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(06/11/07 4:05pm)
ROME – President Bush, denounced by tens of thousands of anti-American protesters on the streets of Rome, defended his humanitarian record on Saturday to Pope Benedict XVI, who expressed concern about “the worrisome situation in Iraq.”\nBush also sought to shore up relations with Premier Romano Prodi, whose center-left government has been heavily critical of U.S. policies. While Prodi has withdrawn Italian forces from Iraq, Bush thanked him for Italy’s leadership in supporting the fragile western-backed government in Lebanon and its commitment of 2,000 troops for NATO’s mission in Afghanistan.\nRelations with Italy are “pretty darn solid,” Bush said.\nProdi agreed. “We basically agree on how the future of the world should look, should be,” the Italian leader said. \nThe president went to the Vatican for his first meeting with the pope, who has lamented the “continual slaughter” in Iraq and said that “nothing positive comes from Iraq.”\nThe pope asked Bush about his talks in Germany with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a time of deep strain between Moscow and Washington. “The dialogue with Putin was also good?” the pope asked.\n“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Bush said, mindful of the presence of reporters and television cameras during the photo opportunity. They both laughed.\n“I was talking to a very smart, loving man,” Bush said later of his discussion with the pope. “I was in awe, and it was a moving experience.”\nHighly unpopular in Italy and across Europe, the president made a point about U.S. efforts to fight disease and poverty in Africa. Bush recalled that he had asked Congress to double the commitment for fighting AIDS in Africa, from $15 billion to $30 billion.\nTens of thousands of anti-globalization and far-left activists marched peacefully through the capital’s ancient center to protest Bush’s visit. Thousands of police were deployed round the Colosseum, the downtown Piazza Venezia and other sites.\nAs the protests were concluding, riot police used tear gas on small groups who threw bottles and donned masks in defiance of a police order.\nMore than an hour into the clashes, police charged the demonstrators, pursuing them down alleyways to break up the crowd as helicopters circled overhead. News agency ANSA said six people were taken into custody.\nWhite House aides shrugged off the protests, calling them democracy in action; Bush apologized for disrupting traffic as his motorcade moved through Rome under heavy security.
(06/06/07 11:39pm)
By Glen Johnson \nThe Associated Press\nMANCHESTER, N.H. – President Bush drew sporadic, startling criticism Tuesday night from Republican White House hopefuls unhappy with his handling of the Iraq war, his diplomatic style and his approach to immigration.\n“I would certainly not send him to the United Nations” to represent the United States, said Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and one-time member of Bush’s Cabinet, midway through a spirited campaign debate.\nArizona Sen. John McCain criticized the administration for its handling of the Iraq War, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said, “I think we were underprepared and underplanned for what came after we knocked down Saddam Hussein.”\nRep. Duncan Hunter of California said the current administration “has the slows” when it comes to building a security fence along the border with Mexico.\nRep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado recalled that White House aide Karl Rove had once told him “never darken the door of the White House.” The congressman said he’d tell George W. Bush the same thing.\nThe criticism of Bush was more in keeping of the type of rhetoric that could be expected when Democratic presidential contenders debate.\nIts prominence at the GOP event, while Bush was traveling overseas, was a reflection of his poor poll ratings and the need of even members of his own party to campaign on platforms of change.\nThe Republicans sprinkled the criticism of Bush throughout a two-hour debate that ranged over topics from war to immigration legislation pending in Congress to religion. The debate was the third of the accelerated primary campaign.\nNone of the 10 men on the debate stage raised their hand in agreement when moderator Wolf Blitzer of CNN asked if anyone favored allowing gays to serve openly in the military.\nBoth Hunter and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas said they would pardon Vice President Dick Cheney’s former aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, sentenced to 30 months in prison earlier in the day for lying and obstructing a CIA leak investigation.\nFormer New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a former prosecutor, said the sentence was excessive and therefore “argues in favor of a pardon.”\nGiuliani had the central role in an unscripted moment of humor. \nAsked about a Rhode Island Catholic bishop who criticized him for supporting abortion rights, Giuliani began to respond when a lightning strike briefly interfered with the debate hall sound system.\n“Look, for someone who went to parochial schools all his life, this is a very frightening thing that’s happening right now,” he said to laughter.
(06/06/07 11:36pm)
WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison Tuesday for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation, the probe that showed a White House obsessed with criticism of its decision to go to war.\nI. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the highest-ranking White House official sentenced to prison since the Iran-Contra affair, asked for leniency, but a federal judge said he would not reward someone who hindered the investigation into the exposure of a CIA operative. The operative’s husband had accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war.\nNo date was set immediately for Libby to report to prison.\n“Mr. Libby failed to meet the bar. For whatever reason, he got off course,” said U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton.\nSpecial Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who spent years investigating the case, said, “We need to make the statement that the truth matters ever so much.” He had asked for a sentence of up to three years, while Libby had asked for probation and no time in prison.\nReaction from the White House was still supportive, but somber.\nPresident Bush, traveling in Europe, said through a spokesman that he “felt terrible for the family,” especially Libby’s wife and children. Libby and his wife, Harriet Grant, have two school-age children.\nCheney said he hoped his former top aide would prevail on appeal.\nLibby did not apologize and has maintained his innocence.\n“It is respectfully my hope that the court will consider, along with the jury verdict, my whole life,” he said in brief remarks in court before the sentencing, his first public statement about the case since his indictment in 2005.\nA Republican stalwart, he drew more than 150 letters of support from military commanders and diplomats who praised his government service from the Cold War through the early days of the Iraq war.\nHe was convicted in March of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters about CIA official Valerie Plame. Fitzgerald questioned Bush and Cheney in a probe that became a symbol of the administration’s deepening problems. \n“Mr. Libby was the poster child for all that has gone wrong in this terrible war,” defense attorney Theodore Wells said. “He has fallen from public grace. It is a tragic fall, a tragic fall.”\nCheney, looking to Libby’s appeal, said, “Speaking as friends, we hope that our system will return a final result consistent with what we know of this fine man.”\nDefense attorneys sought to have the sentence delayed until appeals run out. A delay also would give Bush more time to consider calls from Libby’s allies to pardon the longtime aide.\nWalton said he saw no reason to put the sentence on hold but agreed to consider it. He scheduled a hearing for a week from Thursday.\nLibby and Fitzgerald left court without speaking to reporters.\nAmong Libby’s supporting letter writers were former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.\nLibby’s attorneys noted that Fitzgerald never charged anyone with leaking Plame’s identity, including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage or White House political adviser Karl Rove, the original sources of the leak.
(06/04/07 3:54am)
KHARTOUM, Sudan – Hundreds of demonstrators gathered Saturday in front of the American embassy in Sudan, shouting “God is great!” and “Down with the CIA!” to protest new U.S. economic sanctions on the country.\nPolice cordoned off the tightly guarded U.S. compound as protesters denounced President Bush, who announced Tuesday that the U.S. had blacklisted 31 companies and three individuals, forbidding them from conducting business with an American company or bank.\nThe measure aims to pressure Sudan to end violence in its Darfur region, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million chased from their homes in four years of fighting between local rebels and government forces.\n“The sanctions are not even worth the ink they were written with,” rally organizer Omar Kambal said in a speech. Kambal, who heads Sudan’s Youth Union, called on the government to “sever all economic ties with the U.S., today rather than tomorrow.”\nAfter a decade of U.S. economic sanctions, the two countries have little business in common. Sudan conducts nearly three-quarters of its trade with Arab and Asian nations, mainly China.\nOrganizers said 1,000 people, mostly students and members of Sudan’s lawyers association, attended the demonstration, which lasted about two hours and was held for the second time in as many days. An Associated Press reporter estimated the number of people present at about 200 before demonstrators ordered him to leave.\nThe embassy said its staff was absent because it was the weekend.\n“We are fortunate that the demonstrators were not violent,” embassy spokesman Joel Maybury said. \nThe U.S. first enforced economic sanctions on Khartoum in 1997 after withdrawing its ambassador because of Sudan’s past links to terrorism.\nIn retaliation for American embassy bombings in East Africa, the U.S. launched cruise missile strikes against Khartoum in 1998, destroying a pharmaceutical plant suspected at the time as belonging to Osama bin Laden.\nSanctions were later reinforced because of a civil war in the south of Sudan, and beefed-up again since the crisis erupted in the western Darfur region in 2003.
(06/04/07 3:53am)
HOMOSOSSA SPRINGS, Fla. – Tropical Storm Barry weakened into a tropical depression as it moved through Tampa Bay on Saturday, bringing nearly 7 inches of rain to parts of the drought-parched region.\nForecasters discontinued the tropical storm warnings and watches issued for stretches of the Gulf Coast. The depression’s sustained winds had slowed to near 35 mph and it was moving north-northeast at about 23 mph.\nThe storm, which formed on the first day of the Atlantic hurricane season, made landfall in the Tampa Bay area in the morning and had moved across the state to Jacksonville by the evening, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.\nDry conditions in Florida have left Lake Okeechobee, the second-largest freshwater lake in the contiguous United States, at its lowest recorded level and allowed a brush fire on the Georgia-Florida border to burn for weeks.\n“This is a blessing,” said Bob Buning, an employee at MacRae’s Bait Shop in Homosassa, where boaters had returned to the Homosassa River by Saturday afternoon. “We needed this rain really bad.”\nBy Saturday morning, Barry had brought nearly 6 inches of rain to Melbourne and nearly 7 inches to West Palm Beach. It was expected to drop 2 to 4 inches of rain on parts Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Isolated areas could get up to 5 inches of rain.\n“It’ll help a little bit, but everyone is so far below rainfall that we’re still going to be under drought conditions,” said Kim Brabander, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. She said 30 to 40 inches of rain were needed.\nThe rain was expected to help cool down some of the smoldering areas of a massive wildfire along the Florida-Georgia border, allowing fire crews to focus where the fire is actively raging, said Larry Morris with the firefighters’ joint information center.\nBarry was rapidly losing the characteristics of a tropical depression, the hurricane center said.\n“This is going to be a weather maker; it’s just not going to be a tropical system,” Senior Hurricane Specialist Richard Knabb said.\nIn Mexico, Tropical Storm Barbara made landfall Saturday and weakened into a depression as it moved inland from the southern Pacific coast near the Guatemala border, an area notoriously vulnerable to flooding.\nAt least 1,400 people were evacuated from coastal communities in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, Radio Formula reported. The state’s civil protection department did not return a phone call to The Associated Press.\nIn the Guatemalan border town of Ocos, at least 100 people were evacuated after the storm tore off the roofs of their homes.\nWith maximum winds of nearly 35 mph and higher gusts, Barbara was centered about 20 miles north of the Mexican city of Tapachula. The storm was heading northeast at 7 mph, and was expected to weaken as it moves further inland.\nBarry formed more than three weeks after the first named storm of the year, Subtropical Storm Andrea, developed off Florida’s eastern coast. Andrea skirted the southern Atlantic coast but caused minimal damage.\nThe National Weather Service said it expects 13 to 17 tropical storms in the Atlantic hurricane season, with seven to 10 becoming hurricanes and three to five in the strong category.
(06/04/07 3:41am)
NEW YORK – Federal authorities announced Saturday they had broken up a suspected Muslim terrorist cell planning a “chilling” attack to destroy John F. Kennedy International Airport, kill thousands of people and trigger an economic catastrophe by blowing up a jet fuel artery that runs through populous residential neighborhoods.\nThree men, one of them a former member of Guyana’s parliament, were arrested and one was being sought in Trinidad as part of a plot that authorities said they had tracked for more than a year and was foiled in the planning stages.\n“The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable,” U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference, calling it “one of the most chilling plots imaginable.”\nIn an indictment charging the four men, one of them is quoted as saying the foiled plot would “cause greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks,” destroying the airport, killing several thousand people and destroying parts of New York’s borough of Queens, where the line runs underground.\nOne of the suspects, Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen native to Guyana and retired JFK air cargo employee, said the airport named for the slain president was targeted because it is a symbol that would put “the whole country in mourning.”\n“It’s like you can kill the man twice,” said Defreitas, 63, who first hatched his plan more than a decade ago when he worked as a cargo handler for a service company, according to the indictment.\nAuthorities said the men were motivated by hatred toward the U.S., Israel and the West. Defreitas was recorded saying he “wanted to do something to get those bastards.”\nHe was arraigned Saturday afternoon in federal court, but did not enter a plea. He was to be held pending a bail hearing scheduled for Wednesday, prosecutors said. A phone number for his lawyer could not be located.\nTwo other men, Abdul Kadir of Guyanaajl and Kareem Ibrahim of Trinidad, were in custody in Trinidad. A fourth man, Abdel Nur of Guyana, was still being sought in Trinidad.\nAuthorities said the men had tried to reach out to a Trinidadian radical Muslim group, Jamaat al Muslimeen, which launched an unsuccessful rebellion in 1990 that left 24 dead.\nThe pipeline, owned by Buckeye Pipeline Co., takes fuel from a facility in Linden, N.J., to the airport. Other lines service LaGuardia Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport.\nKadir, a former member of Parliament in Guyana, was arrested in Trinidad for attempting to secure money for “terrorist operations,” according to a Guyanese police commander who spoke on condition of anonymity.\nKadir left his position in Parliament last year. Muslims make up about 9 percentof the former Dutch and British colony’s 770,000 population, mostly from the Sunni sect.\nIsha Kadir, the Guyanese suspect’s wife, said her husband flew from Guyana to Trinidad on Thursday. She said he was arrested Friday as he was boarding a flight from Trinidad to Venezuela, where he planned to pick up a travel visa to attend an Islamic religious conference in Iran.\n“We have no interest in blowing up anything in the U.S.,” she said Saturday from the couple’s home in Guyana. “We have relatives in the U.S.”
(05/30/07 11:19pm)
SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea pressed communist North Korea to redouble its reconciliation efforts Tuesday, as the estranged neighbors opened high-level talks amid rifts over the North’s nuclear program and the South’s delayed rice shipments.\nThe Cabinet-level meetings in Seoul resumed for a second day on Wednesday. The talks come after a historic cross-border test train-run on tracks restored earlier this month, the first time trains crossed the heavily armed border since rail links were cut early in the 1950-53 Korean War.\nSouth Korea hopes to win the North’s consent to formally reopen cross-border rail service. But the talks could easily plunge into stalemate over North Korea’s refusal to start dismantling its nuclear programs and the South’s refusal to ship promised rice to the impoverished North.\nNorth Korea scuttled similar talks last year after South Korea snubbed an earlier demand for rice shipments, citing concerns about the North’s missile tests in July 2006. Since then, North Korea has tested its first atomic bomb and is accused of stonewalling on pledges to start dismantling its nuclear programs.\nSouth Korea’s Minister of Unification Lee Jae-joung kicked off the second day of talks by urging both countries to improve ties “so that we won’t let down the expectations of our people.”\nWhile welcoming the North Korean delegation to Seoul a day earlier, Lee urged his counterparts to use the recent train test-run as a springboard for improved ties.\n“That experience is a victory that was jointly achieved by both North and South Korea,” Lee said. “Just as a train moves ahead, I think we should make efforts to ensure our talks move forward and never retreat.”\nOne sticking point remains North Korea’s promise in February to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in exchange for energy aid and political concessions, a pledge the North has yet to honor.\nThe South, meanwhile, is delaying about 400,000 tons of rice shipments promised to its neighbor in talks last month. The aid delivery was set to start in late May.\nEarlier, Lee attributed the delay to “various reasons related to peace on the Korean peninsula,” including fulfillment of the February nuclear agreement. But he said he did not believe North Korea’s delegation chief, Kwon Ho Ung, would protest, Yonhap news agency reported.\nNorth Korean media have criticized the South for trying to link food aid to the nuclear standoff.\nSouth Korean protesters rallied outside the site of the talks Tuesday to demand all aid be stopped, holding a sign that read “Down with Kim Jong Il.” Police broke up the small crowd before the North Korean delegates arrived.\nAt evening dinner banquet, Kwon, North Korea’s senior cabinet councilor, said he hoped the talks would be meaningful and productive. While the two Koreas focus on their shared interests, he said, relations “will not freeze but move ahead.”\nNorth Korea has been refusing to shut down its reactor until it receives funds from an account at a bank in the Chinese territory of Macau that was frozen when the U.S. blacklisted the bank in 2005.
(05/30/07 11:18pm)
CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez defended his decision not to renew the license of a popular opposition-aligned television network and warned Tuesday he might crack down on another TV station, accusing it of trying to incite attempts on his life.\nChavez said his refusal to renew the license of Radio Caracas Television, which went off the air at midnight Sunday, is “a sovereign, legitimate decision.”\nHe said another station, Globovision – one of the few channels on air that is still harshly anti-government – had encouraged attempts on his life and could also face sanctions.\n“I recommend (Globovision) take a tranquilizer, that they slow down, because if not, I’m going to slow them down,” Chavez said in a speech.\nChavez did not elaborate, but said some broadcasters and newspapers are conspiring to spark unrest and warned that radio stations should not be inciting violence by “manipulating” public sentiment.\n“A new destabilization plan is under way,” Chavez said, calling for his supporters to be “on alert” and ordering officials to closely monitor media coverage.\nGlobovision’s legal advisor Perla Jaimes told The Associated Press that Chavez had no legal basis to sanction the channel and said it would not be intimidated by the warnings.\n“Globovision is not going to change its editorial line,” Jaimes said. “We cannot stop transmitting the news. We cannot self-censor. We have to broadcast everything that is happening in the country.”\nThousands, both Chavez supporters and opponents, staged separate marches in Caracas on Tuesday. The Chavez opponents chanted “freedom!” while government supporters said they were in the streets to reject an opposition attempt to stir up violence.\nInformation Minister Willian Lara on Monday accused Globovision of encouraging an attempt on Chavez’s life by broadcasting the chorus of a salsa tune, “Have faith, this doesn’t end here,” along with footage of the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II.\nGlobovision director Alberto Federico Ravell denied wrongdoing, calling the allegations “ridiculous.” Globovision replayed footage of the assassination attempt during a retrospective of news events covered by RCTV during its 53 years on the air.\nThe government turned over RCTV’s license to a new state-funded public channel, which showed a documentary on explorers in Antarctica, a children’s program and exercise programs, interspersed with government ads repeating the slogan “Venezuela now belongs to everyone.”\nChavez says it is a move to democratize the airwaves. He accused RCTV of helping incite a failed coup in 2002, violating broadcast laws and “poisoning” Venezuelans with programming that promoted capitalism.
(05/30/07 11:17pm)
ATLANTA – A man with a rare and dangerous form of tuberculosis ignored doctors’ advice and took two trans-Atlantic flights, leading to the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963, health officials said Tuesday.\nThe man, whom officials did not identify, is at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital in respiratory isolation.\nHe was potentially infectious at the time of the flights, so officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended medical exams for cabin crew members on those flights, as well as passengers sitting in the same rows or within two rows.\nCDC officials did not release row numbers but said the airlines were working with health officials to contact those passengers. Passengers who should be tested will be contacted by health officials from their home countries.\nThe man told health officials he was not coughing during the flights. Other passengers are not considered at high risk of infection because tests indicated the amount of TB bacteria in him was low, said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine.\nIn an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the man said he had traveled to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon and expressed frustration with how he said the CDC handled the situation.\n“I didn’t want to put anybody at risk,” the man, who declined to be identified because of the stigma surrounding his condition, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We just wanted to come home and get treatment.”\nThe infected man flew from Atlanta to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385. He returned to North America on May 24 aboard Czech Air Flight 0104 from Prague to Montreal. The man then drove into the United States at the Champlain, N.Y., border crossing.\nThe man had been advised by health officials in early May not to travel to Europe. “He was told traveling is against medical advice,” said Dr. Steven Katkowsky, director of the Fulton County Department of Health & Wellness.\nThe man conceded that the health department advised him not to travel, but he didn’t want to call off his wedding, he told the Journal-Constitution. The CDC never told him he couldn’t go, he said.\nWhen the man arrived back in the United States, he voluntarily went to a New York hospital, then was flown by the CDC to Atlanta. He is not facing prosecution, health officials said.\nThe man said the CDC contacted him in Rome during his honeymoon, telling him that he had to return home and that he had to turn himself in to Italian authorities, be isolated and be treated there, the Journal-Constitution reported.\n“He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back,” Cetron said.\nIn an attempt to evade the no-fly list that the CDC had put him on, he and his wife flew into Canada and drove to the U.S., he told the newspaper.\n“I’m a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person,” he told the paper. “This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I’ve cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing.”\nCDC officials told The Associated Press they could not immediately comment on the interview.
(05/29/07 3:13pm)
WASHINGTON – Flinching in the face of a veto threat, Democratic congressional leaders neared agreement with Bush administration Tuesday on legislation to pay for the Iraq war without a troop withdrawal timeline.\nSeveral officials said the emerging $120 billion compromise would include as much as $8 billion for Democratic domestic priorities – originally resisted by the White House – such as disaster relief for Hurricane Katrina victims and farmers hurt by drought.\nAfter a bruising veto struggle in which Bush vetoed one Democratic-drafted measure and threatened to reject another, congressional leaders in both political parties said they hoped the compromise would be cleared for President Bush’s signature by Friday.\nIn power less than five months, Democrats coupled their war-related concession with a vow to challenge Bush’s policies anew, and quickly.\n“We’re going to continue our battle, and that’s what it is, to represent the American people like they want us to represent them, to change the course of the war in Iraq,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.\nLawmakers in both parties claimed victory in legislation that contained no binding limitation on Bush’s powers as commander in chief.\n“I view this as the beginning of the end of the president’s policy on Iraq in this war,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. “It ends the blank check of more troops, more money, more time and more of the same. And it begins the notion that we have to have a new direction to Iraq that has accountability, standards that you can measure progress and not.”\nEmanuel, Reid and other Democrats pointed to a provision setting standards for the Iraqi government to meet in developing a more democratic society. U.S. reconstruction aid would be conditioned on progress toward meeting the goals, but Bush would have authority to order the money to be spent regardless of how the government in Baghdad performed.\nAnd despite the Democratic claims of success, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters she is unlikely to vote for the war money because it lacks “a goal or a timetable” for troop withdrawal.\nRepublicans said that after weeks of struggle, they had forced Democrats to drop their demand for a troop withdrawal timetable.\nRep. John Boehner of Ohio, the House GOP leader, said, “Democrats have finally conceded defeat in their effort to include mandatory surrender dates in a funding bill for the troops, so forward progress has been made for the first time in this four-month process.”\nBut Republicans agreed to concessions, as well, in terms of billions of dollars in domestic spending that Democrats wrung from them and the administration. Republican leaders had hoped to persuade the White House to make a tougher stand against the Democratic demands, but it appeared that they were undercut by the desire of the GOP rank and file for money for farmers and others.\nFinal details of the measure remained in flux, although Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said at an early evening news conference, “We’re very close to having things tied down.”
(05/29/07 3:13pm)
BAGHDAD – A car bomb exploded Tuesday at an outdoor market in a Shiite area of Baghdad, killing 25 people and wounding at least 60, the deadliest in a string of attacks that stoked sectarian tension in and around the capital.\nThe blast occurred in Amil, one of a cluster of neighborhoods in southwestern Baghdad where Sunni-Shiite tension is running high three months after the start of the U.S.-led security crackdown.\nFollowing the blast, terrified survivors ran through the streets hauling buckets and pots of water to try to put out fires in shops that were shattered by the bomb. Volunteers tore through the rubble, searching for survivors.\nSami Hussein, 25, was heading to the market with her 5-year-old son when she heard the explosion, “followed by gray and black smoke, which engulfed the market and made me to fall on the ground.”\nShe suffered shrapnel wounds in her face and legs.\n“I lost my son and have no idea about his fate,” she said. Medical officials at the hospital said he died in the blast. \nFadhil Hussein, 32, who sells spices in the market, said he was thrown from his stall and wounded with shrapnel in his back and head.\n“I found myself in a pickup truck with other people. Some of them were bleeding and yelling,” he said.\nNo group claimed responsibility for the blast. But U.S. officials believe Sunni extremists are stepping up car bombings, especially against Shiite civilians, to enflame sectarian hatred and undermine public confidence in government security forces.\nThere were other signs Tuesday that Sunni-Shiite tensions are again rising after they eased last winter following the start of the Baghdad security operation Feb. 14.\nIn north Baghdad, gunmen wearing army uniforms stopped a bus carrying college students to a Shiite neighborhood, entered the vehicle and sprayed the passengers with gunfire, police said. Eight students were killed and two were wounded.\nAt another fake checkpoint near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, gunmen killed six people from one family – a woman, her 5-year-old son and four men – and stole their car, police said. It was unclear whether the victims were Sunnis or Shiites.\nIn Baghdad, mortar shells struck a college in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, killing four people and wounding 27. Four rounds landed around the office of prominent Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi, causing no casualties but destroying three cars, his staff said.\nGunmen in two vehicles ambushed a car in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Khadra carrying three plainclothes police officers from the major crimes unit, killing two and wounding the third, police said.\nAnother officer was killed when a roadside bomb exploded next to a police patrol driving through an eastern Baghdad neighborhood, police said. Three other officers were wounded.\nIn all, at least 100 Iraqis were killed or found dead nationwide Tuesday, according to police. They included 33 people found shot execution-style, presumably by sectarian death squads, and their bodies scattered across Baghdad.
(05/24/07 3:48am)
WASHINGTON – President Bush, trying to defend his war strategy, declassified intelligence Tuesday asserting that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terrorist cell that would conduct attacks outside Iraq and that the United States should be the top target.\nThe information mirrored a classified bulletin from the Homeland Security Department in March 2005, reporting that bin Laden had enlisted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his senior operative in Iraq, to plan potential strikes in the U.S. The warning was described at the time as credible but not specific and did not prompt the administration to raise its national terror alert level.\nThe declassification of the intelligence came a day before Bush was scheduled to speak about terrorism at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.\nBush, who is battling Democrats in Congress over spending for the unpopular war in Iraq, will argue that the terrorist threat to America is real, said Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser. She said Bush would talk about why Iraq is an important battleground in fighting terrorism abroad to prevent attacks on U.S. soil and highlight previously reported successes in foiling terrorist attacks.\nThe Bush White House has intermittently declassified and made public sensitive intelligence information to help rebut critics or defend programs or actions against possibly adverse decisions in the Congress or the courts. On a few occasions, the declassified materials were intended as proof that terrorists see Iraq as a critical staging ground for global operations.\nDemocrats and other critics have accused Bush of selectively declassifying intelligence, including portions of a sensitive National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, to justify the U.S.-led invasion on the ground that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. That assertion proved false.\nTownsend, reading from notes, said the declassified intelligence showed that in January 2005, bin Laden tasked al-Zarqawi with organizing the cell. Al-Zarqawi, the former leader of al-Qaida’s Iraq operations, was killed there in June 2006 by a U.S. airstrike.\n“We know from the intelligence community that al-Zarqawi welcomed the tasking and claimed he already had some good proposals,” Townsend said.\nShe said that in the spring of 2005, bin Laden instructed Hamza Rabia, a senior operative, to brief al-Zarqawi on al-Qaida planning to attack sites outside Iraq, including the United States. She did not disclose where in the United States those attacks were being plotted.\nAround the same time, Abu Fajah al-Libi, a senior al-Qaida manager, suggested that bin Laden send Rabia to Iraq to actually help al-Zarqawi plan the external operations, Townsend said. It is unclear whether Rabia went to Iraq, she said.\nShe said the information was declassified because the intelligence community has tracked all leads from the information.
(05/21/07 4:07pm)
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Gunmen armed with rifles, grenades and explosives climbed down from rooftop positions Saturday and residents began venturing out of bullet-scarred homes after their leaders agreed to end a week of Palestinian factional bloodshed in Gaza.\nThe truce began to take hold as Israel launched a fifth day of airstrikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip in reprisal for the Islamic militant group’s rocket attacks on Israeli border towns. Other recent cease-fires between the factions have been short-lived, but Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said he expected this one to stick because of Israel’s military action.\n“No one would accept to fight one another while the Israelis are shelling Gaza,” he said.\nThe clashes between Hamas and Fatah gunmen loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have brought the two groups that nominally share power to the brink of civil war. More than 50 Palestinians have been killed in a week of infighting.\nThe overlapping violence from Israel’s attacks on Hamas rocket operations has killed 23 other Palestinians in the past week.\nOn Saturday, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz vowed to keep going after Hamas militants who would fire rockets at Israel, warning them to be “very afraid.”\nStill, Peretz said time was not ripe for a major Israeli ground offensive in Gaza.\nAn Israeli airstrike killed three people in a car in Gaza early Sunday, Palestinian medics said. Israel said the car was carrying three Hamas radicals and a load of weapons. The Israeli army also said warplanes demolished arms factories belonging to Hamas and, for the first time since the airstrikes began on Tuesday, Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group that has also been involved in rocket attacks on Israel.\nOn Saturday, four Palestinians were killed in air attacks on Hamas targets, while five rockets from Gaza hit the Israeli border area, causing damage, but no injury.\nThe Israeli air attacks, backed by tank fire, have driven Hamas fighters out of their bases, prompting the militant group to accuse Israel and Fatah of colluding against it.\nThe Palestinian infighting broke out Sunday after Abbas stationed thousands of security forces on the streets of lawless Gaza City, a move Hamas interpreted as a provocation because it wasn’t consulted.\nSaturday’s truce committed the battling factions to pull their fighters off the streets and exchange an unknown number of hostages.\nFour previous cease-fire agreements collapsed earlier in the week.\nA gunbattle erupted outside the home of a senior Fatah official in Gaza City as the cease-fire was reached, and security officials said several people were wounded.\nAnd in another sign of the shaky nature of the truce, several hostages from both factions were released before an official exchange ceremony, but only after their captors shot them in the legs, both sides said.\nStill, as word of the cease-fire spread and enforcement teams went out on the streets, fighters began to comply, something they had not done with the previous truces. They also began knocking down roadblocks they had set up to identify rival fighters.\nTruce enforcers from various Palestinian factions went from rooftop to rooftop, urging gunmen to leave. At one Gaza City building that had been the site of fierce fighting, Hamas fighters climbed down carrying a cache of rocket-propelled grenades, bags of explosives and AK-47 rifles.\nMervat, a resident who would only give her first name for fear of reprisal, said the fighting terrorized her 5-year old daughter who thought the conflict was with Israelis. The two never left home throughout the fighting.\n“Hopefully it will stick this time. We are the only losers if this continues,” she said.
(05/20/07 11:32pm)
GARDEZ, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber on foot detonated himself in a crowded market in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday just after a U.S. convoy drove by, killing at least 14 people and wounding 31, officials and witnesses said.\nThe attack in the city of Gardez damaged about 30 shops, shattered windows and destroyed the stores closest to the explosion. Three vehicles were damaged, including a taxi blasted by dozens of pieces of shrapnel.\nWitnesses said a U.S. convoy appeared to be the target, and Maj. William Mitchell, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, said there were initial reports of injuries to ISAF soldiers, though he didn’t have further details.\nSix people died at the scene of the blast, police said. Another eight died later at a hospital, said Ghulam Hazrat Majedi, the doctor in charge of the Gardez hospital. He said two of the 31 people injured were in a critical condition.\nAfghan soldiers donated blood for the wounded.\nNasar Ahmad, a 30-year-old shopkeeper whose three cousins were seriously injured in the blast, said he saw a U.S. convoy driving through the city just before the explosion.\n“I heard a strong blast and then saw a fireball go up,” Ahmad said from Gardez’ hospital. “For 10 minutes I couldn’t hear and I didn’t know where I was. I saw a lot of people injured lying in the street.” \nShah Mohammad, 19, said everyone killed or wounded by the blast were Afghan civilians.\n“The convoy had already passed when the attack happened,” he said. \nThe blast in Gardez comes one day after a suicide bomber in northern Afghanistan killed three German soldiers and seven civilians.\nA statement from NATO’s ISAF said that during the last several days Afghan and ISAF operations “have resulted in the removal of over 100 enemy fighters.” The ISAF press office said it wasn’t immediately clear what the word “removal” meant.\nThe statement said local Afghans are increasing their cooperation with military and government units.
(05/20/07 11:32pm)
MOSCOW, Idaho – Dozens of law enforcement officers surrounded a church Sunday where they believed they had cornered a shooter or shooters who wounded two officers and a civilian in bursts of automatic gunfire, police said.\nAbout 75 shots were fired in the attack late Saturday, said David Duke, Moscow’s assistant police chief. Duke said the attack was apparently an ambush, with the shooter firing into the Latah County Courthouse to lure people into the line of fire.\n“Whoever the shooter is wanted to draw people to the courthouse,” Duke said. “When officers responded, he did open fire on them.”\nA Moscow police officer was shot first, followed by a Latah County sheriff’s deputy who came to his aid. A civilian was struck after that, Duke said.\nPolice do not believe the shooter had a specific target in mind, Duke said.\n“He was just shooting at anybody he could,” Duke said. “We believe the shots were from a high area, based on where the victims were shot.”\nPolice declined to release the condition of the people who had been shot, and few details were immediately available.\nDuke said the victims were shot with automatic weapons fire. \nPolice initially said two civilians had been shot, but corrected that statement after learning that one civilian had been injured elsewhere.\nOfficers surrounded the First Presbyterian Church, which is near the courthouse and nestled in a heavily residential neighborhood near downtown and Moscow High School. Duke said they were preparing a plan for ending the standoff.\nStreets in the area have been barricaded and residents have been told to stay inside their homes. Many residents told news media that they heard the hail of bullets, and some said they witnessed the shooting of the officers.\nA caretaker lives in the church, but Duke said police have had no contact with that person since the incident started.\nThe incident began around 11 p.m. Saturday, when someone began shooting at the courthouse, Duke said. The courthouse, which includes the sheriff’s office, was evacuated, Duke said.\nMore than 30 shots were fired into the sheriff’s dispatch center, but no one was injured, he said.\nThe final shot from inside the church was heard about 1 a.m., Duke said. \nOfficers have had no contact with the person in the church, he said.\nMoscow, a community of about 20,000 people that is home to the University of Idaho, is located 80 miles south of Spokane, Wash.\nThe wounded were taken to Gritman Medical Center in Moscow.
(05/16/07 9:44pm)
COLUMBIA, S.C. – Republican presidential contenders agreed on the need for lower taxes and vowed to crack down on federal spending Tuesday night in a campaign debate. They pledged to reduce the massive federal bureaucracy.\n“We’ve had a Congress that’s spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop,” said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a jab at the Democratic presidential hopeful’s penchant for $400 haircuts.\nHuckabee said he wanted to hang an “Out of Business” sign on the Internal Revenue Service, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said flatly, “I am not going to raise taxes.”\nSen. John McCain of Arizona said he would make sure President Bush’s tax cuts were made permanent, even though he opposed them in 2001.\n“I cut taxes when I was governor,” said Jim Gilmore, former governor of Virginia.\nFormer New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called for “Reagan-like budget cuts across the board” of 5 percent to 20 percent, and Tommy Thompson said he had cast many vetoes as governor of Wisconsin to hold down spending.\nThe 10 White House hopefuls differed only by degree in pledging fealty to Republican economic orthodoxy, although McCain and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo both said the GOP had recently abandoned its longtime tradition of controlling spending.\nLess than two weeks ago, the candidates shared a stage in Simi Valley, Calif., in the first Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.\nIraq and social issues dominated the discourse that night, a preview of Tuesday night’s event in South Carolina, where conservative Christians make up a large chunk of the state’s GOP primary voters.\nSince the California event, Giuliani has reaffirmed his support for abortion rights after his convoluted debate answer on whether he would welcome the Supreme Courtoverturning its landmark decision legalizing abortion. He personally opposes the procedure.\nAlso taking part in the debate were Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, and Reps. Ron Paul of Texas and Duncan Hunter of California.\nPaul, the Libertarian presidential nominee in 1988, voted against giving Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq in 2002. \nHours before the debate, candidates responded to the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist and Moral Majority founder who was a force in conservative politics.\nMcCain, who once called Falwell and people like him “agents of intolerance,” praised him in a statement as “a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country.” Romney described Falwell as “an American who built and led a movement based on strong principles and strong faith.”\nGiuliani told reporters after a tour of the debate site: “He was a man who set a direction. He is someone who is not afraid to speak his mind.”\nThe University of South Carolina’s Koger Center for the Arts was the setting for the debate, sponsored by the South Carolina Republican Partyand Fox News Channel. The channel’s Brit Hume was moderating.\nUnderscoring the dominant issues, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq and the South Carolina Young Democrats sponsored a 20-foot mobile billboard to circle the debate site, bearing the phrases: “Republicans, Mission Accomplished?” and “McCain, Mission Accomplished?” Activists affiliated with Planned Parenthood also were holding an abortion-rights rally outside the hall.
(05/16/07 9:44pm)
PARIS – Nicolas Sarkozy took office as France’s president on Wednesday, waving farewell to outgoing leader Jacques Chirac and promising to move quickly and boldly equip the nation for a new era.\nChirac, ending 12 years in power, transferred the nuclear codes to President Sarkozy in a private meeting that was a high point of the transfer of power.\nA 21-gun salute signaled the change in leadership after the 74-year-old Chirac took leave with a handshake at the entrance of the ornate Elysee Palace and walked alone to a waiting car. Sarkozy, with a clenched jaw, returned the wave before turning to enter his new home for the next five years.\nThe blunt-talking, pro-market Sarkozy, 52, the sixth president of the Fifth Republic, founded by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, won election May 6 on pledges of market reforms and a break with the past.\nIn his first speech as president, a determined Sarkozy noted that he was elected with a mandate for change that he was honor-bound to fulfill.\n“The people conferred a mandate on me. ... I will scrupulously fulfill it,” he said, adding that further delays “will be fatal.”\nChirac handed over the helm after two terms marked by lackluster reforms and tensions in rundown, immigrant-packed housing projects far from the glory of the Elysee Palace.
(05/16/07 9:44pm)
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – An Israeli helicopter launched missiles at a Hamas command center in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least four people, after Hamas fired rocket barrages into Israel in an apparent attempt to draw Israel into increasingly violent Palestinian infighting.\nHamas gunmen fatally shot six bodyguards from the rival Fatah movement and mistakenly ambushed a jeep carrying their own fighters, killing five. In all, 16 people were killed in the bloodiest day of Palestinian infighting since violence broke out in the Gaza Strip four days ago.\nIsrael launched an airstrike at a Hamas building after the organization’s militants launched barrage after barrage of rockets at Israeli towns. Palestinian officials said at least four gunmen were killed.\nThe streets of central Gaza City echoed with gunfire and were empty except for gunmen in black ski masks. Terrified residents huddled in dark homes after electricity to some downtown neighborhoods was cut off by a downed power line.\nThe violence threatened to bring down the Palestinians’ two-month-old Hamas-Fatah unity government and brought the Palestinians dangerously close to all-out civil war.\n“What is happening in Gaza endangers not only the unity government, but the Palestinian social fabric, the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian strategy as a whole,” said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.\nDespite Israel’s vow to stay out of the fray, its missile strike added another layer of complexity to Gaza’s mayhem, and raised the specter of a large-scale Israeli invasion.\nPolice from the Fatah-allied Preventive Security organization arrested five Hamas men and were driving them through Gaza City when the vehicle was ambushed by Hamas fighters, Preventive Security officials told The Associated Press. Five of the Hamas men were killed, along with two Fatah men, they said.\nHamas radio reported that a Hamas man was killed in another clash, and a nurse in an ambulance was shot in the head after being caught in the crossfire, hospital officials said. Her family said she was brain dead and on a respirator.\nA group of about 200 Palestinians marched in central Gaza City, waving Palestinian flags and demanding an end to the fighting. Dozens of masked gunmen used the cover of the demonstration to improve their positions on the street, and then opened fire on the demonstrators, wounding one in the leg. The rest fled.\nIn Gaza City, Hamas gunmen set fire to an 11-story apartment building housing Fatah lawmaker Nema Sheik Ali, the wife of the head of Preventive Security. Witnesses said the gunmen broke into her fifth-floor apartment and beat up her and two of her children before torching the building. The militants prevented people from evacuating as women and children screamed, pleading to be let out.\nIn four days of fighting, 41 people have been killed and dozens more have been injured. Most of the dead have been from Fatah.\nFighting raged close to President Mahmoud Abbas’ heavily guarded compound, which was also targeted by Hamas mortar fire overnight, and the bodies of two Fatah gunmen were sprawled on the street nearby. Abbas, a moderate from Fatah, was not present.
(05/14/07 6:08pm)
AVALON, Calif. – Cooler weather aided firefighters Saturday as they battled to surround a 4,200-acre wildfire in the rugged, unpopulated interior of Santa Catalina Island while the resort’s main town returned to life as the blaze’s threat eased.\nThe fire was about two-thirds contained and was expected to be encircled by Tuesday evening, Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Andrew Olverasaid. One home and six businesses burned Thursday but no one had been seriously injured.\nNearly 4,000 evacuated residents had started returning to the island, where damage was estimated at $2.1 million.\n“We have a sense of duty to the town to bring it back to normal,” delicatessen owner Rick Miller said as he unloaded supplies from his van. “People get hungry and it doesn’t hurt to see businesses open and calm restored.”\nFog and highs only in the 60s diminished the threat of the fire spreading. It was isolated in the back country of the 76-square-mile island, more than 20 miles off the Southern California coast.\nThe fire appeared to have been ignited by contractors working on antennas at a radio station in the island’s interior, Avalon Fire Chief Steven Hoefs said.\nBill Agresta, chief engineer at station KBRT-AM, said three contractors had been cutting steel antenna cable with a gas-powered circular saw Thursday when the fire ignited.\nAgresta said he saw a small blaze and ran inside the station to call 911. By the time he returned, it had moved several hundred feet downhill and engulfed the contractors’ tool truck.\nElsewhere, smoke from a mammoth wildfire in the Southeast closed sections of two major highways Saturday. Crews were still battling a wildfire in Georgia and northern Florida that had burned 212,000 acres, or more than 330 square miles, since lightning ignited it a week ago.\nFlorida officials closed a 35-mile stretch of Interstate 75 from the Georgia-Florida state line to Lake City, Fla., as well as a 40-mile stretch of I-10 Saturday morning because of near-zero visibility from smoke.\nSeveral accidents had occurred on the two highways, emergency management officials said.\nThe fire, which started in the middle of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, took just six days to grow larger than a separate wildfire that had burned 124,000 acres of Georgia forest and swampland in more than three weeks.\nIn Georgia, the fire posed a threat to the town of Fargo, where 380 people live about eight miles west of the Okefenokee Swamp. Occupants of about 15 homes were urged to leave as a precaution because of the smoke and ash.\nAbout 600 residents evacuated late Thursday from about 160 homes in north Florida were still unable to return home Saturday, said Jim Harrell of the Florida Division of Forestry.\nNear the Canadian border, some evacuation orders were lifted in northeastern Minnesota, where a wilderness wildfire had blackened about 85 square miles of forest. However, an evacuation order was expanded across the border in Canada because of concerns about shifting wind, said Ministry of Natural Resources spokeswoman Leona Tarini.\nDozens of houses and cabins have been burned, and about 300 people had checked in at an evacuation center.
(05/14/07 6:07pm)
BLACKSBURG, Va. – The image most people have of Kevin Sterne is harrowing: a photo showing a tourniquet wrapped around his wounded leg as rescue workers rushed him out of Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall.\nBut on Saturday, there was a new image of the 22-year-old former Eagle Scout, jubilant and full of life as he limped across the stage at the university’s Cassell Coliseum using a crutch and displaying a grin to accept his degree in electrical engineering.\nThe crowd rose to its feet and cheered Sterne in one of the most poignant moments of the morning commencement ceremony at the College of Engineering.\nIt was one of several campus ceremonies in which individual colleges and departments handed out diplomas to students, including posthumous degrees to those killed in the April 16 attack at a dormitory and classroom building.\nThe College of Engineering was hit particularly hard, with 11 students and three professors killed in the shooting.\nEngineering Dean Richard Benson was overwhelmed, his voice breaking at times, as he spoke about the slain. \n“Forgive me,” Benson said quietly as he paused to collect himself while commemorating professor Kevin Granata, who was shot in a hallway as he tried to save students during the rampage in which 33 people were killed.\nThe widow of G.V. Loganathan accepted a teaching award in honor of her husband, a man Benson said students fondly regarded as the best professor they ever had, the kindest person they ever met and incredibly wise.\nAnother slain professor, Dr. Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, was remembered by the dean for his “profound courage” in blocking his classroom door so his students could escape out the windows. He was among those killed by student gunman Seung-Hui Cho, who took his own life.\nProfessors, students, their families and friends wept openly as those attending the political science department’s ceremony were asked to remain silent while a bell chimed for each of their nine slain students as their posthumous degrees were awarded.\nProfessor Edward Weisband said he has vivid memories of each of them in class, “attentive, bright, caring.”\nHe promised their families that their children’s empty seats “shall always remain in any class I teach.” \nAs the overflow crowd rose to honor several of the department’s six injured students who were able to attend, Weisband said, “We take inexpressible joy in your survival.”\nAt an English department ceremony, nearly all of the 135 graduating students and many faculty members stood when asked if they knew someone killed or injured in the shooting spree. The crowd of several hundred rose and applauded loudly as posthumous degrees were awarded to sophomore Ross Abdallah Alameddine and senior Ryan Clark who was one of two students killed in a dormitory before the gunman moved to the classroom building.\nEnglish professor Nikki Giovanni read “We are Virginia Tech,”a poem she penned hours after the rampage that infused a campus convocation with strength the day after the shootings. She was inspired, she said Saturday, by the desire to convey that “what we do is more important than what is done to us.”