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DAMASCUS, Syria— The U.N. confirmed an outbreak of polio in Syria for the first time in over a decade on Tuesday, warning the disease threatens to spread among an estimated half-million children who have never been immunized because of the civil war.

The grim finding added another layer of misery to a brutal conflict that has already killed more than 100,000 people and uprooted millions. The aid group Save the Children urged a "vaccination cease-fire" to try to prevent an epidemic of the highly contagious disease.

Meanwhile, hopes for a negotiated settlement to the three-year conflict appeared ever more distant as Syria's President Bashar Assad sacked a deputy prime minister for meeting Western officials to discuss the possibility of holding a peace conference — the latest blow to diplomatic efforts to bring the country's warring parties to the negotiating table.

At least 10 cases of polio among babies and toddlers were confirmed in northeastern Syria, the World Health Organization said — the first outbreak of the crippling disease in 14 years. Nearly all Syrian children were vaccinated against polio before the civil war began.

WHO spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer said the U.N. agency was awaiting lab results on another 12 suspected cases, mostly children under 2.

"This is a communicable disease. With population movements it can travel to other areas," Rosenbauer said. "So the risk is high of spread across the region."

Regionally, neighboring Lebanon and Jordan are likely to be at particular risk because the two countries have absorbed the bulk of Syrian refugees fleeing war-torn areas, where it's more likely that children haven't been vaccinated. The poorest refugees often crowd, several families together, into apartments and dilapidated shacks.

The polio virus usually infects children in unsanitary conditions through consuming food or drink contaminated with feces. It attacks the nerves and can kill or paralyze, spreading widely and unnoticed before it starts crippling children.

In an interview with The Associated Press in Damascus, UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said his organization and WHO planned to immunize 2.4 million children throughout Syria. He said he had begun discussions with senior Syrian officials to access war zones, but hadn't started negotiating with rebels.

"Vaccinations and immunizations have absolutely no political content. They have no relationship to any military issues and therefore there is every reason ... (to) believe we will gain access into these communities," he said.

Syria said it had launched a vaccination campaign around the country days after the Geneva-based WHO said it had received reports of children showing symptoms of polio in Syria's Deir el-Zour province. But the campaign faces difficulty with lack of access.

Save the Children urged a "vaccination cease-fire" in Syria "to prevent the current polio outbreak from turning into an epidemic."

The group's chief executive, Justin Forsyth, said if the international community and the Syrian government could allow U.N. chemical weapons inspectors to fan out across the country, it could do the same for aid workers.

But armed clashes and government blockades have prevented medical workers and supplies from reaching rebel-held towns, activists said.

One blockaded rebel enclave is the besieged western Damascus suburb of Moadamiyeh, where activists reported last week that residents were eating boiled grape leaves and raw olives because they had run out of food. In September, they reported that six people there had died of illnesses related to malnutrition.

On Tuesday, rebels and Syrian forces observed a temporary cease-fire to allow nearly 2,000 residents to flee the neighborhood, the result of a rare agreement between warring sides to avert a humanitarian crisis.

Desperate men, women and children fearfully crossed over a no man's land, while some elderly and ill residents were carried by Red Crescent workers. Many young men were among those fleeing, and government officials said they included surrendering rebels, who were taken on separate buses.

Government official Aqil Iyad said residents were taken to temporary shelters. Around 3,000 residents of Moadamiyeh fled the area in late August during another rare cease-fire.

In a setback to efforts to bring a quick end to the conflict, Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil was fired Tuesday after meeting in Geneva with the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford.

The meeting on Saturday was to discuss the possibility of holding a peace conference next month in Geneva, State Department spokesman Jen Pskai said.

"We do regularly meet with Syrians with direct contact with the regime in Damascus," she said.

The decree relieving Jamil of his duties said he was fired for "undertaking activities and meetings outside the homeland without coordination with the government," the state news agency SANA said.

Sacking Jamil appeared to signal the government was hardening its stance — or that it feared he was jockeying for a position in a post-Assad Syria.

Jamil told Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV that he also met with a Russian diplomat and U.N. officials. He did not say whether his moves were coordinated with Assad.

"I am not an employee," he said. "I am a political activist."

Assad has said in principle that his government will attend talks, but it will not negotiate with the country's disparate armed rebel groups.

The sacking occurred as the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, was in Damascus to meet officials and opposition figures.

A key sticking point is Assad's future. Much of Syria's fractured opposition rejects any transition plan in which Assad or his circle are involved.

Also on Tuesday, unknown gunmen shot dead Mohammad Saeed, a well-known activist in Aleppo province who was an important source of information for international media, including the AP. The Aleppo Media Center said Saeed was shot dead by a gunman in a passing car in the town of Hreitan, where he was based.

Saeed was highly critical of Islamic extremists who have gained strength among the ranks of rebels across the country.

CAIRO  - Egypt's army-backed government and the Muslim Brotherhood should seek reconciliation, a seior minister said on Tuesday, voicing a rare plea to seek compromise with a group branded "terrorists" by many of his cabinet colleagues.

The army toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Brotherhood in July when security forces killed hundreds of its members and jailed thousands, including Mursi, who is due to appear in court on Monday on charges of inciting violence.

Yet street protests regularly erupt and Islamist militants have intensified their attacks.

Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Bahaa El-Din has been trying to encourage both sides to compromise since he put an initiative to the cabinet in August.

"Security is essential and key to Egypt but it is not alone going to get us where we want, and there has to be a political framework as well," Bahaa El-Din told reporters.

"Ultimately this country needs to move towards a framework, of a political accord of some sort. It needs a political framework that is more inclusive for everybody."

His proposal called for an immediate end to the state of emergency, political participation for all parties and the guarantee of human rights, including free assembly.

But Bahaa El-Din's mission will not be easy.

State-run media have whipped up public opinion against the Brotherhood and helped create a climate in which there is little tolerance for the Islamist movement that won every election since a popular uprising toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

The security clampdown has hardened the Brotherhood's position.

JOIN THE ROADMAP

Bahaa El-Din expressed hope a political compromise could be reached, even though the Brotherhood's top leaders are in jail and say that, as a peaceful movement, they see no need to renounce violence, a key demand made by the government in the past.

"The fact that some or most or all of the leadership is in jail, I don't think that alone prevents them from taking a step forward and saying 'we are willing to give a sign that we will abandon this path (of violence) and join the roadmap'," he said.

A video, released by the interior ministry showed officials from the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) visiting some of the detained Islamists including Al-Wasat party leader Abu El-Ela Madi.

Officials are also seen speaking with Brotherhood leader Saad El-Husseini who, according to EOHR head Hafez Abu Saada, was the most agitated and told them that the state and the army were taking "revenge".

Other more senior detainees of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its general guide Mohamed Badie, refused to meet with the human rights group, Abu Saada said.

Bahaa El-Din said the Brotherhood had "a huge impact on the perpetuation and continuation of violence" and should pursue politics instead. He did not elaborate.

Nearly daily street protests, clashes between supporters and opponents of Mursi and rising attacks by Islamist groups that security officials say are linked to the Brotherhood have hammered tourism and investment in Egypt, a strategic U.S. ally.

Bahaa El-Din predicted Egypt's economy could withstand the upheaval, but expressed hopes that economic growth would climb to 7 percent once the political turbulence eased.

Egypt had several years of growth of around seven percent before the 2011 revolt.

"It will continue to grow 2 to 3 percent per year. But I wish we could do better," he said. "Egypt, like any other country, can live with a certain level of instability."

Pelantun "Pour It Up" yang menghiasi kulit depan majalah GQ tersebut bersempena ulang tahun ke-25 majalah tersebut memperlihatkan Rihanna tampil separuh bogel dengan kepalanya dipenuhi ular berwarna-warni, manakala seekor ular sawa dikalungkan pada lehernya.

"Kepala Medusa, saya rasa seperti Iluminati!!," tulisnya di Twitter seperti yang dipetik dariDailymail.

"Saya suka bermain dengan tema binatang, walaupun yang satu ini (ular) sedikit masalah untuk saya, tapi saya sangat menyukainya."

Dalam pada itu, Rihanna yang kini dalam jelajah konsertnya "Diamonds World Tour" baru sahaja selesai dengan konsertnya di Tel Aviv, Israel dan bakal ke Puerto Rico dan Barbados sebelum kembali ke Amerika Syarikat untuk lokasi terakhir konsert jelajahnya.

"Soal agama adalah hak individu dan ia langsung tiada kena mengena dengan parti politik dan setiap umat Islam tidak kira sama ada mereka artis atau golongan biasa perlu tahu tanggungjawab kepada agama dan bukannya menuding jari kepada pihak lain.

"Politik tidak boleh mempengaruhi seseorang untuk melakukan ibadat ataupun tidak dan saya tidak faham mengapa politik disalahkan dalam konteks artis tidak mengamalkan ajaran agama Islam dalam ceramah yang dia sampaikan," ujarnya.

Zed atau nama sebenarnya Rozaidi Abdul Jamil turut mempertikai dan mempersoalkan perjuangan Abby dalam parti Pas yang dilihat tidak ikhlas selain menabur fitnah.

"Saya tidak faham dengan sikapnya kerana secara terang-terangan dia bukannya memperjuangkan Islam tetapi hanya untuk kepentingan politik dan jelas isu yang dia bangkitkan ternyata tidak masuk akal.

"Ia bersifat kebudak-budakkan dan ingin saya tanya di sini, di mana Abby ketika isu seperti penggunaan kalimah Allah hebat diperkatakan sebelum ini? Abby hanya muncul dan lantang bersuara pada ceramah-ceramah untuk membantu pilihan raya parti itu dan bukannya memperjuangkan Islam."

Oh, the things you hear on Amtrak's Acela service! Screaming kids, complaints about Wi-Fi and — oh yeah — a former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA seemingly spilling secrets to reporters.

We learn this from the Twitter feed of Tom Matzzie, former Washington director of MoveOn.org Political Action, who sat near retired Gen. Michael Hayden. Matzzie's tweets suggest that Hayden took calls from reporters digging into the ongoing NSA spy scandal and asking about President Barack Obama's BlackBerry and CIA secret prisons overseas.

Hayden apparently insisted on being quoted anonymously.

"FAIL," as they say.

BRUSSELS — European leaders united in anger as they attended a summit overshadowed by reports of widespread U.S. spying on its allies — allegations German Chancellor Angela Merkel said had shattered trust in the Obama administration and undermined the crucial trans-Atlantic relationship.

The latest revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency swept up more than 70 million phone records in France and may have tapped Merkel's own cellphone brought denunciations Thursday from the French and German governments.

Merkel's unusually stern remarks as she arrived at the European Union gathering indicated she wasn't placated by a phone conversation she had Wednesday with President Barack Obama, or his personal assurances that the U.S. is not listening in on her calls now.

"We need trust among allies and partners," Merkel told reporters in Brussels. "Such trust now has to be built anew. This is what we have to think about."

"The United States of America and Europe face common challenges. We are allies," the German leader said. "But such an alliance can only be built on trust. That's why I repeat again: spying among friends, that cannot be."

The White House may soon face other irked heads of state and government. The British newspaper The Guardian said Thursday it obtained a confidential memo suggesting the NSA was able to monitor 35 world leaders' communications in 2006. The memo said the NSA encouraged senior officials at the White House, Pentagon and other agencies to share their contacts so the spy agency could add foreign leaders' phone numbers to its surveillance systems, the report said.

The Guardian did not identify who reportedly was eavesdropped on, but said the memo termed the payoff very meager: "Little reportable intelligence" was obtained, it said.

Other European leaders arriving for the 28-nation meeting echoed Merkel's displeasure. Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt called it "completely unacceptable" for a country to eavesdrop on an allied leader.

If reports that Merkel's cellphone had been tapped are true, "it is exceptionally serious," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told national broadcaster NOS.

"We want the truth," Italian Premier Enrico Letta told reporters. "It is not in the least bit conceivable that activity of this type could be acceptable."

Echoing Merkel, Austria's foreign minister, Michael Spindelegger, said, "We need to re-establish with the U.S. a relationship of trust, which has certainly suffered from this."

France, which also vocally objected to allies spying on each other, asked that the issue of reinforcing Europeans' privacy in the digital age be added to the agenda of the two-day summit. Before official proceedings got under way, Merkel held a brief one-on-one with French President Francois Hollande, and discussed the spying controversy.

After summit talks that lasted until after 1 a.m. Friday, Herman Van Rompuy, European Council president, announced at a news conference that France and Germany were seeking bilateral talks with the United States to resolve the dispute over electronic spying by "secret services" by the end of this year.

"What is at stake is preserving our relations with the United States," Hollande told reporters at his own early-morning news conference. "They should not be changed because of what has happened. But trust has to be restored and reinforced."

"It's become clear that for the future, something must change — and significantly," Merkel said. "We will put all efforts into forging a joint understanding by the end of the year for the cooperation of the (intelligence) agencies between Germany and the U.S., and France and the U.S., to create a framework for the cooperation."

The Europeans' statements and actions indicated that they hadn't been satisfied with assurances from Washington. On Wednesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama personally assured Merkel that her phone is not being listened to now and won't be in the future.

"I think we are all outraged, across party lines," Wolfgang Bosbach, a prominent German lawmaker from Merkel's party, told Deutschlandfunk radio. "And that also goes for the response that the chancellor's cellphone is not being monitored — because this sentence says nothing about whether the chancellor was monitored in the past."

"This cannot be justified from any point of view by the fight against international terrorism or by averting danger," Bosbach said.

Asked on hursday whether the Americans had monitored Merkel's previous communications, White House spokesman Carney wouldn't rule it out.

"We are not going to comment publicly on every specified alleged intelligence activity," he said.

But while the White House was staying publicly mum, Carney said the Obama administration was discussing Germany's concerns "through diplomatic channels at the highest level," as it was with other U.S. allies worried about the alleged spying.

Obama adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism Lisa Monaco wrote in an editorial for USA Today that the U.S. government is not operating "unrestrained."

The U.S. intelligence community has more restrictions and oversight than any other country, she wrote. "We are not listening to every phone call or reading every e-mail. Far from it."

Monaco noted that a privacy and civil liberties oversight board is reviewing counterterrorism efforts to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected.

"Going forward, we will continue to gather the information we need to keep ourselves and our allies safe, while giving even greater focus to ensuring that we are balancing our security needs with the privacy concerns all people share," she wrote.

In the past, much of the official outrage in Europe about revelations of U.S. communications intercepts leaked by former NSA contract worker Edward Snowden seemed designed for internal political consumption in countries that readily acknowledge conducting major spying operations themselves. But there has been a new discernible vein of anger in Europe as the scale of the NSA's reported operations became known, as well as the possible targeting of a prominent leader like Merkel, presumably for inside political or economic information.

"Nobody in Germany will be able to say any longer that NSA surveillance — which is apparently happening worldwide and millions of times — is serving solely intelligence-gathering or defense against Islamic terror or weapons proliferation," said Hans-Christian Strobele, a member of the German parliamentary oversight committee.

Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, said Europe's undermined confidence in the U.S. meant it should suspend negotiations for a two-way free-trade agreement that would account for almost half of the global economy. The Americans, Schulz said, now must prove they can be trusted.

"Let's be honest. If we go to the negotiations and we have the feeling those people with whom we negotiate know everything that we want to deal with in advance, how can we trust each other?" Schulz said.

European Union Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said for many Europeans, eavesdropping on their phone calls or reading their emails is particularly objectionable because it raises the specter of totalitarian regimes of the recent past.

"At least in Europe, we consider the right to privacy a fundamental right and it is a very serious matter. We cannot, let's say, pretend it is just something accessory," Barroso told a presummit news conference.

Referring to the former East Germany's secret police, the feared Stasi, Barroso said, "to speak about Chancellor Merkel, in Germany there was a part of Germany where there was a political police that was spying on people's lives every day. So we know very recently what totalitarianism means. And we know very well what comes, what happens when the state uses powers that intrude in people's lives. So it is a very important issue, not only for Germany but for Europe in general."

In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry summoned the U.S. ambassador to stress how seriously it takes the reported spying on Merkel. Germany's defense minister said his country and Europe can't return "to business as usual" with Washington, given the number of reports that the United States has eavesdropped on allied nations.

A German parliamentary committee that oversees the country's intelligence service met to discuss the spying allegations. Its head, Thomas Oppermann, recalled previous reports to the panel that U.S. authorities had denied violating German interests, and said, "we were apparently deceived by the American side."

Meanwhile, two Western diplomats told  that U.S. officials have briefed them on documents obtained by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that might expose their respective countries' levels of intelligence cooperation with the U.S.

The diplomats said the briefings came from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The Washington Post said some of the documents Snowden took contain sensitive material about collection programs against adversaries including Iran, Russia and China. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the intelligence briefings publicly.