Eighty demonstrators against Arizona's tough-on-illegal-immigration policies trickled out of jails here Friday

Reporting from Phoenix Eighty demonstrators against Arizona’s tough-on-illegal-immigration policies trickled out of jails here Friday, as a local sheriff continued one of his controversial operations that critics contend targets Latinos.The protesters had been arrested Thursday, the day the state’s controversial immigration law took effect and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio launched his 17th sweep against illegal immigrants.

On Friday, Arpaio announced that three illegal immigrants were arrested in the sweep. During such operations, his deputies stop people for sometimes minor violations and check their immigration status.A federal judge had barred most of the immigration law, SB 1070, from being implemented, but that didn’t stop hundreds of protesters from filling the streets and engaging in civil disobedience on Thursday. Twenty-three were arrested at Arpaio’s main downtown jail for blocking the entrance. Their demonstration forced the sheriff to delay his sweep for several hours.Activists on Friday boasted that they had slowed down the tough-talking Arpaio.”Families were not separated; the community was not terrorized,” said Carlos Garcia of civil rights group Puente, who was arrested Thursday.

Friday afternoon, several activists blocked the command center Arpaio set up for his sweep, leading to more arrests for civil disobedience. “They want to go to jail, so that’s where they’re going,” Arpaio said. “They want to keep coming, we’ll lock them up.”Also Friday, Gov. Jan Brewer said the Legislature might “tweak” SB 1070 when it convenes in January to address the federal judge’s concerns about the law.

For example, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton had singled out a provision requiring that every person arrested in the state be held until their immigration status is determined. Brewer’s lawyer had told the judge that the sentence was “inartfully” written and should apply only to suspected illegal immigrants.The law was already significantly narrowed once before in response to pressure from opponents. After Brewer signed the legislation in April, she accepted last-minute revisions from the Legislature. The law had required police to determine the immigration status of people they interact with whom they suspect are in the country illegally. Now it requires them to check only people they stop and believe are illegal immigrants. (Ap – The Los Angeles Times )

Telefonica on Saturday pulled out of negotiations to acquire a euro7.15 billion stake in Brazil's leading cell phone company Vivo

MADRID Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica on Saturday pulled out of negotiations to acquire a euro7.15 billion ($9.3 billion) stake in Brazil’s leading cell phone company Vivo. Telefonica said in a statement to Madrid’s stock exchange early Saturday that the deal fell through after Portugal Telecom’s board of directors failed to accept the Spanish company’s offer by the deadline.”The deal has been extinguished,” Telefonica said.Though PT shareholders voted two weeks ago to accept the offer, the Portuguese government used special voting rights to block the sale, citing national interests.The European Union’s Court of Justice then ruled that the Portuguese government’s blocking of the deal was illegal.

Telefonica and PT each own 50 percent of Brasilcel, a Dutch holding company which owns 60 percent of Vivo. The Spanish company’s offer was to buy PT’s half of Brasilcel and following the court’s finding it extended the offer until July 16.Telefonica is eager to expand its significant presence in the fast-growing Latin American sector, where it has an important foothold in burgeoning markets such as Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela and Brazil.

Brazil’s economy is booming, in contrast to Telefonica’s home territory of Spain which is struggling to emerge from nearly two years of recession.PT is Portugal’s largest telecommunications operator and the Portuguese government demanded it maintain a foothold in Brazil as it did not want to lose PT’s Brazilian revenue stream.

Telefonica SA is a much larger company than Portugal Telecom SGPS SA, employing about 237,000 people compared with the around 32,000 employees at its Portuguese counterpart.Telefonica would not comment Saturday on the possibility of legal action following the collapse of the deal.Calls to Portugal Telecom on Saturday went unanswered.Telefonica shares fell 1.55 percent to euro16.16 on Friday while Portugal Telecom directors were still considering the deal. Portugal Telecom shares slid 4.53 percent to euro8.08 per share. (AP)

17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday due to the dangers posed for a second day by volcanic ash from Iceland

A huge ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano spread out across Europe on Friday causing air travel chaos on a scale not seen since the September 11 attacks.About 17,000 flights were expected to be canceled on Friday due to the dangers posed for a second day by volcanic ash from Iceland, aviation officials said. Airports in Britain, France, Germany, and across Europe were closed until at least Saturday.”I would think Europe was probably experiencing its greatest disruption to air travel since 9/11,” said a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, Britain’s aviation regulator.”In terms of closure of airspace, this is worse than after 9/11. The disruption is probably larger than anything we’ve probably seen.”

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York, U.S. airspace was closed for three days and European airlines were forced to halt all transatlantic services.

Vulcanologists say the ash could cause problems to air traffic for up to 6 months if the eruption continues, but even if it is short-lived the financial impact on airlines could be significant.The fallout hit airlines’ shares on Friday with Lufthansa, British Airways, Air Berlin, Air France-KLM, Iberia and Ryanair down between 0.8 and 2.2 percent.The International Air Transport Association said only days ago that airlines were just coming out of recession.

“LIMITED COMMERCIAL SIGNIFICANCE”

The flight cancellations would cost carriers such as British Airways and Lufthansa about 10 million pounds ($16.04 million) a day, transport analyst Douglas McNeill said.

“To lose that sum of money isn’t a very pleasant experience but it’s of limited commercial significance as well,” he told BBC TV. “A couple of days like this won’t matter too much. If it goes on for weeks, that’s a different story.”The volcano began erupting on Wednesday for the second time in a month from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, hurling a plume of ash 6 to 11 km (4 to 7 miles) into the atmosphere.Officials said it was still spewing magma and although the eruption could abate in the coming days, ash would continue drifting into the skies of Europe.

Volcanic ash contains tiny particles of glass and pulverized rock that can damage engines and airframes.

In 1982 a British Airways jumbo jet lost power in all its engines when it flew into an ash cloud over Indonesia, gliding toward the ground before it was able to restart its engines.The incident prompted the aviation industry to rethink the way it prepared for ash clouds.

Of the 28,000 flights that usually travel through European airspace on an average day, European aviation control agency Eurocontrol said it expected only 11,000 to operate on Friday while only about a third of transatlantic flights were arriving.The British Meteorological Office showed the cloud drifting south and west over Europe. Eurocontrol warned problems would continue for at least another 24 hours and an aviation expert at the World Meteorological Organization said it was impossible to say when flights would resume.”We can only predict the time that flights will resume after the eruption has stopped, but for as long as the eruption is still going on and still leading to a significant eruption, we cannot say,” said Scylla Sillayo, a senior official in the WMO’s aeronautical meteorology unit.

AIRSPACE CLOSED

Britain’s air traffic control body said all English airspace would be closed until 8 p.m. EDT on Friday although certain flights from Northern Ireland and Scottish airports were being allowed to take off until 1800 GMT.”When the experts give us the all-clear we’ll get the operation back up and running,” Paul Haskins, head of safety at National Air Traffic Service, told BBC radio.

There were no flights from London’s Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, which handles some 180,000 passengers a day, while officials at Germany’s Frankfurt airport, Europe’s second busiest, said flights would be suspended from 2 a.m. EDT.Around 2,000 people slept overnight at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a spokeswoman said, adding they did not expect airspace in the Netherlands to reopen soon.

Eurocontrol said airspace was closed over Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, the north of the Czech Republic, northern France including all Paris airports, and at airports in northern Germany, Austria and parts of Poland.

Polish officials said if the disruption continued, it might force a delay in Sunday’s funeral for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife who were killed in a plane crash last Saturday.Airlines across Asia and the Middle East have also canceled or delayed flights to most European destinations.

However, as the ash plume drifted south over Europe, Irish officials said most of the airspace over Ireland had reopened.The air problems have proved a boon for rail companies. All 58 Eurostar trains between Britain and Europe were operating full, carrying some 46,500 passengers, and a spokeswoman said they would consider adding services if problems persisted.(Reuters)

United Arab Emirates officials say at least two more fraudulent Irish passports

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates officials say at least two more fraudulent Irish passports have been linked to the alleged hit squad accused of killing a Hamas commander in Dubai. They also say some of the 18 suspects visited the Gulf city for a reconnaissance mission at least once before the Jan. 19 killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his Dubai hotel room.The officials, who are close to the investigation, spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The latest allegations mean the list of fraudulently obtained passports tied to the killing include six British, five Irish and one French and German. Two Palestinians are in custody and three suspects remain unidentified.The UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, said the Gulf country is deeply concerned that the suspected assassins used expertly doctored passports from nations that don’t require advance UAE visas.

Dubai police say at least 11 suspects used altered British, Irish, French and German passports before the Jan. 19 slaying of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.”The UAE is deeply concerned by the fact that passports of close allies, whose nationals currently enjoy preferential visa waivers, were illegally used to commit this crime,” Gargash said in a statement, carried by the Emirates’ state-run news agency WAM on Sunday.

Dubai’s police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, has blamed Israeli’s Mossad secret service.”The abuse of passports poses a global threat, affecting both countries’ national security as well as the personal security of travelers,” the Emirates’ Foreign Minister Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan was quoted saying in the same statement.

The statement gave no updates on the investigation, but said the Emirates’ and Dubai authorities continue to scrutinize events that led to al-Mabhouh’s slaying and its aftermath. The authorities also remain in “close contact with the concerned European governments,” the statement added and listed the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and Germany and Austria.Earlier this week Tamim told reporters in Dubai that the alleged assassins used foreign cell phone cards to avoid being traced while calling a “command center” in Austria.(AP)