Seeking to weaken the Afghan government, Taliban insurgents have been carrying out attacks and assassinations intended to intimidate both officials and civilians ahead of next year’s withdrawal of most international troops.

Baghlan provincial council leader Mohammad Rasoul Mohseni was entering the compound in the provincial capital of Pul-e-Khumri in the morning when the bomber approached on foot and detonated his explosives, said Baghlan chief of police Asadullah Sherzad.

The attacker was dressed in police uniform and blended with officers at a checkpoint near the council headquarters, then slipped into a group of people surrounding Mohseni and set off his bomb in the crowd, said Baghlan deputy police chief Mohammad Sadeq Muradi.

“He was basically waiting for his target, who was Rasoul Mohseni,” Muradi said.

Two of Mohseni’s police bodyguards, four checkpoint police and seven civilians were killed in the blast, he said. It was unclear whether the attacker was actually a member of Afghan security forces or an insurgent who bought or stole a uniform.

Mohammad Zahier Ghanizada, a member of parliament from Baghlan, said that Mohseni had previously received multiple death threats.

A well-known figure in Baghlan, Mohseni was previously a respected commander in the Northern Alliance that fought against the Taliban’s hard-line regime before it was toppled in 2001. He comes from a prominent family in the province, and his brother Azim Mohseni is a member of parliament.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed in a text message to journalists that an insurgent operative carried out the targeted bombing.

“Today at 11 a.m. in front of the Baghlan provincial council office, we have carried out a suicide attack and killed the head of the council,” it said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the bombing Monday.

“Such attacks are against all human rights and the principles of Islam,” Karzai said in a statement. “Perpetrators of such attacks are enemies of the Afghan nation and the puppets of foreigners.”

Karzai left later Monday for a two-day state visit to India, where he is expected to request military aid.

Both Karzai and the U.S. have sought peace talks with the Taliban and other insurgent factions in preparation for most foreign troops leaving next year after more than 12 years of war, but the efforts have borne little fruit. The Taliban seek to re-establish the strict interpretation of Islamic law they imposed for five years before being ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion over its sheltering of al-Qaida’s leadership.

The insurgents last month launched a fierce new spring offensive. On Monday, Taliban forces attacked several police checkpoints in the southern province of Helmand, and fighting raged on all day and into the night, both insurgents and police said.

Helmand’s deputy police chief, Ghulam Rabbani, said the fighting was in heavily contested Sangin district and there were casualties on both sides. He expected the clashes to continue overnight.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the insurgents had wrested control of six police checkpoints, but Helmand government officials denied that.

The insurgents also are pushing an assassination and bombing campaign that has in the past week alone seen the police chief of Farah province gunned down outside his home and twin blasts kill nine people in an elite gated community for government officials and business owners outside of the southern city of Kandahar. Two bombs also exploded outside the provincial governor’s office in Nangarhar province last week, killing one police guard.

Insurgents have also targeted members of the international coalition. A roadside bomb killed four American soldiers last week in the country’s south, while another insurgent faction, Hizb-e-Islami, targeted a coalition convoy in the capital of Kabul two days later, killing two U.S. soldiers and four American contractors who were training Afghan troops to take over security.

The one-story brick-and-wood hospital building housed patients with severe mental disorders, Health Ministry officials said. An Emergencies Ministry official said the fire started in a wooden annex and then spread to the main brick building, which had wooden beams.

Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said that half of the patients took sedatives at night. She insisted that the patients were not tied to their beds and were not given any medication that would leave them unconscious and unable to escape.

At least 29 people were burned alive, said Irina Gumennaya, a spokeswoman for the federal Investigative Committee.

Investigators said the 38 dead included 36 patients and two doctors. They said a nurse managed to escape and save one patient, while another patient got out on his own. The Emergencies Ministry also posted a list of the patients indicating they ranged in age from 20 to 76. Gumennaya told Russian news agencies that most of the people died in their beds.

Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyev said some of the hospital windows were barred. Gumennaya cited the surviving nurse as saying that the doors inside the hospital were not locked.

Investigators said they are looking at violations of fire regulations and a short circuit as possible causes for the blaze that engulfed the hospital in the Ramensky settlement, some 85 kilometers (53 miles) north of Moscow.

Vadim Belovoshin of the Emergencies Ministry said that it took firefighters an hour to get to the hospital because a ferry across a canal was closed and they had to make a detour.

Vorobyev told Russian state television that the fire alarm seems to have worked, but the fire spread too quickly.

Skvotsova told the state television said that the hospital had all the necessary fire equipment, but conceded mental hospitals should be better equiped for emergencies than the current law requires.

President Vladimir Putin called for a thorough investigation into the deadly fire and asked regional authorities to pay more attention to safety regulations.

Russia has a poor fire safety record, with about 12,000 deaths reported in 2012. In January, a fire in an underground parking lot killed 10 migrant workers from Tajikistan who were working and living there. In a similar incident in September, 14 Vietnamese workers were killed by fire at a clothing factory near Moscow.

In one of the most high-profile cases of negligence, more than 150 people died in a night club in the city of Perm after a pyrotechnic show ignited a wooden ceiling.

After a factory fire killed 112 garment workers in November, clothing brands and retailers continued to reject a union-sponsored proposal to improve safety throughout Bangladesh’s $20 billion garment industry. Instead, companies expanded a patchwork system of private audits and training that labor groups say improves very little in a country where official inspections are lax and factory owners have close relations with the government.

In the meantime, the number of deaths and injuries has mounted. In the five months since last year’s deadly blaze at Tazreen Fashions Ltd., there were 40 other fires in Bangladeshi factories, killing nine workers and injuring more than 660, according to a labor organization tied to the AFL-CIO umbrella group of American unions. Manufacturers dispute that there have been that many recent incidents.

Wednesday’s collapse of the Rana Plaza building that killed more than 300 people is the worst disaster to hit Bangladesh’s fast-growing and politically powerful garment industry. For those attempting to overhaul conditions for workers who are paid as little as $38 a month, it is a grim reminder that corporate social responsibility programs are failing to deliver on lofty promises.

More than 48 hours after the eight-story building collapsed, some garment workers were still trapped alive Friday, pinned beneath tons of mangled metal and concrete. Rescue crews struggled to save them, knowing they probably had just a few hours left to live, as desperate relatives clashed with police.

“Improvement is not happening,” said Amirul Haque Amin, president of the National Garment Workers Federation in Bangladesh, who said a total of 600 workers have died in factory accidents in the last decade. “The multinational companies claim a lot of things. They claim they have very good policies, they have their own code of conduct, they have their auditing and monitoring system,” Amin said. “But yet these things keep happening.”

What role retailers should play in making working conditions safer at the factories that manufacture their apparel has become a central issue for the $1 trillion global clothing industry.

The clothing brands say they are working to improve safety, but the size of the garment industry — some 4,000 factories in Bangladesh alone —means such efforts skim the surface. That opaqueness is further muddied by subcontracting. Retailers can be unwittingly involved with problematic factories when their main suppliers farm out work to others to ensure orders are filled on time.

“We remain committed to promoting stronger safety measures in factories and that work continues,” Wal-Mart said in a statement after the Rana Plaza collapse. The world’s largest retailer says there was no authorized Wal-Mart production in the building. One of the Rana Plaza factories, Ether Tex, listed Wal-Mart as a customer on its website.

Labor groups argue the best way to clean up Bangladesh’s garment factories already is outlined in a nine-page safety proposal drawn up by Bangladeshi and international unions.

The plan would ditch government inspections, which are infrequent and easily subverted by corruption, and establish an independent inspectorate to oversee all factories in Bangladesh, with powers to shut down unsafe facilities as part of a legally binding contract signed by suppliers, customers and unions. The inspections would be funded by contributions from the companies of up to $500,000 per year.

The proposal was presented at a 2011 meeting in Dhaka attended by more than a dozen of the world’s largest clothing brands and retailers — including Wal-Mart, Gap and Swedish clothing giant H&M — but was rejected by the companies because it would be legally binding and costly.

At the time, Wal-Mart’s representative told the meeting it was “not financially feasible … to make such investments,” according to minutes of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.

After last year’s Tazreen blaze, Bangladeshi union president Amin said he and international labor activists renewed a push for the independent inspectorate plan, but none of the factories or big brands would agree.

Siddiqur Rahman, former vice president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, denied the factories are responsible for killing the plan, saying the problem was that buyers did not want to pay for it.

“We welcome anything that is good for the garment industry and its workers here,” Rahman said. He also disputed several union groups’ figures of dozens of factory fires since November, saying there had been only one.

This week, none of the large clothing brands or retailers would comment about the proposal.

Wal-Mart spokesman Kevin Gardner did not directly answer questions about the unions’ safety plans in replies to questions emailed by The Associated Press. H&M responded to questions with emailed links to corporate social responsibility websites.

In December, however, a spokesperson for the Gap — which owns the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic chains — said the company turned down the proposal because it did not want to be vulnerable to lawsuits and did not want to pay factories more money to help with safety upgrades.

H&M also did not sign on to the proposal because it believes factories and local government in Bangladesh should be taking on the responsibility, Pierre Börjesson, manager of sustainability and social issues, told AP in December.

H&M, which places the most apparel orders in Bangladesh and works with more than 200 factories there, is one of about 20 retailers and brands that have banded together to develop training films for garment manufacturers.

Wal-Mart last year began requiring regular audits of factories, fire drills and mandated fire safety training for all levels of factory management. It also announced in January it would immediately cut ties with any factory that failed an inspection, instead of giving warnings first as before.

And the Gap has hired its own chief fire inspector to oversee factories that produce its clothing in Bangladesh.

But many insist such measures are not enough to overhaul an industry that employs 3 million workers.

“No matter how much training you have, you can’t walk through flames or escape a collapsed building,” said Ineke Zeldenrust of the Amsterdam-based Clean Clothes Campaign, which lobbies for garment workers’ rights.

Private audits also have their failings, she said. Because audits are confidential, even if one company pulls its business from a supplier over safety issues, it won’t tell its competitors, who will continue to place orders — allowing the unsafe factory to stay open.

The Tazreen factory that burned last year had passed inspections, and two of the factories in the Rana Plaza building had passed the standards of a major European group that does factory inspections in developing countries. The Business Social Compliance Initiative, which represents hundreds of companies, said the factories of Phantom Apparels and New Wave Style had been audited against its code of conduct which it said focuses on labor issues, not building standards.

“The audits and inspections are too much focused on checklists,” said Saif Khan, who worked for Phillips Van Heusen, the owner of brands Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, in Bangladesh until 2011 as a factory compliance supervisor.

“They touch on broader areas but do not consider the realities on the ground,” he said.

The focus in Pyongyang on Wednesday was less on preparing for war and more on beautifying the capital ahead of the nation’s biggest holiday: the April 15 birthday of the nation’s founder, Kim Il Sung. Soldiers put down their rifles to blanket the barren ground with sod and students picked up shovels to help plant trees.

But the impoverished, tightly controlled nation that has historically used major holidays to draw the world’s attention by showing off its military power could well mark the occasion by testing a missile designed to strike U.S. military installations in Japan and Guam.

South Korea’s foreign minister said the prospect of a medium-range missile launch is “considerably high.”

North Korean officials have not announced plans to launch a missile in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions barring Pyongyang from nuclear and missile activity.

But they have told foreign diplomats in Pyongyang that they will not be able to guarantee their safety starting Wednesday and urged tourists in South Korea to take cover, warning that a nuclear war is imminent. Most diplomats and foreign residents in both capitals appeared to be staying put.

Premier Alison Redford was in Washington for her fourth trip to lobby on behalf of a pipeline that Canada sees as critical to its economic well-being. The Obama administration is considering whether to approve the pipeline, which would carry 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta across six U.S. states to the Texas Gulf Coast, which has numerous refineries. A decision is expected later this summer.

“It would become something that we would continue to talk about,” Redford said of a possible rejection during a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It would be a continuing issue.”

The pipeline has become a flashpoint in the U.S. debate over climate change. Republicans and business and labor groups have urged the Obama administration to approve the pipeline as a source of much-needed jobs and a step toward North American energy independence. Environmental groups have been pressuring President Barack Obama to reject the pipeline, saying it would carry “dirty oil” that contributes to global warming. They also worry about a spill.

Obama’s initial rejection of the pipeline last year went over badly in Canada, which relies on the U.S. for 97 percent of its energy exports.

The pipeline is critical to Canada, which needs infrastructure in place to export its growing oil sands production from northern Alberta. The region has the world’s third largest oil reserves, with 170 billion barrels of proven reserves. Daily production of 1.5 million barrels from the oil sands is expected to increase to 3.7 million in 2025. Only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have more reserves.

Pope Francis was elected today.

Nick Todaro, n...@ennisdailynews.com

The Catholic world saw the election of a new leader today with the ascension of Pope Francis, formerly the Cardinal from Argentina Jorge Bergoglio.

St. John Nepomucene Catholic Church pastor Fr. John Dick, attending to parishioners in the community this afternoon, weighed in through a prepared statement.

“Exciting news,” Dick said. “The Catholic church and all peoples have been given a blessing in the cardinal from Argentina, Pope Francis.”

Bergoglio is the first ever from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.

After announcing “Habemus Papum” — “We have a pope!” — a cardinal standing on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica today revealed the identity of the new pontiff, using his Latin name. Bergoglio had reportedly finished second in the 2005 conclave that produced Benedict XVI — who last month became the first pope to resign in 600 years.

The 76-year-old archbishop of Buenos Aires has spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina, overseeing churches and shoe-leather priests.

In the second day of the conclave, thick black smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, prompting sighs of disappointment from the thousands of people gathered in a rain-soaked and chilly St. Peter’s Square.

“I’m not happy to see black smoke. We all want white,” said the Rev. ThankGod Okoroafor, a Nigerian priest studying theology at Holy Cross University in Rome. “But maybe it means that the cardinals need to take time, not to make a mistake in the choice.”

Cardinals voted twice Wednesday morning in the Vatican’s famed frescoed Sistine Chapel following an inaugural vote Tuesday to elect a successor to Benedict XVI, who stunned the Catholic world last month by becoming the first pope in 600 years to resign.

The cardinals broke for lunch at the Vatican hotel and planned another two rounds of voting Wednesday afternoon.

The drama — with stage sets by Michelangelo and an outcome that is anyone’s guess — is playing out against the backdrop of the church’s need both for a manager who can clean up an ungovernable Vatican bureaucracy and a pastor who can revive Catholicism in a time of growing secularism.

The difficulty in finding both attributes in one man, some analysts say, means that the world should brace for a long conclave — or at least one longer than the four ballots it took to elect Benedict in 2005.

But despite that swipe, and a continuing torrent of rhetoric from Pyongyang threatening nuclear war and other mayhem, President Park Geun-hye is sticking by her campaign vow to reach out to North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, and to send the country much-needed humanitarian aid.

Public frustration with the last five years of North-South relations, which saw North Korean nuclear tests, long-range rocket launches and attacks that left dozens of South Koreans dead, is a big part of the reason Park is trying to build trust with Pyongyang, even as she and South Korea’s military promise to respond forcefully to any possible attack from the North.

In recent days, North Korea has vowed “merciless” retaliation and said it will no longer abide by the armistice that ended the Korean War. Pyongyang is angry about ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills and about new U.N. sanctions, issued over the North’s December long-range rocket launch, which the U.N. called a cover for a banned missile test, and its third underground nuclear explosion, conducted Feb. 12.

On Wednesday, an unidentified spokesman for the North Korean National Defense Commission’s armed forces ministry repeated those threats while decrying South Korea’s own recent rhetoric, including a warning from Seoul that North Korea’s government will “evaporate from the face of the Earth” if it ever uses a nuclear weapon.

Press reports, not confirmed by authorities have claimed that Ion Balint — his real name — use the lions to intimidate rivals and victims.

When he rode away from prison on a black stallion in 2010, Balint played up that fearsome image.

“You said I fed men to the lions?” Balint can be heard saying on a tape heard by The Associated Press. “Why don’t you come over and I’ll give you some lions!”

Authorities won’t speculate about why Balint kept lions and bears, as well as thoroughbred horses and canaries, at his high-walled and heavily guarded estate in the poorest part of Bucharest.

“Many untruths are being reported,” Balint’s son-in-law Marius Vlad told The Associated Press on Wednesday, referring to other rumors of a torture chamber.

Bystanders and relatives who gathered near the gates of the estate described Balint, 48, as a good neighbor and an animal lover, and said they weren’t bothered by roaring lions.

“We can hear them every day but only when they’re hungry or the female is in heat,” said Gabriela Ionescu, 36, robed in a dressing gown and clutching her toddler daughter’s hand. “They don’t disturb us at all.”

Authorities allege that Balint and his brother Vasile headed a criminal network which controlled much of the underworld activity in Bucharest, a city of 2 million. Some 400 police and detectives were involved in the investigation which led to the arrest last week of 67 suspects, including the Balint brothers.

In 2009, Balint was convicted of human trafficking, violence and pimping, and sentenced to 13 years in prison. That was reduced to six years but Balint was free after a year.

On Wednesday, the four lions and two bears were sedated, put in cages and removed Wednesday by environmental authorities and the Vier Pfoten animal welfare charity. The animals, which generally appeared in good condition, will be temporarily housed in a zoo and may be eventually relocated in South Africa, animal welfare officers said.

Mircea Pupaza, commissioner of the National Environment Guard, told The Associated Press that Balint had no documentation or health records for the animals, which he’s kept illegally for 10 years. He could face a year in prison and a hefty fine for illegally keeping wild animals.

“The lions are a status symbol for him,” said Livia Cimpoeru, a Vier Pfoten spokeswoman. She declined to speculate whether they had a more sinister purpose.

A product called Testis compositum is also marketed as a sexual enhancer, good for lack of stamina. Some online retailers advertise oral and injectable forms as testosterone boosters.

South African police say they found needles in Pistorius’ bedroom along with the substance, which they initially named as testosterone. Prosecutors later withdrew that statement identifying the substance and said it had been sent for laboratory tests.

Pistorius family spokesperson Lunice Johnston said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday that the athlete’s lawyers confirmed that the substance is Testis compositum.