Bono devoted a series of U2′s 2009 concerts to Suu Kyi, demanding her release from house arrest, and unveiled the Amnesty award at one Dublin concert that year. He said the June 18 event would be the first time he’s ever met the 66-year-old pro-democracy activist.

“It’s so rare to see grace trump military might, and when it happens we should make the most joyful noise we can,” Bono said in a prepared statement. “Aung San Suu Kyi’s grace and courage have tilted a wobbly world further in the direction of democracy. We all feel we know her, but it will be such a thrill to meet her in person.”

Suu Kyi was elected to Parliament in Myanmar, also known as Burma, last month; took her seat May 2; and launched an international tour Tuesday starting in neighboring Thailand. She’s also scheduled to address both houses of the British Parliament during her European tour next month.

She is expected to visit Dublin solely to be guest of honor at the concert, called Electric Burma.

Bill Shipsey, an Amnesty official organizing the concert, said others taking part would be actress Vanessa Redgrave, the Riverdance troupe, and folk-rock singer Damien Rice.

Bob Geldof, like Bono an Irish rocker-turned-humanitarian, also will be involved in the concert. Geldof praised Suu Kyi as a “heroine of dignity, integrity, courage and steely moral vigor (who) lost her freedom and her family in order to gain a nation. Ireland is ennobled by her visit.”

The two groups had often fought together against government soldiers before March, but there has been rivalry between them since they gained control of major towns. Fighters have occupied different parts of each city and sometimes compete for whose flag should fly over key buildings.

On Saturday, the two groups came to an agreement in principle to merge and create a transitional council and an army of the “Islamic State of Azawad,” a word the Tuareg people use for northern Mali. Since that agreement, however, negotiations toward a final declaration have stalled, according to the representatives.

A spokesman for the NMLA says it does not want to see a strict form of Islamic law imposed in any new state and is worried about Ansar Dine’s links with al-Qaida’s affiliate in North Africa called al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. The terror cell is responsible for dozens of kidnappings in the region and attacks on Western targets, including the French and Israeli embassies in Mauritania.

“We don’t accept Shariah law. That’s never what we wanted,” Mossa Ag Attaher, an NMLA spokesman told the Associated Press by telephone from France.

“There are also problems linked to certain concepts, like how the region is going to be governed,” Ag Attaher added.

The NMLA wants the new state to ratify the United Nations’ conventions which deal with human rights, something Ansar Dine is said to be resisting. Ag Attaher said that Ansar Dine’s links with AQIM were also proving a stumbling bloc.

“We can never accept that a movement from outside Azawad comes and controls part of this territory,” Ag Attaher said.

AQIM has its origins in Algeria, but was pushed south into Mali starting in 2003. The terror cell is known to operate several bases in Mali’s remote deserts and forests, but until the rebels seized the key towns of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu in northern Mali, their fighters had never been openly seen in the major cities, where AQIM commanders have now been spotted.

Oumar Ould Hamaha, an Ansar Dine fighter in Timbuktu, confirmed that negotiations were proving difficult between the two rebel groups.

“We agree on 80 percent of the subject matter with the NMLA,” Ould Hamaha said by telephone. “The most important thing is that we come to a common agreement now.”

The NMLA’s Ag Attaher said that the negotiators in the northern city of Gao are now waiting for the head of Ansar Dine, Iyad Ag Ghali, to arrive there to take part in discussions. Ag Ghali was not present when the initial document was signed.

On Tuesday, the current head of the African Union, Benin’s President Yayi Boni, met with the new French president Francois Hollande in Paris, where they discussed the issue of north Mali.

Hollande suggested that the African Union and the body representing nations in West Africa, known as ECOWAS, refer the issue of Mali to the United Nations Security Council.

“What we want is that these institutions go to the U.N. Security Council so that it finds a framework that allows stability to be restored in Mali and the wider Sahel,” Hollande said.

The French president said that the France would be willing to help an operation in Mali if it were covered by a Security Council resolution.

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Associated Press writer Baba Ahmed contributed to this report from Bamako, Mali.

Prosecutors have filed a total of 21 misdemeanor counts against the owner, Horacio Santorsola, and seven employees after conducting further investigation with the help of the Inland Valley Humane Society, said Reza Daghbandan, a prosecutor with the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office.

The defendants, who are not in custody, have a July 20 court date and face a maximum of a year in county jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted, he said.

Santorsola, 73, said the case was exaggerated and he and his employees had done nothing wrong.

He has not been cited once in the 18 years he’s owned the business, he said, and grabbing animals by their necks and legs is necessary because they are not tame.

“I think it’s a bunch of crap,” Santorsola said. “How are you going to pick them up? They don’t have a leash. They run, believe me, they do run.”

The video was taken earlier this year over a seven-week period by an undercover investigator using a buttonhole camera, said Matt Rice, director of investigations at Mercy for Animals.

Prosecutors relied on the help of veterinarians to determine which actions crossed the line into criminal behavior, Daghbandan said.

“This isn’t the same standard of care as a house pet would get … but we felt comfortable that these instances went too far,” he said.

Animal handling experts who reviewed the footage called the treatment of the animals, which include emus, pigs, goats, sheep and cows, “brutally improper.”

“If they were to do this to a companion animal like a dog or a cat, everyone would jump up in outrage,” said Holly Cheever, a veterinarian and expert witness in animal cruelty cases who is also vice president of New York State Humane Association.

Cheever said in one shot, a cow appears to be suffering from a prolapsed uterus and is bleeding.

“Even food animals are supposed to be given proper care and protection from abuse and this is very clear cut abuse,” she said. “The dragging of the downed animals, the tossing of the baby animals onto the floor, leaving them gasping and dying: It’s hard to choose any one aspect because it’s pretty unpleasant from beginning to end.”

A website for Ontario Livestock Sales says the family-owned business 40 miles east of Los Angeles holds auctions every Tuesday and handles horses, cattle, goats, hogs and exotic animals. The facility, which was founded in 1936, sells 1,000 to 1,300 animals every week, according to its website.

Mercy for Animals has filmed at livestock facilities around the U.S., including footage at a poultry farm that last year led Target and McDonald’s to drop their egg supplier after undercover footage showed hens packed into cramped cages, male chicks being tossed into plastic bags to suffocate and workers cutting off the tips of chicks’ beaks.

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Online:

http://www.mercyforanimals.org/auction/

But while the pop star’s show was effectively banned from Indonesia, tens of thousands of young women here put on performances like Karisma’s every night. They shake and grind in smoky bars, ritzy nightclubs, at weddings, even circumcisions. In most cases the hosts say the sexier the better.

The apparent double standard highlights divisions between Indonesia’s largely tolerant majority and a vocal minority of Islamic hard-liners. The conservatives hold outsized influence in government, and have successfully picked high-profile battles like the Lady Gaga show, but they haven’t been able to stop dangdut, which has a long tradition here.

Karisma’s stage shows have gotten nearly a million hits on YouTube. Julia Perez, an actress and wannabe politician, is dubbed the “sex bomb” for her racy act. Another performer, Dewi Persik, is known for her powerful back-and-forth hip thrusting “saw move” and public acknowledgments that she had surgery to become “a born-again virgin” to please her future husband.

The up-and-coming “Trio Macan,” made up of three Gaga look-alikes, with dyed hair and catlike poses, often simulate sex with male customers on stage.

Members of the Anti Apostasy Movement, Indonesian Mujaheeds Council and the notoriously thuggish Islamic Defender’s Front, better known as FPI, are quick to say they go after provocative dangdut performances. From time to time their followers jump in vans and ransack dangdut bars and nightclubs in the capital, Jakarta, and its outskirts.

But they know this won’t get them the kind of attention they crave, said Andrew Weintraub, a professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh and author of the book “Dangdut Stories.”

“Lady Gaga is a big name,” he said. “It’s a big stage for conservative Muslim organizations to promote their own agenda. They’ll get a lot of attention internationally — which is also what makes the state nervous.”

All 52,000 tickets for the concert Lady Gaga planned to give June 3 sold out within days, but members of the FPI had vowed to meet her at the airport if she dared step off the plane. Others bought tickets to her show saying, if it went ahead, they’d wreak havoc from inside the packed stadium.

As the weekslong controversy raged, conservative politicians and members of more mainstream Muslim organizations piled onto the anti-Gaga wagon. And police — for the first time ever — denied a permit to one of the many Western stars passing through, citing security. Lady Gaga eventually pulled the plug.

“We hold huge concerts here all the time,” said Desi Anwar, a local television anchor, noting that crowd control is nothing new. “This is what happens when the government is perceived as weak and not consistent.”

Indonesia is often held up by U.S and others as a beacon of how Islam and democracy can coexist, and in many ways they are right. Most of the secular nation’s 210 million Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith and accept differences in others, with schoolgirls in headscarves regularly seen in shopping malls walking arm-in-arm with friends wearing tiny short shorts and T-shirts.

Sweeping reforms that followed the ouster of Gen. Suharto’s 32-year dictatorship in 1998 have allowed citizens to directly pick their own leaders, while vastly improving human rights, opening up the media and allowing artists freely express themselves for the first time in decades.

But a small extremist fringe has become more vocal in recent years, using its influence to push through controversial laws banning everything from kissing in public to showing too much skin. They’ve also become more violent, going after Christians and members of other religious minorities with batons and machetes, usually without paying any price.

More recently, mobs attacked Alex Aan, an atheist, now in jail for his beliefs, and rampaged a book discussion by visiting Canadian liberal Muslim activist, Irshad Manji.

That’s one reason hard-liners felt they could take on Gaga — the biggest international star in the world, said Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based analyst with the International Crisis Group think tank. They were emboldened by a string of successes.

“These guys are on a roll,” she said, adding they have learned that by mobilizing various conservative groups and politicians, “they can set the agenda and underscore the importance of abiding by Islamic values.”

Critics say President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose government relies on the support of Islamic parties, is largely to blame for rising intolerance for remaining silent.

But the passivity of the majority also plays a role, staying out of the debate unless their own liberal lifestyles are at stake — as was the case with Lady Gaga.

Dangdut, which got its name from the rhythmic “dang” and “dut” of the drum, is an occasional target of conservatives, though Weintraub, the music professor, says most of its singers are not raunchy.

Introduced in the 1970s, the genre is partly derived from Malay, Arabic, and Hindu music. For many years, it was mostly the music that expressed the hopes and disappointments of the downtrodden, spilling into the streets and back alleys from bars and restaurants, taxis and public buses.

After Suharto’s downfall, when media restrictions were lifted, dangdut made the leap to commercial TV. Once male-dominated audiences expanded to include the middle- and upper-class women, many of whom felt empowered by overt expressions of sexuality.

From that emerged Inul Daratista, a village girl from East Java province who wowed fans nationwide with her rapid-fire, pelvic “drill dancing.”

Hard-liners were mortified, calling her lewd and a threat to national morals. They held protest rallies, forced her to cancel shows and dismantled a statue of her built near her home.

Within a few months, the then 24-year-old largely disappeared from the limelight, in part because of legislation proposed in response to her wiggling derriere that eventually led to the country’s controversial 2008 anti-pornography law.

The law has been applied arbitrarily since than, usually with hard-liners leading the charge.

It was used to jail the editor of Indonesia’s now-shuttered version of Playboy, even though there are many smuttier magazines on the streets. The lead singer of a local pop band, Peter Pan, also is behind bars after a homemade sex video of him and two girlfriends found its way on the Internet, even though several lawmakers caught in similar sex scandals are still sitting in Parliament.

Dangdut’s influences have changed over the years to include everything from American and British rock to salsa, house and remix, and styles of dance today are shaped by MTV and Western pop stars.

Hard-liners cite those outside influences as another reason they don’t like it.

Conservative opponents of dangdut don’t worry fans like Imam Siswanto, who says the genre is powerful because it often touches on issues that resonate with the masses: heartache, social inequality and, sometimes, faith.

He said that although critics sent Gaga packing, “I can firmly and confidently say that dangdut will never die.”

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Online:

Dangdut singer: http://bit.ly/j37Txf