Gunmen killed 15 policemen working as instructors at the local police academy and two translators in the southern city of Basra, Iraq, police said. The men were forced off a bus on the city's outskirts Sunday afternoon, and their bodies were found hours later dumped in several locations, police said. Basra is about 80 percent Shiite, Iraq's majority sect that makes up the bulk of the police and security forces nationwide, especially in the predominantly Shiite south. Most of the murdered policemen were believed to have been Shiite.
Fire officials said 70 percent of the California blaze is now contained. Dying winds and cooler temperatures gave firefighters an edge Sunday in fighting a 63-square-mile wildfire that killed four of their own last week, although the blaze was still threatening a wilderness area plagued by drought and filled with dead trees. Fire officials blamed the 40,450-acre blaze burning in Southern California about 90 miles east of Los Angeles on arson.
The chairman of the Senate Democratic campaign expressed confidence Sunday his party can win a Senate majority in the Nov. 7 elections, calling the vote "more and more a referendum on George Bush." "We're right on the edge. Every week things get better and better," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "With the exception of one candidate, no other Republican candidate uses a four-letter word -- B-U-S-H. They're running away from him."
Nearly one of every 25 weapons the U.S. military bought for Iraqi security forces is missing and many others cannot be repaired because parts or technical manuals are lacking, a government audit said Sunday. The Department of Defense cannot account for 14,030 weapons -- almost 4 percent of the semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons it began supplying to Iraq since the end of 2003, according to a report from the office of the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
The Gallaudet University board of trustees says it has voted to terminate the appointment of Jane Fernandes as the next president of the nation's premier school for the deaf.
