible that the message from the heretic pharaoh has some connection to the story of Moses and the Exodus, as outlined in the Hebrew Bible.

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Russia's Putin signals he will sign U.S. adoption ban

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin signaled on Thursday he would sign into law a bill barring Americans from adopting Russian children and sought to forestall criticism of the move by promising measures to better care for his country's orphans.

In televised comments, Putin tried to appeal to people's patriotism by suggesting that strong and responsible countries should take care of their own and lent his support to a bill that has further strained U.S.-Russia relations.

"There are probably many places in the world where living standards are higher than ours. So what, are we going to send all our children there? Maybe we should move there ourselves?" he said, with sarcasm.

Parliament gave its final approval on Wednesday to the bill, which would also introduce other measures in retaliation for new U.S. legislation which is designed to punish Russians accused of human rights violations.

For it to become law Putin needs to sign it.

"So far I see no reason not to sign it, although I have to review the final text and weigh everything," Putin said at a meeting of federal and regional officials that was shown live on the state's 24-hour news channel.

"I intend to sign not only the law ... but also a presidential decree that will modify the support mechanisms for orphaned children ... especially those who are in a difficult situation, by that I mean in poor health," Putin said.

Critics of the bill say the Russian authorities are playing political games with the lives of children, while the U.S. State Department repeated its "deep concern" over the measure.

"Since 1992 American families have welcomed more than 60,000 Russian children into their homes, and it is misguided to link the fate of children to unrelated political considerations," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement.

Ventrell added that the United States was troubled by provisions in the bill that would restrict the ability of Russian civil society organizations to work with U.S. partners.

Children in Russia's crowded and troubled orphanage system - particularly those with serious illnesses or disabilities - will have less of a chance of finding homes, and of even surviving, if it becomes law, child rights advocates say.

They point to people like Jessica Long, who was given up shortly after birth by her parents in Siberia but was raised by adoptive parents in the United States and became a Paralympic swimming champion.

However, the Russian authorities point to the deaths of 19 Russian-born children adopted by American parents in the past decade, and lawmakers named the bill after a boy who died of heat stroke in Virginia after his adoptive father left him locked in a car for hours.

Putin reiterated Russian complaints that U.S. courts have been too lenient on parents in such cases, saying Russia has inadequate access to Russian-born children in the United States despite a bilateral agreement that entered into force on November 1.

NATIONAL IDENTITY

But Putin, who began a new six-year term in May and has searched for ways to unite the country during 13 years in power, suggested there were deeper motives for such a ban.

"For centuries, neither spiritual nor state leaders sent anyone abroad," he said, indicating he was not speaking specifically about Russia but about many societies.

"They always fight for their national identities - they gather themselves together in a fist, they fight for their language, culture," he said.

The bid to ban American adoptions plays on sensitivity in Russia about adoptions by foreigners, which skyrocketed as the social safety net unraveled with the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Families from the United States adopt more Russian children than those of any other country.

Putin had earlier described the Russian bill as an emotional but appropriate response to the Magnitsky Act, legislation signed by President Barack Obama this month as part of a law granting Russia "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) status.

The U.S. law imposes visa bans and asset freezes on Russians accused of human rights violations, including those linked to the death in a Moscow jail of Sergei Magnitsky, an anti-graft lawyer, in 2009.

The Russian bill would impose similar measures against Americans accused of violating the rights of Russian abroad and outlaw some U.S.-funded non-governmental groups.

(Reporting By Alexei Anishchuk; additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Steve Gutterman; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Doina Chiacu)

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US stocks down as "fiscal cliff" deadline nears

NEW YORK: US stocks dipped Thursday in the absence of a deal to avert a "fiscal cliff" crisis as an end-of-year deadline crept closer.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the session down 18.28 points (0.14 percent) at 13,096.31.

The broad-market S&P 500 slipped 1.73 points (0.12 percent) at 1,418.10 while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite shed 4.25 points (0.14 percent) at 2,985.91.

Washington has until the end of the month to reach a compromise on how to avert a crisis that could lead to steep tax hikes and stringent budget cuts. But with the clock ticking, a deal has yet to take shape.

Experts say a fall over the so-called "fiscal cliff" could take the world's biggest economy back into recession.

Still, markets appeared to be bolstered by word that the House of Representatives would reconvene on Sunday, raising hopes of an 11th-hour compromise.

President Barack Obama cut short his family Christmas break in Hawaii and returned to the capital, and the Senate was also in session Thursday.

"News that the House will reconvene for a session Sunday night propelled stocks to end well off the lows of the day, erasing an earlier double-digit loss on the Dow that came courtesy of discouraging remarks from Senator Harry Reid and a fall in Consumer Confidence," said analysts with Charles Schwab & Co.

Traders were also digesting a sharp drop in consumer confidence in December, traditionally a key driver of the US economy.

In its monthly survey, the Conference Board said the index now stands at 65.1, compared to the downwardly revised 71.5 in November.

Stocks in focus included US auto giant Ford, which said Thursday it would invest $773 million to expand factories across its home state of Michigan, generating 2,350 new jobs, part of a plan to add 12,000 jobs by 2015. It fell 0.23 percent.

Microsoft edged 0.4 percent higher after announcing it would open six new stores in the United States in 2013.

US-listed shares of Toyota Motor Corporation climbed 2.4 percent. The Japanese automaker said Wednesday that it had agreed to pay about $1.1 billion to settle a class action lawsuit launched by US vehicle owners affected by a series of mass recalls.

Marvell Technology Group dropped 3.5 percent after a jury on Wednesday hit it with a billion-dollar verdict, ruling that the US chip maker "willfully" infringed on patents held by Carnegie Mellon University.

Bond prices rose. The 10-year US Treasury yield fell to 1.72 percent from 1.76 percent late Wednesday, while the 30-year slipped to 2.9 percent from 2.93 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.

-AFP/ac

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Nirbhaya’s will power pulling her through: Amar Singh

NEW DELHI: It is Nirbhaya's sheer will power that she has pulled through this critical state, said Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh who is recuperating in Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore where she was flown to on Wednesday night.

Singh said Nirbhaya was "as stable as she was in Delhi" which is an "achievement", raising hopes amid grim signals over what the future holds for the tenacious girl.

He underwent kidney transplant at the famous Singapore hospital in 2009. His prolonged stay there, followed by the presence of the who's who of industry, Bollywood and politics, put it on the A-list of the country's VIPs. Since then, megastar Rajnikanth has been treated there.

The surprise decision to shift Nirbhaya out of Safdarjung Hospital in a critical state has raised many questions, with the choice of hospital intriguing many. But Singh, once close to Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amitabh Bachchan, vouched for it.

"It is the best hospital for organ transplant and more importantly, it is very good for post-operative care," Singh said.

Intestinal problem ties Nirbhaya to the Singapore hospital's first Indian star patient. Singh had his intestines cut up after an ailment was callously assumed as malignant. A large part of his bowels were removed before he realized that it was a medical mess-up. Then, a famous surgeon from a top Mumbai hospital suggested the Singapore medical centre.

Since then, movie icon Rajnikanth has come here, putting the hospital in the spotlight for situations like Nirbhaya's crisis.

"Singapore is the nearest destination to bring her to in her state of criticality. It is only five hours from India," Singh said.

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."

"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

___

Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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Putin Will Sign Ban on Adoptions to United States

Activists protest against a bill banning U.S. adoptions of Russian children in St.Petersburg, Russia, Dec. 26, 2012. Dmitry Lovetsky/AP Photo

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he will sign a controversial ban on adoptions to the United States, defying domestic and international criticism that the move is playing politics with the lives of orphans.

The ban was added last week to a broader bill retaliating for a set of human rights sanctions that President Obama signed into law earlier this month. Putin also pledged to improve the lives of children in Russia’s notoriously under-resourced orphanages.

“I intend to sign the law you have just mentioned as well as a presidential decree changing the procedure of helping orphaned children, children left without parental care, and especially children who are in a disadvantageous situation due to their health problems,” Putin said, according to the Russian Interfax news agency, when asked about the ban during a meeting of the Russian State Council on Thursday.

Putin added that higher living standards overseas are no reason to allow children to be adopted by foreigners.

The Life of Putin

“There is one more reason of which I haven’t spoken yet, but which I would mention now. Probably there are quite a lot of places in the world where living standards are somewhat better than we have. And so what? Will we send all our children there? Perhaps we will move there ourselves?” he said.

Putin did not say when he would sign the bill into law, but if it is done immediately it would go into force on January 1.

At stake are the cases of 46 Russian children whose adoptions would be frozen if the bill becomes law, according to Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Pavel Astakhav. He said those children would receive priority to be adopted by Russian families.

American families who were preparing to welcome their newly adopted children home are instead bracing themselves for the possibility of never seeing them again.

“It’s a heartbreaking process because we’ve already started preparing our home. Not remodeling, or painting, or buying furniture or anything, but just preparing the emotional state of our home, of ourselves and of our children for the change that is going to occur,” Patrick Griffin told ABC affiliate KCUA. He and his wife Jan are just two months into adopting a child from Russia.

“You hope that it is not a door shut but just, you know, that it is simply an obstacle, a delay. But we do not know. It’s the fear of the unknown,” Griffin said.

The proposed ban has split Russian society. At least seven people were detained while protesting the bill on Wednesday as the upper house of parliament vote to approve the measure, according to RIA Novosti. Human rights advocates have urged Russian authorities not to move forward with the ban, saying it denies Russian orphans a home with a family.

It has also caused a rare division among the Russian government.

Several top officials, including Russia’s foreign minister and education minister have come out against the ban. A leaked memo from another top official suggested its passage would cause Russia to breach several international treaties, including a recently enacted adoption agreement between the United States and Russia.

Others, like Astakhav, have supported the measure, saying that Russian children should remain in Russia.

A recent poll by the Public Opinion Foundation found a majority of Russians supported the ban, while a quarter opposed it and another quarter expressed no opinion.

Russia is the third most-popular place for Americans to adopt children. According to the State Department, over 45,000 Russian children have been adopted by American families since 1999.

Russian officials, however, have pointed to the cases of 19 Russian adopted children who have been killed in the United States as evidence of broader mistreatment of Russian children by their adopted parents. The adoption ban bill was named after Dima Yakovlev, who died in 2008 after his adoptive father left him in a car in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. The bill also slaps sanctions on Americans accused of abusing Russian children and judges deemed to have provided them with lenient sentences.

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