---

BlackBerry may have won a reprieve but Google and Skype were squarely in the firing line Tuesday as India's security agencies widened their crackdown on telecom firms. India's 1.1 million BlackBerry users heaved a sigh of relief after the government Monday gave the smartphone's manufacturer a two-month window to provide a permanent solution to avert a ban on its corporate message services.

Security forces in India, battling insurgencies ranging from Kashmir in the northwest to the far-flung northeast, are insisting that telecom groups give them the capability to monitor their data.

---

---

By Michael Stott
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's paramount leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, hinted on Monday he would return to the presidency in 2012 for six more years and said democracy protesters marching without permission deserved to be beaten.

Asked by the Kommersant daily newspaper in an interview whether Russia's 2012 presidential election did not worry him because he had already decided it, Putin replied:
"No, it interests me like...I wanted to say like everyone, but in fact more than everyone else. But I don't want to make a fetish out of it."

---

---

Global economic woes gripped investors on Tuesday, roiling financial markets from Tokyo to Dublin to New York.
Worries that started in Asia continued in the U.S. after housing numbers painted a grim picture of the economy.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped to its lowest close in seven weeks. The Dow finished down 133.96 points, or 1.3%, at 10040.45, its fourth consecutive decline and its ninth losing session in the past 11. The measure fell below 10000 during the day.

Day after day, investors have been hit with more evidence that the economy is stalling. The Dow is down over 4% this month, after an ebullient July that was fueled by impressive earnings results from U.S. companies.

---

---

Sales of previously occupied homes in the United States fell 27 percent in July, the weakest showing in 15 years, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. It was the largest monthly drop in the four decades that records have been kept.

---

---

Hamas nod for Ground Zero mosque

Terror group's leader: 'Have to build it'

By S.A. MILLER in Washington and TOM TOPOUSIS in New York
Last Updated: 12:03 PM, August 16, 2010
Posted: 1:49 AM, August 16, 2010
Comments: 475

A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero -- insisting Muslims "have to build" it there.
"We have to build everywhere," said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization's chief on the Gaza Strip.
"In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer," he said on "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on WABC.
OBAMA CATCHES HOLY HELL
"We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places."
AP
'WE HAVE TO PRAY': Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (inset) got support from Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar (above left, with Gaza political leader Ismail Haniyeh), who spoke on WABC Radio yesterday in favor of Rauf's proposal to build an Islamic center in this downtown location two blocks from Ground Zero.
Hamas, he added, "is representing the vast majority of the Arabic and Islamic world -- especially the Islamic side."
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who so far has not taken a position on the mosque, dismissed the endorsement.
"Hamas is a terrorist organization, and their views don't deserve any weight on anything," his spokesman said.
Zahar said Muslims around the world, including those who live in this country, are united in a common cause.
"First of all, we have to address that we are different as people, as a nation, totally different," he said.
"We already are living under the tradition of Islam.
"Islam is controlling every source of our life as regard to marriage, divorce, our commercial relationships," Zahar said.
"Even the Islamic people or the Muslims in your country, they are living now in the tradition of Islam. They are fasting; they are praying."
Politicians who previously had lots to say on the matter were not nearly as eager to discuss the latest development.
Despite his outspoken opposition to the building of a mosque so close to Ground Zero, Rep. Peter King (R-LI) said only, "I don't respond to Hamas."
Mayor Bloomberg, a strong supporter of the plan, declined comment through a spokesman.
Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the proposed mosque, and two other leaders of the plan who previously had commented extensively, were silent yesterday.
They did not respond to The Post's phone calls or e-mails about the Hamas endorsement.
Hamas first came up in the mosque debate earlier this summer when Abdul Rauf refused to describe the group as a terrorist organization -- despite the State Department listing that identifies it as such.
Tom Brown, a chief opponent of the mosque, said: "This is what we've been saying . . . Imam Rauf is a radical Muslim who will not call Hamas a terror group."
A retired firefighter who was a first responder on 9/11, Brown lost 100 of his FDNY friends at the Twin Towers.
"How much evidence do we need that this guy is a radical Muslim?" he asked.
"If Rauf really were a bridge builder and an interfaith guy and all the things he professes to be, he wouldn't be doing this to people."
Abdul Rauf raised eyebrows last week when he departed on a State Department-sponsored goodwill mission to the Middle East, despite concerns that the trip may be helping him with the mosque's $100 million fund-raising goal.
The Obama administration insisted the trip, reportedly with stops in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar, was strictly to improve understanding about Muslim communities in the United States.
But a London-based Arabic-language newspaper that interviewed Abdul Rauf reported that he said he would also collect money from Muslim and Arab nations around the world -- raising the possibility that the American government is helping him build contacts in oil-rich states.

---

---

U.S. homeowners were less confident about the value of their homes in the second quarter, with one-third believing home prices had not yet reached a bottom, real estate website Zillow.com said on Thursday.

Nevertheless, a significant number of homeowners said they planned to put their home up for sale in the next six months if they saw signs of a real estate market turnaround.
Homeowners were more pessimistic about the short-term future of home values in their local market than they had been in the previous three quarters, according to the Zillow Second Quarter Homeowner Confidence Survey.

---

---

New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed to a nine-month high last week, yet another setback to the frail economic recovery.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 500,000 in the week ended August 14, the highest since mid-November, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 476,000 from the previously reported 484,000 the prior week, which was revised up to 488,000 in Thursday's report.

---