Boston row averted; Jackson Browne in D.C.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Occupy Boston protesters and police ended a standoff calmly Monday, while a few protesters were arrested elsewhere and Jackson Browne played in Washington.
Fear of another round of clashes between protesters and police in Boston was allayed when activists trying to bring a large, winterized Army-surplus tent to downtown's Dewey Square encampment backed down after police stopped them. The financial district encampment is full of smaller, three-season tents.
Protesters said the larger, weatherproof, fireproof tent -- donated by a homeless man who raised the money for it through private donations -- would better meet the city's fire-code requirements, protesters said.
"We have made it quite clear we are not allowing them to build a new neighborhood in a public park," Mayor Thomas Menino spokeswoman Dot Joyce said.
In Washington, protesters heard Browne perform "Battle for the Future," a song he composed for the Occupy movement, The Washington Post reported.
Browne -- whose hits songs a generation ago included "Running on Empty" and "Doctor My Eyes" and whose political activism included his 1986 "Lives in the Balance" album that condemned Reaganism and U.S. Central American policy -- said Monday, "This movement doesn't need a new song -- it just needs people to show up and sing.'"
His performance came a day after U.S. Park Police arrested 31 people and tore down a barn-like building activists began to erect Sunday morning in a park two blocks from the White House. Protesters said Monday they would find a new place to hold meetings in bad weather.
In Oregon, Occupy Portland protesters huddled for warmth Monday and two men were arrested in the downtown Shemanski Park as temperatures hovered above freezing after a weekend of face-offs with police that resulted in nearly two-dozen arrests. Riot police scuffled with protesters Saturday evening after demonstrators tried to set up a new campsite. Nineteen people were arrested.
Temperatures were forecast to drop to 25 degrees Monday night.
About 70 miles south of San Francisco, two Occupy Santa Cruz protesters were arrested early Monday after chaining themselves to courthouse steps, sheriff's deputies said. The two men -- one 25 and the other 41 -- were arrested for alleged trespassing because they were told they could not remain on the property overnight, sheriff's deputies said.
In Denver, a federal judge Monday heard arguments police were unconstitutionally restricting Occupy Denver supporters' free-speech rights. Lawyers for the protesters told U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn the city was using ordinances selectively to stifle the movement, The Denver Post reported.
Gingrich returns Pelosi salvo
NEW YORK, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Republican U.S. presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said Monday Nancy Pelosi should face charges if she reveals information from his old ethics case.
The Democratic California congresswoman told the political Web site Talking Points Memo Monday there are "thousands of pages" of information about Gingrich from the 1990s when he was a congressman from Georgia.
The House voted 395-28 in 1997 to reprimand Gingrich and require him to pay a $300,000 penalty, after he admitted giving false information to the House ethics committee and violating House rules.
"One of these days we'll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich," Pelosi said. "When the time is right. … I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff."
Gingrich called Pelosi's comments "an early Christmas gift, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"That's a fundamental violation of the rules of the House and I would hope that members would immediately file charges against her the second she does it," the former House speaker said.
"I want to thank [former] Speaker Pelosi for what I regard as an early Christmas gift," Gingrich said. "… I regard it as a useful education for the American people to see what a tainted political ethics operation Pelosi was engaged in."
The Times said Pelosi's press secretary, Drew Hammill, responded in a Twitter posting that she was "clearly referring to the extensive amount of information that is in the public record."
Gingrich was in New York to meet with businessman Donald Trump.
Turnout plunges in Egypt runoff election
CAIRO, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Turnout plunged Monday in Egypt's runoff vote in the first round of parliamentary elections since President Hosni Mubarak's ouster, election observers said.
Voter lines were much shorter than when voting began a week ago, the observers said. At the same time, Egypt's election commission said turnout last week was much lower than it first reported.
Fifty-two percent of eligible voters turned out last week, not 62 percent, as the commission reported a few days ago. Authorities blamed the discrepancy on a mathematical error.
Egyptian authorities first estimated turnout at 70 percent.
The ruling military council had sought to use the high turnout figures as proof of voters' support for its legitimacy as custodian of the political transition, The New York Times reported.
Islamists won a 61 percent parliamentary majority last week -- figures that will "be more balanced" when the votes are finalized, independent presidential candidate Amr Moussa said.
The mainstream Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party received 36.6 percent and the ultraconservative Salafi Islamists Nour Party 24.4 percent.
Still, last week's results are "a message to the liberal forces that they have to come together and ... mobilize themselves in order to create a strong opposition within the Parliament," Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister and Arab League secretary-general, told CNN.
The Brotherhood movement, which seeks to expand Islamic law in many Middle Eastern countries, prevailed in two days of balloting that began a week ago. The balloting included voters in Cairo and Alexandria, cities where liberal parties said they hoped to exhibit their greatest strength.
The Brotherhood's party, which says it is moderate and emphasizes tolerance and pluralism, is accused by opposition leaders of using tactics similar to those of Mubarak to sway voters to its side, the Egyptian daily al-Ahram said Monday.
The party denies the accusations, saying any Supreme Electoral Commission violations, such as having party delegates in front of polling stations, were insignificant and were needed to facilitate the balloting by an overwhelming number of voters.
The commission said 9.7 million valid votes were cast last week.
The Nour Party, formed in January with the revolution that overthrew Mubarak, maintains an exacting version of Islam and seeks to impose strict Islamic law similar to that in Saudi Arabia, in which women must be veiled and alcohol is banned.
Islamists have formed governments in Tunisia and Morocco and are positioned for a major role in Libya after the ouster and killing of Moammar Gadhafi, the Times reported.
Farmers: Crisis if no undocumented workers
MAITLAND, Fla., Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Florida farmers warn of a crisis if Washington passes a bill stripping them of their undocumented workforce, which accounts for 75 percent of their workers.
"If approximately 75 percent of your workforce disappears, what are you to do?" the Florida Grower trade monthly asks in its current issue.
Most undocumented farm workers currently buy fake Social Security cards and employers generally issue paychecks and deduct payroll taxes attributed to the false numbers, the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association acknowledges.
This lets the employers fulfill their legal obligation. They are not required to check if the numbers are legitimate.
But the proposed Legal Workforce Act, sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, would require all employers to use the E-Verify federal database to confirm the numbers' legitimacy -- and not hire undocumented workers.
The law would "provide growers who want to do the right thing with a reliable source of legal labor" and "protect the livelihoods of American workers and the rights of guest workers," Smith said
With unemployment near record highs, "these jobs should go to legal workers," he said June 14 when he introduced the bill.
Agricultural other business groups oppose Smith's bill, and chances of its passage are questionable, The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post reports.
But even if it doesn't pass on Capitol Hill, a similar bill might pass in Florida, the farmers say.
Eleven states, including Alabama and Georgia, have passed E-Verify laws, despite opposition. This drove away undocumented farm workers, causing massive crop losses, FFVA says.
Farmers could hire legal guest workers under a U.S. H-2A visa program, which provides entry for temporary or seasonal agricultural work.
But these workers must be covered by U.S. wage laws, workers' compensation and other standards farmers say they can't afford, the Post says.
