More democracy promised in Jordan

King Abdullah of Jordan announced Sunday that the government would in the future be elected, not appointed, responding to a demand of protesters calling for democratic change. But he failed to specify any timetable.

Jordanian political activists, inspired by the so-called Arab Spring movement that began in Tunisia, have called for curbs on the sweeping powers of the monarch, who appoints the prime minister and Cabinet and can dissolve parliament. Abdullah spoke in live TV broadcast.

The Libyan government said Sunday that it had reopened a major highway from the capital to the Tunisian border after routing a rebel attack on the road near the strategic town of Zawiya.

But opposition spokesmen said fierce fighting continued in Zawiya, the largest city between the capital and the Tunisian border and home of the nation's principal functioning refinery.

The clashes around Zawiya, 30 miles west of Tripoli, were the most intense so near the capital in several months and raised the specter of the rebels cutting off the capital from its major lifeline to the outside world. NATO is enforcing both a no-fly zone and a limited blockade of Libyan ports, meaning food and other imports must be brought by land.

Government officials sought to downplay the attack as a desperate ploy. "They are pathetic, they are weak, their numbers are in the dozens, not the hundreds," Musa Ibrahim, chief government spokesman, said Sunday of the rebels. He said military officials were negotiating the surrender of the remaining rebel force. But rebel leaders based in the eastern city of Benghazi said fighting was still raging.

In recent days, the world has followed the saga of Amina Araff, a blogger who presented herself online as "A Gay Girl in Damascus" and wrote passionately about the Syrian government's crackdown on protesters. Those writings stopped Tuesday, and a posting to the blog, ostensibly written by a cousin, said she had been hauled away by security agents.

The U.S. State Department started an investigation. But almost immediately skeptics began asking: Has anyone ever actually met Amina? Two days after her disappearance, images presented on her blog as being of Amina were revealed to have been taken from the Facebook page of a London woman. And on Sunday, the truth spilled out: The gay girl in Damascus confessed to being a 40-year-old American man from Georgia.

The persona he cultivated for years -- a lesbian who was half-Syrian and half-American -- was a tantalizing Internet-era fiction, one that Tom MacMaster used to bring attention to the human rights record of Syria. On Sunday, MacMaster wrote an apology on his blog: "While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on this blog are true and not misleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone."

NEWS SERVICES