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109TH YEAR I ©2012 THE MIAMI HERALD

INDEXTHE AMERICAS ...........4A WORLD NEWS ............6AOPINION........................7ACOMICS & PUZZLES ..6B

IN U.S., 1 IN 2 NEW GRADUATES ARE JOBLESS OR UNDEREMPLOYED, 3A

OBAMA STRONG IN SWING STATES AS ECONOMY IMPROVES, 5A

REPSOL THREATENS TO SUE FIRMS THAT HELP ARGENTINA,BUSINESS FRONT

CLEMENS TRIAL COULD HINGE ON VALUE OF CONGRESS’ HEARINGS, SPORTS FRONT

In Latin America, radical left at crossroads

BY PETER BAKERNew York Times Service

WASHINGTON — U.S. Presi-dent Barack Obama, seeking to ex-pand his administration’s response to oppression in the Middle East, announced new sanctions on Mon-day against those who provide Syr-ia and Iran with cutting-edge tech-nology to track down dissidents for abuse, torture or death.

The measures underscored the role that computers, social media and cellphones have played not just in organizing resistance to au-thoritarian governments but also in helping security services crack down on those dissidents. The new sanctions are meant to put technol-ogy providers on notice that they will be held responsible for en-abling human rights abuses.

The announcement came as Obama continues to search for a more effective response to the killings in Syria, where more than 9,000 people have died over the last year as the government of President Bashar al Assad has tried to suppress a popular uprising. Critics have described Obama’s response as too passive and have called for more robust action to halt the violence. Obama argued on Monday that the focus on technol-ogy refl ected an ever-widening set of actions that would eventually stop Assad.

“These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them,” Obama said in a speech at the United States Holo-caust Memorial Museum. “It’s one more step toward the day that we know will come, the end of the As-sad regime that has brutalized the Syrian people.”

The president, who toured the museum alongside Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, presented himself as a champion of Israel in the face of Republican complaints that he has not been supportive enough of the United States’ clos-est ally in the Middle East.

He noted that his administration had voted against United Nations resolutions condemning Israel and had worked to counter any threat from Iran. “The United States will

TURN TO SANCTIONS, 2A•

Washingtonimposes new sanctions for aiding Syria, Iran

BY JUAN FOREROWashington Post Service

BOGOTA — Quite suddenly, whether intentional or not, Argen-tina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner became the standard-bearer of populist nationalism in Latin America when her country seized a Spanish oil company last week.

The takeover of YPF enthralled Argentines and drew praise from nationalists as far away as Ven-ezuela, even as the radical politi-cal left in Latin America struggles with questions about its future.

The region’s most bombas-tic leader, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, who says his self-styled revolution should replace what he calls “savage capitalism,” is so ill with cancer that he has tak-en to pleading with God in public to spare his life. And in Cuba, the 53-year-old Castro government is resorting to reforms to keep a moribund economy afl oat.

So Argentina’s announcement last week, complete with a defi ant speech by Fernandez and the un-ceremonious removal of YPF ex-ecutives from their Buenos Aires

offi ce, bolstered those who fi rmly believe that the state trumps the interests of private companies in Latin America.

“It’s the correct position,” Ra-fael Ramirez, Venezuela’s mining and oil minister, told reporters. “You cannot permit that a country with important internal consump-tion and with Argentina’s growth projections watches as transna-tional companies exploit and take away oil while not investing to in-crease production capacities.”

But even as Argentina’s senate prepared to approve the expropri-

ation this week, Fernandez’s move underscored the gulf that exists between a group of nationalist countries led by charismatic pop-ulists and the economic centrists who govern much of the rest of the region, most notably in Brazil.

Locked out of world fi nancial markets for defaulting on $100 billion in debt a decade ago, Ar-gentina restricts imports, imposes currency and price controls, and has used a nationalized pension system and central bank reserves

TURN TO RADICAL LEFT, 4A•

BY ROBERT BARNESWashington Post Service

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will conclude one of its most signifi cant and controversial terms in decades by taking on one more issue that has divided the nation: Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.

The court’s fi nal oral argu-ment on Wednesday — Arizona v. United States — provides yet another chance for the justices to confront fundamental questions about the power of the federal

government. And the rulings the court will issue between now and the end of June could dra-matically alter the United States’ election-year landscape.

The court has considered U.S. President Barack Obama’s health-care law, has taken its fi rst look at the political redistricting battles being fought across the nation and will decide whether federal regulators still hold the authority to police the nation’s airwaves.

The Obama administration has moved aggressively against

Arizona’s SB 1070, which directs law enforcement to play a much more active role in identifying illegal immigrants and makes it a crime for them to seek work. The administration has persuad-ed courts to put aside key parts of the law.

And, as with last month’s hearings on the healthcare law, in the Arizona case the government is asking the court to recognize that the Constitution gives the federal government vast powers to confront national problems,

such as illegal immigration. “As the framers understood, it is the national government that has the ultimate responsibility to regu-late the treatment of aliens while on American soil, because it is the nation as a whole — not any single state — that must respond to the international consequenc-es of such treatment,” solicitor general Donald Verrilli told the court in the government’s brief.

Immigration is one of the

TURN TO IMMIGRATION, 2A•

Sudan warplanes hit key South Sudan cityBY ALAN BOSWELLMcClatchy News Service

BENTIU, South Sudan — Su-danese war jets launched four missiles into this key South Suda-nese state capital Monday, killing at least one and wounding 10 oth-ers as tensions continued to rise along the disputed South Sudan-Sudan border.

The jets appeared to be tar-geting a bridge on the only road linking Bentiu with the confl ict zone to the north, where Suda-nese and South Sudanese troops last week fought a pitched battle for control of Heglig, an oil town that had long been controlled by Sudan.

A car fi lled with journalists, including a McClatchy corre-spondent, had barely crossed the bridge when a missile struck 50 yards away, spouting a dark plume of smoke into the air.

Another missile struck a near-by market, incinerating a row of stalls made of wood and grass and killing a young boy, whose charred body lay crumpled near-by. Ten civilians were wounded, including three children.

It was the fourth aerial attack in 10 days on Bentiu but the fi rst since South Sudan announced

Friday that its troops had pulled out of Heglig, raising the spec-ter that Sudan would now march south of the recognized border in retaliation. There was no sign that either side was backing away from the confrontation. Sudan’s President Omar Bashir deliv-ered a fi ery speech in Heglig on Monday, vowing “no negotia-tion with those people,” accord-

ing to an account by the French news agency AFP. Meanwhile, at the South Sudanese barracks on the edge of Bentiu, top generals, some of whom had just fl own in, drank tea under trees, discuss-ing strategy and suggesting that a new South Sudanese offensive might be in the offi ng.

TURN TO SUDAN, 2A•

Some doubt whether sustainable seafood delivers on its promiseBY JULIET EILPERINWashington Post Service

Seafood counters used to be simpler places, where a fi sh was la-beled with its name and price. Now-adays, it carries more information than a used-car listing. Where did it swim? Was it farm-raised? Was it ever frozen? How much harm was done to the ocean by fi shing it?

Many retailers tout the environ-mental credentials of their seafood, but a growing number of scientists have begun to question whether these certifi cation systems deliver on their promises. The labels give customers a false impression that purchasing certain products helps the ocean more than it really does, some researchers say.

Backers respond that they are helping transform many of the globe’s wild-caught fi sheries, giv-ing them a fi nancial incentive to include environmental safeguards, while giving consumers a sense of what they can eat with a clear conscience.

To add to the confusion, there are a variety of certifi cation labels and guides, prompting retailers to adopt a hybrid approach, relying on multiple seafood rating systems

or establishing their own criteria and screening products that way.

As of Sunday, for example, Whole Foods stopped selling sea-food listed as “red” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute — including octopus, gray sole and Atlantic halibut —

TURN TO SEAFOOD, 2A•

AFP-GETTY IMAGES

Sudanese soldiers ride in a military vehicle in the oil region of Heglig on Monday.

ARIZONA v. U.S.:Politics to test justices again

JOSHUA LOTT/NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE

Laura Gomez, an illegal immigrant who is six months pregnant, originally from Colima, Mexico, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

SCOTT EELLS/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Fresh fish is displayed at the New Fulton Fish Market in New York.

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