QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We are not searching for a needle in a haystack - we are still trying to define where the haystack is.”

Air Marshal Mark Binskin, the deputy chief of Australia’s Defense Force, as officials narrowed the search area for a Malaysia Airlines plane that has been missing since March 8 Article, this page

Anger with Qatar tinges Arab summit

KUWAIT CITY - Arab leaders openly feuded over the region’s most intractable problems at their annual summit Tuesday, particularly anger at Qatar for its support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Islamist group is reeling after Egypt’s military last summer removed Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt have declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. They, along with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar to protest against its support of the group.

In the summit’s first day, the Saudi crown prince, Kuwait’s ruler and Egypt’s president pushed for a joint approach to terrorism, saying it posed an imminent danger to regional security.

Egypt’s interim president, Adly Mansour, called for Arab interior and justice ministers to meet before June to draft guidelines for what every nation must do to confront terrorism. The implication was that Qatar will be held to any guidelines that emerge - and could face isolation or reprisals if it failed to meet them.

Israeli quizzed over 15-year-old claim

JERUSALEM - Police on Tuesday questioned a senior Israeli government minister and presumptive presidential candidate over allegations he committed a sex offense against a former aide 15 years ago.

The allegations against Silvan Shalom were made in recent days by a woman claiming to be a former secretary in Shalom’s office while he was minister of science and technology. She said he invited her to his hotel room, where he lay on a bed in a white robe and asked her to sit next to him.

She said she felt coerced to perform a sex act on Shalom.

Shalom, 55, has denied the accusations, and his spokesman, Barak Seri, said he answered “all questions” when interviewed by police for nearly two hours Tuesday.

Observers and defenders have said the timing of the allegation is suspect, with the race for the presidency heating up. Shalom has not formally declared his candidacy but he is widely expected to run for the position.

N. Korea test-fires 2 midrange missiles

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea test-fired two medium-range ballistic missiles today, South Korea and the U.S.

said, in what was seen as a challenge to a rare three-way summit in the Netherlands of officials from Seoul, Tokyo and Washington that focused on the North’s security threat.

The launch of the Rodong missiles - for the first time since 2009 - violates U.N. Security Council resolutions and marks an escalation from a series of shorter-range rocket launches the North has staged in recent weeks to protest ongoing annual military drills by the U.S. and South Korea.

The missiles flew about 400 miles off North Korea’s east coast early this morning, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said. It wasn’t immediately clear where the missiles landed. Kim said they likely were fired from a mobile launcher.

With a range of up to 800 miles, the North’s arsenal of an estimated 300 Rodong missiles could reach Tokyo and key U.S. military bases in Japan.

The U.S. State Department confirmed the latest launch, which happened on the fourth anniversary of the sinking of a South Korean warship that Seoul and other nations blame on a North Korean torpedo. Pyongyang denied involvement in that attack, which killed 46 sailors.

First lady’s talk beamed to remote China

BEIJING - U.S. first lady Michelle Obama encouraged rural Chinese students to aim high and get a good education despite humble roots, in a speech Tuesday that was delivered via satellite technology to remote communities in southwestern China.

She cited herself, basketball star LeBron James and Starbucks Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz as examples of people with modest backgrounds succeeding, during her 15-minute presentation at Chengdu No. 7 High School in Sichuan province.

“Because in America, we believe that no matter where you live or how much money your parents have, or what race or religion or ethnicity you are, if you work hard and believe in yourself, then you should have a chance to succeed,” she said.

Her speech, on the last leg of a six-day, three-city tour of China, was delivered to a stadium of 700 students as well as to 12,000 rural students through satellite-enabled distance-learning technology.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/26/2014