From Wire Reports

As trial resumes after five-week break, Saddam complains about shackles

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The trial of Saddam Hussein resumed Monday with the former Iraqi president trying to take command of the courtroom and angrily complaining about being shackled and mistreated by "occupiers and invaders."

A former U.S. attorney general sat with the defense team and said it would be "extremely difficult" to get a fair trial. Other defendants spoke out, too, complaining of their treatment in detention or dissatisfaction with their court-appointed counsel.

After a short session in which the first testimony was read into the record, Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin adjourned the trial until Dec. 5 to allow time to find replacements for two defense lawyers who were slain and another who fled Iraq after he was wounded.

Shoppers crowd stores but spend only modestly as holiday season begins

NEW YORK - The nation's retailers had a modest start to the holiday shopping season as consumers jammed stores for bargains in the early morning hours Friday but seemed to lose interest as the weekend wore on.

"There was a lot of hype, a lot of promotions and lot of people, but the results were on the lukewarm side," said Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers.

According to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which monitors sales at more than 45,000 retail outlets, sales for the combined Friday and Saturday period slipped 0.5 percent to $13.4 billion, from the year-ago period.

Analysts said there was heavy shopper traffic for the day after Thanksgiving, but consumers apparently lost their enthusiasm once those early bird specials were over.

"If you give Americans a bargain, they will get up whatever time to take advantage of it. But I don't think this weekend turned out to be as big as retailers hoped," said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, based in Charleston, S.C.

EU justice chief: Washington needs more time to respond to reports of secret CIA jails, covert flights

BERLIN - The United States has told the European Union it needs more time to respond to media reports that the CIA set up secret jails in some European nations and transported terror suspects by covert flights, the top EU justice official said Monday.

Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini also warned that that any of the 25 bloc nations found to have operated secret CIA prisons could have their EU voting rights suspended.

The Council of Europe - the continent's main human rights watchdog - is investigating the allegations, and EU justice official Jonathan Faul last week formally raised the issue with White House and U.S. State Department representatives, Frattini said.

"They told him, 'give us the appropriate time to evaluate the situation.' Right now, there is no response," he said.

The CIA has refused to comment on the European investigation.

Frattini said suspending EU voting rights would be justified under the EU treaty, which stipulates that the bloc is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, and that a persistent breach of these principles can be punished.

Clandestine detention centers would violate the European Convention on Human Rights.

Inner cities bleed jobs despite federal programs

WASHINGTON - Many of America's inner cities continue to hemorrhage jobs despite years of federal programs designed to improve their economies.

Nearly half of the country's 82 largest municipalities lost jobs from 1995 to 2003, according to a new study by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City. By comparison, only one of the surrounding metropolitan areas lost jobs during the same period.

A separate analysis by The Associated Press found that most inner cities targeted by the federal government's primary urban economic programs lost jobs as well.

In fact, the best-performing cities were not part of the federal empowerment zone and renewal community programs, which provide businesses with billions of dollars in tax incentives to expand and hire workers.

"It's sobering," said Michael Porter, a Harvard business professor who did the study for the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City. "It suggests that there are relatively few inner cities that are thriving in the sense of job growth."

Porter and his team analyzed how many jobs were added or lost in inner cities with more than 50,000 residents. They found that only 10 added jobs at a higher rate than surrounding metropolitan areas. All 40 inner cities that lost jobs did so faster than surrounding areas.

China not manipulating currency for economic advantage, U.S. says

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Monday determined that China was not manipulating its currency to gain economic advantages but still pressed the Chinese to move more quickly to allow the yuan's value to be set by market forces.

The administration's determination, made in a currency report it is required to submit to Congress every six months, was certain to disappoint critics who contend that Chinese currency practices play a large role in America's soaring trade deficits.

Treasury Secretary John Snow said China's decision to allow a small revaluation of its currency last July had been a factor in deciding not to brand China a currency manipulator, but he said more must be done.

The United States had a trade deficit of $162 billion with China last year, the largest ever recorded with a single country, and this year's deficit is expected to approach $200 billion.

Fat heinies causing problems for doctors

That traditional shot in the heinie may be doing less and less good as people become plumper, according to a new study presented Monday.

"Our study has demonstrated that a majority of people, especially women, are not getting the proper dosage from injections to the buttocks. There is no question that obesity is the underlying cause," said Dr. Victoria Chan, a researcher at the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Dublin, Ireland.

Her study found that as few as one in 10 women and six in 10 men may be getting proper doses from injections because the needle can't reach the target zone.

She presented the findings during the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America being held in Chicago this week.

Many drugs and vaccines are typically administered through injections into the muscles of the buttocks, including painkillers, antibiotics and anti-nausea drugs. The region is considered a good spot because it has relatively few major blood vessels, nerves or bones to be damaged by a needle, yet has many small blood vessels that speed absorption of drugs.

But the new study showed that "68 percent of intramuscular injections do not reach the muscles of the buttock," Chan said. "The amount of fat tissue overlying the muscles exceeds the length of the needles commonly used for these injections."

Gel offers hope in fighting AIDS

SOWETO, South Africa - In the cramped quarters of a Soweto clinic, a key win in the fight against AIDS is inching closer.

Three thousand women here and in the adjacent township of Orange Farm are being enrolled in a trial to test a squishy, clear gel called PRO 2000, a microbicide its creators hope will kill HIV before the virus manages to latch onto the cells of the person it hopes to invade.

The tests here are part of a trial with 10,000 women across Africa, the biggest efficacy trial for such a product, and one of several signs that microbicides are moving with increasing speed from scientific dream to a real weapon against the human immunodeficiency virus.

Microbicides are virus-killing gels applied vaginally before sex.

Opposition candidate wins Honduran presidential election, official says

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Opposition candidate Mel Zelaya, who vowed to reinvigorate the Honduran economy by eliminating government corruption, is the country's new president, the top election official said Monday even while ordering a recount of the previous day's vote.

Aristides Mejia, president of the national election institute, did not give vote tallies for the Liberal Party's Zelaya or his opponent, ruling National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

"Hondurans have a president-elect … and it is Zelaya," Mejia told Honduran TV's Channel 5.

However, he did not release hard data and said final results would not be available for another 48 hours because of "some technical problems."

The institute said Sunday that voting trends favored Zelaya, who received 50.8 percent of the vote, compared with Lobo Sosa's 44.2 percent. A national exit poll of 120,000 voters Sunday by television stations HRN and Channel 5 also gave Zelaya a significant lead.

Zelaya declared victory Sunday night, but Lobo Sosa has not conceded. The winner assumes office Jan. 27 for a term of four years.

Three other candidates from smaller parties were expected to win only a fraction of the presidential vote.