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(04/23/07 4:00am)
BEAUFORT, S.C. – A somber crowd watched as six jets flew overhead in formation at an air show where a Navy Blue Angel pilot died in a crash the day before.\nSmoke streamed behind one of the jets as it peeled away from the others to complete the “missing man formation,” the traditional salute for a lost military aviator.\nSunday’s air show at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort began with a tribute to the Navy Blue Angel pilot whose aircraft plunged to the ground Saturday as the elite aviators were coming together for their final formation.\nThe pilot’s name had not been released by early Sunday afternoon, keeping with a military policy of waiting 24 hours after the death.\nWitnesses said metal and plastic wreckage – some of it on fire – hit homes in a neighborhood located about 35 miles northwest of Hilton Head Island. William Winn, the county emergency management director, said several homes were damaged. Eight people on the ground suffered injuries that were not life threatening, said Capt. Sarah Kansteiner of Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.\nAn investigation has begun, but Kansteiner said Sunday that she could not say anything about the cause of the crash.\nThe crash took place in the final minutes of Saturday’s air show, said Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Walley, a Blue Angel pilot. The pilots were doing a maneuver which involved all six planes joining from behind the crowd to form a triangle, said Lt. Cmdr. Garrett D. Kasper, spokesman for the Blue Angels. One plane did not rejoin the formation.\nA Navy statement said the pilot had been on the team for two years – and it was his first as a demonstration pilot.\n“Our squadron and the entire U.S. Navy are grieving the loss of a great American, a great Naval officer and a great friend,” Walley said.\nKasper said all possible causes of the crash are under investigation, and it could take at least three weeks for an official cause to be released.\nJohn Sauls, who lives near the crash site, said the planes were banking back and forth before one disappeared and a plume of smoke shot up.\n“It’s one of those surreal moments when you go, ‘No, I didn’t just see what I saw,’” Sauls said.\nThe last Blue Angel fatality was in 1999, when a pilot and crewmate were killed while practicing for air shows at a base in Georgia.\nSaturday’s show was at the beginning of the team’s flight season, and more than 100,000 people were expected to attend. The team, which is based at Pensacola Naval Air Station, recently celebrated its 60th anniversary.\nThe 2007 team has a new flight leader and two new pilots; Blue Angel pilots traditionally serve two-year rotations.\nKasper said the team would return to Florida on Sunday afternoon.
(04/23/07 4:00am)
A jury awarded $9 million to a black man who suffered permanent brain damage after being beaten and dumped in a field by four men in 2003. Billy Ray Johnson, 46, lives in a nursing home because of the injuries he suffered in the beating. In the criminal case, the men accused of assaulting him were fined and sentenced to probation and jail time, but none served more than 60 days behind bars.
(04/23/07 4:00am)
BAGHDAD – Gunmen in northern Iraq stopped a bus filled with Christians and members of a tiny Kurdish religious sect, police said, separating out the groups and taking 23 of the passengers away to be shot.\nPolice said the execution-style killings of the Yazidis – a primarily Kurdish sect that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians – appeared to be in response to the stoning death of a Yazidi woman who had recently converted to Islam.\nPrime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, on a tour abroad to ask the mostly Sunni-led governments of the Arab world to help his struggling government stop the violence in Iraq, said he told Egypt’s president that Iraq’s reality is “not a civil or sectarian war.”\nIn the northern Iraq killings, armed men in several cars stopped the bus as it was carrying workers from the Mosul Textile Factory to their hometown of Bashika, which has a mixed population of Christians and Yazidis – a primarily Kurdish sect that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians.\nThe gunmen checked passengers’ identification, then asked the Christians to get off the bus, said police Brig. Mohammed al-Wagga.\nWith the Yazidis still inside, the gunmen drove them to eastern Mosul, where they were lined up along a wall and shot to death, al-Wagga said.\nAfter the killings, hundreds of Yazidis took to the streets of Bashika, a town in Ninevah province that is 80 percent Yazidi, 15 percent Christian and about five percent Muslim. Shops were shuttered and many Muslims closed themselves in their homes, fearing reprisal attacks.\nAbdul-Karim Khalaf, a police spokesman for Ninevah province said the executions were in response to the killing two weeks ago of a Yazidi woman who had recently converted to Islam.\nThe woman fell in love with a Muslim, converted to Islam and ran off with him, Khalaf said. Disapproving relatives dragged her back to Bashika, where she was stoned to death, he said. A grainy video showing gruesome scenes of the stoning was distributed on Iraqi Web sites in recent weeks.\nIn a religiously mixed neighborhood of Baghdad, two suicide car bombers attacked a police station, police said, killing at least 13 people and turning nearby buildings into piles of rubble.\nThe first driver raced through a police checkpoint guarding the station and exploded his vehicle just outside the two-story building, police said. Moments later, a second suicide car bomber aimed at the checkpoint’s concrete barriers and exploded just outside them, police said.\nThe blasts collapsed nearby buildings, smashing windows and burying at least four cars under piles of concrete. Metal roofs were peeled back by the force of the explosions. Pools of blood made red mud of a dusty driveway.\nA man who was among the 82 wounded in Sunday’s attack staggered through the wreckage.\n“All our belongings and money were smashed and are gone. What kind of life is this? Where is the government?” he asked. “There are no jobs, and things are very bad. Is this fair?”\nIraqi police stations often are the target of attacks by insurgents who accuse the officers of betraying Iraq by working in cooperation with the government.
(04/23/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – Democrats are considering their next step after President Bush’s inevitable veto of their war spending proposal, including a possible short-term funding bill that would force Congress to revisit the issue this summer.\nAnother alternative is providing the Pentagon the money it needs for the war but insisting that the Iraqi government live up to certain political promises. Or, the congressional Democrats could send Bush what he wants for now and set their sights on 2008 spending legislation.\nThe options are being weighed as Bush and Congress head toward a showdown this week on his Iraq policy. House and Senate appropriations meet Monday to negotiate a final bill that, if approved by both chambers, could reach the president’s desk as early as the end of the week.\nArmy Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Iraq war, is expected to brief lawmakers behind closed doors as they cast their final vote.\nThe legislation is expected to fund the Iraq war but call for combat troops to leave, probably by March 31, 2008. Bush has promised to reject it and Republicans say they will back him, leaving Democrats short of the two-thirds majority support needed to override the veto.\nSetting an end date to the war before it’s won “would be a death blow to forces of moderation throughout the Middle East,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.\nDemocratic leaders have been reluctant to discuss their next step, focusing instead on their ability to send Bush legislation rebuking his Iraq policy. But other lawmakers say there is no denying that Democrats do not have the two-thirds majority needed to override Bush’s veto. And soon enough, everyone will be asking what happens next.\nRep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who chairs the House panel that oversees military funding, said he wants a bill that would fund the war for just two or three months. Before that second bill would expire in summer, Democrats would try again to pass legislation calling for an end to combat.\nBush has said the military needs more than $90 billion through September, most of which would finance combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.\nMurtha’s proposal would give Democrats time to try to rally support among Republicans growing increasingly frustrated with the war who have so far been reluctant to tie the hands of their GOP president.\nThe tact also would attract party liberals in the House who don’t want to fund the war at all.\nRep. Lynn Woolsey said she likes the idea of a limited funding bill because it keeps open the possibility that Congress will cut off money for the war this summer.\n“Look at it every single day,” Woolsey, D-Calif., said of the violence in Iraq. “I hope it’s not worse, but it will be. ... In two months, it might be that there should be no more money” for the war.\nBut that impression is precisely why such a plan would be difficult to pass in the House and likely sink in the Senate, where more conservative Democrats say they prefer other means to twist the president’s arm.\nCutting off funding for the war is the “wrong message to our troops” and would fail, said Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Then “the defeat of an effort to cut funding would be used by the president as evidence of support for his policy,” he added.\nAccordingly, Levin said he would support legislation that would fund the war through September but insist the Iraqi government live up to its political promises.\nLast fall, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pledged to make laws establishing provincial elections, regulate distribution of the country’s oil wealth and reverse measures that have excluded many Sunnis from jobs and government positions because of Baath party membership.\nLevin, D-Mich., said that should Bush veto the war spending bill, Democrats could pass legislation that would drop the timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal but require the Iraqis meet certain benchmarks. He declined to provide further specifics.\nIn order to attract GOP support and force Bush to sign the bill, Democrats would have to craft language that gives the president some flexibility. At the same time, Democratic leaders will have to persuade their own party members that the bill still challenges Bush’s Iraq policy.\n“The greater clarity of the consequences for the failure to meet the benchmarks, the greater pressure on Iraqi leaders,” Levin said.\nWhite House spokeswoman Dana Perino dismissed Murtha’s suggestion of a short-term funding bill and said Democrats should focus instead on providing troops what they need.\n“Since there’s only five months left in this supplemental, having this same debate in another month, given their track record on producing legislation, doesn’t seem prudent,” Perino said.\nRep. James Moran, a member of defense appropriations panel, said Democrats might not have much of a choice in responding to Bush’s veto other than to consider the short-term funding bill.\n“We don’t want to throw in the towel,” said Moran, D-Va. “The problem is (Bush) is willing to play chicken with funding the troops and we aren’t. We just aren’t going to take a chance (the Pentagon) will run out of funding for the troops.”
(04/23/07 4:00am)
BLACKSBURG, Va. – Computer forensics are playing a key role in the probe of the Virginia Tech gunman, with investigators revealing he bought ammunition clips on eBay designed for one of two handguns used to kill 32 people and himself.\nThe eBay account and other Internet activities provided insight Saturday into how Seung-Hui Cho may have plotted for the rampage, including the purchase of several empty ammo clips about three weeks before the attack.\nEBay spokesman Hani Durzy said the purchase of the clips from a Web vendor based in Idaho was legal and that the company has cooperated with authorities. Attempts to reach the Idaho dealer were unsuccessful.\n“Within 24 hours, after Cho’s identity was made public, we had reached out to law enforcement to offer our assistance in any investigation,” Durzy said.\nAuthorities are also examining the personal computers found in Cho’s dorm room and seeking his cell-phone records.\nCho, 23, also used the eBay account to sell items ranging from Hokies football tickets to horror-themed books, some of which were assigned in one of his classes.\nA search warrant affidavit filed Friday stated that investigators wanted to search Cho’s e-mail accounts, including the address Blazers5505@hotmail.com. Durzy confirmed Cho used the same blazers5505 handle on eBay.\nVirginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said investigators are “aware of the eBay activity that mirrors” the Hotmail account.\nOne question investigators hope to answer is whether Cho had any e-mail contact with Emily Hilscher, one of the first two victims. Investigators plan to search her Virginia Tech e-mail account.\nExperts say that when the subject of an investigation is a loner like Cho, his computers and cell phone can be a rich source of information. Authorities say Cho had a history of sending menacing text messages and other communications – written and electronic.\nOn March 22, Cho bought at least two 10-round magazines for the Walther P22. A day later, he made a purchase from a vendor named “oneclickshooting,” which sells gun accessories and other items. It appears that he bought three Walther P22 clips in that purchase, but the seller could not be reached for comment.\nCho sold tickets to Virginia Tech sporting events, including last year’s Peach Bowl. He sold a Texas Instruments graphics calculator that contained several games, most of them with mild themes.\n“The calculator was used for less than one semester then I dropped the class,” Cho wrote on the site.\nHe also sold many books about violence, death and mayhem. Several of those books were used in his English classes, meaning Cho simply could have been selling used books at the end of the semester.\nHis eBay rating was superb – 98.5 percent. That means he received one negative rating from people he dealt with on eBay, compared with 65 positive.\n“great ebayer. very flexible,” the buyer said of his Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl tickets, which went for $182.50.\nAndy Koch, Cho’s roommate from 2005-06, said he never saw Cho receive or send a package, although he didn’t have much interaction with the shooter. Students can sign up for a free lottery on a game-by-game basis, and the tickets are free.\n“We took him to one football game,” he said. “We told him to sign up for the lottery, and he went and he left like in the third quarter, and that was it. He never went again. He never went to another game.”\nCho sold the books on the eBay-affiliated site half.com. They include “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” by Carol J. Clover, a book that explores gender in the modern horror film. Others include “The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre”; and “The Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense” by Joyce Carol Oates – a book in which the publisher writes: “In these and other gripping and disturbing tales, women are confronted by the evil around them and surprised by the evil they find within themselves.”\nBooks by those three authors were taught in his Contemporary Horror class.\nExperts say things like eBay transactions can be hugely valuable in trying to figure out the motivation behind crimes.\nAn examination of a computer is “very revealing, particularly for a person like this,” said Mark Rasch of FTI Consulting, a computer and electronic investigation firm. “What we find ... particularly with people who are very uncommunicative in person, is that they may be much more communicative and free to express themselves with the anonymity that computers and the Internet give you.”\nCho’s computer could hold a record of just about anything he has done, even of activities or communications he may have tried to erase. But Rasch said that likely will not be a problem, noting the way the gunman created a record of his thinking in videos, photos and documents.\n“This guy wanted to leave a trail. He wasn’t trying to conceal what he did,” Rasch said.\n–Associated Press writers Kristen Gelineau and Allen G. Breed contributed to this report.
(04/18/07 4:00am)
The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki was shot to death in a brazen attack Tuesday by an organized crime chief apparently enraged that the city refused to compensate him after his car was damaged at a public works construction site, news agencies reported. The shooting was rare in a country where handguns are strictly banned and only four politicians are known to have been killed since World War II.\nU.S. forces recently intercepted Iranian-made weapons intended for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s top general said Tuesday, suggesting wider Iranian war involvement in the region. It appeared to be the first publicly disclosed instance of Iranian arms entering Afghanistan, although it was not immediately clear whether the weapons came directly from Iran or were shipped through a third party.
(04/18/07 4:00am)
LONDON – The Virginia Tech shootings sparked criticism of U.S. gun control laws around the world Tuesday. Editorials lashed out at the availability of weapons, and the leader of Australia – one of America’s closest allies – declared that America’s gun culture was costing lives.\nSouth Korea’s Foreign Ministry said the government hoped Monday’s shootings, allegedly carried out by a 23-year-old South Korean native, would not “stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.”\nWhile some focused blame only on the gunman, world opinion over U.S. gun laws was almost unanimous: Access to weapons increases the probability of shootings. There was no sympathy for the view that more guns would have saved lives by enabling students to shoot the assailant.\n“We took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country,” said Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who staked his political career on promoting tough gun laws after a gunman went on one of the world’s deadliest killing sprees 11 years ago.\nThe tragedy in a Tasmanian tourist resort left 35 people dead. Afterward, Australia’s gun laws were changed to prohibit automatic weapons and handguns and toughen licensing and storage restrictions.\nHandguns are also banned in Britain – a prohibition that forces even the country’s Olympic pistol shooting team from practicing on its own soil. In Sweden, civilians can acquire firearm permits only if they have a hunting license or are members of a shooting club and have no criminal record. In Italy, people must have a valid reason for wanting one. Firearms are forbidden for private Chinese citizens.\nStill, leaders from Britain, Germany, Mexico, China, Afghanistan and France stopped short of criticizing President Bush or U.S. gun laws when they offered sympathies to the families of Monday’s victims.\nEditorials were less diplomatic.\n“Only the names change – And the numbers,” read a headline in the Times of London. “Why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?”\nThe French daily Le Monde said the regularity of mass shootings across the Atlantic was a blotch on America’s image.\n“It would be unjust and especially false to reduce the United States to the image created, in a recurrent way, from the bursts of murderous fury that some isolated individuals succumb to. But acts like this are rare elsewhere, and tend to often disfigure the ‘American dream.’”\nPolice started identifying the victims Tuesday. One was a Peruvian student identified as Daniel Prez Cueva, 21, according to his mother Betty Cuevas, who said her son was studying international relations.\nTwo professors from India and Israel were also killed.\nLiviu Librescu, 76, an engineering science and mathematics lecturer, tried to stop the gunman from entering his classroom by blocking the door before he was fatally shot, his son said Tuesday from Tel Aviv.
(04/13/07 4:00am)
BAGHDAD – A suicide bomber blew himself up in the Iraqi parliament cafeteria Thursday, killing at least eight people – including three lawmakers – and wounding dozens in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified, U.S.-protected Green Zone.\nA news video camera captured the moment of the blast: a flash and an orange ball of fire causing a startled parliament member who was being interviewed to duck, and then the smoky, dust-filled aftermath of confusion and shouting. The video was shot by Alhurra, a U.S. government-funded Arab-language channel.\nThe blast came hours after a suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed.\nThe parliament bombing was believed to be the deadliest attack in the Green Zone, the enclave that houses Iraq’s leadership as well as the U.S. Embassy, and is secured by American and Iraqi checkpoints.\nSecurity officials at parliament, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, said they believed the bomber was a bodyguard of a Sunni member of parliament who was not among the dead. They would not name the member of parliament.\nThe officials also said two satchel bombs were found near the cafeteria. A U.S. bomb squad took the explosives away and detonated them without incident.\nPresident Bush strongly condemned the attack, saying: “My message to the Iraqi government is `We stand with you.’”\nMaj. Gen. William Caldwell told The Associated Press that eight people were killed in the attack, which witness accounts indicated was carried out by a suicide bomber.\nIraqi officials said the bomber struck the cafeteria while several lawmakers were eating lunch, and at least three of them – two Sunnis and a Shiite – were killed. State television said 30 people were wounded.\n“We don’t know at this point who it was. We do know in the past that suicide vests have been used predominantly by al-Qaida,” Caldwell said.\nGovernment spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh suggested that those behind the attack might work in the building.\n“There are some groups that work in politics during the day and do things other than politics at night,” he told Alhurra.\nThe Alhurra video showed the blast, with startled lawmaker Jalaluddin al-Saghir, who is also a Muslim imam, ducking for cover. It then showed the immediate aftermath: People screamed for help in a smoky hallway, with one man was slumped over, covered in dust, motionless. A woman kneeled over what appeared to be a wounded or dead man near a table. The camera then focused on a bloody, severed leg.\nTV cameras and videotapes belonging to a crew sending footage to Western networks were confiscated and apparently handed over to U.S. authorities.\nAfter the blast, security guard no one – including lawmakers – was allowed to enter or leave.\nA spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said no Americans were hurt.\nThe bombing came amid the two-month-old security crackdown in Baghdad, which has sought to restore stability in the capital so that the government of Iraq can take key political steps by June 30 or face a withdrawal of American support.\n“We know that there is a security problem in Baghdad,” added Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at the State Department. “This is still early in the process and I don’t think anyone expected that there wouldn’t be counter-efforts by terrorists to undermine the security presence.”\n–Associated Press Writer Lauren Frayer contributed to this report.
(04/13/07 4:00am)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A federal grand jury indicted an Ohio man on charges of joining al-Qaida and conspiring to bomb European tourist resorts and U.S. government facilities and military bases overseas, officials announced Thursday.\nChristopher Paul, 43, a U.S. citizen and resident of Columbus, spent time in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the early 1990s and told al-Qaida members there that he was dedicated to committing violent jihad, according to a federal indictment.\nHe received military-type training at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan, and later transferred money to an alleged co-conspirator, the indictment said.\nThe investigation into Paul and his activities spanned four years, three continents and at least eight countries, FBI agent Tim Murphy said Thursday, shortly before Paul appeared before a federal judge.\n“The indictment of Christopher Paul paints a disturbing picture of an American who traveled overseas to train as a violent jihadist, joined the ranks of al-Qaida and provided military instruction and support to radial cohorts both here and abroad,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein said in a statement.\nPaul, who was arrested Wednesday outside his apartment, is charged with providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to provide support to terrorists and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. The weapon of mass destruction charge carries the most serious penalty, up to life in prison.\nIn court Thursday, Magistrate Judge Terence Kemp asked Paul if he understood the charges. Paul replied: “Yes, sir.”\nProsecutors asked that he be held without bond, and Kemp set another hearing Friday on the issue. Paul’s lawyer, Don Wolery, declined comment after the hearing.\nA friend of Paul’s, Hisham Jenhawi, 32, said he found the charges hard to believe.\n“I don’t think it’s even close to his personality to act upon something like that,” he said at the courthouse. “He’s a very kind person. You would meet him on the street and he would want to hug you with the heart that he has.”\nThe indictment says Paul traveled to Germany about April 1999 to train co-conspirators to use explosives to attack European and U.S. targets, including government buildings and vacation spots frequented by American tourists.\nIt does not name specific resorts or buildings that might have been targeted, but gives U.S. embassies, military bases and consular premises in Europe as examples.\nPaul later sent a wire transfer of $1,760 from a financial institution in the U.S. to an alleged co-conspirator in Germany, prosecutors allege.\nA fax machine in his home contained names, phone numbers and contact information for key al-Qaida leadership and associates, according to the indictment, issued Wednesday.\nPaul also is accused of storing material at his father’s house in Columbus, including a book on improvised land mines, money from countries in the Middle East and a letter to his parents explaining that he would be “on the front lines,” according to the indictment.\nHis sister, Sandra Laws, answered the door at the home and said she and her father live there. She said the family declined further comment.\nNo charges are expected against family members, authorities said.\nTwo other Columbus men have been charged in federal investigators’ terrorism investigation. Iyman Faris was sentenced in 2003 to 20 years in prison for a plot to topple the Brooklyn Bridge. Nuradin Abdi, accused of plotting to blow up a Columbus-area shopping mall, is awaiting trial on charges including conspiring to aid terrorists.
(04/13/07 4:00am)
Nestle SA, the world’s biggest food and drink company, said Thursday it will buy Gerber Products Co. from pharmaceutical maker Novartis SA for $5.5 billion, giving it the largest share of the global baby food market. The acquisition helps further Nestle’s recent focus on health and nutrition, following its purchases of the U.S. weight control company Jenny Craig and Novartis Medical Nutrition.
(04/12/07 4:00am)
ALGIERS, Algeria – Bombs heavily damaged the prime minister’s office and a police station Wednesday, killing at least 23 people and wounding about 160, Algeria’s official news agency said. Al-Qaida’s wing in North Africa claimed responsibility.\nPrime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem, who was unhurt, called the attack a “cowardly, criminal terrorist act” as he spoke to reporters outside his wrecked offices.\nThe attacks were a devastating setback for the North African nation’s efforts to close the chapter on its Islamic insurgency that has killed 200,000 people. After years of relative calm, the al-Qaida affiliate recently has recently waged several smaller attacks in the oil- and gas-rich nation.\nAccording to Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, a spokesman for al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they were carried out by three suicide bombers in trucks packed with explosives. The spokesman said the bombers targeted three sites: the government headquarters in Algiers and the Interpol offices and a special police forces building in the suburb of Bab Ezzouar.\nBelkhadem declined to say how many had been killed or wounded. The official APS agency said at least 23 people were killed and 160 wounded in the two attacks, but gave no breakdown. The other bombing targeted the police station of Bab Ezzouar, east of the capital, Algiers, on the road to its airport.\nWitnesses said at least one of the attacks appeared to have been a car bomb.\nA charred, wrecked car lay on the pavement about 98 feet from the gates of the government building – a modern white, block-like high-rise that also houses the Interior Ministry.\nOn Tuesday in neighboring Morocco, police surrounded a building in Casablanca where four terrorism suspects were holed up, causing three to flee and blow themselves up with explosives. The fourth was shot to death by a police sharpshooter as he apparently tried to detonate his bomb. A police officer was killed and 10 people, including a young child and a policeman, suffered injuries.\nSince five suicide bombings that killed 45 people in Morocco in May 2003, police have pursued an unprecedented crackdown on suspected militants, arresting thousands of people, including some accused of working with al-Qaida and its affiliates to plot attacks in Morocco and abroad.\nAlgeria’s insurgency broke out in 1992, after the army canceled legislative elections that an Islamic party appeared set to win.\nSince then, violence related to the insurgency has left an estimated 200,000 dead – civilians, soldiers and Islamic fighters – according to the government.\nMilitary crackdowns and amnesty offers had turned them into a ragtag assembly of fighters in rural hideouts, and for several years, the government appeared to have them basically under control.\nAlgeria’s main militant group recently changed its name to al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa and began targeting foreigners – signs that the country’s dwindling ranks of Islamic fighters were regrouping.\nThe latest attacks, especially on Belkhadem’s office, showed that the militants are far from beaten, even though experts say that they number perhaps no more than several hundred people.\nBelkhadem expressed bitterness at insurgents who refused the amnesty offers.\n“The Algerian people stretched out a hand to them, and they respond with a terrorist act,” he said.\nAl-Jazeera said its office in Rabat, Morocco, received a telephone call from a spokesman for al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, identified as Abu Mohammed Salah, who claimed responsibility for the attacks.\n–Associated Press Writer Aidan Lewis in Algiers contributed to this report.
(04/12/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon will lengthen tours of duty for all active-duty Army units in Iraq to 15 months from the current 12 months as the military struggles to supply enough troops for the conflict, two defense officials said Wednesday.\nDefense Secretary Robert Gates planned to announce the decision Wednesday afternoon, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.\nIt is the latest move by the Pentagon to cope with the strains of fighting two wars simultaneously and maintaining a higher troop level in Iraq as part of President Bush’s revised strategy for stabilizing Baghdad.\nOfficials on Monday said some 13,000 National Guard troops were receiving orders alerting them to prepare for possible deployment to Iraq – meaning a second tour for several thousand of them. Officials said a final decision to deploy the four infantry combat brigades later this year will be based on conditions on the ground and named specific Guard units based in Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma and Ohio.\nThe Pentagon said the Guard units would serve as replacement forces in the regular troop rotation for the war, and would not be connected to the controversial military buildup that was ordered by President Bush and which officials say is starting to show some success in curbing violence in Baghdad.\nWord has also emerged that Defense Department officials were considering a plan to extend by up to four months the tours of duty for as many as 15,000 U.S. troops already in Iraq as a way to maintain the buildup past the summer.\nThere are currently 145,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and when the buildup is completed by June, there would be more than 160,000, officials are calculating.\nDefense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wednesday that with the way the rotation schedule is laid out now, the force size would begin to fall after August unless some action is taken – sending some troops earlier than expected or keeping some beyond their planned homecomings.\nHe declined to confirm details of any of the options under consideration.\n–AP Military Writer Robert Burns and AP Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid contributed to this report.
(04/12/07 4:00am)
BEIJING – Along with spitting, run-down housing and bad manners, add unintelligible English to the list of things organizers of the 2008 Beijing Olympics want to ban.\nMunicipal officials promised on Wednesday to crack down on awkward, Chinese-inflected English, known as “Chinglish,” and asked the public to help police bad grammar and faulty syntax.\nWith 500,000 foreigners expected for the Olympics, taxi drivers who can’t speak English – or signs that mangle the language – could be an embarrassment and distract from the $40 billion being poured into rebuilding the city for the games.\nThroughout the city, examples abound.\nA store selling tobacco products advertises: “An Excellent Winding Smoke.”\nOn the floor at Beijing’s Capital Airport, a sign reads: “Careful Landslip Attention Security.”\nOn a billboard, this mysterious message: “Shangri-La is in you mind, but your Buffalo is not.”\nIn an elevator, parents are warned: “Please lead your child to tare the life.”\nLiu Yang, who heads the “Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program” for the city government, said 6,500 “standardized” English-language signs were put up last year on Beijing roads. But he acknowledged private businesses were not following the rules, which were handed to reporters – a stack of glossy documents weighing 2 pounds.\n“We will pass the message on to authorities in the advertising sector,” Liu said. “If English translation is needed it must be subject to the standards set forth in the regulations.”\nLiu said a language hotline may be set up for the games to encourage the public to report nonsense English. China’s diplomatic missions abroad are assisting, Liu said, “and our people working in foreign companies are helping with correct usage.”\n“In the future when we set up new signs in public places in English, we hope all these standards will be followed to avoid more additional mistakes.”\nLiu said Beijing taxi drivers must pass an English test to keep their licenses. But he acknowledged most speak only Chinese, and many are skipping language classes.
(04/12/07 4:00am)
BAGHDAD – Iranian intelligence operatives have been training Iraqi fighters inside Iran on how to use and assemble deadly roadside bombs known as EFPs, the U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday.\nCommanders of a splinter group inside the Shiite Mahdi Army militia have told The Associated Press that there are as many as 4,000 members of their organization that were trained in Iran and that they have stockpiles of EFPs, a weapon that causes great uneasiness among U.S. forces here because they penetrate heavily armored vehicles.\nU.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell would not say how many militia fighters had been trained in Iran but said that questioning of fighters captured as recently as this month confirmed many had been in Iranian training camps.\n“We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them. We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees debriefs,” Caldwell said at a weekly briefing.\nEFP stands for explosively formed penetrator, deadly roadside bombs that hurl a fist-size lump of molten copper capable of piercing armor.\nIn January, U.S. officials said at least 170 U.S. soldiers had been killed by EFPs.\nCaldwell also said the U.S. military had evidence that Iranian intelligence agents were active in Iraq in funding, training and arming Shiite militia fighters.\n“We also know that training still is being conducted in Iran for insurgent elements from Iraq. We know that as recent as last week from debriefing personnel,” he said.\n“They do receive training on how to assemble and employ EFPs,” Caldwell said, adding that fighters also were trained in how to carry out complex attacks that used explosives followed by assaults with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms.
(04/12/07 4:00am)
The White House is considering naming a high-powered official to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The official would report directly to President Bush and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. The goal would be to improve the coordination of military and civilian efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan by different parts of the government.
(04/10/07 4:00am)
BAGHDAD – Tens of thousands draped themselves in Iraqi flags and marched peacefully through the streets of two Shiite holy cities Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad’s fall. Demonstrators were flanked by two cordons of police as they called for U.S. forces to leave, shouting “Get out, get out, occupier!”\nSome marchers strode along trying to rip apart an American flag; others marched across an American flag rug flung across the road.\nSecurity was tight across Iraq, with a 24-hour ban on all vehicles in Baghdad starting from 5 a.m. Monday. The government quickly reinstated the day as a national holiday, rescinding its weekend order that had decreed that April 9 no longer would be a day off.\nThe Najaf rally was ordered by Muqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite cleric who a day earlier issued a statement ordering his militiamen to redouble their battle to oust American forces, and argued that Iraq’s army and police should join him in defeating “your archenemy.”\nThose marching were overwhelmingly Shiite, but Sunnis – who are believed to make up the heart of Iraq’s insurgency – have also called for an American withdrawal.\n“The enemy that is occupying our country is now targeting the dignity of the Iraqi people,” Nassar al-Rubaie, head of al-Sadr’s bloc in parliament, told an interviewer as he marched. “After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded.”\nA senior official in al-Sadr’s organization in Najaf, Salah al-Obaydi, called the rally a “call for liberation.”\nAl-Sadr did not attend the demonstration and has not appeared in public for months. U.S. officials say he left Iraq for neighboring Iran after the Feb. 14 start of a Baghdad security crackdown, but his followers say he is in Iraq.\nIraqi soldiers in uniform joined the crowd, which was led by at least a dozen turbaned clerics – including one Sunni. Many marchers danced as they moved through the streets.\nCol. Steven Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman and aide to the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, praised the peaceful nature of the demonstration, saying Iraqis “could not have done this four years ago.”\n“This is the right to assemble, the right to free speech – they didn’t have that under the former regime,” Boylan said. “This is progress, there’s no two ways about it.”\nMonday’s demonstration marks four years since U.S. Marines and the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division swept into the Iraqi capital 20 days into the American invasion.\nForeign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Monday that “mistakes were made” after Saddam Hussein’s regime was ousted four years ago.\n“The main mistake was a vacuum left in the fields of security and politics, and second mistake was how liberating forces became occupation forces,” Zebari told Al-Arabiyah television.
(04/10/07 4:00am)
YUMA, Ariz. – President Bush said Monday the United States has toughened security along its border with Mexico and it’s time for Congress to approve legislation overhauling the nation’s immigration laws.\nAt a Border Patrol station in this southwest desert city, the president campaigned for a law to help people get temporary work in the United States or clear up their illegal status with a path to citizenship.\nBush hoped to send a message – particularly to conservative critics from his own party – that the stepped-up border enforcement is working. His get-tough message was meant to prod Congress into passing a guest worker program for immigrants, a signature domestic policy goal.\nBush was joined by Sen. Jon Kyl, the Arizona Republican, whose support is seen as critical to any deal in the Congress.\nAnother lawmaker vital to Bush’s effort, Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, said Monday: “President Bush did the right thing today by speaking out.”\n“Only a bipartisan bill will become law,” Kennedy added. “There is a lot of common ground, especially in the need to strengthen our borders and enforce our laws, though important differences remain to be resolved.”\nThe Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, has scheduled time for immigration debate in May.\nBoth Bush and the Democratic-run Congress are eager to show some accomplishment on a core issue like immigration. Yet it’s a sticky subject, and the fault lines don’t necessarily fall along party lines. For Bush, opportunities to see through his domestic agenda are shrinking.\nAdministration officials led by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez have been meeting privately for weeks with Republican senators. That expanded to a meeting in late March with key senators from both parties.\nOut of that session, a work-in-progress plan emerged – one described as a draft White House plan by officials in both parties and advocacy groups who got copies of the detailed blueprint.
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WASHINGTON – About 13,000 National Guard troops are receiving notice to prepare for possible deployment to Iraq, making it the second tour for several thousand of them.\nThe orders had been anticipated, but the specific units were not announced until Monday. \nThey are the Army National Guard’s 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, based in Little Rock, Ark.; 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Oklahoma City; the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Indianapolis; and the 37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Columbus, Ohio.\nThe units would serve as replacement forces in the regular troop rotation for the war, and they would not be connected to the recent military buildup for security operations in Baghdad, the Pentagon said.\n“They are receiving alert orders now in order to provide them the maximum time to complete their preparations,” the Defense Department said. “It also provides a greater measure of predictability for family members and flexibility for employers to plan for military service of their employees.”\nThe final determination on whether the units will deploy will be made based on conditions on the ground in Iraq, officials said.\nThe troop alerts come as President Bush and Congress wrestle over legislation that would set timelines for troop withdrawals from Iraq.\nBush asked for more than $100 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. Congress has approved the money, but the Senate added a provision calling for most U.S. combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008. The House version demands a September 2008 withdrawal. Bush has vowed to veto any legislation that includes such deadlines.\nThe Army said some of the troops being alerted now have not yet served in Iraq, but some have served in the campaign in Afghanistan or elsewhere.\nSince November 2002, various elements of Indiana’s 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Their last brigade-level rotation was in support of the Afghan campaign from May 2004 to August 2005.
(04/10/07 4:00am)
Iran announced Monday it has increased its enrichment of uranium. It’s a defiant expansion of a nuclear program that has drawn U.N. sanctions and condemnation from the West. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony at the enrichment facility at Natanz that Iran was now capable of enriching nuclear fuel “on an industrial scale.”
(04/05/07 4:00am)
TEHRAN, Iran – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a surprise move that defused escalating tension in the Middle East, announced the release of 15 captive British sailors and marines Wednesday in what he called an Easter gift to the British people.\nPrime Minister Tony Blair, who said the Britons had been released, added that he bore “no ill will” toward the Iranian people following the 13-day standoff.\nThe breakthrough eased tensions that have been increasing steadily, raising fears of military conflict in the volatile region and prompting a spike in oil prices. It suggested that Iran’s hard-line leadership had decided Tehran had demonstrated its strength in the standoff but did not want to push the crisis too far.\nDespite the announcement, however, the crew members had not arrived at the British Embassy as of 9 p.m local time in Tehran.\nAlex Pinfield, first secretary of embassy in Tehran, said it’s not clear when they would be handed over or where they are going to spend the night. He indicated the British “are still discussing the Iranian case with the Iranian Foreign Ministry.”\nAsked about apparent contradictions over Blair saying the crew had been freed and British Embassy statements that they had not yet been handed over to British authorities, a Downing Street spokesman would only say “the process is under way.”\nIranian state television showed the 14 men and one woman meeting with Ahmadinejad outside the presidential palace following his announcement at a news conference that they were being freed. The crew members were seized while on patrol in the northern Persian Gulf on March 23, would leave Iran on Thursday.