WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama said in an interview Sunday that the Boy Scouts of America should end its controversial ban on gays and lesbians when its national executive board takes up the issue next week.
"My attitude is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does in every institution and walk of life," Obama told CBS News in a pre-Super Bowl interview.
"The Scouts are a great institution that are promoting young people and exposing them to opportunities and leadership that will serve people for the rest of their lives," he said. "And I think nobody should be barred from that."
On January 28, the century-old youth group with 2.6 million boys in its membership ranks said it was rethinking its longstanding ban, and the group's national board of directors is expected to meet Wednesday to discuss the issue.
Unlike the Girl Scouts of the USA, a separate organisation, the Boy Scouts maintained for years a ban on "open or avowed homosexuals" from participating either as members or adult leaders.
Its stance was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2000, but it has come under pressure in recent years to change tack in the face of growing public acceptance of homosexuality.
The CBS interview was broadcast ahead of the Super Bowl, the American football sporting extravaganza that transfixes the country each year.
Obama also told CBS that he hopes to generate more revenue for the US budget without raising taxes by closing tax loopholes.
"There is no doubt we need additional revenue coupled with smart spending reductions to bring down our deficits," Obama said.
Following another recent security issue with Java, Apple issued an update that added the latest versions to the system's browser plug-in blacklist to protect users from any potential threats; however, in doing so it silently blocked a number of people from accessing required Java content, such as banking and financial Web sites.
To manage this problem, if you need Java, then the latest version from Oracle (version 1.7.0_13) that was released yesterday should have addressed the security holes and get your system back up and running. You can download it for OS X Lion or Mountain Lion from Oracle at its Java Downloads page.
Unfortunately the Java 7 runtime is not available for those using Snow Leopard, for which the latest version is Java 6. However, Apple has issued its own separate update to Java 6 for Snow Leopard to address the vulnerabilities in this version. The update, which should be available through its Software Update service, should run automatically or can be invoked by going to the Apple menu.
Given the stream of recent security issues with Java, if you don't need Java, then you might consider avoiding using it on your system, or at least be sure to disable the Web plug-in for it. While Java is a powerful and useful runtime that a number of programs use, the avenue for exploiting it is almost exclusively through the Web plug-in component of the runtime, so if you find you do need it installed, then you might at least consider disabling the plug-in in the Java Control Panel (or in Apple's Java Preferences utility for Java SE 6).
Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or ! Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.
ANKARA, Turkey The suicide bomber who struck the U.S. Embassy in Ankara spent several years in prison on terrorism charges but was released on probation after being diagnosed with a hunger strike-related brain disorder, officials said Saturday.
The bomber, identified as 40-year-old leftist militant Ecevit Sanli, killed himself and a Turkish security guard on Friday, in what U.S. officials said was a terrorist attack. Sanli was armed with enough TNT to blow up a two-story building and also detonated a hand grenade, officials said.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that police believe the bomber was connected to his nation's outlawed leftist militant group Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C. And on Saturday DHKP-C claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on a website linked to the group. It said Sanli carried out the act of "self-sacrifice" on behalf of the group.
The authenticity of the website was confirmed to The Associated Press by a government terrorism expert who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with rules that bar government employees from speaking to reporters without prior authorization.
Play Video
State Dept. had bomber of U.S. embassy in Turkey on terror list
CBS News correspondent Holly Williams reports from Ankara that the DHKP-C is on the State Department's list of terror organizations. They are Marxists who believe that the United States is an imperialist state that's controlling Turkey. Their targets have included both the U.S. and the Turkish military.
Turkey's private NTV television, meanwhile, said police detained three people on Saturday who may be connected to the U.S. Embassy attack during operations in Ankara and Istanbul. Two of the suspects were being questioned by police in Ankara, while the third was taken into custody in Istanbul and was being brought to Ankara.
NTV, citing unidentified security sources, said one of the suspects is a man whose identity Sanli allegedly used to enter Turkey illegally, while the second was suspected of forging identity papers. There was no information about the third suspect.
Earlier, Turkish Interior Minister Muammer Guler said Sanli had fled Turkey after he was released from jail in 2001, but managed to return to the country "illegally," using a fake ID. It was not clear how long before the attack he had returned to Turkey.
NTV said he is believed to have come to Turkey from Germany, crossing into Turkey from Greece. Police officials in Ankara could not immediately be reached for comment.
DHKP-C has claimed responsibility for assassinations and bombings since the 1970s, but it has been relatively quiet in recent years. Compared to al Qaeda, it has not been seen as a strong terrorist threat.
Sanli's motives remained unclear. But some Turkish government officials have linked the attack to the arrest last month of dozens of suspected members of the DHKP-C group in a nationwide sweep.
Speculation also has abounded that the bombing was related to the perceived support of the U.S. for Turkey's harsh criticism of the regime in Syria, whose brutal civil war has forced tens of thousands of Syrian refugees to seek shelter in Turkey. But Erdogan has denied that.
Officials said Sanli was arrested in 1997 for alleged involvement in attacks on Istanbul's police headquarters and a military guesthouse, and jailed on charges of membership in the DHKP-C group.
While in prison awaiting trial, he took part in a major hunger strike that led to the deaths of dozens of inmates, according to a statement from the Ankara governor's office. The protesters opposed a maximum-security system in which prisoners were held in small cells instead of large wards.
Sanli was diagnosed with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and released on probation in 2001, following the introduction of legislation that allowed hunger strikers with the disorder to get appropriate treatment. The syndrome is a malnutrition-related brain illness that affects vision, muscle coordination and memory, and that can cause hallucinations.
Sanli fled Turkey after his release and was wanted by Turkish authorities. He was convicted in absentia in 2002 for belonging to a terrorist group and attempting to overthrow the government.
On Saturday, the U.S. flag at the embassy in Ankara flew at half-staff and already tight security was increased. Police sealed off a street in front of the security checkpoint where the explosion knocked a door off its hinges and littered the road with debris. Police vehicles were parked in streets surrounding the building.
The Ankara governor's office, citing the findings of a bomb squad that inspected the site, said Sanli had used 13.2 pounds of TNT for the suicide attack and also detonated a hand grenade. That amount of TNT can demolish "a two-story reinforced building," according to Nihat Ali Ozcan, a terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey.
Officials had earlier said that the bomber detonated a suicide vest at the checkpoint on the outer perimeter of the compound.
The guard who was killed was standing outside the checkpoint. The U.S. ambassador on Saturday attended his funeral in a town just outside of Ankara.
A Turkish TV journalist was seriously wounded and two other guards had lighter wounds.
DHKP-C's forerunner, Devrimci Sol, or Revolutionary Left, was formed in 1978 as a Marxist group openly opposed to the United States and NATO. It has attacked Turkish, U.S. and other foreign targets since then, including two U.S. military contractors and a U.S. Air Force officer.
The group changed its name to DHKP-C in 1994.
Friday's attack came as NATO deployed six Patriot anti-missile systems to protect its ally Turkey from a possible spillover from the civil war raging across the border in Syria. The U.S., Netherlands and Germany are each providing two Patriot batteries.
Ozcan, the terrorism expert, said the Syrian regime, which had backed terrorist groups in Turkey, including autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels, during the Cold War era and through the 1990s, had recently revived ties with these groups.
As Turkey began to support the Syrian opposition, Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime began to try "rebuilding its ties with these organizations," Ozcan said.
Radikal newspaper reported that the DHKP-C had recently been taking an interest in "regional issues," reviving its anti-American stance and taking on "a more pro-Assad position."
Former U.S. ambassador to Turkey Ross Wilson speculated that the masterminds of the embassy bombing may have been partly motivated by U.S.-Turkish policy on Syria.
"A successful attack would embarrass the Turkish government and security forces, and it would have struck at the United States, which is widely — if wrongly — thought to have manipulated the Erdogan government into breaking with Bashar al-Assad and supporting efforts to remove him from power," Wilson, director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, wrote in an analysis. "That might rekindle public support for the group. Alas for DHPK/C, this seems unlikely."
Howard Eissenstat, a Turkey expert at St. Lawrence University in the United States, said the bombing showed that a "relatively isolated and obscure group" still has the capacity to cause havoc.
"They really fall outside of our comfortable narratives," Eissenstat wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "And they do seem to have been left in an ideological time warp. There is something distinctly cult-like about them."
The attack drew quick condemnation from Turkey, the U.S., Britain and other nations, and officials from both Turkey and the U.S. pledged to work together to fight terrorism.
It was the second deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic post in five months.
On Sept. 11, 2012, terrorists attacked a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The attackers in Libya were suspected to have ties to Islamist extremists, and one is in custody in Egypt.
U.S. diplomatic facilities in Turkey have been targeted previously by terrorists. In 2008, an attack blamed on al Qaeda-affiliated militants outside the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul left three assailants and three policemen dead.
The body of an American woman who went missing while on a solo trip to Turkey has been pulled from a bay in Istanbul, and nine people have been held for questioning, according to local media.
Sarai Sierra, 33, was last heard from on Jan. 21, the day she was due to board a flight home to New York City.
The state-run Andolu Agency reported that residents found a woman's body today near the ruins of some ancient city walls in a low-income district, and police identified the body as Sierra.
Rep. Michael Grimm, R-NY, who with his staff had been assisting the Sierra family in the search, said he was "deeply saddened" to hear the news of her death.
"I urge Turkish officials to move quickly to identify whomever is responsible for her tragic death and ensure that any guilty parties are punished to the fullest extent of the law," he said in a statement.
Courtesy Sarai Sierra's family
Footage Shows Missing New York Mom in Turkish Mall Watch Video
NYC Woman Goes Missing While Traveling In Turkey Watch Video
New York Mother Goes Missing on Turkish Vacation Watch Video
The New York City mother, who has two young boys, traveled to Turkey alone on Jan. 7 after a friend had to cancel. Sierra, who is an avid photographer with a popular Instagram stream, planned to document her dream vacation with her camera.
"It was her first time outside of the United States, and every day while she was there she pretty much kept in contact with us, letting us know what she was up to, where she was going, whether it be through texting or whether it be through video chat, she was touching base with us," Steven Sierra told ABC News before he departed for Istanbul last Sunday to aid in the search.
Steven Sierra has been in the country, meeting with U.S. officials and local authorities, as they searched for his wife.
On Friday, Turkish authorities detained a man who had spoken with Sierra online before her disappearance. The identity of the man and the details of his arrest were not disclosed, The Associated Press reported.
The family said it is completely out of character for the happily married mother, who met her husband in church youth group, to disappear.
She took two side trips, to Amsterdam and Munich, before returning to Turkey, but kept in contact with her family the entire time, a family friend told ABC News.
Further investigation revealed she had left her passport, clothes, phone chargers and medical cards in her room at a hostel in Beyoglu, Turkey.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A member of a Turkish leftist group that accuses Washington of using Turkey as its "slave" carried out a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy, the Ankara governor's office cited DNA tests as showing on Saturday.
Ecevit Sanli, a member of the leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), blew himself up in a perimeter gatehouse on Friday as he tried to enter the embassy, also killing a Turkish security guard.
The DHKP-C, virulently anti-American and listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, claimed responsibility in a statement on the internet in which it said Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was a U.S. "puppet".
"Murderer America! You will not run away from people's rage," the statement on "The People's Cry" website said, next to a picture of Sanli wearing a black beret and military-style clothes and with an explosives belt around his waist.
It warned Erdogan that he too was a target.
Turkey is an important U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism. Leftist groups including the DHKP-C strongly oppose what they see as imperialist U.S. influence over their nation.
DNA tests confirmed that Sanli was the bomber, the Ankara governor's office said. It said he had fled Turkey a decade ago and was wanted by the authorities.
Born in 1973 in the Black Sea port city of Ordu, Sanli was jailed in 1997 for attacks on a police station and a military staff college in Istanbul, but his sentence was deferred after he fell sick during a hunger strike. He was never re-jailed.
Condemned to life in prison in 2002, he fled the country a year later, officials said. Interior Minister Muammer Guler said he had re-entered Turkey using false documents.
Erdogan, who said hours after the attack that the DHKP-C were responsible, met his interior and foreign ministers as well as the head of the army and state security service in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss the bombing.
Three people were detained in Istanbul and Ankara in connection with the attack, state broadcaster TRT said.
The White House condemned the bombing as an "act of terror", while the U.N. Security Council described it as a heinous act. U.S. officials said on Friday the DHKP-C were the main suspects but did not exclude other possibilities.
Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.
SYRIA
The DHKP-C statement called on Washington to remove Patriot missiles, due to go operational on Monday as part of a NATO defense system, from Turkish soil.
The missiles are being deployed alongside systems from Germany and the Netherlands to guard Turkey, a NATO member, against a spillover of the war in neighboring Syria.
"Our action is for the independence of our country, which has become a new slave of America," the statement said.
Turkey has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the civil war in Syria and has become one of President Bashar al-Assad's harshest critics, a stance groups such as the DHKP-C view as submission to an imperialist agenda.
"Organizations of the sectarian sort like the DHKP-C have been gaining ground as a result of circumstances surrounding the Syrian civil war," security analyst Nihat Ali Ozcan wrote in a column in Turkey's Daily News.
The Ankara attack was the second on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an Islamist militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
The DHKP-C was responsible for the assassination of two U.S. military contractors in the early 1990s in protest against the first Gulf War, and it fired rockets at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.
It has been blamed for previous suicide attacks, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square. It has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months.
Friday's attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.
(Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
BAMAKO: President Francois Hollande received a rapturous welcome in Mali on Saturday as he promised that France would stay as long as necessary to continue the fight against Islamist rebels in the country's north.
As troops worked to secure Kidal, the last bastion of radicals who occupied the vast desert north for 10 months before the French army's surprise intervention, Hollande told Malians it was time for Africans to take the lead but that France would not abandon them.
"Terrorism has been pushed back, it has been chased away, but it has not been defeated yet," said Hollande, whose decision to intervene in Mali three weeks ago won him accolades in the former French colony.
"France will stay by your side as long as necessary, as long as it takes for Africans themselves... to replace us," he told a large crowd in the capital, Bamako, at a monument commemorating Mali's independence from France.
Earlier, in the fabled city of Timbuktu, thousands gathered in the central square and danced to the beat of drums -- a forbidden activity during the extremists' occupation -- to welcome the French leader, with shouts of "Vive la France! Long Live Hollande!"
Mali's interim president Dioncounda Traore thanked his counterpart for the French troops' "efficiency", which he said had allowed the north to be freed from "barbarity and obscurantism".
Hollande was offered a young camel draped in a French flag as he toured the city.
"The women of Timbuktu will thank Francois Hollande forever," said 53-year-old Fanta Diarra Toure.
"We must tell him that he has cut down the tree but still has to tear up its roots."
Hollande and Traore toured Timbuktu's 700-year-old mud mosque of Djingareyber and the Ahmed Baba library for ancient manuscripts.
As they visited the site of two ancient saints' tombs that the extremists tore down with pickaxes in July, considering them idolatrous, Hollande told the mosque's imam: "There's a real desire to annihilate. There's nothing left."
"We're going to rebuild them, Mr President," said Irina Bokova, the head of UNESCO, which is trying to assess the scale of the damage to Mali's ancient heritage -- particularly in Timbuktu, a caravan town at the edge of the Sahara that rose to fame in the 14th century as a gold and salt trading hub.
After Hollande's visit, Mali's national football team pulled off a win against Africa Cup of Nations hosts South Africa to go through to the continental championship semi-final, their best performance since 1972 and another welcome boost to national pride amid the crisis.
Traore congratulated the team on national television, and jubilant crowds took to the streets in Bamako despite a state of emergency in place since January 12.
"This victory... is going to help Mali find peace again," said Mamadou Traore in the capital's Same neighbourhood as his children jumped with excitement.
Reprisal attacks
With the rebels ousted from all major towns but Kidal in the northeast, France is keen to hand over to nearly 8,000 African troops slowly being deployed, which the United Nations is considering turning into a formal UN peacekeeping force.
But there are warnings Mali will need long-term help and fears the Islamists will now wage a guerrilla campaign from the sparsely populated north.
The joy of citizens throwing off the yoke of brutal Islamist rule, under which they were denied music and television and threatened with whipping, amputation of limbs and even execution, has been accompanied by a grim backlash against light-skinned citizens seen as supporters of the extremists.
Rights groups have reported summary executions by both the Malian army and the Islamists.
Human Rights Watch said Friday that Malian troops had shot at least 13 suspected Islamist supporters in Sevare and dumped them into wells.
Mali's military was routed at the hands of rebel groups in the north, whose members are mostly light-skinned Tuaregs and Arabs, before the French army came to its aid.
With fears of reprisal attacks high, many Arabs and Tuaregs have fled.
In all, the crisis has caused some 377,000 people to flee their homes, including 150,000 who have sought refuge across Mali's borders, according to the United Nations.
Hollande called on all troops in Mali to show "exemplary" conduct and respect human rights -- an appeal echoed interim president Traore, who promised to lead a national reconciliation process and repeated that he wants to hold elections by July 31.
The French-led intervention has met little resistance, with many of the Islamists believed to have slipped into the desert hills around Kidal -- likely taking seven French hostages with them, officials say.
While largely supported by the French public, the operation has not yet paid domestic political dividends for Hollande, failing to reverse a steep slide in his approval ratings as the economy struggles.
US Vice President Joe Biden praised the French intervention Saturday.
"That's why the United States applauds and stands with France and other partners in Mali, and why we are providing intelligence support, transportation for the French and African troops and refuelling capability for French aircraft," he told top military brass at a security conference in Munich.
Sorry, San Francisco. An annual Madden NFL Super Bowl simulation predicts the Ravens will trump the 49ers in the final seconds of Sunday's Big Game. Get on this, Vegas! And with "Star Wars" in the news, Crave asks if J.J. Abrams can pull off the impossible directing both "Star Wars Episode VII" and "Star Trek." Are you into it or not into it? Maybe a J.J. Abrams and "Star Wars"-themed musical will help you decide.
Crave stories:
- Student builds R2-D2 powered by Raspberry Pi
- Orbiting robot gas station gets closer to reality
- Creepy realistic vampire baby dolls are immortal
- Artists use real-time MRI footage to create music video
- Madden attempts to predict Super Bowl XLVII victor
- Forget Episode VII, watch 'JJ Abrams Star Wars -- The Musical'
- Crave giveaway: $200 shopping spree at KlearGear.com
(CBS News) NEW ORLEANS -- It was August 2005 when New Orleans nearly drowned. Hurricane Katrina broke through levees in 53 places, flooding 80 percent of the city. More than 1,100 people died.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
/ CBS News
But in catastrophe, there was opportunity. One of the biggest was recreating a school system from scratch. We asked Mayor Mitch Landrieu about that Friday.
SCOTT PELLEY: Paint the picture for me. What was the New Orleans school system the day after Katrina?
MITCH LANDRIEU: It was gone. It never existed. Every building was under water. But what also happened was structurally, in terms of governance, it just disappeared. Everybody that worked for the system didn't exist anymore, in terms of the jobs that were there or the schools. And we had to piece it back together.
They pieced it back, not as the traditional school system it was, but as a charter school system with teachers and principals hired, fired and promoted based on merit and parents given the freedom to choose schools they like.
LANDRIEU: One of the things that we had the ability to do was to actually physically rebuild every school with FEMA reimbursements and with other money. Now, we didn't put the school back like it was. We built a 21st century, state-of-the-art, knowledge-based school.
PELLEY: You've been doing this a little over five years. What have you accomplished?
LANDRIEU: What's happening now is the achievement level of the kids in the inner city is now beginning to match the kids on the statewide level in a very, very short period of time. And finally, if you go into any charter school in New Orleans right now, and you ask a kid when is he going to graduate, what he tells you is when he's going to graduate from college. And so they really have their eyes focused on, "I've got a future ahead of me. I intend to finish school. I don't intend to drop out."
Super Bowl hosting "big lift" post-Katrina, mayor says Restaurant industry boosts New Orleans' economy "Project Homecoming": Helping Katrina families get home at last
Simone Smith
/ CBS News
Simone Smith has applied to 13 universities. She's a senior who chose to go to a high-performing science school called Sci Academy.
SIMONE SMITH: I want to go to Princeton. I very much want to go to Princeton.
Before Katrina, the graduation rate was less than 50 percent. Now it's more than 75 percent. Test scores are up 33 percent.
PELLEY: What did it mean to you to be able to pick the high school that you went to?
SMITH: It meant everything. I don't think I would be here if I wasn't able to pick the high school that I wanted to go to. Because I don't feel like you can be truly educated without having a choice. I think having a choice is kind of education.
Mayor Landrieu gave great credit to the Teach for America program, which sent 375 teachers from all over the country to New Orleans.
After four years, nearly a million miles traveled and 112 countries visited, Hillary Clinton stepped down as the 67th secretary of state on Friday. But even on this, her final day as America’s top diplomat, she could not escape the questions about what she’ll do four years from now.
Many of the 1,000 employees who gathered to see her off expressed hope that this was not the end of her political career.
“2016! 2016!” the crowd chanted as Clinton waved and drove away. “We’ll Miss You!”
Right before her departure, Clinton gave the traditional farewell speech to staff on the steps of the State Department’s historic C street lobby. In a roughly 10 minute, often reflective speech she called the 70,000 State Department employees part of “a huge extended family.”
“I cannot fully express how grateful I am to those with whom I have spent many hours here in Washington, around the world and in airplanes,” she said, drawing laughter from the audience.
Clinton’s trademark sense of humor was on display, even as she grew emotional speaking about how much the State Department had meant to her over the last four years.
PHOTOS: Hillary Clinton Through the Years
“I am very proud to have been secretary of state. I will miss you. I will probably be dialing ops just to talk,” she joked to a cheering and laughing crowd. “I will wonder what you all are doing, because I know that because of your efforts day after day, we are making a real difference.”
But Clinton also was somber when discussing the danger diplomats and foreign service officers face all over the world, using Thursday’s suicide bombing attack against the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, in which a Turkish guard was killed, as an example.
“We live in very complex and even dangerous times, as we saw again just today at our embassy in Ankara, where we were attacked and lost one of our foreign service nationals, and others injured,” said Clinton “But I spoke with the ambassador and the team there. I spoke with my Turkish counterpart. And I told them how much we valued their commitment and their sacrifice.”
Clinton was flanked by trusted deputies, Bill Burns and Tom Nides, whom she gave warm hugs to at the end of the speech. With a huge “Thank You” sign behind her she walked a rope line after finishing her speech, greeting the hordes of employees who wanted to shake her hand and say goodbye before she walked out of the State Department as secretary of state for the last time.
“It’s been quite a challenging week saying goodbye to so many people and knowing that I will not have the opportunity to continue being part of this amazing team,” Clinton said. “But I am so grateful that we’ve had a chance to contribute in each of our ways to making our country and our world stronger, safer, fairer and better.”
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Rescue workers pulled out more bodies from debris at the headquarters of Mexican state oil giant Pemex on Friday after a powerful explosion killed at least 33 people and threw a spotlight onto the state-run company's poor safety record.
Scenes of confusion and chaos outside the downtown tower block in Mexico City have dealt another blow to Pemex's image, just as Mexico's new president is seeking to court outside investment for the 75-year-old monopoly.
Thursday's blast occurred at a Pemex building next to the 50-story skyscraper, and senior officials said 33 people had so far been confirmed dead. A further 121 were injured, said the company's chief executive, Emilio Lozoya.
Officials have been unable to say how many people may still be trapped in the wreckage of the office block, which remains cordoned off. A military paramedic at the scene said there were likely many and expected the death toll to keep rising.
Lozoya said it was not clear what caused the midafternoon explosion, which has been the subject of speculation ranging from a bomb attack, to a gas leak, to a boiler blowing up.
"A fatal incident like yesterday's cannot be explained in two hours, we are working with the best teams in Mexico and from overseas, we will not speculate," he told a news conference.
Pemex, both a symbol of Mexican self-sufficiency and a byword for security glitches, oil theft and frequent accidents, has been hamstrung by inefficiency, union corruption and a series of safety failures costing hundreds of lives.
The latest Pemex disaster is also one of the first serious tests for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office in December saying overhauling the company was a top priority.
Investors have been closely following how far he will go in enticing private capital to boost flagging oil output in a country that is the world's number seven producer.
"This incident speaks very poorly of the image of Pemex management, and that's interpreted as additional risk in the market," said Miriam Grunstein, an energy researcher at Mexico's CIDE think tank.
COLLAPSE
A Pemex official said the damaged area was used for human resources in the corporate and refining divisions. It did not have a boiler or gas installations, the official said.
Former Pemex worker Ricardo Marin, 53, said there was nothing in the building which would explode and that the kitchen, where there would be gas, was on the other side.
"The only thing that occurs to me is that it was an attack - but against whom? There's no one with an important job down there," he said, waiting outside the Pemex hospital where a friend was in intensive care. "Maybe it could be a message to Pena Nieto, but not even that has any logic."
Pemex office worker Alfonso Caballero, who was one floor above the blast at the time, said he did not smell any gas and guessed it had been caused by machinery.
Mexican officials have not ruled out sabotage.
An official at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said an "international response team" was on its way to Mexico City at the request of the Mexican government. The team includes explosive specialists and fire experts.
Pemex CEO Lozoya said the four floors worst affected by the explosion normally had about 200 to 250 people working on them. That compared with about 10,000 staff in the entire complex.
Red Cross official Isaac Oxenhaut said the ceiling had collapsed in three lower floors of the Pemex building.
The blast followed a September fire at a Pemex gas facility near the northern city of Reynosa that killed 30 people. More than 300 were killed when a Pemex natural gas plant on the outskirts of Mexico City blew up in 1984.
Eight years later, about 200 people were killed and 1,500 injured after a series of underground gas explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico's second-biggest city. An official investigation found Pemex was partly to blame.
'NO PRIVATIZATION'
Whatever caused the explosion, the deaths and destruction will put the spotlight back on safety at Pemex, which only a couple of hours beforehand had issued a statement on Twitter saying it had managed to improve its record on accidents.
"I suspect this was a bomb," said David Shields, an independent Mexico City-based oil analyst. "There are clandestine armies across Mexico, not just the (drug) cartels."
Shields pointed to the bombing of several Pemex pipelines in the eastern state of Veracruz in 2007. A shadowy Marxist rebel movement took credit for some of the blasts.
Meanwhile, George Baker, director of Energia.com, a Houston-based energy research center, said past history suggested the government could seek to exploit the incident.
He pointed to the 1992 Guadalajara blast and the subsequent deal that followed to overhaul the Pemex administration led by then-President Carlos Salinas, like Pena Nieto a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
"Salinas said he wanted a response from Pemex, and months later Pemex announced a restructuring. The restructuring had nothing to do with the Guadalajara accident, but it was used as a pivot to do something," Baker said.
Pena Nieto has yet to reveal details of his Pemex reform plan, which already faces opposition from the left.
Both Pena Nieto and his finance minister were this week at pains to stress the company will not be privatized.
(Additional reporting by Adriana Barrera, Simon Gardner and Krista Hughes; Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Louise Ireland, Vicki Allen and Eric Beech)
