The Lede Blog: New Photographs Stir Doubts About Bashar's Baby and Iran's Space Monkey

Last Updated, Saturday, 12:37 p.m. Bad news, readers: new images appear to cast doubt on the accuracy of two of the week’s most widely-reported stories — the rumored pregnancy of Syria’s first lady, and the pioneering space flight of an Iranian monkey.

As the Washington Post correspondent Liz Sly reported, President Bashar al-Assad’s office posted five new photographs of his wife, Asma, on Facebook, as part of an effort to disprove a curious aside in a Lebanese newspaper report that she is pregnant. In each of the photographs, said to have been taken last week in Damascus, a very slender Mrs. Assad was pictured congratulating the winners of this year’s Syrian Science Olympiad.

As my colleague Rick Gladstone explained, “rumors that Mrs. Assad had conceived in June,” were first reported in November by Al Bawaba, an Amman-based news Web site. Since the British-born first lady has been out of public view for most of the past year, as her husband’s government struggled to regain control of the country, the rumors about her spread despite an absence of visual confirmation.

The photographs were released a day after Mr. Assad’s office issued an indignant statement taking exception to a Washington Post blogger’s reading of the Lebanese newspaper’s story. The statement said the blogger, Max Fisher, “based his analysis on false allegations that led him to wrong results which are far from reality.”

Since Syria’s Science Olympiad takes place every year, the president’s office could have recycled images of the first lady that were taken a year or more earlier, but that would require the cooperation of all of the students pictured with her in the photographs. At least one of the students pictured with Mrs. Assad in the new photographs, a girl with curly hair wearing brightly-patterned sneakers, does appear in another image of the winners posted on the Olympiad’s Facebook page.

While this set of images appears to back the official story coming out of Damascus, recently released photographs and video of the monkey that Iran says it sent into space seem to undermine Tehran’s claims.

Video broadcast on Iranian television this week showed what officials said were images of a monkey before and after a space flight.

As journalists at the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle pointed out on its Persian language site on Thursday, the first reports on the space mission published in Iran’s state-run media showed an anxious-looking monkey prepared for blast-off with a prominent mole above his right eye.

When Iran got around to releasing photographs and video of the monkey’s capsule being retrieved post-flight, there was no trace of a mole on his brow in the close-ups of him waiving to reporters or smiling for the cameras at a subsequent public appearance.

That led to speculation that Iran might have attempted to cover up a failed space mission by displaying a different monkey than the one that actually made a 150-mile round trip into the thermosphere and back. Or that the newly famous monkey had fallen prey to the Iranian penchant for cosmetic surgery.

DW: Iranian Astro Monkey went to space with a mole on his face, came back without it. Plastic surgery? #iran http://t.co/iN4jxecP

— negin shiraghaei (@neginsh) 31 Jan 13

The missing mole is not exactly hard evidence that Iranians had a spare monkey waiting in the wings to pretend he’d just got back from space, but Iran does have a track record of fictionalizing its achievements in the field of rocket-science. Last July, however, the Iranian Students’ News Agency — which released photographs of the monkey with and without the mole this week — did report that the space agency in Tehran had five monkeys in training for the mission.

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Dina Manzo Split from Her Husband - in October

TV Watch

By Charlotte Triggs

02/02/2013 at 01:20 PM EST

Dina Manzo is splitting from her husband of seven years, Tommy Manzo, she confirmed Saturday.

"My secret ... I have been separated since October," the reality star, who appeared on Bravo's Real Housewives of New Jersey before moving on to her own show, Dina's Party on HGTV, Tweeted. "My heart hurts but Tommy and I will always share a very special love."

Dina, 41, and her sister Caroline, who also appeared on the show, were married to brothers Tommy and Albert Manzo, owners of N.J.'s Brownstone event hall. Dina's million-dollar wedding was documented for VH1's My Big Fat Fabulous Wedding, but Tommy never appeared on Housewives, and Dina has alluded to her husband's aversion to the media.

On Twitter, Dina thanked friends for their support. "I'm so grateful for the support of my loved ones during this time, especially my spiritual friends. You know who you are. And of course, my biggest supporter Lexi (her daughter from a previous marriage). Tommy adores her and they will remain close."

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New rules aim to get rid of junk foods in schools

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most candy, high-calorie drinks and greasy meals could soon be on a food blacklist in the nation's schools.

For the first time, the government is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful.

Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out of lunch lines and vending machines. In their place would be foods like baked chips, trail mix, diet sodas, lower-calorie sports drinks and low-fat hamburgers.

The rules, required under a child nutrition law passed by Congress in 2010, are part of the government's effort to combat childhood obesity. While many schools already have improved their lunch menus and vending machine choices, others still are selling high-fat, high-calorie foods.

Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunchrooms also have "a la carte" lines that sell other foods. Food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has never before been federally regulated.

"Parents and teachers work hard to instill healthy eating habits in our kids, and these efforts should be supported when kids walk through the schoolhouse door," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

Most snacks sold in school would have to have less than 200 calories. Elementary and middle schools could sell only water, low-fat milk or 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice. High schools could sell some sports drinks, diet sodas and iced teas, but the calories would be limited. Drinks would be limited to 12-ounce portions in middle schools and to 8-ounce portions in elementary schools.

The standards will cover vending machines, the "a la carte" lunch lines, snack bars and any other foods regularly sold around school. They would not apply to in-school fundraisers or bake sales, though states have the power to regulate them. The new guidelines also would not apply to after-school concessions at school games or theater events, goodies brought from home for classroom celebrations, or anything students bring for their own personal consumption.

The new rules are the latest in a long list of changes designed to make foods served in schools more healthful and accessible. Nutritional guidelines for the subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall. The 2010 child nutrition law also provided more money for schools to serve free and reduced-cost lunches and required more meals to be served to hungry kids.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has been working for two decades to take junk foods out of schools. He calls the availability of unhealthful foods around campus a "loophole" that undermines the taxpayer money that helps pay for the healthier subsidized lunches.

"USDA's proposed nutrition standards are a critical step in closing that loophole and in ensuring that our schools are places that nurture not just the minds of American children but their bodies as well," Harkin said.

Last year's rules faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn't be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department exempted in-school fundraisers from federal regulation and proposed different options for some parts of the rule, including the calorie limits for drinks in high schools, which would be limited to either 60 calories or 75 calories in a 12-ounce portion.

The department also has shown a willingness to work with schools to resolve complaints that some new requirements are hard to meet. Last year, for example, the government relaxed some limits on meats and grains in subsidized lunches after school nutritionists said they weren't working.

Schools, the food industry, interest groups and other critics or supporters of the new proposal will have 60 days to comment and suggest changes. A final rule could be in place as soon as the 2014 school year.

Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said surveys by her organization show that most parents want changes in the lunchroom.

"Parents aren't going to have to worry that kids are using their lunch money to buy candy bars and a Gatorade instead of a healthy school lunch," she said.

The food industry has been onboard with many of the changes, and several companies worked with Congress on the child nutrition law two years ago. Major beverage companies have already agreed to take the most caloric sodas out of schools. But those same companies, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, also sell many of the non-soda options, like sports drinks, and have lobbied to keep them in vending machines.

A spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association, which represents the soda companies, says they already have greatly reduced the number of calories that kids are consuming at school by pulling out the high-calorie sodas.

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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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"Great Rotation"- A Wall Street fairy tale?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's current jubilant narrative is that a rush into stocks by small investors has sparked a "great rotation" out of bonds and into equities that will power the bull market to new heights.

That sounds good, but there's a snag: The evidence for this is a few weeks of bullish fund flows that are hardly unusual for January.

Late-stage bull markets are typically marked by an influx of small investors coming late to the party - such as when your waiter starts giving you stock tips. For that to happen you need a good story. The "great rotation," with its monumental tone, is the perfect narrative to make you feel like you're missing out.

Even if something approaching a "great rotation" has begun, it is not necessarily bullish for markets. Those who think they are coming early to the party may actually be arriving late.

Investors pumped $20.7 billion into stocks in the first four weeks of the year, the strongest four-week run since April 2000, according to Lipper. But that pales in comparison with the $410 billion yanked from those funds since the start of 2008.

"I'm not sure you want to take a couple of weeks and extrapolate it into whatever trend you want," said Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist at Citigroup. "We have had instances where equity flows have picked up in the last two, three, four years when markets have picked up. They've generally not been signals of a continuation of that trend."

The S&P 500 rose 5 percent in January, its best month since October 2011 and its best January since 1997, driving speculation that retail investors were flooding back into the stock market.

Heading into another busy week of earnings, the equity market is knocking on the door of all-time highs due to positive sentiment in stocks, and that can't be ignored entirely. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> ended the week about 4 percent from an all-time high touched in October 2007.

Next week will bring results from insurers Allstate and The Hartford , as well as from Walt Disney , Coca-Cola Enterprises and Visa .

But a comparison of flows in January, a seasonal strong month for the stock market, shows that this January, while strong, is not that unusual. In January 2011 investors moved $23.9 billion into stock funds and $28.6 billion in 2006, but neither foreshadowed massive inflows the rest of that year. Furthermore, in 2006 the market gained more than 13 percent while in 2011 it was flat.

Strong inflows in January can happen for a number of reasons. There were a lot of special dividends issued in December that need reinvesting, and some of the funds raised in December tax-selling also find their way back into the market.

During the height of the tech bubble in 2000, when retail investors were really embracing stocks, a staggering $42.7 billion flowed into equities in January of that year, double the amount that flowed in this January. That didn't end well, as stocks peaked in March of that year before dropping over the next two-plus years.

MOM AND POP STILL WARY

Arguing against a 'great rotation' is not necessarily a bearish argument against stocks. The stock market has done well since the crisis. Despite the huge outflows, the S&P 500 has risen more than 120 percent since March 2009 on a slowly improving economy and corporate earnings.

This earnings season, a majority of S&P 500 companies are beating earnings forecast. That's also the case for revenue, which is a departure from the previous two reporting periods where less than 50 percent of companies beat revenue expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Meanwhile, those on the front lines say mom and pop investors are still wary of equities after the financial crisis.

"A lot of people I talk to are very reluctant to make an emotional commitment to the stock market and regardless of income activity in January, I think that's still the case," said David Joy, chief market strategist at Columbia Management Advisors in Boston, where he helps oversee $571 billion.

Joy, speaking from a conference in Phoenix, says most of the people asking him about the "great rotation" are fund management industry insiders who are interested in the extra business a flood of stock investors would bring.

He also pointed out that flows into bond funds were positive in the month of January, hardly an indication of a rotation.

Citi's Levkovich also argues that bond investors are unlikely to give up a 30-year rally in bonds so quickly. He said stocks only began to see consistent outflows 26 months after the tech bubble burst in March 2000. By that reading it could be another year before a serious rotation begins.

On top of that, substantial flows continue to make their way into bonds, even if it isn't low-yielding government debt. January 2013 was the second best January on record for the issuance of U.S. high-grade debt, with $111.725 billion issued during the month, according to International Finance Review.

Bill Gross, who runs the $285 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, the world's largest bond fund, commented on Twitter on Thursday that "January flows at Pimco show few signs of bond/stock rotation," adding that cash and money markets may be the source of inflows into stocks.

Indeed, the evidence suggests some of the money that went into stock funds in January came from money markets after a period in December when investors, worried about the budget uncertainty in Washington, started parking money in late 2012.

Data from iMoneyNet shows investors placed $123 billion in money market funds in the last two months of the year. In two weeks in January investors withdrew $31.45 billion of that, the most since March 2012. But later in the month money actually started flowing back.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Suicide Bomber Attacks Market in Pakistan

Abdul Basit/Associated Press

People gathered at the scene of the explosion in a market in northwestern Pakistan on Friday.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — An explosion in a market in northwestern Pakistan on Friday killed at least 21 people and wounded 33 in what police described as a suicide bombing.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Hangu, about 70 miles west of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. Abu Omar, a Taliban commander in the neighboring tribal region of North Waziristan, said in a telephone interview that the attack was in revenge for the killing on Thursday of a Sunni cleric.

The cleric, Mufti Abdul Majeed Deenpuri, 60, was shot in the southern port city of Karachi, setting off fears of reprisals against Shiites.

Mr. Deenpuri was a senior teacher at Jamia Binoria, one of the largest seminaries in Pakistan. A gunman opened fire on a vehicle carrying the cleric and a colleague at a busy intersection and then fled.

While the security situation is precarious across Pakistan, Rehman Malik, the interior minister, had warned of the potential for an attack in Karachi, a sprawling, violence-prone port city. Cellphone service was suspended there from noon to 3 p.m. during Friday Prayer.

Sectarian violence has also occurred in Hangu in the past, often forcing the authorities to impose a curfew. The town borders the Orakzai tribal region, where the army and paramilitary forces are fighting Taliban militants.

Friday’s explosion occurred just after Friday Prayer as worshipers filed out of nearby Sunni and Shiite mosques, police officials said. “People were coming out of the mosque when the explosion occurred,” said one officer in Hangu, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Another police official in Hangu said a suicide bomber had detonated his explosives. While Shiites were the likely target, the dead included people from both Islamic sects, he said.

Separately, a Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said 30 mortar shells fired from Afghanistan on Friday morning killed six residents of Angoor Adda, a border village in South Waziristan. However, there was no official comment from the Pakistani military, and a local government official gave a conflicting number of casualties, saying three people were killed and six wounded.

In recent years, Pakistan and Afghanistan have traded barbs over allegations of cross border rocket and artillery fire. The 1,510 mile long craggy border between the two countries has long posed a problem for both sides, each accusing the other of not manning the border effectively. Both sides maintain that insurgents easily cross over the porous border, but plans to fence the border have been shot down as impractical.

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch released its World Report 2013, which sharply criticized the Pakistani government and its military and intelligence agencies for failing to reduce human rights abuses.

“Pakistan’s human rights crisis worsened markedly in 2012 with religious minorities bearing the brunt of killings and repression,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, the director in Pakistan for Human Rights Watch. “While the military continued to perpetrate abuses with impunity in Baluchistan and beyond, Sunni extremists killed hundreds of Shia Muslims and the Taliban attacked schools, students, and teachers.”

Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan. Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting from Islamabad.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misidentified the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. It is Peshawar, not Hangu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

An earlier headline with this article misstated the location of the suicide attack. It was in a market, not a mosque.

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Google moves closer to resolving EU investigation

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Google has offered to take specific steps to allay competition regulators’ concerns about its business practices, in a major move towards ending a two-year investigation and avoiding billions of dollars in fines.

The European Commission said on Friday it had received detailed proposals from the world’s most popular search engine, which has been under investigation following complaints from more than a dozen companies, including Microsoft, that Google has used its market power to block rivals.

If the commission accepts the proposals under its settlement procedure, it would mean no fine and no finding of wrongdoing against Google.

Companies found to be in breach of EU rules can be fined as much as 10 percent of global turnover, which could mean up to $ 4 billion if there is no satisfactory resolution in Google’s case.

EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told Reuters he had received Google’s submission, but declined to give details of the proposal.

“We are analyzing it,” he said.

Google spokesman Al Verney said the group continues to work cooperatively with the commission.

The company ranks first in Internet searching in Europe, with an 82 percent market share, versus 67 percent in the United States, according to research firm comScore.

Lobbying group ICOMP, whose members include complainants Microsoft, Foundem, Hot-map, Streetmap and Nextag, said any solution should include measures ensuring that rivals could compete on a level playing field with Google.

The FairSearch coalition, whose members include online travel agencies and complainants Expedia and TripAdvisor, said a third-party monitor should be appointed to ensure that Google lives up to any promises.

The commission, which acts as competition regulator in the 27-member European Union, is now expected to seek feedback from Google’s rivals and other interested parties, before launching an official market test.

Last month, Google won a major victory when U.S. antitrust regulators ended their investigation, saying the company had not manipulated its web search results to block rivals.

The commission has said Google may have favored its own search services over those of rivals, and copied travel and restaurant reviews from competing sites without permission.

The EU executive is also concerned the company may have put restrictions on advertisers and advertising to prevent them from moving their online campaigns to competing search engines.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Rex Merrifield and Hans-Juergen Peters)

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Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem Expecting Second Child: Report

By Sarah Michaud and Tim Nudd

02/01/2013 at 01:15 PM EST

Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem

George Pimentel/WireImage

Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem may be set to double down on parenthood.

The actors, who have a 2-year-old son, Leonardo, are expecting their second child together, the New York Post's Page Six reports.

"Nature is very wise and gives you nine months to prepare, but in that moment – when you see that face, you are transformed forever," Cruz, 38, has said of parenthood.

Reps for the couple did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's requests for comment.

Cruz and Bardem, 43, both Oscar winners, were married in July 2010 at a friend's home in the Bahamas.

If true, this won't be the only new addition to the family this year – Cruz's sister Mónica is expecting a bundle of joy of her own.

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Hedgehog Alert! Prickly pets can carry salmonella

NEW YORK (AP) — Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.

In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health officials on Thursday say such cases seem to be increasing.

The CDC recommends thoroughly washing your hands after handling hedgehogs and cleaning pet cages and other equipment outside.

Other pets that carry the salmonella bug are frogs, toads, turtles, snakes, lizards, chicks and ducklings.

Seven of the hedgehog illnesses were in Washington state, including the death — an elderly man from Spokane County who died in January. The other cases were in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon.

In years past, only one or two illnesses from this salmonella strain have been reported annually, but the numbers rose to 14 in 2011, 18 last year, and two so far this year.

Children younger than five and the elderly are considered at highest risk for severe illness, CDC officials said.

Hedgehogs are small, insect-eating mammals with a coat of stiff quills. In nature, they sometimes live under hedges and defend themselves by rolling up into a spiky ball.

The critters linked to recent illnesses were purchased from various breeders, many of them licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CDC officials said. Hedgehogs are native to Western Europe, New Zealand and some other parts of the world, but are bred in the United States.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

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Wall Street surges to five-year highs on data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks climbed to five-year highs on Friday in the wake of jobs and manufacturing data that showed the economy's sluggish recovery is still on track.

The Dow industrials rose to 14,000 for the first time since mid-October 2007 and the S&P hit its highest since December that year. The S&P advanced 5 percent in January, its best start to a year since 1997.

Analysts attributed the market's robust showing so far this year partly to a deluge of cash flowing into equities.

Data on Thursday showed investors poured $12.7 billion into U.S.-based stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the latest week, concluding the strongest four-week flows into stock funds since 1996.

"There's a lot of money looking for a home and people are finally deciding the bond market is done and moving money into equities," said Edward Simmons, managing director and partner at HighTower in Portland, Maine.

"I see the rotation (of assets) pushing the market up in the face of not-massive amounts of good news," he said. "People are overlooking the higher risk in equities."

Employment grew modestly in January, with 157,000 jobs added in the month, slightly below expectations for 160,000. Still, figures for both November and December were revised upwards.

Other reports released Friday showed the pace of growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector picked up in January to its highest level in nine months, U.S. consumer sentiment rose more than expected last month, while December construction spending also beat forecasts.

"All the data seems to keep pointing to a slowly, steadily improving economy," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management Corp in Chicago.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 137.21 points or 0.99 percent, to 13,997.79, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 14.81 points or 0.99 percent, to 1,512.92 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 34.76 points, or 1.11 percent, to 3,176.89.

With the day's gains, major equity indexes were on track for a fifth straight week of gains. The S&P 500 is also coming off its best monthly performance since October 2011.

Investors were also attuned to corporate earnings, with a trio of Dow components reporting profits that beat expectations.

Exxon Mobil was little changed at $89.95 after its results while Chevron added 0.8 percent to $116.10.

Drugmaker Merck & Co fell 2.9 percent to $42 after a cautious 2013 outlook.

Generic drugmaker Perrigo reported a better-than-expected second-quarter profit and its shares jumped 6.3 percent to $106.92, the largest advancer on the S&P 500.

Of the 252 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings so far, 69 percent have exceeded expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data. That is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above average since 1994.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are estimated to have grown 4.4 percent, according to the data, up from a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season but well below a 9.9 percent profit growth forecast on October 1.

Dell Inc gained 4.2 percent to $13.80 after sources said the company was nearing an agreement to sell itself to a buyout consortium led by its founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners.

Shares of General Motors and Ford Motor rose after the two largest American automakers posted better-than-expected U.S. auto sales for January.

GM gained 1.2 percent to $28.42 and Ford added 0.9 percent to $13.07.

Shares of Zoetis surged on its trading debut on the New York Stock Exchange after its shares were priced at $26, above the expected range. Zoetis was trading at $30.67 at midday, after earlier climbing as high as $31.74.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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U.N. Panel Says Israeli Settlement Policy Violates International Law

GENEVA — Israel has pursued a creeping annexation of the Palestinian territories through the creation of Jewish settlements and committed multiple violations of international law, possibly including war crimes, a United Nations panel said on Thursday, calling for an immediate halt to all settlement activity and the withdrawal of all settlers.

Presenting their findings in Geneva after a nearly six-month inquiry for the United Nations Human Rights Council, a panel of three judges, led by, Christine Chanet, of France, said Israel’s settlements had clearly violated the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit a state from transferring its own civilian population into territory it has occupied.

Asked if Israel’s actions constituted war crimes, Ms. Chanet replied that its offenses fell under Article 8 of the International Criminal Court statute. “Article 8 of the I.C.C. statute is in the chapter of war crimes,” she said at a news conference. “That is the answer.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry quickly dismissed the report as “counterproductive and unfortunate” and said it provided a reminder of the Human Rights Council’s “systematically one-sided and biased approach towards Israel.”

Israel “must cease all settlement activities without preconditions” and start withdrawing all settlers from the occupied territories, the judges state in their report, which is due to be debated in the Human Rights Council in March.

The panel drew on 67 submissions from a cross section of academics, diplomats, Israeli civilian organizations and Palestinians, Ms. Chanet said. Israel refused to cooperate with the investigators, who as a result were unable to visit the West Bank and went instead to the Jordanian capital, Amman, to take testimony.

The council’s decision last March to investigate the effect of Jewish settlements on Palestinian rights prompted Israel to break off cooperation with the council, castigating it as a political platform used “to bash and demonize Israel.” The panel’s report came two days after Israel boycotted a council review of its human rights, becoming the first country to withhold cooperation from a process in which all 193 United Nations member states have previously engaged.

The United States has condemned Israel’s settlement policy as unhelpful and an obstacle to achieving a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue, but it also opposed the creation of the fact-finding mission, saying at the time that it was an example of the council’s bias against Israel, that it did not “advance the cause of peace” and that it would “distract the parties from efforts to resolve the issues that divide them.”

The panel noted that Israel had established about 250 Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967, with a combined population now estimated at 520,000. It said the settler population was growing much faster than the population of Israel outside the settlements.

The report quotes the Israeli finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, as saying in November that the government had doubled the budget for West Bank settlements “in a low-key way because we didn’t want parties in Israel or abroad to thwart the move.”

The result is “a mesh of construction and infrastructure leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,” the report concludes.

These actions fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, the panel noted, and if a future Palestine state ratified the Rome Statute, which created the court, Israel could be called to account for “gross violations of human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law.”

The report was welcomed by Palestinian officials and some settlement opponents in Israel. Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in a statement that it documented “illegal Israeli practices without any ambiguity.”

Israeli officials, on the other hand, dismissed the report, saying that the only way to resolve the settlement issue was through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without preconditions.

Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, criticized the report for ignoring Israel’s unilateral evacuation of all settlements in Gaza, and several in the northern West Bank, in 2005. “This was a major event,” said Mr. Palmor, describing the omission as “gross and crude” and evidence that the fact-finding mission did not lay out all the facts.

Nick Cumming-Bruce reported from Geneva, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.

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