Maldives

MALÉ, Maldives - The United States backtracked Friday from its swift recognition of the new Maldives government, which the nation's former leader contends came to power in a coup. The Maldives, off southern India, has faced a day of rioting and two days more of a political standoff since Mohamed Nasheed announced Tuesday that he was resigning as president after months of protests against his rule and fading support from the security forces. But the next day, Nasheed, who now faces an arrest warrant, announced he had actually been pushed from power at gunpoint.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi today ordered 1,600 Indian paratroopers to the Maldives to put down a coup attempt by foreign mercenaries, the Press Trust of India said. The agency said the decision was taken at an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss an appeal for military aid from Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. At least 12 people were killed when about 150 foreign gunmen trying to overthrow the Maldives government today seized several top government officials and battled loyalist troops, officials said.

Several hundred foreign attackers seized the capital of the Maldives yesterday in an attempt to overthrow the government of the Indian Ocean islands, killing at least 12 people and wounding 100, government and diplomatic sources reported. The attackers reportedly fled early today after India, the biggest military power in southern Asia, dispatched 1,600 troops and three naval vessels in response to a Maldivian appeal for help. Officials and diplomats said the estimated 400 gunmen who launched the attack on the island capital, Male, early yesterday were believed to be mercenaries recruited from among Sri Lanka's Tamil rebels by Maldivian opponents of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

It's safe to say that unless you are a diver, the Maldives never crossed your mind, at least until Dec. 26, when the little nation of about 1,200 islands was smacked by the tsunami that ran over parts of southeast Asia. The Maldives? (That's MALL-deevz, although lots of people also say the second syllable like the English word dives, which makes sense, given the country's spectacular diving sites.) Where are they? They're in the Indian Ocean, to the west and south of Sri Lanka, an isolated nation of about 280,000 people.

U.S. immigration authorities will not deport anyone to Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the next four months, the Department of Homeland Security announced yesterday. The tsunami that hit South Asia has so crippled the infrastructure in those countries that it would be difficult to send anyone back, an agency spokesman said. "It has been determined that right now those are the areas most severely stricken," said Manny Van Pelt, the spokesman. "It's not based on the number of people who die but the ability to effectively remove a person into the country.

Attorneys for globetrotting ex-fugitive David Friedland will ask a federal judge at hearings beginning today to suppress statements Friedland claims he made while drugged to U.S. marshals returning him home from his Indian Ocean hideaway. The colorful former state senator from Jersey City, N.J., who faked his own death in a scuba diving accident in the Bahamas on Labor Day, 1985, had eluded Interpol until last Dec. 12 when he was discovered running a string of scuba- diving schools under an assumed name in the Maldives, an island chain southwest of India.

Swashbuckling swindler David Friedland, an ex-New Jersey state senator who crisscrossed the globe a few steps ahead of the law after faking his own death in the Caribbean 27 months ago, has been nabbed on a tropical island in the Indian Ocean, the FBI said yesterday. Friedland, a jet-setting womanizer, brilliant politician, accomplished poet, federal informant and convicted criminal, was traveling alone when authorities in the Republic of Maldives seized him late Monday or early yesterday, said FBI Agent James J. Knights, spokesman for the bureau's Newark office.

Serbia struggles to keep power on BELGRADE, Serbia - Serbia was struggling to keep its power system going, officials warned Thursday, after weeks of record low temperatures in Europe that have snarled traffic, frozen rivers, and challenged officials to step up outreach to the homeless. The Serbian state power company said that its system could not hold on for much longer. Authorities urged citizens to save electricity in an appeal aired on national TV. Europe's big freeze has claimed hundreds of lives, mostly of homeless people, while tens of thousands of residents remain trapped in remote villages in Bosnia and Serbia and other areas.

David Friedland, the elusive former New Jersey state senator who staged his fake scuba-diving death in 1985 to avoid a prison sentence, was so heavily medicated on his return flight from the Maldive Islands in December that he made self-incriminating statements to the federal marshals who accompanied him home, according to a lawyer familiar with Friedland's case. Attorneys for Friedland want a federal judge to prevent those statements from being used against him in a fraud trial scheduled for Camden in the fall, said lawyer John Sullivan of Jersey City, who assisted one of Friedland's attorneys, Peter Willis, in preparing legal papers on the issue.

How could you? How could you possibly do it - sunbathe on the sands of Phuket, Thailand, at one of that region's great multistar resorts? Merely a spit away, people are trying to reclaim their lives and livelihoods after one of the worst natural disasters in modern history. Then again, how could you not do it? Phuket, Thailand's largest island, survives in normal times by two industries: rubber tree plantations and tourism. And this is no normal time. Isn't this when Phuket (pronounced p'hoo-KET)

Cuban activists caution the pope MIAMI - Nearly 750 Cuban activists have signed a letter to Pope Benedict XVI warning that his planned visit to Cuba will "send a message to the oppressors that they can continue" to abuse Catholic opponents, dissidents reported Thursday. "We would be very happy to receive you in our country, if the message of faith, love and hope that you could bring us also would serve to halt the repression against those who want to go to church," the letter said.

MALÉ, Maldives - The United States backtracked Friday from its swift recognition of the new Maldives government, which the nation's former leader contends came to power in a coup. The Maldives, off southern India, has faced a day of rioting and two days more of a political standoff since Mohamed Nasheed announced Tuesday that he was resigning as president after months of protests against his rule and fading support from the security forces. But the next day, Nasheed, who now faces an arrest warrant, announced he had actually been pushed from power at gunpoint.

Fast is a good quality in an action/adventure. But there is lightning-paced and then there is warp speed. Doug Liman's Jumper is the latter, a not-so-good quality in an action/adventure for the simple reason that the audience can't figure out what's going on. Adapted from Steven Gould's young-adult novel, Liman's tale of the bookish high-schooler with unusual powers isn't a shot of adrenaline, it's an OD. Mercilessly bullied at...

It's safe to say that unless you are a diver, the Maldives never crossed your mind, at least until Dec. 26, when the little nation of about 1,200 islands was smacked by the tsunami that ran over parts of southeast Asia. The Maldives? (That's MALL-deevz, although lots of people also say the second syllable like the English word dives, which makes sense, given the country's spectacular diving sites.) Where are they? They're in the Indian Ocean, to the west and south of Sri Lanka, an isolated nation of about 280,000 people.

Where are all the Europeans? The Japanese? The people who, since the first resort opened in 1972, have been making the tiny Maldives Republic of 1,200 islands one of the world's great tourist pamperers? The travelers are not coming, at least not in force, not since the tsunami in December. Tourism, the Maldives' No. 1 moneymaker, usually accounts for more than a fifth of the national income, and it's down by 49 percent this year. The government had expected tourism tax revenues to come to $43 million by December's end; new projections put it at $31 million.

How could you? How could you possibly do it - sunbathe on the sands of Phuket, Thailand, at one of that region's great multistar resorts? Merely a spit away, people are trying to reclaim their lives and livelihoods after one of the worst natural disasters in modern history. Then again, how could you not do it? Phuket, Thailand's largest island, survives in normal times by two industries: rubber tree plantations and tourism. And this is no normal time. Isn't this when Phuket (pronounced p'hoo-KET)

U.S. immigration authorities will not deport anyone to Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the next four months, the Department of Homeland Security announced yesterday. The tsunami that hit South Asia has so crippled the infrastructure in those countries that it would be difficult to send anyone back, an agency spokesman said. "It has been determined that right now those are the areas most severely stricken," said Manny Van Pelt, the spokesman. "It's not based on the number of people who die but the ability to effectively remove a person into the country.