MiamiHerald.com

HOTEL COPIES: A copy of The Miami Herald will bedelivered to your room. A credit of US$0.25 will beposted to your account if delivery is declined. INTERNATIONAL EDITION MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2011

108TH YEAR I ©2011 THE MIAMI HERALD

INDEXTHE AMERICAS ...........4AU.S. NEWS ...................5AOPINION........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES...6B

SUICIDE BOMBING KILLS NINE SOLDIERS IN AFGHANISTAN, 6A

PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA TO FILE FOR BANKRUPTCY, 3A

GRIZZLIES SHOCK SPURS; HORNETS STING LAKERS, SPORTS FRONT

U.S. CRACKS DOWN ON THREE POKER WEBSITES,BUSINESS FRONT

Congress will raise debt limit, Obama says BY BEN FELLER Associated Press

CHICAGO — U.S. President Ba-rack Obama, insisting a politically divided government will not risk tanking the world economy, says Congress will once again raise the amount of debt the country can pile up to ensure it has money to pay its bills. For the fi rst time, though, he signaled that he will have to go along with more spending cuts to ensure a deal with Republicans.

In an interview with The Associ-ated Press, the president also spoke in his most confi dent terms yet that voters will reward him with another four years in the White House for his work to turn around the econ-omy. Speaking from his hometown and the site of his newly launched reelection bid, Obama said he thinks voters will determine he is the best prepared person “to fi nish the job”.

Appearing rejuvenated from spending time and raising some po-litical cash in his hometown, Obama on Friday was just a week removed from a marathon showdown with House Republicans that almost led to a government shutdown. He signed the budget bill to avoid the embarrassing stoppage of govern-ment services when he got back to the White House later in the day.

As Washington’s political leaders scramble to show leadership on the suddenly consuming debt debate, Obama made sure in the interview to promote his long-term plan to cut trillions of dollars as the fairer, more compassionate alternative to a Re-publican plan that surged to party-line passage Friday afternoon in the House. Yet it was his comments on the debt limit — an issue the White House has labored to keep separate from the broader discussion on how to rein in spending — that altered the course of the conversation.

The government is nearing its borrowing limit of $14.3 trillion and risks a crippling default. Seizing on public frustration about spending, House Republicans say they won’t lift the debt cap without more cuts.

TURN TO OBAMA, 2A•

BY RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD New York Times Service

HAVANA — For 52 years the Castro brothers have ruled Cuba. But if President Raul Castro has his way, he may be out of the job as soon as 2013 and defi nitely by 2018, when he is 86.

Castro, in a speech Saturday heralding a battery of changes intended to lift the island out of economic despair and stagnant thinking, proposed that politi-cians be limited to two fi ve-year terms in an effort to rejuvenate a political system dominated by aging loyalists of the revolution. At the top are himself and Fidel Castro, 84, who permanently gave up presidential power in 2008 and last month announced that he was no longer head of the Communist Party, either.

But Raul Castro made even more explicit what most Cubans discuss only behind closed doors and the rest of the world has tak-en for granted: The Castro era is nearing its end.

“We have arrived at the con-clusion that it is advisable to limit the fundamental political and state offi ces to a maximum period of two consecutive peri-ods of fi ve years,” Castro said in a speech opening the Sixth Com-munist Party Congress, the fi rst such gathering since 1997. He said his generation had failed to

prepare a new crop of younger leaders, and called for a “system-atic rejuvenation of the whole chain of party and administra-tive posts”.

Castro’s declarations may in-tensify the intrigue surrounding his offi cial ascension to the party’s top spot, from the second-highest position, and the question of who

will be designated the new No. 2, a possible successor.

His proposal to curtail terms came on a day that swung be-tween embracing the past and grasping for the future.

In the morning, Cuba looked back, with fi ghter jets, gleaming olive-colored tanks and hun-dreds of thousands of march-ers chanting in fervor over the failed invasion by Cuban ex-iles at the Bay of Pigs 50 years ago, still a celebrated triumph here.

In the afternoon, Castro looked ahead, swearing allegiance to socialism while bowing to the cold realities of this country’s crippled economy. He called for the elimination of monthly ration books that most Cubans use to buy goods, and for continued ex-pansion of private enterprise. He cajoled his compatriots to shake off inertia and embrace an “up-dating” of the Cuban model.

TURN TO TERM LIMITS, 4A•

JAVIER GALEANO/AP

Cuban soldiers march along Revolution Square to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs in Havana on Saturday. The parade marks the anniversary of the failed 1961 invasion by U.S.-backed Cuban exiles.

President Raul Castro speaks at the 6th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in Havana on Saturday. Castro proposed that politicians be limited to two five-year terms.

JOSE GOITIA/NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE

Mubarak’s sons struggle to adjust to prison lifeBY MICHAEL SLACKMAN AND MONA EL NAGGAR New York Times Service

CAIRO — The prison is called Tora Farm, but there is nothing agricultural about it. It is a two-story block of poured concrete, and for years its massive gray walls have held those deemed en-emies of the powerful.

Now they hold the full tableau of state power under President Hosni Mubarak: Gamal Mubarak, a prince of the political scene, now prisoner No. 23, and his older brother Alaa, leader among the business elite, prisoner No. 24; the prime minister, Ahmed Nazif, a patrician man who once said Egyptians were not ready for democracy; Zakaria Azmi, the president’s closest confi dant; Fathi Sorour, the party loyalist and speaker of Parliament; and more.

They make docile inmates, their captors say, still stunned to fi nd themselves behind bars. They eat food brought from out-side, the right of any detainee who has not been convicted. But Gamal appears badly shaken and often refuses to eat. He shares a cell with Alaa.

“Bear in mind they are very broken,” said a prison offi cial who spoke on the condition of

anonymity. “They do everything they are asked. They don’t raise their voices.”

The former president is not in Tora Farm, but he has been detained, and if his health im-proves, he is expected there soon. Offi cials said Saturday that the elder Mubarak had been moved to a military hospital in Cairo and that, like all the others, he would be interrogated by a special cor-ruption unit within the state pros-ecutor’s offi ce. In Tahrir Square, people crowded the newspaper seller, staring at the headlines de-claring that on Tuesday, Mubarak would be questioned again.

All over Cairo, Egyptians sat in coffee shops and cafes, gath-ered on corners and in their homes, marveling at what not long ago seemed impossible. These detentions, perhaps as much as the day Mubarak re-signed, have captivated the na-tion, given a sense of hope for the future. The men in custody represent the core of the power structure, not just the head.

With its leaders jailed, the once-supreme National Demo-cratic Party has already been relegated to history, but Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court

TURN TO EGYPT, 2A•

Syrians protest despite reform promisesBY ZEINA KARAM Associated Press

BEIRUT — Hundreds of people chanting “God, Syria, Freedom!” took to the streets Sunday in south-ern Syria but security forces beat them back with batons, one day after President Bashar Assad promised to end nearly 50 years of emergency rule in an attempt to quell the grow-ing uprising, witnesses said.

Activists had called for protests across Syria on Sunday to mark In-dependence Day and to bolster the popular uprising against the coun-try’s authoritarian regime.

The demonstration in Suweida, about 80 miles southeast of the capital Damascus, drew about 300 people, according to witnesses who spoke on condition of anonymity. They said police beat up demonstra-tors with batons in an attempt sup-

press the protest. The witness ac-counts could not be independently confi rmed because Syria has placed tight restrictions on media outlets and expelled foreign journalists.

Protesters in several oth-

er cities also were planning demonstrations.

The demonstrations come de-spite promises by Assad to end the

TURN TO SYRIA, 2A•

Study links emotional and physical pain BY MELISSA HEALY Los Angeles Times Service

LOS ANGELES — Across cul-tures and language divides, peo-ple talk about the sting of social rejection as if it were a physical pain.

We feel “burned” by a partner’s infi delity, “wounded” by a friend’s harsh words, “crushed” when a

loved one fails us, “heartache” when spurned by a lover.

There’s a reason for that linguis-tic confl ation, says a growing com-munity of pain researchers: In our brains too, physical and social pain share much the same neural circuit-ry. In many ways, in fact, your brain may scarcely make a distinction be-tween a verbal and physical insult.

So the well-worn parental reas-surance that “sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you” is false, these scien-tists say. And they have the pictures to prove it.

University of Kentucky psychol-ogist Nathan DeWall, a researcher

TURN TO STUDY, 2A•

In this image from Syrian state television, President Bashar Assad speaks to his cabinet in Damasus on Saturday.

AP

Cuba’s leader proposes political term limits

18PGA01.indd 118PGA01.indd 1 4/18/2011 4:36:47 AM4/18/2011 4:36:47 AM