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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 SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2011

108TH YEAR I ©2011 THE MIAMI HERALD

Civil war fears rise in Syria as death toll crosses 3,000

U.K. defense minister quits after scandal

Israeli soldier likely to return Tuesday, family says

INDEXTHE AMERICAS ...........4AU.S. NEWS.....................5A OPINION........................7ACOMICS & PUZZLES ...6B

U.S. PUTS IRAQ WITHDRAWAL PLANS UNDER WRAPS, 3A

EGYPT’S MILITARY TAKES OVER INQUIRY INTO COPTIC UNREST, 6A

CLINTON SAYS U.S. MUST STAND UP TO CHINA,BUSINESS FRONT

TIGERS KEEP SERIES ALIVE,SPORTS FRONT

BY DAVID STRINGERAssociated Press

LONDON — Britain’s defense minister Liam Fox quit his post Fri-day after days of allegations about the infl uence-peddling of a close personal friend who joined key vis-its overseas and posed as an unof-fi cial aide.

Fox acknowledged he had blurred the lines of his profes-sional and private lives in allowing Adam Werritty, who had previously worked as a defense lobbyist, to or-ganize meetings and join him dur-ing 18 trips overseas.

A government inquiry into the case will continue to investigate whether Werritty used his access and friendship with Fox for per-sonal gain, or on behalf of others seeking to win favor or contracts with Britain.

Prime Minister David Cameron named Philip Hammond, who had been Transport Secretary, as Fox’s replacement — asking him to take on the task of implementing severe defense cuts under a national aus-terity program and to negotiate the exit from the violent confl ict in Af-ghanistan by the end of 2014.

Fox wrote that he was leaving his role “with great sadness” in a resignation letter, but appeared to have little alternative after more than a week of scrutiny of his per-sonal ties to Werritty.

“I mistakenly allowed the dis-tinction between my personal in-terest and my government activi-ties to become blurred,” Fox told Prime Minister David Cameron in the letter.

TURN TO BRITAIN, 2A•

BY DIAA HADIDAssociated Press

JERUSALEM — An Israeli sol-dier captured by Gaza militants will likely return home Tues-day, said a spokes-woman for his family on Friday, ending a fi ve-year ordeal for his family and the country.

Sgt. Gilad Schal-it will be freed by the militant Islamic Hamas in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in a deal fi rst an-nounced last week by the two sides.

The Tuesday date from the fam-ily spokeswoman was the highest level indication so far of the timing for the fi rst phase of the exchange.

Spokeswoman Tami Shienkman said that the Israeli military chief

of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, told the Schalit family the news late on Thursday evening in their home in

northern Israel.“If everything goes

smoothly, on Tues-day he will be home,” she the told The As-sociated Press.

In Gaza, Hamas offi cials also said the exchange would take place Tuesday.

In the fi rst phase, Schalit is set to be swapped for some 450 Palestinian pris-oners. About 550 prisoners would be released two months later, accord-

ing to the deal. The military chief of staff warned that unexpect-ed events could delay the deal, Shienkman said.

TURN TO SCHALIT, 2A•

BY ZEINA KARAMAssociated Press

BEIRUT — Thousands of Syr-ian protesters called on soldiers Friday to abandon President Bashar al Assad’s regime and join a dissident army numbering in the small thousands, as the top U.N. human rights offi cial warned of a “full-blown civil war” in Syria, say-ing the death toll in the 7-month-old crackdown has passed 3,000.

Security forces opened fi re at protesters, killing at least 11, in-cluding a 14-year-old boy, in what has become a weekly ritual of pro-tests met by gunfi re, according to activists.

Friday’s protests, dubbed “Free Soldiers,” were in honor of army offi cers and soldiers who have sided with the protesters and are reportedly clashing with loyalists in northern and central Syrian cit-

ies in an increasing militarization of the uprising.

“The army and people are one!” protesters shouted in the southern village of Dael, where most of the deaths occurred Friday. In other locations, some protesters held up banners that read: “Free soldiers do not kill free people asking for freedom.”

“I will not serve in an army that destroys my country and kills my people,” read a posting on the Syr-ian revolution’s main Facebook page that was meant to encourage defections.

Friday’s demonstrations were the most explicit show of sup-port so far by the country’s pro-test movement for the defectors. Faced with gunfi re, bullets, mass arrests and a lack of willingness by the international community to intervene militarily, many Syrians

now feel the armed dissidents are their only hope to topple Assad’s regime.

The Free Syrian Army, as the dissidents are known, are led by an air force colonel who recently fl ed to Turkey. The group is said to in-clude more than 10,000 members and is gaining momentum as the fi rst armed challenge to Assad’s authoritarian regime after seven months of largely nonviolent resistance.

Clashes between troops and gunmen believed to be defec-tors left at least 25 people dead on Thursday, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The group said heavy clashes also took place in a Damascus suburb Friday.

Analysts say that until the rebels

TURN TO SYRIA, 2A •

BY RAF CASERTAssociate Press

BRUSSELS — The European Union is considering a roughly 75 percent cut in funding for a pro-gram that helps feed 18 million of its poorest citizens.

The cuts, set to take effect after New Year’s, would come at a time of rising unemployment and con-sumer food prices in many parts of Europe, as well as overall economic turmoil on the continent. The loom-ing cuts already have raised fears among people who rely heavily on the program.

“We poor, small people, we can-not face up to this,” said Rene Wal-

tener, 41, who is unemployed and married with four children. “We sometimes have diffi culties getting through the month, so a bit of milk here, a tin of cassoulet, a bit of yo-gurt — the kids are happy with that and it allows us to continue.”

The Food for the Deprived pro-gram dates back to 1987. At fi rst, it relied heavily on food surpluses from farms that benefi ted from a bloated and ineffi cient subsidy re-gime. But over time, as the farming became more effi cient, food was in-creasingly purchased on the market to keep the program going.

In recent years, Germany and other countries have objected to

that practice, saying the program is not living up to its original mandate of doing something useful with ex-cess products from farms. Germany won a legal case in April to outlaw the practice of purchasing the food on the market.

The European Union’s 27 farm ministers will assess the program next Thursday in Luxembourg. On the table is a proposal to keep the program going at ¤500 million ($690 million) through legal changes instead of moving to just ¤113 million ($155 million), but at present it does not appear it will

TURN TO FOOD AID, 2A•

EU considering massive cuts to funding of its food aid program

SCHALIT

ERALDO PERES/AP

A man dressed in a convict costume holds a handful of cash during an anti-corruption march in Brasilia.

GEERT VANDEN WIJNGAERT/AP

Women stock food at a local food aid center in Brussels.

Brazil takes hard line on corruptionBY JULIANA BARBASSAAssociated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff wast-ed little time fi ring her top aide in May when the country’s big-gest newspaper reported that he had received $4 million in unex-plained income.

Rousseff didn’t stop with her chief of staff. In quick succession, she let go of three other minis-ters publicly accused of every-

thing from receiving kickbacks to charging the government for staying at a love motel. Mean-while, public outrage had turned into regular street protests.

Those unprecedented actions in the halls of power match what Brazilians say is a new mood spreading across South Ameri-ca’s biggest country: People are making it clear in the streets and elsewhere that long-tolerated sins such as bribery, graft and

other acts of corruption are no longer tolerable.

Brazilians have long accepted such malfeasance as the neces-sary cost of doing business, be it in commerce or public service. Every year, the country loses up to $47.4 billion to undeclared tax revenue, vanished public money and other casualties of wide-spread corruption, according to an August survey by the Federa-tion of Industries of Sao Paulo.

For most of Brazil’s history, people have felt powerless to change things. Two decades of military dictatorship starting in 1964 and years of hyperinfl ation left citizens feeling disconnect-ed from their representatives and from the spending of their tax money.

Now a new middle class is rising on the strength of the

TURN TO BRAZIL, 4A•

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