APNewsBreak: US aid a step toward Korea nuke talks (AP)

The United States is poised to announce a significant donation of food aid to North Korea this week, the first concrete accomplishment after months of behind-the-scenes diplomatic contacts between the two wartime enemies. An agreement by North Korea to suspend its controversial uranium enrichment program will likely follow within days.

A broad outline of the emerging agreement has been made known to The Associated Press by people close to the negotiations.

Discussions have been taking place since summer in New York, Geneva and Beijing. They already have yielded agreements by North Korea to suspend nuclear and ballistic missile testing, readmit international nuclear inspectors expelled in 2009, and resume a dialogue between North Korea and South Korea, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity of the negotiations.

Suspension of uranium enrichment by North Korea had been a key outstanding demand from both the U.S. and South Korea of the North, which has tested two atomic devices in the past five years. Food talks in Beijing yielded a breakthrough on uranium enrichment, they said.

The announcement of the food aid, expected to take place as early as Monday in Washington, not only would be welcome news for North Korea, but also pave the way for another crucial U.S.-North Korea meeting in Beijing on Thursday. That meeting in turn could lead within weeks to the resumption of nuclear disarmament talks that would also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

The so-called six-party talks were last held three years ago, and resuming them would amount to a foreign policy coup for the Obama administration.

The U.S. would provide 240,000 tons of high-protein biscuits and vitamins ? 20,000 tons a month for a year ? but not much-wanted rice, according to reports in the South Korean media. It would be the first food aid from the U.S. in nearly three years.

Negotiators have sought for two decades to convince North Korea to dismantle its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which the government insists exists to generate much-needed power. But plutonium can be used to make atomic bombs, and North Korea also stands by its right to develop missiles to defend itself against the nuclear-armed United States.

In 2009, North Korea tested a missile capable of reaching U.S. shores, earning widespread condemnation and strengthened U.N. sanctions. An incensed North Korea, which insisted the rocket launch was designed to send a satellite into space, walked away from ongoing nuclear disarmament talks in protest.

In the weeks that followed, North Korea tested a nuclear device and announced it would begin enriching uranium, which would give it a second way to make atomic weapons.

"North Korea's disclosure of a uranium enrichment program was bait" for negotiations and aid, said Jeung Young-tae, an analyst with the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. "And the United States grabbed that bait."

With little arable land and outdated agricultural practices, North Korea has long struggled to feed its people. Flooding and a harsh winter further destroyed crops. The World Food Program issued a plea earlier this year for $218 million in humanitarian help to feed the most vulnerable.

As donations trickled in, Washington deliberated for months on whether to contribute food aid.

Then, in July, U.S. and North Korean negotiators met in New York, and again in Geneva in November. Two days of discussion on food aid in Beijing led to this week's expected announcement of a food-aid package.

This diplomatic dance has unfolded as North Korea prepares for two milestone events for its citizens: the 100th anniversary of the April 1912 birth of President Kim Il Sung, who is officially regarded as the nation's "eternal president" long after his death, and a movement to prepare Kim Jong Un, son of current leader Kim Jong Il, to become the next ruler.

A peace treaty with the U.S. to formally end the Korean War and ensure stability on the Korean peninsula has remained a key goal for the North Korean leadership. The war that erupted in 1950 was suspended with an armistice in 1953, but tensions on the Korean peninsula have remained high ever since.

A technical state of war remains, and the U.S. maintains a garrison of 28,500 troops in South Korea to protect its ally against aggression.

More recently, the deadly March 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship and a November 2010 artillery attack on a front-line South Korean island populated by civilians only deepened tensions between North Korea and the West.

Besides a food aid deal, another tangible sign of diplomatic progress has been North Korea's recent willingness to discuss letting U.S. military officials into North Korea to recover remains of U.S. servicemen killed ? a project suspended by Washington in 2005. North Korea has agreed to allow a first U.S. team into the country in the spring, officials said.

But overlying all of this is a desire by the U.S. and its allies to restart nuclear disarmament negotiations.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Friday that there was no announcement yet on food aid or further U.S. talks with North Korea.

However, those with knowledge of the negotiations told the AP an announcement was expected as soon as Monday, and would include a provision for better monitoring of food distribution to allay concerns that aid meant for the most needy is diverted to North Korea's powerful military.

Nuland, who has said the government wants to ensure the food goes to the needy, "not to the regime, and not to go locked up in storehouses," has said the food in question is better characterized as "nutritional assistance."

"When you think about food, you think about sacks of rice, cans of food, things that might easily be diverted to the wrong purpose," she said Thursday.

"When you talk about nutritional assistance, it could be that, but it could also be things like vitamin supplements to populations in need, like women and children; it could be high protein biscuits or other things." The concern, she said, is that items intended for starving women and children "not find themselves on some leader's banquet table."

___

Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. Follow Jean H. Lee, AP's Korea bureau chief, on Twitter at twitter.com/newsjean.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111218/ap_on_re_as/as_nkorea_us

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Christopher Hitchens, militant pundit, dies at 62 (AP)

Cancer weakened, but did not soften Christopher Hitchens. He did not repent or forgive or ask for pity. As if granted diplomatic immunity, his mind's eye looked plainly upon the attack and counterattack of disease and treatments that robbed him of his hair, his stamina, his speaking voice and eventually his life.

"I love the imagery of struggle," he wrote about his illness in an August 2010 essay in Vanity Fair. "I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient."

Hitchens, a Washington, D.C.-based author, essayist and polemicist who waged verbal and occasional physical battle on behalf of causes left and right, died Thursday night at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer, according to a statement from Vanity Fair magazine. He was 62.

"There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar," said Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. "Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

He had enjoyed his drink (enough to "to kill or stun the average mule") and cigarettes, until he announced in June 2010 that he was being treated for cancer of the esophagus.

He was a most engaged, prolific and public intellectual who wrote numerous books, was a frequent television commentator and a contributor to Vanity Fair, Slate and other publications. He became a popular author in 2007 thanks to "God is Not Great," a manifesto for atheists.

Long after his diagnosis, his columns and essays appeared regularly, savaging the royal family, reveling in the death of Osama bin Laden, or pondering the letters of poet Philip Larkin. He was intolerant of nonsense, including about his own health. In a piece which appeared in the January 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, he dismissed the old saying that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

"So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion," he wrote. "It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don't live up to their apparent billing."

Eloquent and intemperate, bawdy and urbane, Hitchens was an acknowledged contrarian and contradiction ? half-Christian, half-Jewish and fully non-believing; a native of England who settled in America; a former Trotskyite who backed the Iraq war and supported George W. Bush. But his passions remained constant and targets of his youth, from Henry Kissinger to Mother Teresa, remained hated.

He was a militant humanist who believed in pluralism and racial justice and freedom of speech, big cities and fine art and the willingness to stand the consequences. He was smacked in the rear by then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and beaten up in Beirut. He once submitted to waterboarding to prove that it was indeed torture.

Hitchens was a committed sensualist who abstained from clean living as if it were just another kind of church. In 2005, he would recall a trip to Aspen, Colo., and a brief encounter after stepping off a ski lift.

"I was met by immaculate specimens of young American womanhood, holding silver trays and flashing perfect dentition," he wrote. "What would I like? I thought a gin and tonic would meet the case. `Sir, that would be inappropriate.' In what respect? `At this altitude gin would be very much more toxic than at ground level.' In that case, I said, make it a double."

An emphatic ally and inspired foe, he stood by friends in trouble ("Satanic Verses" novelist Salman Rushdie) and against enemies in power (Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini). His heroes included George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Gore Vidal (pre-Sept. 11). Among those on the Hitchens list of shame: Michael Moore, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong il, Sarah Palin, Gore Vidal (post Sept. 11) and Prince Charles.

"We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant," Hitchens wrote in Slate in 2010 after the heir to the British throne gave a speech criticizing Galileo for the scientist's focus on "the material aspect of reality."

"He fell for the fake anthropologist Laurens van der Post. He was bowled over by the charms of homeopathic medicine. He has been believably reported as saying that plants do better if you talk to them in a soothing and encouraging way. But this latest departure promotes him from an advocate of harmless nonsense to positively sinister nonsense."

Hitchens was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1949. His father, Eric, was a "purse-lipped" Navy veteran known as "The Commander"; his mother, Yvonne, a romantic who later kill herself during an extra-marital rendezvous in Greece. Young Christopher would have rather read a book. He was a "a mere weed and weakling and kick-bag" who discovered that "words could function as weapons" and so stockpiled them.

In college, Oxford, he made such longtime friends as authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan and claimed to be nearby when visiting Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton did or did not inhale marijuana. Radicalized by the 1960s, Hitchens was often arrested at political rallies, was kicked out of Britain's Labour Party over his opposition to the Vietnam War and became a correspondent for the radical magazine International Socialiam. His reputation broadened in the 1970s through his writings for the New Statesman.

Wavy-haired and brooding and aflame with wit and righteous anger, he was a star of the left on paper and on camera, a popular television guest and a columnist for one of the world's oldest liberal publications, The Nation. In friendlier times, Vidal was quoted as citing Hitchens as a worthy heir to his satirical throne.

But Hitchens never could simply nod his head. He feuded with fellow Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn, broke with Vidal and angered freedom of choice supporters by stating that the child's life begins at conception. An essay for Vanity Fair was titled "Why Women Aren't Funny," and Hitchens wasn't kidding.

He had long been unhappy with the left's reluctance to confront enemies or friends. He would note his strong disappointment that Arthur Miller and other leading liberals shied from making public appearances on behalf of Rushdie after the Ayatollah Khomeini called for his death. He advocated intervention in Bosnia and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

No Democrat angered him more than Clinton, whose presidency led to the bitter end of Hitchens' friendship with White House aide Sidney Blumenthal and other Clinton backers. As Hitchens wrote in his memoir, he found Clinton "hateful in his behavior to women, pathological as a liar, and deeply suspect when it came to money in politics."

He wrote the anti-Clinton book, "No One Left to Lie To," at a time when most liberals were supporting the president as he faced impeachment over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Hitchens also loathed Hillary Rodham Clinton and switched his affiliation from independent to Democrat in 2008 just so he could vote against her in the presidential primary.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, completed his exit. He fought with Vidal, Noam Chomsky and others who either suggested that U.S. foreign policy had helped caused the tragedy or that the Bush administration had advanced knowledge. He supported the Iraq war, quit The Nation, backed Bush for re-election in 2004 and repeatedly chastised those whom he believed worried unduly about the feelings of Muslims.

"It's not enough that faith claims to be the solution to all problems," he wrote in Slate in 2009 after a Danish newspaper apologized for publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that led Muslim organizations to threaten legal action. "It is now demanded that such a preposterous claim be made immune from any inquiry, any critique, and any ridicule."

His essays were compiled in such books as "For the Sake of Argument" and "Prepared for the Worst." He also wrote short biographies/appreciations of Paine and Thomas Jefferson, a tribute to Orwell and "Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring)," in which he advised that "Only an open conflict of ideas and principles can produce any clarity." A collection of essays, "Arguably," came out in September 2011 and he was planning a "book-length meditation on malady and mortality." He appeared in a 2010 documentary about the topical singer Phil Ochs.

Survived by his second wife, author Carol Blue, and by his three children (Alexander, Sophia and Antonia), Hitchens had quotable ideas about posterity, clarified years ago when he saw himself referred to as "the late" Christopher Hitchens in print. For the May 2010 issue of Vanity Fair, before his illness, Hitchens submitted answers for the Proust Questionnaire, a probing and personal survey for which the famous have revealed everything from their favorite color to their greatest fear.

His vision of earthly bliss: "To be vindicated in my own lifetime."

His ideal way to die: "Fully conscious, and either fighting or reciting (or fooling around)."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obits/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_hitchens

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States get a say on health benefits in Obama's law (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration on Friday rolled out a benefits framework for millions of people who will get private insurance through the health care overhaul, but states will decide the specifics.

The new law calls for the federal government to set a basic benefits package for private insurance. But that's tricky territory for the administration as it tries to avoid the "big brother" label on health care. Obama will be defending his signature domestic law on two fronts next year ? before the Supreme Court and the voters.

Friday's proposal from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius allows states to retain some leeway. Private insurance traditionally has been regulated at the state level, and many state officials don't like having to answer to Washington.

The basic benefits package could eventually affect 90 million people, HHS said. That includes those who would gain private insurance thanks to the health care law, as well as many more currently enrolled in small employer and individual plans.

The new proposal would let states pick a benefits package from several federally approved options. Those range from benefits offered to federal and state employees to the most popular small business plans in the state and to a large health maintenance organization, or HMO.

"The proposal we're putting forward today reflects our commitment to giving states the flexibility they need," Sebelius said. It's a prickly relationship, with 26 states asking the Supreme Court to toss out the law.

If a state doesn't want to pick benefits, the default will be the package available through the largest small business plan in that state.

Initial state reaction was positive. "Quite frankly, this was a very smart approach for HHS," said Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger. "It builds on existing state law." Praeger, a Republican, chairs the health care committee of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Starting in 2014, millions of people now uninsured will be able to buy private coverage in new state markets; taxpayer subsidies would help with premiums.

Insurers wanting to participate in the new state health insurance exchanges will have to offer at least the federally approved "essential benefits package."

Business groups and consumer advocates are watching closely because they expect the federal government's decisions to set new national standards for health insurance. At issue is the right balance between affordable coverage and comprehensive benefits.

Under the law, the benefits package must include such fundamentals as inpatient and outpatient care, emergency services, maternity and childhood care, prescription drugs, preventive screenings and labs.

It must also cover mental health and substance abuse treatment, as well as rehabilitation for physical and cognitive disorders, and dental and vision care for children. Such additional benefits are often not fully covered by frugal plans that are now the best that many small businesses can afford.

Traditionally regulated by the states, private insurance benefits vary widely across the country. Large companies can opt out of most state rules, although they usually offer comprehensive coverage.

Consumer advocates had hoped Obama would set a robust standard for the whole nation. But his administration only met them part way.

"The essential health benefits package will for the first time define a minimum standard for health insurance coverage," said Stephen Finan of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. "We urge states to choose a benchmark plan that provides the best care for someone at risk of a life-threatening chronic disease such as cancer."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_mandated_health_benefits

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Video: Is Ron Paul the man to watch in Iowa?

Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are getting all the attention, but the man to watch in Iowa could be a 76-year-old veteran congressman from Galveston, Texas, a doctor who's run for president twice before and has the potential to shake up this year's race. NBC?s Andrea Mitchell has the Ron Paul story.

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45676002/

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Hand, foot, mouth disease kills 156 in Vietnam (AP)

HANOI, Vietnam ? Vietnam says an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease has killed 156 people, mostly children, and sickened more than 96,000 through late November.

An official at the Ministry of Health says the average number of weekly cases dropped from about 3,000 in September to 2,460 in November.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel alert Monday urging people visiting Vietnam to protect themselves from the disease by practicing "healthy personal hygiene."

This year's outbreak is a sharp uptick from recent years. Since 2008, about 10,000 to 15,000 cases were reported per year with about 20 to 30 children dying annually.

The common childhood illness typically causes little more than a fever and rash, and most recover quickly.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/health/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_he_me/as_vietnam_childhood_virus

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Elemental 'cookbook' guides efficient thermoelectric combinations

Public release date: 14-Dec-2011
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Richard Merritt
richard.merritt@duke.edu
919-660-8414
Duke University

DURHAM, N.C. A repository developed by Duke University engineers that they call a "materials genome" will allow scientists to stop using trail-and-error methods for combining electricity-producing materials called "thermoelectrics."

Thermoelectric materials produce electricity by taking advantage of temperature differences on opposite sides of a material. They are currently being used in deep space satellites and camp coolers. But until now, scientists have not had a rational basis for combining different elements to produce these energy-producing materials.

The project developed by the Duke engineers covers thousands of compounds, and provides detailed "recipes" for creating most efficient combinations for a particular purpose, much like hardware stores mix different colors to achieve a particular tint of paint. The database is free and open to all (aflowlib.org).

"We have calculated the thermoelectric properties of more than 2,500 compounds and have calculated all their energy potentials in order to come up with the best candidates for combining them in the most efficient ways," said Stefano Curtarolo, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials sciences and physics at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. "Scientists will now have a more rational basis when they decide which elements to combine for their thermoelectric devices."

The results of the Duke team's work were published online in the journal Physics Review X.

A thermoelectric device takes advantage of temperature differences on opposite sides of a material the greater the temperature difference, the greater energy potential.

Thermoelectric devices are currently used, for example, to provide power for deep-space satellites. The side of the device facing the sun absorbs heat, while the underside of the device remains extremely cold. The satellite uses this temperature difference to produce electricity to power the craft.

Different material combinations may be a more efficient method of turning these temperature differences into power, according to Shidong Wang, a post-doctoral fellow in Curtarolo's lab and first author of the paper.

Thermoelectric materials can be created by combining powdered forms of different elements under high temperatures a process known as sintering. Not only does the new program provide the recipes, but it does so for the extremely small versions of the particular elements, known as nanoparticles. Because of their miniscule size and higher surface areas, nanoparticles have properties unlike their bulk counterparts.

"Having this repository could change the way we produce thermoelectric materials," Wang said. "With the current trial-and-error method, we may not be obtaining the most efficient combinations of materials. Now we have a theoretical background, or set of rules, for many of the combinations we now have. The approach can be used to tackle many other clean energy related problems."

The Duke researchers believe that the use of thermoelectric devices which the new database should help fuel could prove especially effective in cooling microdevices, such as laptop computers.

###

Wang and Curtarolo made use of data collected by the aflowlib.org consortium, a cloud-distributed repository for materials genomics. It currently comprises electronic structures, magnetic and thermodynamic characterization of inorganic compounds. The project, started by Duke scientists, is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Duke's Wahyu Setyman, as well as Zhao Wang and Natalio Mingo of France's Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission, were also part of the research team.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 14-Dec-2011
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Richard Merritt
richard.merritt@duke.edu
919-660-8414
Duke University

DURHAM, N.C. A repository developed by Duke University engineers that they call a "materials genome" will allow scientists to stop using trail-and-error methods for combining electricity-producing materials called "thermoelectrics."

Thermoelectric materials produce electricity by taking advantage of temperature differences on opposite sides of a material. They are currently being used in deep space satellites and camp coolers. But until now, scientists have not had a rational basis for combining different elements to produce these energy-producing materials.

The project developed by the Duke engineers covers thousands of compounds, and provides detailed "recipes" for creating most efficient combinations for a particular purpose, much like hardware stores mix different colors to achieve a particular tint of paint. The database is free and open to all (aflowlib.org).

"We have calculated the thermoelectric properties of more than 2,500 compounds and have calculated all their energy potentials in order to come up with the best candidates for combining them in the most efficient ways," said Stefano Curtarolo, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials sciences and physics at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. "Scientists will now have a more rational basis when they decide which elements to combine for their thermoelectric devices."

The results of the Duke team's work were published online in the journal Physics Review X.

A thermoelectric device takes advantage of temperature differences on opposite sides of a material the greater the temperature difference, the greater energy potential.

Thermoelectric devices are currently used, for example, to provide power for deep-space satellites. The side of the device facing the sun absorbs heat, while the underside of the device remains extremely cold. The satellite uses this temperature difference to produce electricity to power the craft.

Different material combinations may be a more efficient method of turning these temperature differences into power, according to Shidong Wang, a post-doctoral fellow in Curtarolo's lab and first author of the paper.

Thermoelectric materials can be created by combining powdered forms of different elements under high temperatures a process known as sintering. Not only does the new program provide the recipes, but it does so for the extremely small versions of the particular elements, known as nanoparticles. Because of their miniscule size and higher surface areas, nanoparticles have properties unlike their bulk counterparts.

"Having this repository could change the way we produce thermoelectric materials," Wang said. "With the current trial-and-error method, we may not be obtaining the most efficient combinations of materials. Now we have a theoretical background, or set of rules, for many of the combinations we now have. The approach can be used to tackle many other clean energy related problems."

The Duke researchers believe that the use of thermoelectric devices which the new database should help fuel could prove especially effective in cooling microdevices, such as laptop computers.

###

Wang and Curtarolo made use of data collected by the aflowlib.org consortium, a cloud-distributed repository for materials genomics. It currently comprises electronic structures, magnetic and thermodynamic characterization of inorganic compounds. The project, started by Duke scientists, is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Duke's Wahyu Setyman, as well as Zhao Wang and Natalio Mingo of France's Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission, were also part of the research team.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/du-eg121411.php

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UK police arrest man in phone hacking probe (AP)

LONDON ? British police said Wednesday they have arrested another suspect in their investigation of phone hacking by the News of the World, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid shut down earlier this year.

The 41-year-old man was held on suspicion of conspiring to intercept voice mail messages and pervert the course of justice, London's Metropolitan police said.

The man's name was not released, but media including Sky News ? which is 39 percent owned by Murdoch's News Corp. ? identified him as Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who was jailed for hacking into the voicemail messages of royal staff while working for the News of the World.

Mulcaire's lawyer, Sarah Webb, declined to comment.

Police said the man was being held at a police station in south London.

Only two people have been jailed for phone hacking ? Mulcaire and News of the World reporter Clive Goodman, both in 2007.

After long maintaining that phone hacking at the News of the World was the work of a rogue reporter, Murdoch closed the tabloid in July after evidence emerged it had accessed the mobile phone voice mails of celebrities, politicians and even crime victims in its search for exclusives.

More than a dozen News of the World journalists, including former editor Andy Coulson, have been arrested as the scandal escalated and investigation widened.

Coulson, who resigned as Prime Minister David Cameron's media adviser when he became embroiled in the investigation, is suing News of the World's publisher for terminating the payment of his legal fees relating to the phone-hacking scandal.

He was not present Wednesday as his case against News International subsidiary News Group Newspapers got underway at London's High Court. The case is expected to last about a day.

Coulson's lawyer James Laddie asked Justice Michael Alan Supperstone to declare that News Group Newspapers must pay Coulson's costs in defending himself from allegations of criminality during his tenure as editor.

News Group Newspapers is arguing that a clause in Coulson's severance agreement stating it must pay any reasonable legal costs for defending or appearing in judicial proceedings relating to his editorship does not extend to criminal allegations, Laddie said.

Coulson, who left the newspaper in 2007, quit as Cameron's adviser in January, saying that coverage of the phone-hacking scandal made it too difficult for him to do his job.

Two top London police officers and several senior Murdoch executives also have resigned over the hacking scandal, which has led to multiple investigations and damaged Murdoch's empire.

__________

Cassandra Vinograd can be reached at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111207/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_britain_phone_hacking

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