Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday that Hamas is prepared to accept the right of Israel to “live as a neighbor next door in peace.” But Carter warned that there would not be peace if Israel and the U.S. continue to shut out Hamas and its main backer, Syria. The former president spoke in Jerusalem after meeting last week with top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and his deputy in Syria. It capped a nine-day visit to the Mideast aimed at breaking the deadlock between Israel and Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday urged other Arab countries to reopen their embassies in the capital as a show of support for his government as it cracks down on Shiite militias in Iraq. Meanwhile, a police commander said six people died in clashes in Baghdad’s embattled Shiite enclave of Sadr City. They included three policemen and three civilians, according to the officer who asked not to be named since he was not authorized to release the information.
Under pressure to increase their numbers, the Army and Marine Corps have sharply raised the number of recruits with felony convictions they are admitting to the services. Data released by a congressional committee shows that the number of soldiers admitted to the Army with felony records jumped from 249 in 2006 to 511 in 2007. And the number of Marines with felonies rose from 208 to 350. The bulk of the crimes involved were burglaries, other thefts and drug offenses, but nine involved sex crimes and six involved manslaughter or vehicular homicide convictions.
The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for Alabama, Mississippi and Texas to set new execution dates for three inmates who were granted last-minute reprieves by the justices last year. The court on Monday turned down appeals from Thomas Arthur of Alabama, Earl Wesley Berry of Mississippi and Carlton Turner of Texas. The court blocked their executions last fall while it considered a challenge to Kentucky’s lethal injection procedures.
Republican Sen. John McCain on Monday recalled the bloody beatings of civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., as he began a weeklong tour of communities he said suffer from poverty and inattention from presidential candidates. McCain described in vivid detail the clubbing that fractured the skull of John Lewis, now a Democratic congressman from Georgia. McCain, who speaks often of courage shown by military veterans, said he never saw greater courage than Lewis and the marchers showed that day, March 7, 1965.
