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(07/18/05 3:23am)
LONDON -- Britain's government rejected criticism that lax policies toward Muslim political refugees helped facilitate terror recruiters, while police Sunday searched an Islamic bookstore in the northern city of Leeds, hometown of three of the London suicide bombers.\nAs the investigation continued into the July 7 mass-transit terror attacks, a newspaper reported that Britain's domestic secret service, MI5, had scrutinized one of the four suspected bombers in 2004 but did not regard him as a threat to national security or put him under surveillance.\nMI5 began evaluating Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, during an inquiry focused on an alleged plot to explode a large truck bomb outside a London target believed to be a nightclub in the Soho neighborhood, The Sunday Times reported. The inquiry evaluated hundreds of potential suspects, the newspaper said.\nPolice declined to comment on the report, as did a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair's office.\nThe bombings, which killed 55 people on three underground trains and a double-decker bus, have prompted the government to propose new legislation outlawing "indirect incitement" of terrorism -- including the praising of those who carry out attacks.\nBut Charles Falconer, the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor, dismissed a suggestion that the government had been lax in its policies toward political refugees from Muslim countries, thereby helping to make Britain a fertile recruiting ground for Islamic terrorism.\n"In terms of asylum, our policy is: If you are in fear of persecution, you are entitled to come here," the minister said Sunday on British Broadcasting Corp. television. "Obviously, if you then seek to attack the very state that you come to, that gives rise to different questions.\n"But I don't think we have been ultraliberal. ... What we have got to do now is unify all the forces in our society, in particular in the Muslim community, against those people who are fundamentally at odds with our values."\nThree of the four suspected suicide bombers were born in Britain to parents of Pakistani origin: Khan; Shahzad Tanweer, 22; and 18-year-old Hasib Hussain, all from the Leeds area. The fourth suspect is Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay, 19, who came to Britain as an infant.\nPolice on Saturday released an image captured by surveillance cameras showing all four bombers with backpacks entering the train station in Luton, north of London, the morning of the attacks. Investigators say the four took a train from Luton to London's King's Cross station, where they split up to carry out the bombings.\nThe investigation in Leeds has focused in recent days on an Islamic shop near the home of Tanweer. Police continued their search Sunday of the Iqra Learning Centre, which appeared to sell Islamic books and DVDs and offer seminars and presentations. Police also continued searching a house a few streets from the Tanweer family home.\nOfficers also have been searching the Leeds home of an Egyptian biochemist for more evidence after investigators reportedly found traces of explosives in the man's bathtub. Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar is being interrogated by Egyptian authorities; they say the biochemist denies any connection to the attacks.\nEgypt is not prepared to hand el-Nashar over to Britain, Egyptian security officials said Saturday as British investigators arrived to sit in on the questioning. The two countries have no extradition treaty.\nIn Pakistan, meanwhile, intelligence officials say authorities are examining a possible connection between Tanweer and two al-Qaida-linked militant groups.\nA woman killed in the bombings, Susan Levy, 53, a mother of two, was cremated Sunday in a private service in north London -- the second service so far for London terror victims. Police say Levy was traveling on the Piccadilly subway line, which was hit by the bomb near King's Cross station.\nAbout 700 people were injured in the morning rush-hour attacks. Police said more than 40 people remained hospitalized, at least six of them in critical condition.
(02/11/05 4:12am)
LONDON -- Prince Charles said Thursday he will marry his divorced lover Camilla Parker Bowles in April, putting an official seal on a long romance that Princess Diana blamed for the breakdown of her tempestuous marriage to the heir to the throne. The announcement ruled out the possibility that she would become queen.\nThe Prince of Wales and Parker Bowles will marry Friday, April 8, at Windsor Castle, said the Clarence House, Charles' residence and office.\nDuring a visit to London's financial district Thursday, Charles accepted congratulations on his pending nuptials.\n"Thank you very much, you're so kind." he said. "I am very excited."\nOne of Charles' titles is Duke of Cornwall, so Parker Bowles will use the title Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall after the marriage. When Charles becomes king, she will not be known as Queen Camilla but as the princess consort, Charles' office said.\nThat decision by the prince appeared to be a nod to public opinion, which has never warmed to Parker Bowles, the object of ridicule after tapes of her intimate conversations with Charles emerged in 1992.\nThere is no law saying the wife of a king should be queen, but it is a historic convention. Charles' office said there was no legal reason why Parker Bowles could not become queen, saying the decision was made by the couple.\nPrince Charles' sons, William and Harry, were "delighted" by the news and want the couple to be happy, a spokesman for Charles' office said Thursday.\nThe marriage will be a civil service and not a Church of England service.\n"There will subsequently be a service of prayer and dedication in St. George's Chapel at which the Archbishop of Canterbury will preside," Charles' office said.\nThe decision on the type of service reflects the fact that both are divorcees, and that Parker Bowles' ex-husband is still living. In general, the Church of England, the legally established faith of the nation, disapproves of the remarriage of divorced people in church.\nAs Britain's monarch, Prince Charles would be the supreme governor of the Church of England. Some Anglicans could oppose him holding this role as a divorcee who remarried outside the church.\nThe announcement received the blessing of Queen Elizabeth II, who said she was very happy that her son and Parker Bowles will marry.\nPrime Minister Tony Blair also said he was "delighted"
(08/05/04 1:11am)
LONDON -- Crude oil futures Wednesday jumped to a new record high, riding upward on continuing concern about threats to supplies from Iraq and Russia.\nU.S. light crude for September delivery briefly hit an intraday high of $44.30 a barrel in electronic pre-session trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That price was the highest on record since oil futures began trading on the Nymex 21 years ago.\nThe price later fell to $44.29 in midday trading Wednesday. That was 14 cents above Tuesday's settlement of $44.15, which had set a closing price record.\nOn London's International Petroleum Exchange, September Brent crude futures rose to an all-time intraday high of $40.97, up 33 cents from Tuesday's record settlement price of $40.64. The previous all-time high intraday price was $40.95 set in October 1990. The IPE launched Brent crude futures in June 1988.\nOil prices have risen partly because of concerns about the reliability of crude supplies from Iraq, where saboteurs have attacked pipelines and disrupted exports and because of fears of terrorist attacks in the United States. U.S. authorities warned Sunday that al-Qaida was planning attacks on five key financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.\nUncertainty about the fate of Russia's largest oil company Yukos continued to unnerve markets. Russian tax authorities said Monday they would begin investigating the 2002 activities of Yukos, which produces 2 percent of the world's crude.\nSome analysts have forecast that the oil price could rise to $50 a barrel and that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will not be able to meet demand in the fourth quarter.\nOil analyst Richard Griffiths, at brokerage Williams de Broe, said such a rise was feasible, but only if there was a major disruption to oil supplies coupled with evidence of renewed strength in demand.\nGriffiths said, however, that limits on output capacity for the world's leading producers would cool down significantly in the foreseeable future.\n"I doubt there is a quick fix," Griffiths said, adding that OPEC countries would need more investment and time to reach higher production levels.\nJohn Vautrain, vice president of Houston-headquartered energy consultants Purvin & Gertz, agreed that prices could reach $50.\n"If you want the prices to come down, there probably needs to be a reduction in the (terror) threats. Let's quiet down Iraq, let's get Yukos settled," Vautrain said in Singapore.\n"Clearly the world is very nervous. Clearly New York is very nervous over the variety of events in the past weeks," he said. "Most of it is nerves and not an issue of supply."\nTuesday, OPEC President Purnomo Yusgiantoro said the cartel could not immediately increase output to help bring prices down. But Dow Jones Newswires later quoted a senior Saudi source as saying Saudi Arabia had the capacity to "immediately" increase its oil output from 9.5 million barrels a day to 10.5 million barrels a day.\nTraders say they are awaiting the U.S. Department of Energy's weekly oil data report, due later Wednesday, for further clues on the short-term outlook.\nOne trader, speaking on condition of anonymity, said prices will cool once the "wave of Saudi crude" hits the market, which he said would happen soon.
(12/10/03 5:18am)
LONDON -- Ozzy Osbourne -- once a wild man of heavy metal music, now a dazed dad in a reality TV show -- recuperated in intensive care Tuesday from injuries including a broken neck vertebra after an all-terrain vehicle accident.\nSharon Osbourne flew to Britain from Los Angeles to be with her 55-year-old husband after the latest dramatic incident in a colorful career that has included biting the head off a bat and urinating on the Alamo, among other antics.\n"Apparently he was on his quad bike and he hit something and he fell and the bike landed on top of him," Sharon Osbourne told reporters Tuesday at London's Heathrow Airport.\nA quad bike, akin to a four-wheel-drive motorcycle, is used for recreation and by hunters and farmers to reach inaccessible places.\nSharon Osbourne visited her husband at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, west of London, where he underwent emergency surgery Monday to restore the flow to a damaged blood vessel, said Dr. Dick Jack, hospital medical director.\nOsbourne fractured his left collarbone, eight ribs and a neck vertebra in the accident Monday on his Buckinghamshire estate in southern England.\n"It's satisfactory but it's going to be slow. I don't expect any major changes certainly for 24 hours," Jack said of Osbourne's recovery.\nHe said he believed there was no risk of paralysis from the fractured neck vertebra, although doctors were awaiting a final report from radiologists before removing an immobilizing collar.\nThe accident occurred while the singer was taking a day off from promoting "Changes," a duet with his daughter Kelly, his London publicity agency said in a statement.\nThe song, released Tuesday in Britain, is a likely contender for the Christmas No. 1 spot in singles charts.\nOzzy Osbourne, whose real name is John Osbourne, grew up in a blue-collar family in Birmingham, central England. He served two months in prison for burglary at age 17.\nHe rose to fame with the 1970s metal band Black Sabbath. He left for a solo career, shocking many with lyrics focusing on the occult and startling performances.\nOsbourne bit the head off a live dove at a meeting with record company executives in 1981. The following year he did the same to a live bat at a concert in Des Moines, Iowa, although the bat reportedly bit back, and Osbourne reportedly had to undergo painful rabies shots.\nThe singer also used to throw raw meat into the audience and once urinated on a wall at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas.\nSome fans concluded that decades of alcohol and drug abuse had taken their toll when a rather confused-appearing Osbourne became an unlikely TV star with hit reality show "The Osbournes."\nThe third season of the MTV series, which follows the lives of Ozzy, Sharon and their children -- Jack and Kelly -- started production about a month ago and was to begin airing Jan. 13.\nThe Osbourne accident nearly coincided with a story last weekend on the Los Angeles Times Web site reporting a claim by Osbourne that he was prescribed excessive amounts of powerful anti-psychotic and tranquilizing drugs by a Beverly Hills physician.\nOsbourne said he developed a 42-pill-a-day habit that accounted for his odd behavior on the expletive-laden MTV show, in which he has been seen mumbling, falling and appearing disoriented.\nHe blamed Dr. David Kipper, who has been investigated for the same practices with other celebrity patients.\nOn Monday, however, actor-director Danny DeVito issued a statement in support of Kipper. DeVito said he and his wife, actress Rhea Perlman, and other family members have relied on Kipper's care for more than 20 years.\nCalls to Kipper's office Monday were not returned.\nEarlier this month, Osbourne told a British newspaper he'd been sexually molested as a child and suffered emotional effects long into adulthood.
(06/05/03 12:44am)
LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair, under fire from lawmakers over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which so far can't be found, said Wednesday that he will cooperate with a parliamentary probe into his handling of intelligence reports.\nBlair, who made Iraqi weapons of mass destruction the core of his case for war, hotly rejected claims that his government had exaggerated the threat or misused intelligence material. Opposition politicians called for an independent inquiry.\n"The truth is nobody believes a word now that the prime minister is saying," Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith shouted above the jeering of Blair's supporters.\nQuestions have been raised both in Britain and the United States about why coalition forces have not found evidence that Saddam Hussein had chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in stock and ready to use. The issue has been particularly acute for Blair because allegations about those weapons were always his leading reason for going to war.\nProof that he or his government lied to Parliament would be fatal to Blair's position, though for now he enjoys broad support from Labor Party lawmakers.\nIn hot-tempered exchanges in the House of Commons, Blair let his exasperation show.\n"In the end, there have been many claims made about the Iraq conflict, that hundreds of thousands of people were going to die, that it was going to be my Vietnam, that the Middle East was going to be in flames and this latest one, that weapons of mass destruction were a complete invention by the British government," Blair said.\n"The truth is, some people resent the fact it was right to go to conflict. We won the conflict thanks to the magnificent contribution of the British troops, and Iraq is now free and we should be proud of that."\nIn Washington, where two U.S. Senate committees were pushing for a similar investigation into intelligence on Iraqi weapons, a senior Pentagon official on Wednesday rebutted reports that he had put a political spin on intelligence about Iraq's links to terrorism in order to build a case for war.\nDoug Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, denied news reports that members of a small group of Defense Department officials were directed in 2001 to find evidence of connections between Iraq and the al Qaeda terror group and weapons of mass destruction.\nBritain was the only country to make a major contribution of military forces to the U.S.-led campaign to topple Saddam. The deployment was Britain's biggest since the Falkland Islands war in 1982, and included 26,000 ground troops, an 18-ship naval deployment, a hundred fixed-wing aircraft including fighter-bombers, and 27 helicopters. Thirty-four British military personnel were killed in the conflict.\nBlair's unwavering support of President Bush provoked significant opposition within Britain. Parliament did vote in favor of military action on March 18, but 138 members of Blair's Labor Party voted against him -- the biggest revolt within the party since Blair won power in 1997.\nOn Wednesday, the prime minister announced that the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee had contacted the government early last month to conduct an inquiry into intelligence on Iraq. That investigation, however, may not quiet the controversy.\n"I remind the whole house that the prime minister will only let that committee see the intelligence reports he wants them to see," Duncan Smith said.\n"It reports directly to him, and he can withhold any part or all of its reports. This committee ... is being asked to investigate his role and that of his closest advisers," Duncan Smith said.\nThe probe by the Intelligence and Security Committee is separate from the investigation announced late Tuesday by the influential House of Commons Foreign Relations Committee.\nBlair described as "completely and utterly untrue" a media report that his office had redrafted an intelligence service report to emphasize a claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. He also rejected reports that the claim was based on a single Iraqi defector, saying the information came from an "established and reliable source."\n"I have spoken and conferred with the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee: There was no attempt at any time by any official or minister or member of (my) staff to override the intelligence judgments of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and their judgments -- including the judgment about the so-called 45 minutes -- was a judgment made by the intelligence committee and by them alone" Blair said.\nRobin Cook, who resigned from the Cabinet to protest the war, challenged Blair to admit that the government had been wrong on the 45-minute claim and in asserting that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa for a weapons program.\nBlair said intelligence supported both claims at the time but that the allegation about Africa might prove to be wrong.\nThe latest controversy about the weapons was fueled by a report on BBC Radio quoting an unidentified "senior British official" as saying intelligence officers were unhappy about the inclusion in the dossier of evidence they regarded as unreliable -- such as the 45-minute claim.\nJohn Reid, a senior member of Blair's Cabinet, on Wednesday said "rogue" elements within the intelligence services were responsible for the BBC report.\n"When I look at who is supposed to be the source of this according to the BBC's own reporter, it is one individual, unnamed, anonymous, uncorroborated official who is in some way connected with the intelligence service," Reid told BBC TV.\n"It amazes me that serious organizations like the BBC should take the word of such obviously rogue isolated individuals"
(07/29/02 2:15am)
PARIS -- Lance Armstrong won his fourth straight Tour de France on Sunday, handily beating the world's best cyclists in a grueling three-week event he has turned into his personal showcase.\nThe 30-year-old cancer survivor crossed the finish line on the Champs-Elysees in the bright yellow leader's jersey he has worn since taking control of the race 10 days ago.\nArmstrong's tranquil ride to the finish mirrored the rest of the Tour, in which neither rivals nor the demanding course of 2,032 miles seemed to test him.\nHis final winning margin over second-place Joseba Beloki of Spain was 7 minutes, 17 seconds, making it Armstrong's second-biggest victory. He beat Alex Zuelle by 7:37 in 1999 for his first Tour de France championship.\nRaimondas Rumsas of Lithuania was third overall this year, 8:17 back. No other rider finished within 13 minutes of Armstrong.\n"I'm really happy to finish," the Texan said. "It's a difficult race, three weeks. It's difficult, mentally. It's good to finish."\nOn Sunday, he finished in the main pack of riders as they completed the largely ceremonial 20th stage from Melun, outside Paris, to the tree-lined Champs-Elysees.\nThousands of fans watched, many waving U.S. flags, as Armstrong moved within one of the Tour record of five titles. He's the first American to win four (Greg Lemond, the only other U.S. rider to win the Tour, did so three times).\nAs he went up to the podium for the victory ceremony, Armstrong waved at the crowd, which roared its approval. He smiled broadly when he was presented with a bouquet of yellow flowers that matched his jersey.\nArmstrong stood with his cap pressed against his heart as the "Star Spangled Banner" played.\nLater, he spoke on the phone with President Bush.\n"He's really a sportsman. He said, 'Come, come with me to the White House,'" Armstrong said in French. "He's really a good guy, a fellow Texan."\nArmstrong was joined at the victory ceremony by his wife, Kristin, and three children: 2-year-old Luke and 8-month-old twins Isabelle and Grace.\nArmstrong nestled one of the twins in his arms as he left the podium.\nRobbie McEwen of Australia -- well back in the overall standings -- won Sunday's 89.3-mile stage and took the green jersey for the Tour's best sprinter. Laurent Jalabert of France won the red spotted jersey as best climber, while Ivan Basso of Italy won the white jersey for best young rider.\nArmstrong, meanwhile, was simply the best.\nHe seized the lead in the first mountain leg at La Mongie in the Pyrenees, and nearly doubled it by sprinting up a tough climb to the Plateau de Beille in the next day's 12th stage.\nOn the formidable Mont Ventoux in the southern Provence region, he placed third but took a comfortable lead of 4:21 by finishing nearly 2 minutes in front of Beloki.\n"Armstrong has shown he has the blood of champions flowing through his veins," the head of Beloki's team, Manolo Saiz, said after the Ventoux stage.\n"He is much stronger than us. We see it day after day."\nIt was Armstrong's fifth unsuccessful attempt at winning on the Ventoux, but what mattered was stretching his race lead, rather than taking spectacular -- and tiring -- stage victories.\n"The smart thing to do is to ride conservative now," the U.S. Postal Service rider said as he headed to the Alps. "This is not a race to win by as many seconds or minutes as possible, it's a race just to win. So there's no need to be aggressive."\nThat didn't stop from him adding 45 seconds in the last three mountain stages and winning the final time trial Saturday by nearly a minute.\n"I can remember in 1999 being so nervous every day and worried that I would lose the race in an instant," Armstrong said Saturday. "I don't have those fears any more."\nNext year, Armstrong will try to tie Miguel Indurain's record of five straight Tour titles (three other men also have won the race five times, though not consecutively).\nBut Armstrong, diagnosed in 1996 with testicular cancer, knows he already has made his mark on cycling.\n"Regardless of one victory, two victories, four victories, there's never been a victory by a cancer survivor," he said. "That's a fact that hopefully I'll be remembered for"