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(04/25/08 3:24am)
A Texas appeals court Thursday agreed to hear arguments that hundreds of children the state took from a polygamist compound should be allowed to see their mothers while the massive custody case is resolved. The Yearning For Zion Ranch was raided three weeks ago, but many of the mothers had not been separated from their children until Thursday. Two buses took the women back to the west Texas ranch from nearby San Angelo Coliseum, where the state had been keeping them and the children. One woman held up a cardboard sign that read, “SOS; Mothers Separated; Help.”
(04/25/08 3:11am)
WASHINGTON – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants the Bush administration to press Israel to stop expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank – a step he says is needed to make progress in Mideast peace talks. The White House acknowledges the talks are stagnant five months after both sides pledged to reach a deal by January.\nAbbas was to meet with President Bush on Thursday.\n“The Palestinians and the Israelis have made halting progress,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said before the meeting. She said both sides took “a few steps forward” after the Annapolis, Md., conference last November launched a new round of talks, and Bush visited the Mideast in January.\n“There has been a stall in that,” Perino said. “While conversations have been ongoing between the two, the tensions still remain high on many of the issues, including the road map issues, one of them being settlements.”\nIn a meeting Wednesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Abbas said time was running out if that target laid out in Annapolis was to be met and that more pressure must be exerted on Israel to stop the expansion of West Bank settlements, according to the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.\n“We are serious in having a serious negotiations to reach an agreement by the end of the year, but the gaps are still wide between us and the Israelis,” Abbas said, speaking later to the Arab-American Institute,\nHalting Israeli expansion in the West Bank is a major component of the so-called road map blueprint for peace.\n“I am telling you frankly that the most important obstacle to the peace process and the negotiations is the continuation of the settlement activities,” Abbas said in his speech. “Therefore, I am calling on the Israeli government to stop all settlement activities so we can hold proper meetings to reach a solution on the core issues.”\nAbbas aides said he had pressed Rice for U.S. action on the matter.\nAbbas, who is struggling for authority in the West Bank against the militant Hamas movement that controls Gaza, wants a framework peace agreement by January with timetables and specifics leading to the creation of a Palestinian state and not just a “declaration of principles” as suggested by some Israeli officials. He has said his talks with Bush will focus on achieving a deal on core issues, not just promises.\nBush met with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Wednesday. The White House meetings were a prelude to next month’s trip by Bush to the Middle East to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel. He also was expected to visit Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Bush hopes to achieve a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel before he leaves office in January.\nThe administration had been holding out hope it could arrange a peace summit during the president’s Mideast trip, perhaps at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, where Bush is set to see Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The idea was to have Arab leaders endorse an interim statement demonstrating at least some progress, officials said.\nBut there are deep misgivings about such a meeting among both Arabs and the Israelis, given the slow pace of negotiations, and prospects for the summit are slim, officials said.\nThe core issues remain the final borders of a Palestinian state, the fate of Jerusalem, disputed Israeli settlements, refugees, water and future relations between the two states.
(04/24/08 4:09am)
TUCSON, Ariz. – The government is scrapping a $20 million prototype of its highly touted “virtual fence” on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system is failing to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings, officials said.\nThe move comes just two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced his approval of the fence built by The Boeing Company. The fence consists of nine electronic surveillance towers along a 28-mile section of border southwest of Tucson.\nBoeing is to replace the so-called Project 28 prototype with a series of towers equipped with communications systems, new cameras and new radar capability, officials said.\nLess than a week after Chertoff accepted Project 28 on Feb. 22, the Government Accountability Office told Congress it “did not fully meet user needs and the project’s design will \nnot be used as the basis for future” developments.\nA glaring shortcoming of the project was the time lag between the electronic detection of movement along the border and the transmission of a camera image to agents patrolling the area, the GAO reported.\nAlthough the fence continues to operate, it hasn’t come close to meeting the Border Patrol’s goals, said Kelly Good, deputy director of the Secure Border Initiative program office in Washington.\n“Probably not to the level that Border Patrol agents on the ground thought that they were going to get. So it didn’t meet their expectations.”\nThe Border Patrol had little input in designing the prototype but will have more say in the final version, officials said.\nAgents began using the virtual fence last December, and the towers have resulted in more than 3,000 apprehensions since, said Greg Giddens, executive director of the SBI program office in Washington.\nBut that’s just a fraction of the several hundred illegal immigrants believed to cross the border daily near southwest \nof Tucson.\nThe virtual fence is part of a national plan to use physical barriers and high-tech detection capabilities to secure the Mexican border – and eventually the Canadian boundary.\nBoeing was awarded an $860 million contract to provide the technology, physical fences and vehicle barriers.\n“Boeing has delivered a system that the Border Patrol currently is operating 24 hours a day,” Boeing spokeswoman Deborah Bosick said. She declined further comment.\nProject 28 was not intended to be the final, state-of-the-art system for catching illegal immigrants, Giddens said. “I think some people understood that and some didn’t. We didn’t communicate that well.”
(04/24/08 4:08am)
BAGHDAD – The No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq expressed hope Wednesday that radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr would use his influence to stop his followers from attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces as clashes spread to the outskirts \nof Baghdad.\nThe American military said 21 suspected gunmen were killed in Shiite militia strongholds late Tuesday, while Iraqi officials said 15 civilians were among the dead, including \ntwo women.\nThe fighting, which began a month ago in response to an Iraqi government crackdown on militia violence, has put a severe strain on a cease-fire called in late August al-Sadr. The anti-U.S. cleric threatened this weekend to unleash his Mahdi Army militia in an “open war” if the military operations persist.\nDespite heightened rhetoric by al-Sadr and his followers, U.S. commanders have been careful not to directly link the cleric to the current fighting, instead blaming Iranian-backed Shiite fighters it claims are “special groups” criminals who have broken with his movement.\n“We do not attribute what we’ve seen to JAM,” said Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, using the Iraqi acronym for the \nMahdi Army.\nBut he acknowledged that al-Sadr could stop the attacks.\n“We certainly hope that Sadr will choose the road of peace and responsibility,” Austin, who commands day-to-day operations in Iraq, said Wednesday at a news conference.\nFierce fighting broke out late Tuesday and continued through Wednesday morning in Husseiniyah, a Mahdi Army stronghold to the north of Baghdad’s embattled Sadr City district.\nSeven people were killed, including two women, and 20 were wounded, including women and children, according to Iraqi police and hospital officials.\nAmerican soldiers killed six Shiite extremists Tuesday \nnight after coming under fire as they were recovering a Bradley fighting vehicle that was stuck in the mud in Husseiniyah, Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a military spokesman, said in an e-mail statement.\nU.S. soldiers also killed 15 other suspected militants in separate attacks in Sadr City, the military said separately. The sprawling area in northeastern Baghdad has been the focus of daily clashes that broke out after Iraqi Prime Minister \nNouri al-Maliki launched the crackdown.\nIraqi officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information, said eight ci vilians were killed and 44 others wounded in fighting in Sadr City.\nOne seriously wounded man died as an ambulance speeding him to the hospital was caught in the crossfire, and an elementary school was damaged, \npolice said.\nThe clashes that have been centered in Sadr City, which has a population of some 2.5 million people, have taken a heavy toll on civilians, although the U.S. military insists it takes all possible precautions to avoid hurting innocent Iraqis.\nAt least 315 people have been killed in the area since the outbreak of fighting began March 25, according to an Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.\nThe official said no breakdown was available for the number of militiamen, civilians and Iraqi security forces. But an Associated Press count shows at least 200 of those killed have been civilians.
(04/23/08 3:20am)
Authorities say a 69-year-old central Florida woman found an 8-foot-long alligator prowling in her kitchen late Monday night. Sandra Frosti says the gator must have pushed through the back porch screen door and then went inside through an open sliding glass door at her home in Oldsmar, just north of Tampa. It then apparently strolled through the living room, down a hall and into the kitchen. A trapper with Animal Capture of Florida removed the alligator, which was cut by a plate that was knocked to the ground during the chaos. But no one inside the house was injured.
(04/23/08 3:17am)
ELDORADO, Texas – State authorities began a second day of court-ordered DNA testing Tuesday on members of a polygamist sect, an effort they hope will begin to untangle the group’s complicated \nfamily relationships.\nOfficials in a massive custody case are trying to identify the parents of 437 children taken from a west Texas compound more than two weeks ago. The testing of ranch residents took place in the courthouse square as a handful of deputies in cowboy hats stood guard.\nDavid Williams, 32, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, came on his own from his home in Nevada, hoping to take custody of his sons. Williams said he doesn’t pay attention to the news and only heard his three sons were in state custody from a friend.\nClutching a Book of Mormon and photos of the boys – ages 5, 7 and 9 – Williams looked at his feet as he said his children were “taken hostage by the state.”\n“I have been an honorable American and father, and I have carefully sheltered my children from the sins of this generation,” Williams said. He declined to describe the mother of the boys as his wife, and declined to offer details of why or when he left the sect.\nA judge ordered last week that the DNA be taken to help determine the parentage of the children, many of whom were unable to describe their lineage. Some of the adults have been ordered by the state to submit to testing. Others are being asked to do so voluntarily.\nAuthorities believe the sect forces underage girls into marriages with older men. No one has been arrested, but a warrant has been issued for member Dale Barlowa, convicted sex offender, who has said he has not been to the Texas site in years.\nRod Parker, an attorney for the FLDS, said he is afraid authorities secretly intend to use the DNA to build criminal cases against members of the group. But state Child Protective services spokesman Greg Cunningham said: “We’re not involved in the criminal investigation. That’s not \nour objective.”\nTen lab technicians hired by the state spent Monday collecting samples at the San Angelo coliseum and fairgrounds which served as a shelter for the children who were removed from their Eldorado compound during an April 3 raid.\nSome of those technicians were to be sent to Eldorado on Tuesday to collect samples from the possible parents. Family relationships are immensely tangled within the sect, where multiple mothers live in the same household and children refer to all men in the community as “uncles.”\nAuthorities say they need to figure that out before they begin custody hearings to determine which children may have been abused and need to be permanently removed from the sect compound and which ones can be safely returned to the fold. For now, they’re all in state custody because child-welfare officials believe sexual abuse has occurred or could occur imminently because of the teachings of the sect.
(04/17/08 4:42am)
Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein embraced sobbing relatives and thanked colleagues after being released Wednesday after more than two years in U.S. military custody. Hussein, 36, was freed at a checkpoint in Baghdad, where he was taken by the military aboard a prisoner bus. He left U.S. custody wearing a traditional Iraqi robe and appeared in good health. The U.S. military had accused Hussein of links to insurgents, but did not file specific charges. In December, military authorities brought Hussein’s case into the Iraqi court system for possible trial.
(04/17/08 4:41am)
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court upheld the most common method of lethal injection executions Wednesday, clearing the way for states to resume executions that have been on hold for nearly 7 months.\nThe justices, by a 7-2 vote, turned back a constitutional challenge to the procedures in place in Kentucky, which uses three drugs to sedate, paralyze and kill inmates. Similar methods are used by roughly three dozen states.\nThe governor of Virginia lifted his state’s moratorium on executions two hours after the high court issued its ruling.\n“We ... agree that petitioners have not carried their burden of showing that the risk of pain from maladministration of a concededly humane lethal injection protocol, and the failure to adopt untried and untested alternatives, constitute cruel and unusual punishment,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in an opinion that garnered only three votes. Four other justices, however, agreed with the outcome.\nRoberts’ opinion did leave open subsequent challenges to lethal injection practices if a state refused to adopt an alternative method that significantly reduced the risk of severe pain.\nJustices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.\nExecutions have been on hold since September, when the court agreed to hear the Kentucky case. There was no immediate indication when they would resume, but prosecutors in several states said they would seek new execution dates if the court ruled favorably in the Kentucky case.\nForty-two people were executed last year among more than 3,300 people on death row across the country. Another roughly two dozen executions did not go forward because of the Supreme Court’s review, death penalty opponents said.\nThe argument against the three-drug protocol is that if the initial anesthetic does not take hold, the other two drugs can cause excruciating pain. One of those drugs, a paralytic, would render the prisoner unable to express his discomfort.\nThe case before the court came from Kentucky, where two death row inmates did not ask to be spared execution or death by injection. Instead, they wanted the court to order a switch to a single drug, a barbiturate, that causes no pain and can be given in a large enough dose to cause death.\nAt the very least, they said, the state should be required to impose tighter controls on the three-drug process to ensure that the anesthetic is given properly.\nRoberts said the one-drug method, frequently used in animal euthanasia, “has problems of its own, and has never been tried by a single state.”\nKentucky has had only one execution by lethal injection and it did not present any obvious problems, both sides in the case agreed.\nBut executions elsewhere, in Florida and Ohio, took much longer than usual, with strong indications that the prisoners suffered severe pain in the process. Workers had trouble inserting the IV lines that are used to deliver the drugs.\nRoberts said “a condemned prisoner cannot successfully challenge a state’s method of execution merely by showing a slightly or marginally safer alternative.”\nGinsburg, in her dissent, said her colleagues should have asked Kentucky courts to consider whether the state includes adequate safeguards to ensure a prisoner is unconscious and thus unlikely to suffer severe pain.\nJustice John Paul Stevens, while agreeing with the outcome, said the court’s decision would not end the debate over lethal injection. \n“I am now convinced that this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of the three-drug protocol, and specifically about the justification for the use of the paralytic agent, pancuronium bromide, but also about the justification for the death penalty itself,” Stevens said.\nStevens suggested that states could spare themselves legal costs and delays in executions by eliminating the use of the paralytic.\nTy Alper, a death penalty opponent and associate director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, said he expects challenges to lethal injections will continue in several states.\nThe Rev. Pat Delahanty, head of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said the ruling wasn’t a surprise.\n“We never expected it to do more than maybe slow down executions in Kentucky or elsewhere,” Delahanty said. “We’re going to be facing some executions soon.”
(04/11/08 4:15am)
The Senate on Thursday passed a bipartisan package of tax breaks and other steps designed to help businesses and homeowners weather the housing crisis. The measure passed by an impressive 84-12 vote, but even its supporters acknowledge it’s tilted too much in favor of businesses such as home builders and does little to help borrowers at risk of losing their homes. The plan combines large tax breaks for homebuilders and a $7,000 tax credit for people who buy foreclosed properties, as well as $4 billion in grants for communities to buy and fix up abandoned homes.
(04/11/08 4:14am)
NEW YORK – Sen. John McCain called for federal aid for well-meaning homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages, an attempt to fend off criticism that he has been indifferent to the housing crisis and the market upheaval it has spawned.\nMcCain sketched out a plan Thursday to help 200,000 to 400,000 homeowners trade burdensome mortgages for manageable loans in a speech in Brooklyn. Aides said the plan could cost from $3 billion to $10 billion.\nStill missing were details on exactly who would be eligible for help; McCain said he wants to aid those who borrowed sensibly but now can’t handle their mortgages.\n“There is nothing more important than keeping alive the American dream to own your home,” the likely GOP presidential nominee said in a speech before joining in a roundtable discussion at a Brooklyn company, Windows We Are Inc.\n“And priority No. 1 is to keep well-meaning, deserving homeowners who are facing foreclosure in their homes,” the Arizona senator said.\nThe Bush administration and both parties in Congress also are proposing varying degrees of federal help for \nburdened homeowners.\nIn proposing specific aid, McCain struck a different tone than he did in an address last month. Then, McCain said he opposed aggressive intervention by the government to solve the crisis and that he preferred only limited intervention and letting market forces play out.\nDemocrats criticized the shift in tone; presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called his plan a halfhearted version of her own efforts.\n“So now he’s changed positions and is finally responding to a housing crisis that has been going on for months, but unfortunately his actions are only half-measures,” Clinton said in a statement.\nSen. Barack Obama, who was laying out his own proposal for a $30 billion second economic stimulus package at a town hall meeting in Gary on Thursday, said McCain’s plan offers little in the way of solutions.\n“I’m glad he’s finally decided to offer a plan,” Obama said in a statement released by his campaign. “Better late than never. But don’t expect any real answers, don’t expect it to actually help struggling families because Sen. McCain’s solution to the housing crisis seems a lot like the George Bush solution of sitting by and hoping it passes while families face foreclosure and watch the value of their homes erode.”\nMcCain’s proposals would help between 200,000 and 400,000 homeowners and would back mortgages worth an estimated $3 billion to $10 billion, said Doug Holtz-Eakin, senior policy adviser to McCain.\nJust who would be eligible depends on who applies for help, Holtz-Eakin said.\n“It has to be someone who at the time looked like they were a sensible borrower and now they can’t handle it,” he said.\nHe said the plan would help at least some people with adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, as opposed to 30-year fixed loans.\nOther details of his plan include:\n•Unlike the Democrats, McCain would have individual borrowers apply to have their mortgages refinanced. Democrats would have the mortgage-holders apply for refinancing, which Holtz-Eakin said could leave taxpayers on the hook for risky loans that lenders want to unload.\n•And unlike Bush, McCain would let people have more equity in their homes; Bush would allow as little as 3 percent, while McCain would allow 10 percent, Holtz-Eakin said.\n•McCain’s plan would benefit the government as well as the original lender by giving them certificates for part of the loan’s original value. If the homeowner sold for more, he or she would benefit along with the government and the original lender.\n“It is built on the reality that homeowners should have an equity capital stake in their home,” he said. “Homeowners would end up with a 30-year mortgage and an equity stake in their home. The new lender would receive a federal guarantee of the mortgage. And the taxpayer gets a benefit if the sale value ever recovers.”\nMcCain said lenders ultimately need to write off losses, restructure balance sheets and raise more capital.
(03/04/08 4:46am)
JEBALIYA, Gaza Strip – Israeli aircraft pummeled targets in Gaza for the sixth straight day Monday and militants fired rockets at a major Israeli city. But the fighting showed signs of slowing, with the army pulling ground troops out of northern Gaza.\nThe departing soldiers left behind scenes of devastation in this northern Gaza town: roads plowed up, cars crushed by tanks and electric poles toppled. Hamas militants declared victory and some 20,000 supporters staged a large celebration in Gaza City.\nWhile remaining defiant in public, Hamas leaders signaled a readiness for a truce.\nBut Israeli officials said the troop pullback was only temporary and that the overall offensive was continuing.\n“We are acting and we will continue to act in a way that is painful and effective, that will bring maximum results in terms of halting terror,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told members of his Kadima party.\nAt the same time, he said Israel must press forward with peace talks with moderate Palestinians. The Palestinians suspended the talks on Sunday.\n“We want to carry on with negotiations because the alternative is Hamas rule in the West Bank as well,” he said. “Anyone who sees what is going on in Gaza can well imagine how much worse it would be for Israel if there were to be Hamas rule in the West Bank.”\nThe Gaza fighting has killed some 117 Palestinians since last Wednesday, according to Palestinian medical officials and militant groups. Three Israelis have also been killed.\nThe fighting has brought home the huge challenges facing the latest U.S.-sponsored peace push as long as Israel and Hamas are locked in a seemingly endless spiral of violence.\nSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to visit the region starting Tuesday to promote peace talks. But with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspending those talks to protest the Gaza bloodshed, it wasn’t clear what Rice would be able to accomplish.\nThe Palestinians have two rival governments: Abbas’ moderate administration in the West Bank and the Islamic militant Hamas regime in Gaza.\nHamas strongman Mahmoud Zahar told reporters his group has been in touch with an unidentified third party to discuss a cease-fire that would include the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and an end to an Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.\nIsrael is seeking the release of a soldier captured by Hamas-linked militants in June 2006 as part of a deal. He stressed, however, that Hamas would continue to train and develop weapons even under a truce.\nIsraeli leaders have been reluctant to seek a cease-fire, claiming Hamas would use any lull to rearm. But recent opinion polls show roughly two-thirds of the Israeli public supports truce talks, and a growing number of Israeli leaders have said the government should consider the idea.\nIsrael’s education minister, Yuli Tamir, said the government should try to talk to Hamas to work out a cease fire.\n“Given the terrible situation, and given the fact that we don’t have a perfect option that can guarantee quiet in the south, we should try such a move,” she told Army Radio.
(03/04/08 4:42am)
Pentagon officials say the U.S. launched an air strike early Monday in Somalia to go after a terrorist suspect. In the strike, Somali police said three missiles hit a Somali town held by Islamic extremists, destroying a home and seriously injuring eight people. A Pentagon official said the U.S. military was going after an al-Qaida suspect in the town. As yet, there is no word on whether the suspect was hit. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the strike.
(03/04/08 4:41am)
TOLEDO, Ohio – Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton suggested Monday she’ll press on with the campaign after today’s crucial primaries, arguing that momentum is on her side despite 11 straight losses to rival Sen. Barack Obama.\n“I’m just getting warmed up,” Clinton told reporters, looking ahead to a busy day of campaign events in Ohio and Texas where polls show a close race ahead of Tuesday’s primaries.\nClinton’s husband, former President Clinton, has asserted that his wife must win both Texas and Ohio to keep her campaign alive. On Friday, Hillary Clinton’s advisers recast the stakes, saying if Obama lost any of the four presidential primaries Tuesday – Rhode Island and Vermont also vote – it would show Democrats are having second thoughts about him.\nHillary Clinton predicted success on Tuesday and looked ahead to the next big contest – Pennsylvania on April 22.\n“I think I know what’s happening and I believe I’m going to do very well tomorrow,” she said. “I think that’s going to be a very significant message to the country, and then we move on to Pennsylvania and the states coming up.”\nClinton and Obama have been waging a tough and competitive race for the party’s nomination, but Obama has seized the momentum, reeling off 11 straight wins in primaries and caucuses since Super Tuesday on Feb. 5. Superdelegates, the party’s elected leaders and senior officials, also have been moving toward his candidacy.\nAs for today, Clinton said, “Obviously it’s within the margin of error in both the popular vote and the delegate count. Ohio is the key to winning the presidency and I’m excited about tomorrow and I’m looking forward to it.”\nSpeaking with reporters on her campaign plane, Clinton argued that the competitive primary contest would be good for the party heading into the November elections, a view at odds with some in the party who fear a lengthy, divisive nomination fight would weaken the Democratic candidate.\n“Hard-fought primary contests are a part of American politics,” Clinton said. “We’re going to have a hard-fought contest, we’re going to have a unified Democratic Party, we’re going to get behind whoever our nominee is and we’re going to win in November.”\nLacking from Clinton’s comments was the traditional confidence assurance of victory.\n“I intend to do as well as I can on Tuesday and we’ll see what happens after that,” she said.\nWith Sen. John McCain as the Republican nominee-in-waiting, Clinton said she’s going to focus on national security, because the former prisoner of war is certain to make that the core issue of the fall campaign.\n“This is a wartime election, which Democrats haven’t talked enough about in my opinion,” Clinton said.\nClinton planned a town hall meeting in Texas later Monday, and had bought television time to broadcast it across the state. She was returning to Ohio on Tuesday to await election returns, but planned to fly out of Ohio after those returns were final.
(03/04/08 4:40am)
WOODINVILLE, Wash. – Fires gutted three multimillion-dollar model homes in a Seattle suburb on Monday, and authorities found a sign purportedly left by eco-terrorists that mocks claims that the homes were environmentally friendly.\n“Built Green? Nope black!” read the spray-painted sign that bore the initials of the radical environmental group Earth Liberation Front.\nCrews removed explosive devices found in the homes, said Fire Chief Rick Eastman of Snohomish County District 7. The FBI was investigating the fires as a potential domestic terrorism act, said FBI spokesman Rich Kolko in Washington, D.C.\nNo injuries were reported in the fires, which began before dawn in the wooded subdivision and were still smoldering by midmorning. The sheriff’s office estimated damage at $7 million. In addition to the three homes destroyed, two sustained smoke damage.\nThe houses burned as a federal jury in Tacoma was about to resume deliberations in the case of an alleged ELF activist, Briana Waters. Waters could face at least 35 years if convicted of helping to firebomb the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001.\nThe fires started at the “Street of Dreams,” a strip of unoccupied, furnished luxury model homes where developers show off the latest in high-end housing, interior design and landscaping. The homes were to be sold later. \nThe homes are in a development near the headwaters of Bear Creek, which is home to endangered chinook salmon. Opponents of the development had questioned whether the luxury homes could pollute the creek and an aquifer that is a drinking water source, and whether enough was done to protect nearby wetlands.\nThe sign, a sheet with red scraggly letters, said “McMansions in RCDs r not green,” a reference to rural cluster developments.\nOne of the people involved in the project said the homes used “green” techniques such as water-pervious sidewalks, super-insulated walls and windows and products made with recycled materials, such carpet pads. Advertising for last summer’s “Street of Dreams” show focused on the environmentally-friendly aspects of the homes, which were smaller than some of the huge houses featured in years past.\n“It’s very disappointing to take a situation where we’re tying to promote good building practices – Built Green practices – and that it’s destroyed,” said Doug Barnes, the Northwest division president of Centex Homes in Kirkland.\nThe homes that burned were between 4,200 and 4,750 square feet, with prices up to nearly $2 million.\nThe Earth Liberation Front is a loose collection of radical environmentalists known for trying to cause economic damage to companies or organizations that, in its opinion, harm the environment. The group has no organized structure or leadership; typically, autonomous cells of activists take “direct actions” such as arsons and claim responsibility on behalf of ELF.\nIn 2005, federal authorities charged more than a dozen people involved in an ELF cell known as “the Family” and centered near Olympia, Wash., and Eugene, Ore. The group was responsible for at least 17 fires around the West from 1996 to 2001 – most notoriously, the 1998 destruction of the Vail Ski Resort in Colorado, a fire that caused $12 million in damage.\nWaters, a 32-year-old violin teacher from Oakland, Calif., is accused of serving as a lookout while her friends planted a devastating firebomb at the UW’s horticulture center in 2001, causing $7 million in damages. The horticulture center was targeted because the ELF activists mistakenly believed researchers there were genetically engineering trees, investigators said.
(03/03/08 5:12am)
Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor Dmitry Medvedev was cruising to an easy victory in Russia’s presidential election Sunday, a result expected to give significant power to the outgoing president. The Central Election Commission said that returns from 15 percent of Russia’s electoral districts showed Medvedev with about 65 percent. Some voters complained of pressure to cast ballots for Medvedev, and critics called the election a cynical stage show to ensure unbroken rule by Putin and his allies.
(03/03/08 5:11am)
CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez ordered Venezuela’s embassy in Colombia closed and sent thousands of troops to the countries’ border Sunday after Colombia’s military killed a top rebel leader.\nThe leftist leader warned that Colombia’s slaying of rebel commander Raul Reyes could spark a war in South America and the angry rhetoric sent relations between the nations to their lowest point in Chavez’s nine-year presidency.\nSpeaking on his weekly TV and radio program, Chavez told his defense minister: “Move 10 battalions to the border with Colombia for me, immediately.” He ordered the Venezuelan Embassy in Bogota closed and said all embassy personnel would be withdrawn.\nChavez, a fierce critic of Washington, called the U.S.-allied government in Bogota “a terrorist state” and labeled President Alvaro Uribe “a criminal.”\nChavez condemned Colombia’s slaying of Reyes and 16 other guerrillas on Saturday, saying they were killed while they slept in a camp across the border in Ecuadorean territory. He said Colombia “invaded Ecuador, flagrantly violated Ecuador’s sovereignty.”\n“It wasn’t any combat. It was a cowardly murder, all of it coldly calculated,” Chavez said.\n“We pay tribute to a true revolutionary, who was Raul Reyes,” Chavez said, recalling that he had met the rebel leader in Brazil in 1995 and calling him a “good revolutionary.”\nChavez said he had just spoken to Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and that Ecuador was also sending troops to its border with Colombia.\n“The Colombian government has become the Israel of Latin America,” an agitated Chavez said, mentioning another country that he has criticized for its military strikes. “We aren’t going to permit Colombia to become the Israel of these lands.”\nChavez accused Uribe of being a puppet of Washington and acting on behalf of the U.S. government, saying “Dracula’s fangs (are) are covered in blood.”\n“Some day Colombia will be freed from the hand of the (U.S.) empire,” Chavez said. “We have to liberate Colombia,” he added, saying Colombia’s people will eventually do away with its government.\nThe U.S. State Department had no immediate reaction to Chavez’s comments\nChavez maintains warm relations with the Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and has sought to play a role as mediator in the conflict despite his growing conflict with Colombia’s government.\nChavez’s government called the Colombian military attack a setback in efforts to negotiate a swap of rebel-held hostages for imprisoned guerrillas.\nColombia and Venezuela have been locked in a diplomatic crisis since November, when Uribe ended Chavez’s official role negotiating a proposed hostages-for-prisoners swap.\nNevertheless, the FARC freed four hostages to Venezuelan officials last week, and they were reunited with their families in Caracas. It was the second unilateral release by the FARC this year.\nChavez has recently angered Uribe by urging world leaders to classify the leftist rebels as “insurgents” rather than “terrorists.”\nThe FARC has proposed trading some 40 remaining high-value captives, including former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. defense contractors, for hundreds of imprisoned guerrillas.
(03/03/08 5:10am)
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel sent missiles slamming into the office of Gaza’s Hamas prime minister Sunday, pressing on with an offensive that has killed nearly 70 Palestinians in two days. The moderate Palestinian president suspended peace talks with Israel.\nAt least 54 Palestinians, roughly half of them civilians, were killed in Gaza fighting Saturday, the deadliest day in more than seven years of violence, Palestinian medical officials said. Another 14 Palestinians, one of them a 21-month-old girl, were killed or found dead Sunday. Two Israeli soldiers were killed on Saturday.\nSince the latest bout of fighting erupted on Wednesday, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed, according to an AP tally based on information from Palestinian medical officials and militant groups.\n“We are following the aggression against our people in Gaza,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters. “I’ve conducted contacts with various leaders, with the Security Council, with the EU and with Arab leaders to work to stop this aggression,” he said.\nPalestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said peace talks with Israel had been halted.\n“For the time being, the negotiations are suspended because we have so many funerals,” he said. It was unclear when the talks, relaunched last November at a U.S.-hosted summit, would resume.\nSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to visit this week to try to spur progress in peace talks. Instead, she will likely spend her visit trying to put out the latest fire.\nPrime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s office was empty at the time of Sunday’s pre-dawn airstrike. But the raid was seen as a tough message to the Hamas leadership, which Israel holds responsible for repeated rocket barrages launched from Gaza.\nHaniyeh spoke to leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, asking them “to stop this aggression,” said government spokesman Taher Nunu. He also called for reconciliation talks with Fatah, the rival Palestinian faction headed by Abbas and ousted from Gaza by Hamas last June.\nIsrael’s response to incessant Palestinian rocket fire at southern Israeli communities drew hard international condemnation. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon accused Israel of “disproportionate and excessive use of force.”\nPrime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected the criticism and vowed to press on with the Gaza offensive.\n“With all due respect, nothing will prevent us from continuing operations to protect our citizens,” he told his Cabinet.\nOlmert’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, said an even broader Gaza operation was in the cards, aimed at crushing militant rocket squads but also to “weaken the Hamas rule, in the right circumstances, even to bring it down.”\nIsrael regularly clashes with Gaza rocket squads, but intensified its operations after militants fired salvos last week into Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 closer to Israel’s heartland than previous targets. By striking Ashkelon, some 11 miles north of Gaza, Hamas added pressure on Israeli leaders to exact a high price for the increasing sense of insecurity felt in southern Israel.\nThe onslaught failed however to stop rockets from battering southern Israel. Nine were fired at southern Israel by midday Sunday, including one that struck a house in the rocket-scarred town of Sderot less than a mile from Gaza, the military said. One rocket lightly wounded four Sderot residents, Israeli rescue services said.\nAbout 50 rockets and mortars were fired Saturday, injuring six Israelis.
(03/03/08 5:09am)
LAS VEGAS - FBI agents on Sunday searched a Utah house linked to a man whose hospitalization led to the discovery of deadly ricin in a motel room he had occupied on the Las Vegas Strip.\nThe search of the home outside Salt Lake City began about 8 a.m. and was expected to continue for several hours, FBI spokesman Juan Becerra said. A news conference was scheduled for late morning to discuss the probe.\nRoger Von Bergendorff, the focus of the investigation, had lived in the Riverton house for more than a year before moving to Las Vegas about a year ago, said Tammy Ewell, who lives across the street.\n“He just barely got by in life. He’d just barely make it,” Ewell said Saturday of the 57-year-old Von Bergendorff.\nHe lived there with his cousin Thomas Tholen and his wife, said Ewell, who described the couple as close friends.\nOfficials secured Tholen’s home, but did not immediately search it because they were awaiting court approval for a warrant, Becerra said later Saturday.\nIn a brief telephone interview, Thomas Tholen told The Associated Press that Von Bergerdorff was “holding his own” in the hospital.\nTholen, 53, wouldn’t say much more about his cousin or the discovery Thursday of several vials of ricin - which is deadly in minuscule amounts - at Von Bergendorff’s extended-stay motel room on the Las Vegas Strip.\nAuthorities have not said how much ricin was involved but expressed confidence they have seized all of it.\nHealth officials were still trying to confirm whether Von Bergendorff’s respiratory ailment stemmed from ricin exposure.\nPolice and health officials have tried to assure Las Vegas residents there is no public health threat. There was no apparent link to terrorist activity and no indication of any spread of the deadly substance, they said.\nAdding to the mystery, police said late Friday that firearms, an “anarchist-type textbook” and castor beans, from which ricin is made, were found in the room where the poison was discovered.\nThe firearms and the book, which was tabbed at a spot containing information about ricin, were seized Tuesday, police Capt. Joseph Lombardo said. He did not elaborate.\nEwell, the Tholens’ neighbor, said Von Bergendorff was a “loner” and that she often saw him walking his German shepherd on the street. It wasn’t clear what he did for a living or how he spent his time.\nToward the end of his stay, he started attending the local Mormon church and briefly moved out of the Tholen home into a neighbor’s camper, she said.\nTholen is a former high school art teacher who now sells insurance with his wife, she said.\n“The Tholens were the last ones we’d expect anything to happen to,” Ewell said.\nTholen went to Von Bergendorff’s Las Vegas motel room on Feb. 22 and took the vials to the motel office in a plastic bag while retrieving his cousin’s belongings, authorities said.\nPolice previously said tests did not detect the material in the motel office, the room where Von Bergendorff stayed, or a room at the Excalibur hotel-casino where Tholen stayed Wednesday night.\nAfter the vials were taken to the motel office, Tholen and six other people were decontaminated at the scene and taken to hospitals for examination. None have shown any signs of being affected by ricin, officials said.\nAs little as 500 micrograms of ricin, about the size of the head of a pin, can kill a human, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The only legal use for ricin is cancer research.\nLas Vegas police, who have refused to identify Von Bergendorff or Tholen by name, said Friday that the hospitalized man was unconscious and that investigators had been unable to speak with him.\nThey have said Tholen arrived in Las Vegas after Von Bergendorff summoned an ambulance and was hospitalized Feb. 14 in critical condition.
(02/28/08 5:59am)
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed inclined to reduce the $2.5 billion award of punitive damages to victims of the Exxon Valdez disaster.\nSeveral justices indicated they think the amount approved by a federal appeals court is too high, although there was no apparent consensus about how much Exxon Mobil Corp. should have to pay for the 1989 accident in which its 987-foot tanker ran aground on a reef and dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Alaskan waters.\nJustices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter suggested that perhaps a reasonable number would be twice the amount of money the company has paid to compensate victims for economic losses. Walter Dellinger, representing Exxon, said the company has paid about $500 million in such costs.\nOverall, Exxon has paid $3.4 billion in fines, penalties, cleanup costs, claims and other expenses resulting from the worst oil spill in U.S. history.\n“Exxon gained nothing by what went wrong in this case and paid dearly for it,” Dellinger said, in urging the court to erase the punitive damages judgment that has been upheld by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.\nStanford University law professor Jeffrey Fisher said the nearly 33,000 commercial fishermen, Native Alaskans, landowners, businesses and local governments he represents have each received about $15,000 so far “for having their lives destroyed.”\nFisher said nothing in prior Supreme Court decisions should cause the justices to overturn the $2.5 billion award, about $75,000 for each plaintiff.\nBut Souter said the court has struggled for the past decade to limit excessive punitive damages awards and wondered why the justices should not come up with a number in this case.\n“Would that be illegitimate or unwise?” he asked Fisher.\n“I’ll stick with unwise, Justice Souter,” Fisher said.\nIt was less clear how the court would resolve the issue of whether the company could be held liable at all for the acts of Exxon Valdez captain Joseph Hazelwood. Hazelwood was not on the ship’s bridge when the accident occurred and had been drinking shortly before it left port, both in violation of Coast Guard rules and company policy.\nJustice Samuel Alito, who owns Exxon stock, is not taking part in the case. A 4-4 split on that or any issue would leave the appeals court ruling in place.\nTwo brothers from Cordova, Alaska, were in line in front of the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning, waiting to watch the arguments inside.\nCommercial fisherman Steve Copeland, who was 41 at the time of the spill, said he cannot afford to retire because his business has never recovered from the steep decline it suffered due to the disaster.\nHis brother, Tom, said Exxon “needs to get told they need to be a better corporate citizen.”\nA jury initially awarded $287 million to compensate for economic losses and $5 billion in punitive damages. The appeals court cut the punitive damages in half. The compensatory damages have been paid.\nExxon argues that long-standing maritime law and the 1970s-era Clean Water Act should bar any punitive damages, which are intended both to punish behavior and deter a repeat. The company says it should not be held accountable for Hazelwood’s reckless conduct.\nThe plaintiffs say the judgment, representing three weeks of Exxon’s 2006 profit, is rational and proportionate. It takes account of Exxon’s decision to allow Hazelwood to command the ship, despite knowing he had an ongoing drinking problem, the plaintiffs contend.\nThe case is Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 07-219.
(02/28/08 5:56am)
British police thwarted a suspected plot to kill the king of Saudi Arabia during a state visit to Britain last year, a senior officer said Wednesday. Officers caught a courier at Heathrow Airport attempting to smuggle $330,000 in cash into Britain to pay a cell of dissident Saudi Arabians, said Detective Superintendent Mark Holmes, head of the National Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit. They were plotting to assassinate King Abdullah during his official visit to Britain in late October and early November – the first trip by a Saudi monarch to see Queen Elizabeth II in 20 years, Holmes said.