MADISON, Wis.

Governor offers to retain some union bargaining rights

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has offered to keep certain collective bargaining rights in place for state workers in a proposed compromise aimed at ending a nearly three-week standoff with absent Senate Democrats, according to e-mails released Tuesday by his office.

The e-mails show a softened stance in Walker’s talks with the 14 Democrats who fled to Illinois to block a vote on his original proposal that would strip nearly all collective bargaining rights for public workers and force concessions amounting to an average 8 percent pay cut.

Under the compromise floated by Walker, workers would be able to continue bargaining over their salaries with no limit, a change from his original plan that banned negotiated salary increases beyond inflation. He also proposed compromises allowing collective bargaining to stay in place on mandatory overtime, performance bonuses, hazardous duty pay and classroom size for teachers.

Sen. Bob Jauch, one of the 14 AWOL Democrats, said he hoped the compromise would serve as a blueprint for negotiations. But he and Sen. Tim Cullen, who are both working with Walker’s administration, said the latest offer was inadequate.

WASHINGTON

NPR executive is secretly taped criticizing tea party

A National Public Radio executive was captured on hidden camera calling the tea party movement racist and xenophobic and said NPR would be better off without federal funding, in an embarrassment likely to fuel the latest round of conservative attacks on public broadcasting.

The video was posted Tuesday by James O’Keefe, the same activist whose undercover videos have targeted other groups opposed by conservatives, like the community organizing group ACORN and Planned Parenthood.

It drew swift reaction from Republicans in Congress, who are renewing efforts to cut funding to public broadcasters. NPR and PBS have long been targets of conservatives who claim their programming has a left-wing bias.

National Public Radio said in a statement that it was “appalled” by the comments from Ron Schiller, the president of NPR’s fundraising arm and a senior vice president.

Schiller informed NPR that he was resigning from his position before the video was shot, NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said.

OKYO

Quake shakes buildings, prompts tsunami warning

A magnitude-7.2 earthquake hit northeastern Japan today, shaking buildings hundreds of miles away in Tokyo and prompting the country’s meteorological agency to issue a tsunami warning for the coast. There were no immediate reports of significant damage or injuries.

Japanese officials said they were still assessing the situation and telling residents along the coast to stay away from the shore.

The meteorological agency said the quake hit at 11:45 a.m. local time Wednesday and was centered about 90 miles off the northeastern coast — about 270 miles northeast of Tokyo — at a depth of about 6.2 miles.

PARIS

Authorities dig up jewels stolen in daring 2008 heist

French investigators have found jewels valued at $25 million hidden in a Paris rain sewer — part of the spectacular 2008 heist from luxury jeweler Harry Winston’s Paris boutique.

Nineteen rings and three sets of earrings — one pair valued at $19.5 million — were dug up from a drain at a house in the working class Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, police said, confirming a radio report.

The jewels were hidden in a plastic container set in a cement mold inside the sewer, police said. The house belonged to one of the nine people charged in the heist.

The bold Harry Winston robbery on Dec. 5, 2008, netted the thieves — some dressed as women and wearing wigs — gems and bejeweled watches worth up to $118.1 million, police said. More recently, police have set the figure at $85 million.

The robbery, carried out while Christmas shoppers strolled outside, was among the most audacious in France in recent memory.

Some stolen rings, necklaces and watches were recovered when police rounded up 25 people in a June 2009 sweep and eventually charged nine of them.

Among those charged was the heist’s suspected mastermind, who had been sentenced to 15 years in prison in a drug trafficking case. Police found stolen jewelry and $1.1 million at this house.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

Attack by militants kills 25 in country’s third-largest city

A car bomb exploded near an office of Pakistan’s main intelligence agency in the eastern city of Faisalabad on Tuesday, killing 25 people in the type of militant attack that is growing more common in the country’s populous heartland.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack and said it was aimed at the intelligence office, the Associated Press reported.

Police said the bomb, which was detonated at a gas station, sparked additional explosions of natural gas cylinders, compounding the damage. The blast destroyed parts of several businesses, including an office of the national airline, and wounded at least 100 people.

Sectarian violence is common in Faisalabad, Pakistan’s third-largest city and a textile-producing hub, but Tuesday’s blast was the first major militant attack there.

WORLDWIDE

International Women’s Day turns 100 with mixed results

Egyptian women demanding equal rights on the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day were shoved by men who said they should go home where they belong.

Congolese women asked their government to protect them from systematic rapes, and women in Croatia who lost their jobs accused the government of corruption.

But the centennial anniversary of the day established by socialist women to promote better working conditions, the right to vote and hold public office, and equality with men, also was marked Tuesday by festivities, including dancing in the street in South Korea’s capital and a 10-kilometer run by some 8,000 women in Mexico City.

Speaking at U.N. headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recalled that 100 years ago “gender equality was a largely radical idea.”

While progress since then should be celebrated, he said, “We must also remember that — in too many countries and in too many societies — women remain second-class citizens, denied their fundamental rights, deprived of legitimate opportunity.”

Their second-class status was evident in Cairo’s now famous Tahrir Square, which protesters who succeeded in ousting President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11 used as their base. Hundreds of women — some in headscarves and flowing robes, others in jeans — who marched to the square to celebrate the anniversary, demand equality and an end to sexual harassment were soon outnumbered by men who chased them out.

“They said that our role was to stay home and raise presidents, not to run for president,” said Farida Helmy, a 24-year-old journalist.