Zionism row casts cloud over Kerry's Turkey visit

ANKARA: US Secretary of State John Kerry held talks with Turkey's leaders on the Syria crisis Friday amid a row over comments by the Turkish premier branding Zionism a "crime against humanity."

"Obviously we disagree with that, we find it objectionable," Kerry said at a joint press conference in Ankara, referring to a speech delivered by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that likened Zionism to fascism and anti-Semitism.

Kerry said he would raise the issue "very directly" with Erdogan and express Washington's hopes to see the two "vital allies" work together.

He met later Friday with Erdogan and had a "respectful but frank discussion of the prime minister's speech in Vienna," a senior State Department official said.

"The Secretary made US concerns very clear. The US and Turkish side agreed to stay in very close touch about the whole range of related issues, including their shared commitment to Middle East peace," the official said..

The top US diplomat's visit to Turkey came a day after Washington announced that it would for the first time provide direct aid to Syrian rebels in the form of food and medical supplies as well as $60 million in extra assistance to the political opposition.

But the discussions were overshadowed by renewed tension between Turkey and Israel, two major US allies, following comments Erdogan made earlier this week at a UN-sponsored forum in Vienna.

"As is the case for Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, it is inevitable that Islamophobia be considered a crime against humanity," Erdogan said on Wednesday.

Kerry said it was essential for Turkey and Israel to rekindle their "historic cooperation" but the situation got more complicated "in the aftermath of the speech that we heard in Vienna."

Turkish-Israeli relations have remained in free fall since Israeli troops raided a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship in 2010, killing nine people.

"We have never made any hostile remarks against any nation," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in response to a question over Erdogan's remarks.

"If you want to talk about hostile you can call Israel's attitude that, after it killed nine civilians on high seas," he added.

"If some countries acted in a hostile way against our citizens' right to life, allow us to reserve our right to make a statement."

The incident strained bilateral military and diplomatic ties and left Washington in a bind to mend relations between its two key allies in the region.

Erdogan's comments were branded as "a dark and mendacious statement," by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while Washington said "characterisation of Zionism as a crime against humanity... is offensive and wrong."

A US official travelling with Kerry on his first trip abroad since taking over as secretary of state from Hillary Clinton said Washington was "dismayed" to hear Erdogan's remarks.

"This was particularly offensive frankly," said the official who requested anonymity.

Dealing with Syria, terrorism

As part of their agenda, Kerry and Davutoglu also discussed the nearly two-year civil war in neighbouring Syria which has killed at least 70,000 people according to the UN.

"Together we work to strengthen the Syrian opposition so that we are in a position now to be able to do more," Kerry said, adding that the US and Turkey were trying to reduce the money "flowing to Assad regime's war machine."

"There is no legitimacy in a regime that commits atrocity against its own people," he said.

Turkey, once a close ally of Syria, has joined the United States in its campaign to oust the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and has given shelter to Syrian rebels and to nearly 200,000 refugees along its volatile border.

In January, the US began deploying Patriot missiles, along with Germany and the Netherlands, as part of a NATO mission to protect Turkey from any spillover of the Syrian conflict.

Turkey had requested the measure after several cross-border shelling incidents, including one in October that killed five civilians.

Kerry also attended a memorial ceremony in Ankara, in honour of the US embassy guard who was killed in a February 1 suicide attack claimed by the fiercely anti-US Marxist group the Revolutionary People's Liberation Front (DHKP-C).

"The United States stands strongly with Turkey, our NATO ally, in the fight against terrorism in all its forms," including DHKP-C, al-Qaeda and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Kerry said.

Also on the agenda during the talks was Washington's pressure for increasing sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear programme.

-AFP/ac

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Yahoo axes more products to 'sharpen focus'

Yahoo Avatars didn't make the cut and will be shut down on April 1. (Credit: Yahoo)

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is honing the product focus of the company she has been running for seven months, eliminating several products that were deemed insufficiently popular with the company's 700 million users. Yahoo is discontinuing development and support of its mobile app for Blackberry and Yahoo Clue, a tool introduced in Nov. 2010 that shows detailed search trends, for example.

Mayer has described Yahoo's core business as personalizing content, and the company goals as increasing user engagement, boosting the company's international audience and broadening its demographic base. Products that don't fit into that agenda won't get the resources to stay afloat.

A blog post by platforms chief Jay Rossiter about the product eliminations indicated that Yahoo is going to focus only on core products and experiences, meaning those that are daily habits for users, such as the Yahoo home page, Flickr and Mail, all of which were recently updated.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in January, Mayer outlined the "daily habit" business model: "So the nice thing at Yahoo is that we have all of the content that people want on their phone, we have these daily habits. And I think that whenever you're dealing with a daily habit and providing a lot of value around it there is an opportunity not only to provide a lot of value to the end user but to also create a great business."

Below is the list of the products from Yahoo that will cease to exist in April:

Yahoo! Avatars

Effective April 1, 2013, we will no longer support Yahoo! Avatars across our properties. If you like your existing avatar and want to keep it, please go to the Avatars download page, pick a picture size and format, and click the appropriate download button. Similarly, if you want to edit your avatar, you can download the image and then use a photo editing service of your preference. If you want to continue using your avatar with our products, go to Yahoo! Profile and upload the avatar you downloaded. For more details, please click here. Additionally effective April 1, we will no longer support the Avatars YQL table.

Yahoo! app for BlackBerry

Effective April 1, 2013, the Yahoo! app for BlackBerry will no longer be available for download. For those of you who have already downloaded the app, you can continue to use it but it will no longer be actively supported.

Yahoo! Clues (beta)

Effective April 1, 2013, Yahoo! Clues (beta) will shut down.

Yahoo! App Search

Effective April 1, 2013, Yahoo! App Search will shut down.

Yahoo! Sports IQ

Effective April 1, 2013, Yahoo! Sports IQ will shut down. Your final lifetime Sports IQ score and rank will be automatically transferred to and preserved within your Yahoo! Fantasy Profile.

Yahoo! Message Boards website

Effective April 1, 2013, the Yahoo! Message Boards website will shut down. Our message boards on individual properties (like Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Fantasy Sports) will remain active. We also encourage you to ask and answer questions on Yahoo! Answers, and discuss issues in the comments section on Yahoo! News.

Yahoo! Updates API

As of April 16, 2013, we will no longer support the Yahoo! Updates API.

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Man feared dead in 100-foot sinkhole near Tampa

Last Updated 1:15 p.m. ET

SEFFNER, Fla. A man was missing and feared dead early Friday after a large sinkhole opened under the bedroom of a house near Tampa.

His brother says the man screamed for help before he disappeared.

The 36-year-old man's brother, Jeremy Bush, told rescue crews he heard a loud crash around 11 p.m. Thursday, then heard his brother screaming for help.

"When he got there, there was no bedroom left," Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said. "There was no furniture. All he saw was a piece of the mattress sticking up."

The brother called 911 and frantically tried to help his brother. He said he jumped into the hole and dirt was quickly up to his neck.

"The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother," Jeremy said. "But I just couldn't do nothing."

An arriving deputy pulled the brother from the still-collapsing house.

"I reached down and was able to actually able to get him by his hand and pull him out of the hole," Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy Douglas Duvall said. "The hole was collapsing. At that time, we left the house."

Engineers worked to determine the size of the sinkhole. At the surface, officials estimated it was about 30 feet across. Below the surface, officials believed it was 100 feet wide.

"The entire house is on the sinkhole," Damico said.

Hillsborough County Fire Chief Ron Rogers told a news briefing that extra-sensitive listening devices and cameras were inserted into the sinkhole. "They did not detect any signs of life," he said.

By early Friday, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue officials determined the home had become too unstable to continue rescue efforts.

Neighbors on both sides of the home have been evacuated.

Sinkholes are common in seaside Florida, whose underlying limestone and dolomite can be worn away by water and chemicals, then collapse.

Engineers condemned the house, reports CBS Tampa affiliate WTSP.

From the outside of the small, sky blue house, nothing appeared wrong. There wear no cracks and the only sign something was amiss was the yellow caution tape circling the house.

Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokesman Larry McKinnon said authorities asked sinkhole and engineering experts, and they were using equipment to see if the ground can support the weight of heavy machinery needed for the recovery effort.

Jeremy Bush stood in a neighbor's yard across the street from the house Friday and recounted the harrowing collapse.

"He was screaming my name. I could swear I heard him hollering my name to help him," he said of his brother.

Jeremy Bush's wife and his 2-year-old daughter were also inside the house. "She keeps asking where her Uncle Jeff is," he said. "I lost everything. I work so hard to support my wife and kid and I lost everything."

Janell Wheeler told the Tampa Bay Times newspaper she was inside the house with four other adults and a child when the sinkhole opened.

"It sounded like a car hit my house," she said.

The rest of the family went to a hotel but she stayed behind, sleeping in her car.

"I just want my nephew," she said through tears.

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Obama, Congress Fail to Avert Sequester Cuts

President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.

Obama met for just over an hour at the White House today with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.

But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold at midnight.

"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."

READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester

Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.

Federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year.

Sequestration Deadline: Obama Meets With Leaders Watch Video

Sequester Countdown: The Reality of Budget Cuts Watch Video

The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.

"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."

The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.

The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.

"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."

Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester

Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.

Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like."

But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.

"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."

Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?

The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.

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Facebook buys advertising firm from Microsoft

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook agreed Thursday to buy Atlas Advertiser Suite from Microsoft as part of an effort to boost ad revenues at the massive social network.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"Atlas is a leader in campaign management and measurement for marketers and agencies. We believe this acquisition will benefit both marketers and users," Facebook's Brian Boland said in a blog post.

Atlas was part of the aQuantive group acquired by Microsoft, which ended up in a writedown and loss for Microsoft last year.

Microsoft's Dave O'Hara said the deal "will strengthen our existing partnership" with Facebook "for the benefit of both companies and their respective long-term visions."

Facebook has become the world's biggest social network with more than one billion users, but its stock has been hit by concerns about its ability to boost revenues and profitability.

The California group has been working on a number of advertising initiatives for both desktop and mobile Facebook applications.

Facebook shares rose 1.4 percent to end Thursday at $27.25.

- AFP/ac

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Pope's tweets dissolved

The Catholic Church is one of the few remaining organizations that believes in absolutes.

Sometimes, though, this gives an impression of harshness.

No sooner had the pope bid farewell to his flock than his tweets were summarily removed from Twitter. Pope Benedict XVI officially left office today.

It's true that last week the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI's last tweet would be on February 27.

Yet to see the @Pointifex account deserted feels a little severe.

Currently, the account is open, but is marked simply with the words "Sede Vacante," the Latin for "vacant seat."

It's hard not to think that the decision to remove Pope Benedict's tweets was taken by a vacant seat, an apparatchik of absolutism.

The pope's tweets had always been reverential. Would it have truly hurt to leave them there until the next European came to take his place?

More Technically Incorrect

The tweets have not entirely disappeared. They have been archived by the Vatican here.

The pope currently has 1,613,653 followers. Which, to my eyes, is a surprisingly small number for such a universal religion.

But there's a curious sense of discomfort to this action that might disturb some.

It's odd enough that Pope Benedict is the first pope to resign in around 600 years. Rumors -- some concerning his health, some even more concerning -- have been rife over this peculiar departure.

Forbes reports that it will be up to the next pope to decide whether to tweet. This seems curious in itself. If he didn't, many would imagine this was the Church taking a retrograde step at a very difficult time.

Currently, it may well be that the church is still relatively new to social media. But one might have imagined that leaving Pope Benedict's tweets be would have offered some sense of both pride and continuity.

Instead, they leave a tinge of dark mystery.

Thin is the line between absolution and absolutism.

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Vatican hints at start date for papal conclave

VATICAN CITY Much speculation surrounds the date when leaders of the Roman Catholic Church will begin the process of selecting their new pope.

Play Video

Pope Benedict XVI: "I am no longer Pope"

The date for the conclave of cardinals to begin their deliberations has not yet been set, although one of Pope Benedict XVI's final acts before resigning his office was to amend the rules governing the election of a successor, allowing the cardinals to meet earlier than the usual 15-day transition between pontificates.

On Thursday, soon after Benedict left the Vatican on his final day as pope, Monsignor Carlo Maria Celli, a papal communications officer, hinted that the date could be March 11.

That could not be immediately confirmed.

The date of the conclave's start is important because Holy Week begins March 24, with Easter Sunday March 31. In order to have a new pope in place for the church's most solemn liturgical period, he would need to be installed by Sunday, March 17 -- a tight time frame if a conclave were to start March 15.

Cardinal Francis George, of the Archdiocese of Chicago, told CBS News he hopes the papal conclave will work quickly to name a new pope when it convenes next month -- but he does not know who he will vote for.

"Not yet, I honestly don't," he said. "I've got four or five names in mind. That's part of the next days' work, to check and see do the others think what I think?"

Regarding the issues the cardinals will be considering as they choose a new Pope, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, told CBS News that cleaning up the church after a number of scandals most likely will be part of the conclave's goal.

"Sadly, tragically, we leaders of the church have often given people reasons not to have trust in the church anymore," he said.

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Benedict XVI's Tenure as Pope Ends

VATICAN CITY -- Benedict XVI's eight-year tenure as pope ended today, after he bade farewell to the faithful and departed the Vatican as the first pope to resign in six centuries.

"Thank you for your love and support," the pope tweeted from his Pontifex account. "May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives."

With church bells ringing across Rome, the pope was driven to the helipad on the Vatican grounds for the 15-minute flight to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence where he assumed the title "pope emeritus" after 8 p.m. local time.

When Benedict arrived at the residence just south of Rome, he was greeted by a crowd of supporters waving flags and banners.

READ MORE: Pope Benedict XVI Delivers Farewell Address

"I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this earth," he told them.

Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images

Pope Benedict XVI's Helicopter Ride to Castel Gandolfo Watch Video

Pope Benedict XVI Says Goodbye to Cardinals Watch Video

In his final remarks earlier in the day to colleagues in the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict had promised "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his eventual successor. At a morning meeting at the Vatican, Benedict urged the cardinals to act "like an orchestra" to find "harmony" moving forward.

Benedict, 85, spent a quiet final day as pope, bidding farewell to his colleagues and moving on to a secluded life of prayer, far from the grueling demands of the papacy and the scandals that have recently plagued the church.

His first order of business was a morning meeting with the cardinals in the Clementine Hall, a room in the Apostolic Palace.

Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, thanked Benedict for his service to the church during the eight years he has spent as pontiff.

When Benedict's resignation took effect once and for all at 8 p.m. local time, the Swiss Guards left his side for the last time, their time protecting the pontiff completed.

For some U.S. Catholics in Rome for the historic occasion, Benedict's departure was bittersweet.

Christopher Kerzich, a Chicago resident studying at the Pontifical North American College of Rome, said Wednesday he is sad to see Benedict leave, but excited to see what comes next.

"Many Catholics have come to love this pontiff, this very humble man," Kerzich said. "He is a man who's really fought this and prayed this through and has peace in his heart. I take comfort in that and I think a lot of Catholics should take comfort in that."

9 Men Who Could Replace Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict's Last Sunday Prayer Service

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U.S. to give Syrian rebels medical, food aid, not arms

ROME (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it will for the first time give non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels and more than double its aid to Syria's civilian opposition, disappointing opponents of President Bashar al-Assad clamoring for Western weapons.

The United States cast the aid as a way to bolster the rebels' popular support. It will include medical supplies, food for rebel fighters and $60 million to help the civil opposition provide basic services like security, education and sanitation.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced the new steps after a meeting of 11 mostly European and Arab nations within the "Friends of Syria" group.

The aid did not appear to entirely satisfy the Syrian National Council opposition, a fractious Cairo-based group that has struggled to gain traction inside Syria, especially among disparate rebel forces.

"Many sides ... focus (more) on the length of the rebel fighter's beard than they do on the blood of the children being killed," Syrian National Coalition President Moaz Alkhatib said at an appearance with Kerry and Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi.

TALKS ON PRIME MINISTER POSTPONED

In what analysts described as a sign of disappointment, Syria's political opposition has postponed talks to choose the leader of a provisional government, two opposition sources told Reuters in Beirut.

Opposition leaders hoped a Saturday meeting in Istanbul would elect a prime minister to operate in rebel-controlled areas of Syria, threatened by a slide into chaos as the conflict between Assad's forces and insurgents nears its second anniversary.

While one source said the meeting might happen later in the week, a second source said it had been put off because the three most likely candidates for prime minister had reservations about taking the role without more concrete international support.

"The opposition has been increasingly signaling that it is tired of waiting and no one serious will agree to be head of a government without real political and logistical support," said Syrian political commentator Hassan Bali, who lives in Germany.

Bali said the United States and other members of the core "Friends of Syria" nations appeared intent "on raising the ante against Assad but are not sure how."

A final communiqué said participants would "coordinate their efforts closely so as to best empower the Syrian people and support the Supreme Military Command of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army in its efforts to help them exercise self-defense".

More than 70,000 Syrians have been killed in a fierce conflict that began with peaceful anti-Assad protests nearly two years ago. Some 860,000 have fled abroad and several million are displaced within the country or need humanitarian assistance.

The United States has given $385 million in humanitarian aid but U.S. President Barack Obama has so far refused to give arms, arguing it is difficult to prevent them from falling into the hands of militants who could use them on Western targets.

On Thursday, however, Kerry said the United States would for the first time provide assistance - in the form of medical supplies and the standard U.S. military ration known as Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs - to the fighters.

A U.S. official told reporters it would give the aid only to carefully vetted fighters, adding the United States was worried that "extremists" opposed to democracy, human rights and tolerance were gaining ground in the country.

"Those members of the opposition who support our shared values ... need to set an example of a Syria where daily life is governed neither by the brutality of the Assad regime nor by the agenda of al Qaeda affiliated extremists," the official said.

If sending non-lethal assistance goes smoothly, it could conceivably offer a model for providing weaponry should Obama ultimately decide to do so.

The continued U.S. refusal to send weapons may compound the frustration that prompted the coalition to say last week it would shun the Rome talks. It attended only under U.S. pressure.

Many in the coalition say Western reluctance to arm rebels only plays into the hands of Islamist militants now widely seen as the most effective forces in the struggle to topple Assad.

With fighting raging on largely sectarian lines, French President Francois Hollande said at a Moscow summit that new partners were needed to broker talks on ending the crisis, winning guarded support from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We think that this dialogue must find a new form so that it speaks to all parties," said Hollande, giving few details of his proposal.

Putin said Russia - one of Assad's staunchest allies - would look at Hollande's proposal, "which I think we could consider with all our partners and try to carry out."

REBELS WANT ANTI-TANK, ANTI-AIRCRAFT ARMS

Russia has said Assad's departure must not be a precondition for talks and a political solution, while the West has sided with Syria's opposition in demanding his removal from power.

Kerry's offer of medical aid and food rations fell far short of rebel demands for sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to help turn the tables against Assad's mostly Russian-supplied forces.

It also stopped short of providing other forms of non-lethal assistance such as bullet-proof vests, armored personnel vehicles and military training to the insurgents.

Last week the European Union opened the way for direct aid to Syrian rebels, but did not lift an arms embargo on Syria.

Kerry said the U.S. role should not be judged in isolation but in the context of what other nations will do.

"What we are doing ... is part of a whole," he said. "I am absolutely confident ... that the totality of this effort is going to have an impact of the ability of the Syrian opposition to accomplish its goals."

(This story is corrected by deleting erroneous reference to talks next Monday on military support)

(Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Roger Atwood)

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Football: Arsenal reveal plans for Bergkamp statue

LONDON: Arsenal revealed on Wednesday that they plan to honour former striker Dennis Bergkamp by erecting a statue of the Dutchman outside the Emirates Stadium.

Bergkamp follows in the footsteps of former team-mates Thierry Henry and Tony Adams and legendary Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman, who have already been commemorated in bronze statues outside the club's north London home.

Arsenal were forced to confirm plans for the tribute after an image of a cast for the statue appeared online.

"First of all, I am honoured that this is going to happen," Bergkamp said.

"It makes me very proud. Everyone knows that I love Arsenal and that I had a fantastic time at the club.

"For me and my family it was an important period in our lives. Next to that the people were great, the team was amazing and we had a lot of success over the years.

"I will do everything I can to be there when it will be unveiled. It will definitely be a special moment for me, which I don't want to miss."

Bergkamp scored 120 goals for Arsenal and won three league titles and four FA Cups during his 11-year tenure at the club.

"Dennis and everybody at Arsenal are slightly disappointed that some images have been leaked today of the statue in its development, but this will not detract from the excitement we have for the statue's unveiling in the coming months," said Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis.

-AFP/ac

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