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The world body moved the crisis from the top step of a five-point scale – based on the death rate – to the fourth step, formally reducing it from a “famine” to a “humanitarian emergency”.

However, the U.N. said that 2.3 million people remain in a food crisis situation in Somalia and still need assistance. That represents 31 percent of the country’s population. Across the Horn of Africa region the total is 9.5 million who need help.

The international body declared famine in Somalia last July after successive failed rains. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis fled to refugee camps in Kenya, Ethiopia and the Somali capital Mogadishu in search of food.

The famine was exacerbated by the Somali militant group al-Shabab, which has let few aid agencies into the area it controls in south-central Mogadishu.

Jose Graziano da Silva, the director general of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, warned that without assistance in the region over the next three months “those people will not survive.”

“The Horn of Africa will be for FAO the most important region and we’ll be doing our best here to improve food security,” he said. “We do believe it is possible to have a Horn of Africa free of hunger.”

Mark Bowden, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, said that a massive increase in assistance last year helped lift Somalia out of famine conditions. But he said the international community needed to keep helping.

“The gains are considerable but they are also very fragile and one of the things I want to highlight is we have a temporary respite in terms of addressing the crisis in Somalia,” Bowden said.

He later added: “The years of conflict and poor rains have left millions of Somalis vulnerable. The mortality rates in southern Somalia are still among the highest in the world.”

The militant group al-Shabab this week banned the international Red Cross from operating in southern Somalia. Bowden said any reduction in assistance “is of critical concern to us,” and he urged all sides of the conflict not to impede humanitarian aid.

The U.N. does not have a death toll from Somalia’s famine and will say only that it knows tens of thousands of people died, mostly between April and September last year. A study will be commissioned to look at the death toll in more detail, one U.N. official said Friday.

Senait Gebregziabher, the head of Oxfam in Somalia, lauded the gains against hunger but said that Somalia “is still in the throes of its worst humanitarian crisis in decades” and said that insecurity is disrupting aid supplies, warning the world not to turn its back on the crisis.

“We are seriously concerned that if people do not have the security to tend their crops and animals, or the freedom to access clean water and food in the markets, the humanitarian situation will deteriorate once again,” Gebregziabher said.

After months without rainfall across the region, the U.N. on July 20 declared several parts of Somalia a famine zone. Exhausted, rail-thin women were stumbling into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia with dead babies and bleeding feet.

The journeys sometimes took weeks, and weaker family members – children and the elderly – were left behind on the way to die alone. The U.N. expanded Somalia’s famine zone a couple weeks later, defined as when two adults or four children per 10,000 people die of hunger each day and a third of children are acutely malnourished.

Aid groups quickly sent in planes and boats full of food, though a critical report written by two prominent aid agencies has found that government and aid groups were much too slow to respond despite early warnings of impending disaster. The crisis was the worse since 1991-92, when hundreds of thousands of Somalis starved to death.

This time, the British government estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people died, most of them children. Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti were all badly affected, but the famine hit hardest in areas of Somalia suffering from a toxic mixture of drought, war, high taxes levied by armed groups, and rising food prices.

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Activist Sello Mokhalipi of the Treatment Action Campaign, an organization that advocates for people with HIV/AIDS, said that complaints of the condoms and their defects have been reported.

We had people flocking in, coming to report that the condoms had burst while they were having sex, said Mokhalipi.

In the judicial capital province of Free State, health department spokesperson Jabu Mbalula said that his department recalled all 1,350,000 condoms but urged that there was no need for alarm –although he was unable to quote a direct number of used or recovered condoms.

Mr. Mokhalipi also added that some of the users who complained of the defective and reportedly porous condoms were infected with AIDS and concerned that they may have infected their partners.

We want the department to go out and tell people about these faulty condoms, Mokhalipi said. How can they say people should not panic if there are still clearly people out there in possession of these condoms?

In 2007, 20-million defective condoms were recalled by the government, and the following year, 5-million condoms had to be taken off the market due to faulty manufacturing. In 2009, a reported 5.6-million people were living with AIDS and HIV in South Africa, an infection rate that is more than any other country.

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In an interview with The Associated Press, Michel Martelly pledged to respect the independence of the judge expected to rule within days whether Duvalier should face trial on corruption and human rights violations. Duvalier was driven into exile in 1986 and returned to Haiti a year ago.

But Martelly suggested he has little appetite for a trial that could be explosive for the Caribbean nation, recovering from decades of political turmoil and a devastating earthquake two years ago.

“My way of thinking is to create a situation where we rally everyone together and create peace and pardon people, to not forget about the past – because we need to learn from it – but to mainly think about the future,” he said, adding: “You cannot forget those who suffered in that time, but I do believe that we need that reconciliation in Haiti.”

Duvalier assumed power in 1971 at age 19 following the death of his notorious father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier. The two presided over a dark period in which their private militia of thugs in sunglasses, known as the Tonton Macoute, tortured and killed opponents. The younger Duvalier has been accused of stealing millions of dollars from public funds; he denies the accusations.

Martelly said any decision on a possible pardon would come only with “a consensus among all leaders, all political parties.”

Martelly also pledged to build a new Haitian security force to maintain order without the U.N. peacekeepers – about 11,000 foreign military and police officers have patrolled Haiti since 2004. They have recently come under fire for allegations of sexual abuse and suspicion of being the source of a cholera outbreak that has killed nearly 7,000 people and sickened a half-million.

The president refused to blame the United Nations for the problems, saying individual troops should be held accountable for their own misdeeds. But he said he will replace the peacekeepers with a Haitian security force that will create jobs for 3,000-5,000 Haitian youths and help Haiti become self-sustaining.

Martelly said he’ll need foreign cooperation to fund and train the security force, but pledged to have it at least partially in place by the end of his term in 2016. He has run into opposition from donor countries that criticized earlier pledges to build a new Haitian army – disbanded in disgrace in 1995 – and he acknowledged Thursday that a new army wasn’t realistic.

He refused to put a time frame on an exit for the peacekeepers.

“We are working with them to establish a calendar where they can retreat,” he said. “I don’t want to force the peacekeeping nations to feel like I’m pushing them out.”

The Haitian president spoke on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of global power brokers at the Swiss ski resort of Davos, where he came to meet with potential investors.

Martelly, a popular musician sworn in as president in May, said he has already provided new homes to thousands of earthquake refugees, sent nearly 1 million more children to free schools and made progress on rebuilding the airport and the ports. Investment, he said, is booming.

His main priority, he said, is to create jobs so Haiti can support itself without being dependent on foreign aid.

“The Haiti that has been waiting for help and not moving no longer exists,” he said. “Enough handouts; we need hands up. Enough aid; we need trade.”

Part of that mission will involve helping Haitians to take over the earthquake reconstruction work, which has been dominated by foreigners working for non-governmental organizations.

“When I came in, Haiti was not governed by Haitians anymore. Probably mostly by NGOs. And that has done what to Haiti? It has weakened our institutions,” he said. “We need to focus on the plan that Haiti has today. We have a plan. When we want to go somewhere we are going to have them accompany us. … We need to organize and better use that aid.

A key part of that will be drawing home well-educated Haitians who have abandoned their country amid corruption and lack of opportunity. This week the foreign affairs minister in Paris appealed to Haitians abroad to return.

“The diaspora will be put back to work. We need them,” Martelly said.

But he said he wouldn’t be offering them specific incentives: “It’s not we have anything to offer. They need to have something to offer too. They need to come back and understand that Haiti is their country. By going away…” He broke off and sighed.

“Don’t they always come back?”

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Soldiers and police officers swarmed over streets Saturday in Kano, a city of more than 9 million people that remains an important political and religious hub in Nigeria’s Muslim north. But their effectiveness remains in question, as the uniformed bodies of many of their colleagues lay in the overflowing mortuary of Murtala Muhammed Specialist Hospital, Kano’s largest hospital.

Hospital records seen by an Associated Press reporter there showed at least 120 people died in the attacks that started Friday afternoon after Muslim prayers and as shops closed for the weekend in the sprawling, dusty city. A mortuary attendant, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak with journalists, said they had 126 bodies there.

Other bodies likely lay at other clinics and hospitals in the city.

In a statement issued late Friday, federal police spokesman Olusola Amore said attackers targeted five police buildings, two immigration offices and the local headquarters of the State Security Service, Nigeria’s secret police.

Nwakpa O. Nwakpa, a spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross, said volunteers offered first aid to the wounded, and evacuated those seriously injured to local hospitals. He said officials continued to collect corpses scattered around sites of the attacks. A survey of two hospitals by the Red Cross showed at least 50 people were injured in Friday’s attack, he said.

State authorities declared a 24-hour curfew late Friday as residents hid inside their homes amid the fighting.

A Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in a message to journalists. He said the attack came as the state government refused to release Boko Haram members held by the police.

Boko Haram has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the local Hausa language, is responsible for at least 510 killings last year alone, according to an AP count. So far this year, the group has been blamed for at least 196 killings, according to an AP count.

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Nearly three decades after Israel began airlifting Ethiopia’s ancient Jewish community out of the Horn of Africa, Israel’s rabbis are now working to phase out the community’s white-turbaned clergy, the kessoch, whose unusual religious practices are at odds with the rabbinate’s Orthodox Judaism.

The effort has added to the sense of discrimination felt by Israel’s 120,000 Ethiopian citizens. These sentiments boiled over this month after a group of landlords in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi refused to accept them as tenants, prompting a large rally planned for Wednesday across from Israel’s parliament.

“We are just like all the other Jews. We don’t have any other religion,” said Kess Semai Elias, 42.

Descendants of the lost Israelite tribe of Dan, according to Jewish lore, Ethiopian Jews spent millennia isolated from the rest of the Jewish world. In most Jewish communities, the priesthood of the Bible was replaced by rabbis who emphasized text study and prayer. Ethiopia’s Jewish kessoch continued the traditions of Biblical-era priests, sacrificing animals and collecting the first fruits of the harvest.

The two traditions diverged so much that the first trickle of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants to Israel were asked to undergo a quickened conversion ceremony to appease rabbis who were dubious about their religious pedigree.

When Israeli clandestine operations rescued large groups of Ethiopian Jews from war and famine in the 1980s and early 1990s, a rabbinic consensus was reached and the newcomers did not have to convert – except for a group known as the Falash Mura, whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Christianity generations before.

The 58 kessoch who arrived in Israel in those early days maintained their leadership role in the Ethiopian Jewish community, and in 1992 successfully lobbied the Israeli government to grant them salaries and status similar to those of government rabbis. But as the aging clergy began ordaining a new generation of kessoch over the past decade, and those new leaders also wanted recognition, Israel’s rabbinate objected.

After public demonstrations and a brief hunger strike, the newly ordained kessoch struck a bittersweet deal last month with Israel’s ministry of religious services.

The ministry would finally implement a 2010 government resolution to recognize 13 of them and give them state salaries. But Israel’s state rabbis made it very clear to the new kessoch: They would be the last.

“It’s for the best,” said Rabbi Yosef Hadana, 63, of the Israeli rabbinate.

Himself the son of a respected kess, Hadana long ago traded the shash, the white turban of his father’s tradition, for the black suit and fedora of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

“After 2,500 years of isolation from the nation of Israel, we have returned. Now we need to find a way to be one people,” Rabbi Hadana said.

Hadana says he holds great respect for the kessoch. They were the ones who once spun tales of Jerusalem’s splendor at evening storytelling sessions, keeping alive the Ethiopian Jews’ religious tradition. But anyone in Israel who wants to continue that tradition, he said, must get rabbinic training. Streamlining their religious practice can help integrate Ethiopian immigrants into Israeli society, he said.

Ethiopian-Israelis have long struggled in Israel, with literacy rates relatively low, the culture gap wide and rates of poverty and domestic violence well above the national average.

Many of the older generation work menial jobs, men as security guards and women as cleaners. Their children, most of whom grew up in Israel’s Orthodox Jewish religious schools, speak fluent Hebrew, serve in the army alongside native Israelis and are increasingly studying engineering and sciences in Israel’s universities. Despite these gains, the younger generation is still struggling compared to other Israelis.

The immigrants have also long complained of discrimination. In the late 90s it was discovered that Israel’s health services were throwing out Ethiopian-Israelis’ blood donations over fears of diseases contracted in Africa.

This is not the first time in history that Ethiopian Jews have been asked to reform. Jacques Faitlovitch, one of the first Jewish outsiders to meet the community, told the kessoch in 1904 they would have to stop antiquated paschal sacrifices if they wanted acceptance in the wider Jewish world.

Polish-born Faitlovitch also pushed them to stop Judaism’s last existing monastic tradition. Ethiopia’s last Jewish monk spent his final days in Israel, secluded in a synagogue annex and preparing his own food for reasons of purity. He died about 10 years ago.

Other traditions, like priestly tithes and huts for menstruating women, were also given up upon moving to Israel.

Still, the kessoch, easily recognized by their ceremonial fly-swatting tassels and rainbow-colored sunbrellas, are not ready to be relegated to history. First-generation Ethiopian immigrants still call on them to adjudicate family conflicts, lead funeral prayers, and slaughter meat according to tradition.

Israel only recently allowed kessoch into butcheries to slaughter their own animals – even though it is not considered kosher by rabbinic standards.

But the rabbis still put their foot down when it comes to marriage. To be legal, weddings must be presided by state-recognized rabbis and include mainstream Jewish practices, like exchanging rings and stomping on a glass.

Despite the country’s secular majority, its Orthodox rabbis strictly govern Jewish weddings. Israel does not recognize civil marriages, intermarriages or marriages performed by rabbis from the more liberal Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism – unless they took place abroad.

Israeli rabbis have now agreed to train the 13 new kessoch to perform marriages the mainstream Jewish way. Nevertheless, for most of the kessoch, the prohibition on marrying is such a slap in the face that they cannot bear to show up at the weddings of their own community members.

Instead, they perform their own pirate wedding ceremonies for the newlyweds a few days later – a modest reenactment of the weeklong marriage celebrations they used to hold back in Africa.

At one nighttime ceremony in seaside Ashkelon, women in embroidered cotton robes bounced their shoulders to African beats. Family and friends greeted the couple with the toot of a golden horn. Honey beer flowed from a steel kettle, and an army of men scooped curried lamb – slaughtered by the presiding kess – onto flat injera bread.

Newly ordained Kess Abiyu Azariya, 44, pushed his way to the head of the dance floor. Wearing a white turban and shawl, he recited wedding blessings in the ancient Ethiopian tongue, Geez. “I am singing these prayers to remind the young people what a wedding was like in Ethiopia,” he told the crowd in spoken Amharic.

But the young people were nowhere in sight. Most of the 300 revelers in the room were of the older generation. The dozen young Ethiopian-Israelis who showed up that evening were outside drinking cheap Israeli beer and fiddling with their smartphones. When asked about the practice, they were ambivalent.

“I hope it continues, but it probably won’t,” said David Nadou, 24, shrugging.

The newly ordained kessoch are trying to work against that tide. Kess Semai says they’re close to ordaining yet another group of 30 kessoch – even though Israel vows not to recognize any more.

“We kept this tradition for more than 2,500 years,” Kess Semai said. “Our community won’t allow in the span of 30 years for this tradition to be erased completely.”

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This is only the fifth time in history scientists have chemically confirmed Martian meteorites that people witnessed falling. The fireball was spotted in the sky six months ago, but the rocks weren’t discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December.

This is an important and unique opportunity for scientists trying to learn about Mars’ potential for life. So far, no NASA or Russian spacecraft has returned bits of Mars, so the only samples scientists can examine are those that come here in a meteorite shower.

Scientists and collectors are ecstatic, and already the rocks are fetching big bucks because they are among the rarest things on Earth – rarer even than gold. The biggest rock weighs over 2 pounds.

“It’s Christmas in January,” said former NASA sciences chief Alan Stern, director of the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida. “It’s nice to have Mars sending samples to Earth, particularly when our pockets are too empty to go get them ourselves.”

A special committee Tuesday of meteorite experts, including some NASA scientists, confirmed test results that showed the rocks came from Mars, based on their age and chemical signature.

Astronomers think millions of years ago something big smashed into Mars and sent rocks hurtling through the solar system. After a long journey through space, one of those rocks plunged through Earth’s atmosphere, breaking into smaller pieces.

Most other Martian meteorite samples sat around on Earth for millions of years – or at the very least, decades – before they were discovered, which makes them tainted with Earth materials and life. These new rocks, while still probably contaminated because they have been on Earth for months, are purer.

The last time a Martian meteorite fell and was found fresh was in 1962. All the known Martian rocks on Earth add up to less than 240 pounds.

The new samples were scooped up by dealers from those who found them. Even before the official certification, scientists at NASA, museums and universities scrambled to buy or trade these meteorites.

“It’s incredibly fresh. It’s highly valuable for that reason,” said Carl Agee, director of the Institute of Meteoritics and curator at the University of New Mexico. “This is a beauty. It’s gorgeous.”

Meteorite dealer Darryl Pitt said he is charging $11,000 to $22,500 an ounce and has sold most of his supply already. At that price, the Martian rock costs about 10 times as much as gold.

One of the key decisions the scientists made Tuesday was to officially connect these rocks to the fiery plunge witnessed by people and captured on video last summer. The announcement and the naming of these meteorites – called Tissint – came from the International Society for Meteoritics and Planetary Science, which is the official group of 950 scientists that confirms and names meteorites.

Tony Irving of the University of Washington did the scientific analysis on the rocks and said there is no doubt they are from the red planet. Several of the world’s top experts in meteorites told The Associated Press that they, too, are convinced.

Scientists can tell when meteorites are from Mars because they know what the Martian atmosphere is made of, thanks to numerous probes sent there. The chemical signature of the rocks and the Martian air match, Irving said.

Another clue is that because Mars is geologically active, its rocks tend to be much younger – millions of years old instead of hundreds of millions or more – than those from the moon or asteroids.

Most of the known Martian rocks on Earth have been around for centuries or longer and have been found in Antarctica or the desert. They look so similar to dark Earth rocks that if they fell in other places, such as Maryland, they would blend right in and never be discovered.

Because known Martian meteorite falls happen only once every 50 years or so – 1815 in France, 1865 in India, 1911 in Egypt and 1962 in Nigeria – this is a once-in-a-career or even a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Jeff Grossman, a NASA scientist who is the meteorite society’s database editor, said there is a higher probability of finding “something interesting” from Mars on these rocks because they fell so recently. However, six months is a long time for Earthly contamination to occur, he said.

University of Alberta meteorite expert Chris Herd, who heads the committee that certified the discovery, said the first thing he would do with the rocks would be to rinse them with solvents to try to get rid of earthly contamination and see what carbon-based compounds are left.

But Cornell University astronomer Steve Squyres, who is the principal investigator for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Program and the space agency’s go-to guy on Mars, said unfortunately this type of rock isn’t the kind scientists are most hoping for. This find is igneous, or volcanic, rock.

A softer kind of rock that could hold water or life would be better, but that type is unlikely to survive a fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, he said.

Scientists are hoping NASA and the European Space Agency team up in 2018 to send robotic spaceships to Mars that can bring back samples of rock and dirt. Just this past weekend, a Russian probe that was going to try to bring samples back from a Martian moon came plummeting back to Earth in failure.

A Martian meteorite that was buried in Antarctica made news in 1996. NASA scientists theorized the rock showed traces of life from Mars. Even the White House declared it the first sign of life outside of Earth. Years of study since then have led much of the astronomy world to conclude there was insufficient evidence to support the claim.

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The main roads of Mozambique’s capital were flooded Tuesday after heavy rain fell intermittently Monday. The storm whipped up waves as high as 20 feet (6 meters), keeping Maputo fishermen in port Monday.

State radio reports that much of Xai-Xai, the capital of the southern province of Gaza, was underwater and without electricity. The storm had also brought power lines down. Xai-Xai was worst hit by the 2000 floods that killed at least 700 people.

The National Meteorological Institute on Tuesday predicted more heavy downpour.

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The documentary is a five part series that covers the fight against South African apartheid by the South African people, as well as from people around the world.

The director of the documentary series,” Connie Field said.

“The story is not a history of apartheid, nor a history of the liberation struggle, but a history of what the international community did and what events in South Africa most affected the international world”

The documentary rivals the excellent PBS series on the civil rights movement, “Eyes On The Prize” in its wide range of interviews and news footage. While “Have You Heard” covers many familiar faces against the struggle against racial injustice in South Africa, it also ads many other faces of the soldiers against apartheid.

The hero of of “Have You Heard” is not Nelson Mandela, who is incarcerated for most of the time covered by the series, but Oliver Tambo, who was the head of the ANC while he was in exile. For over 30 years, Tambo was one of the main figures in turning the anti-Apartheid struggle from a South African issue, to a global issue.

In 1976 the murder of South African school children who were protesting being forced to learn the white regime’s language of Afrikans in Soweto and the murder of anti-Apartheid leader, Steve Biko by South African police put the eye of the world of South Africa.

The documentary does a great job showing how all sorts of people from around the world with different backgrounds helped to eventually end apartheid. From religious leaders to world leaders, to workers and students, millions of people joined in to end racial segregation in South Africa.

The worldwide boycotts and protests highlight a global consciousness and worldwide cohesive effort to rally around a cause. The protests ranged from Black congressmen and celebrities such as John Conyers and Stevie Wonder getting arrested protesting the South African embassy, to workers such as Caroline Hunter, a Polaroid employee who organized a protest to get Polaroid to divest from South Africa.

Student activism and protest is also shown in the film series. Students from Cambridge University in England to Columbia University in New York organized mass protests forcing their schools to divest from South Africa.

The American villain of the series is Republican President, Ronald Reagan whose strong opposition to sanctions and pressure on the apartheid regime made him a target of people both in America and abroad who opposed apartheid. The South African government was successful in labeling the anti-Apartheid movement as “communist,” and Reagan’s support of the apartheid regime is an embarrassment to America.

The series gives hope to the world and shows how people from all different racial, social and economic backgrounds can come together for a common cause. With so many negative things going on in the world, hopefully this movie will rally people to join in the continuing fight against worldwide injustice.

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The young man decided to get a tattoo in Persian script written on  his “lil’ guy,” reading, “Borow be salaamat,” or good luck on your journeys. He also had the first initial of his girlfriend’s last name, “M,” tattooed as well.

What exactly left this man HARD-ly euphoric?

An article in the Journal of Sexual Medicine explains that the tattoo artist used a handheld needle, which lends itself to little control if any, and now doctors are saying that the man has a non-ischemic priapism, a condition where blood flowing out of the penis is not sufficient enough to shrink the erection.  Apparently, the tattooing procedure punctured holes into his penis that went deeper than they should have and vessels were damaged in the shaft.

According to the study’s urologists at the medical journal:

Henna, ash, and other natural pigments are used by traditional tattooists. They first use their needles to penetrate the skin. Then they apply the coloring material on the perforated skin surface…. The man’s painful penis had no erections for eight days following the tattooing and then he noticed longer-than-usual sleep-related erections.

To fix his “situation,” the man tried a recommended procedure, where a shunt was implanted into his penis to drain the excess blood, but it failed.  Researchers wrote:

Predictably, the procedure was unsuccessful,” they wrote. “Because of the painless nature of erections, moderately good preservation of erectile function during intercourses, and disappointment with former surgery, the patient has declined to undergo further therapies, and lives with his condition.

The report added:

Considering this case, we discourage penile tattooing.

Just in case you’re wondering, yes, the man is still able to have intercourse, but if you’re thinking of getting a penile tattoo, I WOODn’t if I were you!

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The assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was the latest in a year that has already seen new U.S. economic sanctions, threats to bar American ships from the Persian Gulf, an Iranian death sentence to a jailed U.S. citizen and an escalation in Tehran’s uranium enrichment program.

Iranian reports said two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to Roshan’s car, killing him and his driver. Roshan was a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, and the slaying suggested a widening covert effort to set back the Islamic republic’s atomic program.

But U.S. officials said they had nothing to do with it.

“I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. “We believe there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community and be a productive member of it.”

Earlier, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland wouldn’t answer a question about whether Washington was involved in the killing — or if the administration viewed Roshan as an innocent victim. “I’m not going to speak to who may or may not have done this,” she told reporters.

The attack also came one day after Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary committee that 2012 would be critical for Iran — in part because of “things that happen to it unnaturally.”

And other Israeli officials, hinted at covert campaigns against Iran without directly admitting involvement.

“Many bad things have been happening to Iran in the recent period,” said Mickey Segal, a former director of the Israeli military’s Iranian intelligence department. “Iran is in a situation where pressure on it is mounting, and the latest assassination joins the pressure that the Iranian regime is facing.”

Iranian authorities blamed Israel.

One former official said the magnetic-bomb attack does bear the hallmarks of an Israeli hit. Current and former U.S. officials say Washington prefers proxies like Israel to carry out operations inside Iran, and that up until two years ago, the U.S. and Israel coordinated actions against Iran closely. But the officials say the White House halted such cooperation after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took power.

The officials, past and present, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive strategic negotiations.

In the event that a military intervention might be needed to halt Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons capability, they said counterterrorist officials had considered allowing Israel to use the U.S.-Afghan Shindand Airbase, in western Afghanistan, to launch an air strike against Iranian weapons facilities

The attack in Tehran bore a strong resemblance to earlier killings of scientists working on the Iranian nuclear program — which Iran has blamed on Israel’s Mossad, the CIA and Britain’s spy agency. They point to at least three slayings since early 2010 and the release of a malicious computer virus known at Stuxnet in 2010 that temporarily disrupted controls of some centrifuges — a key component in nuclear fuel production. But all three countries have denied the Iranian accusations.

The U.S. and its allies are pressuring Iran to halt uranium enrichment, fearful that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists the program is for peaceful purposes only and geared toward generating electricity and producing medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.

Natanz is Iran’s main enrichment site, but officials claimed earlier this week that they are expanding some operations to an underground site south of Tehran with more advanced equipment.

Clinton condemned Iran in a statement Tuesday for enriching uranium at the underground Fordo bunker to a level that can be upgraded more quickly for use in a nuclear weapon than the main stockpile. She said Tehran was demonstrating a “blatant disregard for its responsibilities” and that “”there is no plausible justification” for its decision to increase enrichment to 20 percent — higher than the 3.5 percent being made at Iran’s main plant.

Speaking beside Qatar’s visiting prime minister, Clinton expanded her criticism of Iran on Wednesday and expressed concern about a series of “provocative and dangerous” threats by Iranian officials to close off the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the world to the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf.

“This is an international waterway,” she told reporters in Washington. “The United States and others are committed to keeping it open. It’s part of the lifeline that keeps oil and gas moving around the world.”

She said the U.S. and its partners were making it clear to Tehran that such threats were unacceptable.

Washington and Tehran also are at odds over an Iranian court’s death sentence Monday for Amir Hekmati, a 28-year-old former U.S. military translator who was born in Arizona and raised in Michigan. Iran says he is a CIA spy; the Obama administration flatly rejects the accusations.

It is the first time Iran has handed down a death sentence to a U.S. citizen since the Islamic Revolution 33 years ago. Hekmati’s family says he was in Iran visiting his grandmothers.

Prime Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabr Al Thani of Qatar, a country with deep economic ties to Iran and which exports its natural gas to the rest of the world through the Strait of Hormuz, urged more negotiations among Tehran, Washington and the rest of the international community.

“We need to find a way to live together, a peaceful way,” he said. “For us, it’s very important that we don’t trigger any military tension in the region.”

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