394 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(05/05/06 2:38am)
WASHINGTON -- A House committee has ask Exxon Mobil Corp. for detailed information about a lucrative retirement package given to its former chairman, Lee Raymond, calling it an "exorbitant payout" when motorists are paying $3 a gallon for gasoline.\nRaymond, who recently retired, was given a total package of nearly $400 million including salary, bonus, stock options and a one-year $1 million consulting arrangement.\nThe request was made as the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to the country's five biggest oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, seeking detailed information about the companies' spending and investment priorities in light of huge profits over the past year as crude prices jumped to a recent high of more than $75 a barrel.\nThe relatively small amount invested in increasing refinery capacity "is cause for concern," said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the committee chairman, who opened a hearing into soaring oil and gasoline prices on Thursday.\nIn addition to Exxon Mobil, letters went to ConocoPhillips Inc., Chevron Corp., BP America, Inc., and Shell Oil Co.\nExxon Mobil spokesmen did not immediately return a telephone call for comment on the congressional inquiry.\nIn testimony before the House panel, Guy Caruso, head of the government's Energy Information Administration, said that a shortage of excess production capacity worldwide is the primary factor behind tight markets and upward pressure on crude oil prices. "Today the cushions aren't available," he said.\nEnergy Consultant Daniel Yergin added the sharp run-up on crude prices over the past month stems in large part to concerns about possible supply disruptions because of the nuclear standoff with Iran, which produces 2.5 million barrels a day, and unrest in Nigeria, another major producer.\nOn Wednesday, the House passed legislation that would impose up to $150 million in penalties for energy companies found guilty of price gouging. With lawmakers eager to show they are doing something in response to soaring gasoline prices and huge oil industry profits, the measure breezed through the House , 389-34.\nPrice gouging proposals have been talked about in the Senate, especially among Democrats, but it's not clear when the issue might be brought up for consideration.\nPresident Bush called a bipartisan group of lawmakers to the White House on Wednesday to discuss what energy measures might gain bipartisan support. The proposals all addressed the long-term energy problems, and not ways to try to reduce this summer's $3-plus gasoline prices.\n"The price of gasoline should serve as a wake-up call ... that we've got an energy security problem and a national security problem and now is the time to deal with it in a forceful way," Bush said after the meeting.\nMany lawmakers acknowledged little can be done in the short term.\n"There is not a panacea of short term solutions to the (gasoline) price situation today because it's a demand-driven price," said Barton.\nA proposal pushed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to give people $100 rebate checks was all but abandoned Wednesday, ridiculed by Republicans as well as Democrats as insulting and inadequate.\nA Democratic proposal for a federal gasoline tax holiday also seemed to be losing steam.\nBarton promised a string of hearings in the upcoming weeks to develop energy legislation aimed mostly at the long-run. Barton said he sent letters to the major oil companies asking them for information on how they are using their earnings -- especially how much is being invested in exploration, production and refinery expansions.\n"We would like to be able to do something now, quickly. The truth of the matter is we can't," New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told reporters after the meeting at the White House.\nThe president discussed with the lawmakers a range of proposals aimed at increasing and diversifying energy supplies, an extension of tax credits for the purchase of hybrid cars and ways to encourage alternative fuels.\n"I don't think there were any new proposals that had not been kicked around, tried, talked about before," said Domenici.\nThe House-passed price gouging legislation directs the FTC to define price gouging and calls for penalties of up to $150 million for refiners and other wholesalers and $2 million for retailers who violate the law. It covers marketers of gasoline, diesel fuel, crude oil and heating fuel.\nWholesalers and retail outlets such as corner gas stations and service station chains face civil penalties triple the amount of their unfair profit. Violators also could go to jail.\n"American consumers are demanding protection from price gouging," declared Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y.
(05/05/06 2:35am)
ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema sent Zacarias Moussaoui to prison for life Thursday, to "die with a whimper," for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He declared: "God save Osama bin Laden -- you will never get him."\nBrinkema and the unrepentant Moussaoui capped the two-month trial with an intense exchange that will mark the defendant's last public words before his incarceration in a maximum security prison in Colorado.\nA day earlier, a jury rejected the government's case to have Moussaoui executed, deciding instead to send him to prison for life without a chance of parole. Not all jurors were convinced that Moussaoui, who was in jail on immigration charges Sept. 11, had a significant part in the attacks, despite his boastful claims that he did.\nBrinkema firmly refused to be interrupted by the 37-year-old defendant as she disputed his claim that his life sentence meant America had lost and he had won.\n"Mr. Moussaoui, when this proceeding is over, everyone else in this room will leave to see the sun ... hear the birds ... and they can associate with whomever they want," she said.\nShe went on: "You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison. It's absolutely clear who won."\nAnd she said it was proper he will be kept away from outsiders, unable to speak publicly again.\n"Mr. Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory," she said, "but to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper."\nAt that point, Moussaoui tried again to interrupt her, but she raised her voice and spoke over him.\n"You will never get a chance to speak again and that's an appropriate ending."\nBrinkema sentenced Moussaoui to six life terms without the chance of parole.\nShe informed him of his right to appeal the sentence and said she would ask his court-appointed lawyers to file the required notice as a precaution before relieving them from the case. \n"I believe it would be an act of futility," she said of an appeal, "but you do have a right."\nLisa Dolan, who lost her husband Bob in the attack on the Pentagon, was one of three family members of victims allowed to speak at the brief sentencing hearing.\nShe turned to Moussaoui said, "There is still one final judgment day."\nMoussaoui sat in his chair staring at Dolan and the other family witnesses, Rosemary Dillard and Abraham Scott, betraying no emotion as they spoke.\n"You have branded me as a terrorist or a criminal or whatever," he said. "Look at yourselves. I fight for my belief." He spoke for less than five minutes; the judge told him he could not use his sentencing to make a political speech.\nFrench authorities said Thursday they may eventually press the United States to have Moussaoui serve his life sentence in France under two conventions on the transfer of convicts. They were waiting to hear the conditions of his sentencing.\nMoussaoui's mother Aicha El Wafi, pressed for her country to intervene. \n"Now he is going to die in little doses," she said. "He is going to live like a rat in a hole. What for? They are so cruel."\nAfter seven days of deliberation, the nine men and three women rebuffed the government's appeal for death for the only person charged in this country in the suicide hijackings of four commercial jetliners that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.\nFrom the White House, President Bush said Wednesday the verdict "represents the end of this case but not an end to the fight against terror." He said Moussaoui got a fair trial and the jury spared his life, "which is something that he evidently wasn't willing to do for innocent American citizens."\nAttorney General Alberto Gonzales, attending a European Union security conference in Vienna, told reporters Thursday: "There are challenges that exist with respect to prosecuting terrorist cases in our system. I think justice was served in this case."\nIt is not known how many jurors wanted Moussaoui sentenced to life and how many wanted a death sentence. Under federal law, a defendant automatically receives life in prison when a jury is split. The 42-page verdict form gives no indication on how, or if, the jury split.\nThe jury rejected two key defense arguments -- that Moussaoui suffers a mental illness and that executing him would make him a martyr. No jurors indicated on the verdict form that they gave any weight to those arguments.\nNine jurors found that Moussaoui suffered a difficult childhood in a dysfunctional family where he spent many of his early years in and out of orphanages. Three found that Moussaoui only played a minor role in the attacks.\nIn their successful defense of Moussaoui, defense lawyers overcame the impact of two dramatic appearances by Moussaoui himself -- first to renounce his four years of denying any involvement in the attacks and then to gloat over the pain of those who lost loved ones.\nHe was still belittling that pain Thursday. Referring to Dillard, who lost her husband Eddie in the Pentagon attack, he said: "I destroyed a life and she lost a husband. Maybe one day she can think about how many people the CIA has destroyed."\n"You have a hypocrisy beyond belief," he said. "Your humanity is a selective humanity."\nUsing evidence gathered in the largest investigation in U.S. history, prosecutors achieved a preliminary victory last month when the jury ruled Moussaoui's lies to federal agents a month before the attacks made him eligible for the death penalty because they kept agents from discovering some of the hijackers.\nBut even with heart-rending testimony from nearly four dozen victims and their relatives, the jury was not convinced that Moussaoui deserved to die.
(02/16/06 1:09am)
JERUSALEM - Hamas protested "interference" by the United States and Israel following reports Tuesday that the nations were exploring ways to topple the militants' incoming government unless they renounced their violent ideology and recognized Israel's right to exist.\nIn Washington, the White House and the Israeli ambassador to the United States denied such a plot. The State Department said it was reviewing U.S. aid to the Palestinians and would make a decision within two weeks.\nExiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said in Sudan his group had no plans to recognize Israel.\n"There will be no recognition of Israel and there will be no security for the occupation and colonization forces," Mashaal told a rally in Khartoum. "Resistance will remain our strategic option."\nThe New York Times, citing U.S. and Israeli officials it did not identify, reported Tuesday that the United States and Israel were considering a campaign to starve the Palestinian Authority of cash so Palestinians would grow disillusioned and bring down a Hamas government.\nIsraeli security officials said they were looking at ways to force Hamas from power and were focusing on an economic squeeze that would prompt Palestinians to clamor for the return of President Mahmoud Abbas' ousted Fatah Party. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.\nA Foreign Ministry official said Israel was threatening to dry up funding and isolate the Palestinians internationally in an effort to keep Hamas, which is committed to Israel's destruction, from taking power.\nHowever, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Daniel Ayalon told The Associated Press that there were no ongoing plans with the U.S. to topple the Palestinian government. \n"There is no conspiracy between Israel and the United States to hurt the Palestinian people and there is no plan whatsoever to compromise the well-being of the Palestinian people," he said.\nA Hamas official protested the reports, saying attempts to bring down a future Hamas government were hypocritical.\n"This is ... a rejection of the democratic process, which the Americans are calling for day and night," incoming legislator Mushir al Masri said. "It's an interference and a collective punishment of our people because they practiced the democratic process in a transparent and honest way."\nIn Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "There's no plot." State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he was "puzzled" by the report.\n"We are not having conversations with the Israelis that we are not having with others, including the Quartet. There is no plan, there is no plot," he said.\nHe also reiterated the demands of the so-called Quartet of Mideast peace negotiators: that Hamas recognize Israel, renounce terror and accept past agreements reached by the Palestinians. The Quartet -- which includes the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia -- backs the "road map" peace plan envisioning a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel.\nHamas trounced Abbas' Fatah Party in legislative elections last month and is poised to form a new government in the coming weeks. Hamas swept to power on the strength of public dissatisfaction with Fatah's failure to eradicate lawlessness and corruption.\nAbbas, elected separately last year, will remain in office and has been taking steps in recent days to curb the power of the incoming Hamas legislature.\nMashaal, on a regional tour to generate support for Hamas, said the group still hopes to form a national coalition government with other Palestinian factions, including Fatah.\n"The world should commit Israel to withdraw from our territories and stop occupation and aggression and allow the Palestinian people to establish their independent state, with Jerusalem its capital," Marshaal said.\nAP Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid in Washington contributed to this report.
(12/01/05 6:17pm)
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Two businesswomen have become Saudi Arabia's first female elected officials, a historic step in a deeply conservative country where women are largely barred from public life.\nSaudi officials said Wednesday that Lama al-Sulaiman and Nashwa Taher had won election to the board of Jiddah's chamber of commerce. Little information was available about the two women, who could not be reached for comment.\nThe chamber's weekend elections were the first polls in Saudi Arabia in which women were allowed to run and to vote.\n"It seems the decision ... came from very high up, and it's likely going to be followed with more steps," said Badreiah al-Beshr, a Saudi sociologist who follows women's issues. "It was a preparatory move, but the road ahead is still a difficult one."\nWomen were not allowed to vote or stand as candidates in the kingdom's first nationwide municipal elections earlier this year. Electoral officials have said women might cast votes in municipal balloting in 2009.\nThe Jiddah Trade and Industry Chamber initially rejected the nomination of 10 women for its board of governors, but the kingdom's trade minister order the chamber to open the door to female candidates, and allow women to vote, after a flood of petitions from businesswomen.\nKing Abdullah, who ascended to the throne in August and is seen as a reformist monarch, has said he wants to lighten restrictions on women. Women are prevented from driving cars or traveling abroad without permission of a male guardian.\nEarlier this year, female business executives in the eastern city of Dammam were allowed to vote in their chamber of commerce polls, but only if a male guardian cast their ballots for them.\nAl-Beshr said the government was approaching the issue of women in politics cautiously because of the kingdom's long-standing and deeply conservative brand of Islam. The Saudi royal family retains absolute power and Saudis cannot hold public gatherings to discuss political or social issues.\nJiddah, a Red Sea port, is the kingdom's second-largest city after Riyadh, the capital. Women make up about 10 percent of the 40,000 members of the Jiddah chamber. The two women will join 16 men on its board.
(11/17/05 7:13pm)
WASHINGTON -- House and Senate negotiators have struck a tentative deal on the expiring Patriot Act that would curb the FBI's investigative power and require the Justice Department to more fully report its secret requests for information about ordinary people.\nDemocrats and civil libertarians said that while the tentative deal makes some improvements, it doesn't address their chief concern: the curbing of FBI power to gather certain information by requiring the investigators to prove the subject's records are connected to a foreign agent or government.\n"It gives a nod toward checks and balances without fixing the most fundamental flaws in the Patriot Act," said Lisa Graves of the American Civil Liberties Union.\nThe agreement, which would make most provisions of the existing law permanent, was reached just before dawn Wednesday. But by midmorning GOP leaders had already made plans for a House vote on Thursday and a Senate vote by the end of the week. That would put the centerpiece of President Bush's war on terror on his desk before Thanksgiving, a month before more than a dozen provisions were set to expire.\nOfficials negotiating the deal described it on condition of anonymity because the draft is not official and has not been signed by any of the 34 conferees.\nAny deal would mark Congress' first revision of the law passed a few weeks after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. In doing so, lawmakers said they tried to find the nation's comfort level with expanded law enforcement power in the post-9/11 era -- a task that carries extra political risks for all 435 members of the House and a third of the Senate facing midterm elections next year.\nFor Bush, too, such a renewal would come at a sensitive time. With his approval ratings slipping in his second term, the president could bolster a tough-on-terrorism image.\nThe tentative deal would make permanent all but a handful of the expiring provisions, the sources said. Others would expire in seven years if not renewed by Congress. They include rules on wiretapping, obtaining business records under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and new standards for monitoring "lone wolf" terrorists who may be operating independent of a foreign agent or power.\nBy noon, House Democrats on the panel were issuing complaints about the seven-year expiration, arguing that since the House had endorsed the four-year expiration dates enacted as part of the Senate bill, the three provisions should "sunset" at four years, not seven. They also complained that Republican negotiators shut them out of the last phase of talks, a charge Republicans deny.\nThe draft also would impose a new requirement that the Justice Department report to Congress annually on its use of national security letters, secret requests for the phone, business and Internet records of ordinary people. The aggregate number of letters issued per year, reported to be about 30,000, is classified. Citing confidential investigations, the Justice Department has refused lawmakers' request for the information.\nThe 2001 Patriot Act removed the requirement that the records sought be those of someone under suspicion. As a result, FBI agents can review the digital records of a citizen as long as the bureau can certify that the person's records are "relevant" to a terrorist investigation.\nAlso part of the tentative agreement are modest new requirements on so-called roving wiretaps -- monitoring devices placed on a single person's telephones and other devices to keep a target from evading law enforcement officials by switching phones or computers.\nThe tentative deal also would raise the threshold for securing business records under FISA, requiring law enforcement to submit a "statement of facts" showing "reasonable grounds to believe" the records are relevant to an investigation.
(11/17/05 7:13pm)
The last time I left New Orleans I was being evacuated on the back of a military truck that was navigating through the city's flooded streets against a backdrop of war-like destruction. Two months after Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast, I returned to New Orleans for a brief visit. I was both impressed and disheartened by what I saw in terms of the city's recovery. \nThe ferocity of the hurricane is clearly evident two months later. Fallen trees, fences and parts of houses are common sights. Blue plastic tarp covers the damaged roofs of several homes. Thousands of refrigerators line the streets of residential neighborhoods. The food within these discarded refrigerators has rotted so dramatically during weeks without electricity that the refrigerators have to be sealed shut with duct tape and disposed of by the city. Parts of City Park and Lafreniere Park have been converted to vast dumping grounds for fallen trees and branches that are now being churned into wood chips. \nEvidence of the flooding that affected 80 percent of the city is widespread. In the districts that flooded, orange spray-painted markings on the front of every building are a reminder of the grim task officials went through while searching for corpses and give these parts of the city a surreal feeling. On the street side, unclaimed cars that flooded sit caked in a ghostly white film.\nInsulation, floor panels, sheetrock, carpets and mattresses from the gutted interiors of houses whose residents have started to rebuild are piled on street corners waiting to be collected and disposed of. Small boats that had been used to navigate deep within the city during the flooding that exceeded 15 feet of water in some places now lay awkwardly on dry land by the side of major thoroughfares. On St. Claude Avenue and Elysian Fields Avenue, the hauls of a few burnt-out buildings and cars attest to fires that raged unchallenged in the aftermath of the storm. Few traffic lights work in the city and most intersections operate as four-way stops.\nThe infrastructural, economic and social devastation and disruption created by Hurricane Katrina and the resulting flooding is literally colossal. Katrina resulted in the largest metropolitan diaspora in U.S. history. Scott Cowen, president of Tulane University, which is the largest private employer in New Orleans, estimated during a speech in New York City Oct. 29 that only 11 percent of the city's pre-storm population of 468,000 remained or had returned. Located in the less affected Uptown District, Tulane University had to cancel classes for the fall semester.\nSome parts of the city appear to have made remarkable progress in their recovery or were fortunately relatively unscathed by the storm and subsequent flooding. The world famous 143-year-old Café du Monde on Decatur Street reopened Oct. 19 and displays an outdoor banner that proudly proclaims "The Beignets are Back" in reference to its signature treat. Aside from the unusually small number of people walking on the streets and customers at cafés and restaurants, there is a feeling of considerable normality in these parts of town. \nHowever, there are still police-manned entry checkpoints from 8 p.m. to dawn in that area, and non-residents are not allowed to pass through during nighttime. There is still a military presence in the city; military humvees and trucks drive back and forth during the day and I was told by a resident of the Bywater area that the military conduct patrols there at night. Not far from the makeshift fire station is a stretch of road that was painted with the word "HELP" in 10-feet-tall letters during the flooding and a house with the warning "You loot, you dead" spray-painted on it. \nA lot of commercial rehabilitation and reconstruction activity is going on in various parts of the city. Street signs and posters near demolition, cleanup and reconstruction crews advertise $10-per-hour wages and immediate employment. It appears to me that community support, volunteerism and business opportunity will play as significant a role, if not an even larger role, than government assistance in the uneven recovery of this city. Yet despite all the construction work and recent progress, there are parts of the city that seem starkly lifeless and neglected. \nThe future of New Orleans and its former and current residents is vague. I have no doubt that a significant proportion of the city will be rebuilt and repopulated in the next few years. But the demographic make up, rates of district recovery, social and economic vitality, as well as the future population size of the city will only be known with time. As of now there are still residents in the city who face various adversities and who continue to suffer incredible personal, family and financial disruption. \nSome of the minor hurdles faced by some of the city's residents include few convenience stores being opened in the residential areas and the inconvenience of residents having to travel considerable distances to get food and water with the limited aid of the city's now-crippled public transportation system. Some city residents never owned personal modes of transportation and others lost their vehicles in the storm. Another issue is that not all the residents who have returned have had their home gas heating restored and evenings in the city can be cold. Average daily low temperatures in New Orleans in November and December are expected to be 52 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively.\nThe vast majority of New Orleans residents remain scattered across the United States. Some people never left the city, others have returned to rebuild and will soon be followed by more. A fortunate number of people may find their homes intact, while others have nothing to return to. Many will choose to settle in new cities.\nPeople who have never lived in New Orleans may decide to move there and take advantage of various housing and job opportunities. All these people are more important than the physical city of New Orleans itself, and I hope their needs and future aspirations are assessed and addressed through means that are satisfactory to them. That is a tall order and one that I fear will likely be ignored.
(06/06/05 12:25am)
ORANJESTAD, Aruba -- Two men were charged Sunday in connection with the disappearance last week of an Alabama teenager who was visiting the island with classmates to celebrate their high school graduation, Aruba's attorney general said.\nAuthorities on the Dutch Caribbean island also requested a special diving team from the FBI, said Attorney General Caren Janssen.\nThe arrests came nearly a week after 18-year-old Natalee Holloway disappeared during a five-day trip to Aruba with more than 100 other classmates from Mountain Brook High School, near Birmingham, Ala.\nThe men -- ages 28 and 30 -- were arrested Sunday morning at two separate homes in the southeastern community of San Nicolas, Janssen said at a news conference in the capital.\nJanssen declined to provide specific charges, saying the case will go before a judge within 48 hours to determine whether they can be legally held. She said authorities had not found any of Holloway's belongings at the suspects' homes.\n"The charges have a relationship with the disappearance," Janssen said, without providing details. "There is a reasonable suspicion they may be involved."\nJanssen said authorities wanted the FBI diving team because of rough currents in some areas.\nAuthorities impounded three vehicles found at the two homes, and a team of more than a dozen FBI agents will help perform forensic testing on them, police said.\n"We hope she's alive," police commissioner Jan van der Straaten said. "Every day I see the light at the end of the tunnel."\nPolice have received about 180 tips since last week and van der Straaten called on the public to be patient because the investigation will "take time."\nNeighbors described the two detained men as security guards who worked at a hotel closed for renovation near where the teen was staying at the Holiday Inn. Deputy police chief Gerold Dompig confirmed that the suspects were security guards.\nHolloway's uncle, Paul Reynolds, who came from Houston to help with the search, said he hoped the detentions would help investigators.\n"Of course I'm excited about any developments," he said before the charges were announced.\nHolloway, who was last seen early May 30, spent the last night of her vacation eating and dancing at Carlos 'N Charlie's bar and restaurant. She did not show up for her return flight, and police found her passport in her hotel room with her packed bags.\nHolloway spent her last night at a beach concert featuring Boyz II Men and Lauryn Hill at Surfside beach in southern Aruba, Tourism Minister Edison Briesen said. About 8,000 people attended the concert, which was part of the third annual Soul Beach Music Festival.\nAuthorities have checked out several reported sightings of the 5-foot-4-inch blonde, all to no avail.\nHundreds of Arubans and American residents have joined the hunt, upset that Holloway's disappearance could mar the image of this tranquil island. About 500,000 Americans visited Aruba last year, lured by turquoise waters and people brimming with smiles and helpful tips for foreigners.\nPosters with Holloway's photo, reading "kidnapped," have gone up across the tiny island.\nThe Aruban government and local tourism organizations have offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to Holloway's rescue. Her family and benefactors in Alabama have offered another $30,000.\nHolloway's disappearance has shaken a sense of safety many Arubans took for granted in an island of 72,000 people that saw one murder and six rapes last year. This year, there have been two murders and three rapes, police said.\nHolloway, a straight-A student, had earned a full scholarship at the University of Alabama and planned to study premed, Reynolds said. He described his niece as a levelheaded girl who would not have done anything rash.\nAuthorities said a blood-soaked mattress found at a beach in eastern Aruba turned out to be blood from a dead dog found nearby.
(06/02/05 1:21am)
WASHINGTON -- Watergate whistleblower Deep Throat played a central role in one of the biggest White House scandals ever, helping bring down a president and inspire a political mystery so famous his nickname earned an entry in Webster's. Thirty years later, the source is secret no more.\nAt age 91, after decades of hiding his role as The Washington Post's tipster from politicians, the public and even his family, former FBI official W. Mark Felt told his secret to a lawyer his family had consulted on whether Felt should come forward.\nThe attorney, John O'Connor, wrote a Vanity Fair magazine article revealing Felt's disclosure, and within hours of the story's release Tuesday, Felt's family and the Post confirmed it.\n"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," Vanity Fair quoted Felt, the former No. 2 man at the FBI, as saying.\n"It's the last secret" of the story, said Ben Bradlee, the paper's top editor at the time the riveting political drama played out three decades ago.\nFelt lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., and is said to be in poor mental and physical health because of a stroke. His family did not immediately make him available for comment, asking the news media horde gathered outside his home to respect his privacy "in view of his age and health."\n"The family believes that my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr., is a great American hero who went well above and beyond the call of duty at much risk to himself to save his country from a horrible injustice," Felt's grandson, Nick Jones, said, reading a family statement. "We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well."\nWatergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein said in a statement: "W. Mark Felt was 'Deep Throat' and helped us immeasurably in our Watergate coverage. However, as the record shows, many other sources and officials assisted us and other reporters for the hundreds of stories that were written in The Washington Post about Watergate."\nFor many, Felt's admission answers one of the biggest questions in American politics and journalism: Who was the source so fearful he'd be found out by the Nixon White House that he insisted on secret signals rather than phone calls to arrange meetings with the Post reporters, a man portrayed as a cigarette-smoking bundle of nerves by Hal Holbrook in the 1970s movie "All the President's Men"?\n"A good secret deserves a decent burial and this one is going to get a state funeral," said Leonard Garment, acting special counsel to President Nixon after the Watergate story broke and author of the book "In Search of Deep Throat."\nFelt "had the credentials, he had the knowledge, he had a series of motives, he probably was very unhappy with the way the investigation was going," Garment said.\nFor some, it raises new questions.\n"I never thought he was in the loop to have the information," John Dean, counsel in Nixon's White House and the government's top informant in the Watergate investigation, told The Associated Press. "How in the world could Felt have done it alone?"\nDean said he couldn't see how Felt, then in charge of the FBI's day-to-day operations, could have had time to rendezvous with reporters in parking garages and leave clandestine messages to arrange meetings. Perhaps FBI agents helped him, Dean suggested.\nThe scandal that brought Nixon's resignation began with a burglary and attempted tapping of phones in Democratic Party offices at the Watergate office building in Washington during Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. It went on to include disclosures of covert Nixon administration spying on and retaliating against a host of perceived enemies. The most devastating disclosure was the president's own role in trying to cover-up his administration's involvement.\nIU Political Science Professor Marjorie Hershey said without Felt the Watergate story might never have been broken at all and it did hurt the Republican party.\n"Watergate set the Republicans back nationally for almost a decade," she said. "The public outrage lead to a big increase in the number of democratic members in congress. On the other hand, that setback to the Republicans was what lead them to overhaul and reinvigorate their fundraising and their campaigning."\nDeep Throat urged Woodward and Bernstein to follow the money trail.\nThe resulting campaign finance scandal led Congress to overhaul the nation's campaign finance rules, ordering federal candidates and national party committees to disclose their donors' identities and observe new contribution limits.\nWoodward, Bernstein and Bradlee had kept the identity of Deep Throat secret at his request, saying his name would be revealed upon his death. Then Felt revealed it himself, a move that startled Woodward and the Post, the newspaper reported.\nAlso surprised was Nixon chief counsel Charles Colson, who worked closely with Felt in the Nixon administration and served prison time in the Watergate scandal.\n"He had the trust of America's leaders and to think that he betrayed that trust is hard for me to fathom," Colson told the AP.\nEven the existence of Deep Throat, nicknamed for an X-rated movie of the early 1970s, was kept secret for a time. Woodward and Bernstein revealed their reporting had been aided by a Nixon administration source in their best-selling book "All the President's Men." Felt's name doesn't appear there.\nA hit movie was made of the book in 1976 starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. It portrayed cloak-and-dagger methods employed by Woodward and Deep Throat. When Woodward wanted a meeting, he would position an empty flowerpot containing a red flag on his apartment balcony. When Deep Throat wanted to meet, the hands of a clock would appear written inside Woodward's New York Times.\nThe identity of the source had sparked endless speculation over the past three decades. Dean, Nixon chief of staff Alexander Haig, White House press aide Diane Sawyer, speechwriter Pat Buchanan and Garment were among those mentioned as possibilities.\nFelt also had been mentioned, but he regularly denied it. His motive for tipping off Woodward and Bernstein remains unknown, but the Post suggested in a story Tuesday night that anger over Nixon's decision to pass him over for FBI director after the death of J. Edgar Hoover could have been a factor.\nFelt had expressed reservations in the past about revealing his identity, and about whether his actions were appropriate for an FBI man, his grandson said. His family members thought otherwise. His daughter, Joan, argued that he could "make enough money to pay some bills, like the debt I've run up for the children's education."\nOn Wednesday, the question of whether Felt was more hero or more turncoat had the current White House hoping to keep its distance. "It's hard for me to judge," President Bush told reporters, saying the revelation caught him by surprise.\n"A lot of us have always wondered who Deep Throat might have been," Bush said.\nDefense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked during a Pentagon news conference whether Felt should be viewed as a hero or villain, said, "I'm not in any judgmental mood. ... I think that any time any wrongdoing occurs, I think it's important that wrongdoing be reported." He later specified that a person discovering wrongdoing should report that to the appropriate authorities or the Justice Department.\nWoodward and Bernstein were the first reporters to link the Nixon White House and the Watergate break-in.\nNixon, facing almost-certain impeachment for helping to cover up the break-in, resigned in August 1974. Forty government officials and members of Nixon's re-election committee were convicted on felony charges.\nFelt was convicted in 1980 for authorizing illegal break-ins in the 1970s at homes of people associated with the radical Weather Underground. He was pardoned by President Reagan in 1981.
(06/02/05 12:17am)
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. -- A landslide sent at least 12 expensive homes crashing down a hill early Wednesday and damaged 15 others in this coastal Orange County enclave.\nAt least three people were taken to a hospital for minor injuries, officials said. Crews were apparently able to evacuate most of the residents before the earth gave way.\n"The pipes started making funny noises and the toilet sounded like it was about to explode," Carrie Joyce, a fire department office manager who lives in the neighborhood, some 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles.\n"I could see one house, huge, we call it the mausoleum, 5,000 square feet or more. It had buckled, the retaining wall in the front of it was cracked. It just looked like the whole house was going," she said.\nLaguna Beach, its shoreline dotted with coves and tide pools, has some of Southern California's most desired real estate, but it has also grappled with fires and mudslides over the years. Wednesday's slide came on the heels of a near-record winter rainy season.\nThe damaged homes, located in an area called Blue Bird Canyon about 15 blocks from the ocean, are worth about $1.75 million each, which the mayor described as "average" for the area.\nTwelve homes were lost and 15 damaged, Mayor Elizabeth Pearson-Schneider said. Forty more homes were evacuated.\nMultistory homes came to rest at odd angles, some nearly intact, others broken apart and trailing debris. Around the edges of the gash at the top of the hill, several homes jutted out with no earth below parts of their foundations.\nOne house, snapped in two, had an American flag fluttering from a balcony. An unearthed road simply stopped in midair, beneath it a tangle of debris. Trees, cars and roadway also spilled down.\n"We believe we evacuated the people who could be in harm's way," Pearson-Schneider said.\n"My understanding is that we received a phone call from a couple that began feeling slippage. They were quite upset, as you could imagine, and we just told them to get out," he said. People began reporting problems around 5 a.m. and the hillside gave way between 6 and 7 a.m.\nOne man, clutching his cat, said his home looked "like it buckled in the middle and broke in half. We ran from the house. It started coming down."\nTwo injured children were admitted to South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach in good condition, hospital spokeswoman Maggie Baumann said. A third person there, a 71-year-old woman whose house was destroyed, wasn't injured in the landslide but appeared to be under emotional stress, she said.\nThe neighborhoods have been hit before by flooding, mudslides and wildfire. Several homes were red-tagged as uninhabitable in February during the second rainiest season on record in Southern California.
(06/02/05 12:17am)
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A bomb from a suicide attacker tore through a mosque during Wednesday's funeral for a Muslim cleric opposed to the Taliban, killing at least 20 people, and the local governor said an al-Qaida-linked militant was responsible.\nThe dead included the police chief of the capital, Kabul. At least 42 people were wounded.\nThe attack further raised fears that militants here were copying the tactics of insurgents in Iraq.\nPresident Hamid Karzai condemned the assault as an "act of cowardice by the enemies of Islam and the enemies of the peace of Afghan people," and he ordered a high-level investigation.\nThe militants themselves have suffered a heavy price, according to American and Afghan officials.\nKandahar Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai said the suicide bomber's body had been found and he was part of Osama bin Laden's terror network.\n"The attacker was a member of al-Qaida. We have found documents on his body that show he was an Arab," Sherzai told reporters. "We had an intelligence report that Arab al-Qaida teams had entered Afghanistan and had been planning terrorist attacks."\nHe did not elaborate.\nKandahar was a stronghold of the hard-line Taliban regime that was ousted from power in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces for harboring bin Laden.\nThe British Broadcasting Corp. reported that it received a call from a man claiming to be a Taliban member who said the movement was responsible for the attack. It did not identify the caller or say if the report had been verified.\nA purported Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, said in a telephone call to The Associated Press that the group was not responsible for the bombing.
(06/02/05 12:16am)
ALSIP, Ill. -- Federal investigators unearthed a concrete vault containing Emmett Till's casket at a suburban Chicago cemetery Wednesday, hoping to find clues into his 1955 slaying in Mississippi that became a key event in the civil rights movement.\nThe muddy cement vault was loaded onto a flatbed truck and taken to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office, where an autopsy was planned. No autopsy was performed when the 14-year-old black Chicagoan was killed.\n"One purpose of this is to positively identify the remains and dispel any rumors as to whether it is truly Emmett Till or not," FBI spokesman Frank Bochte said. A second reason, he said, is to "see if any further evidence can be looked at to help Mississippi officials bring additional charges if warranted."\nOfficials from the Tallahatchie County, Miss., prosecutor's office, Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the FBI bureau in Jackson, Miss., were on hand for the exhumation.\nThe work began after a brief, private graveside service for three members of Till's family. They later declined to comment.\nInvestigators with shovels and a backhoe began digging under a white tent erected over Till's grave. The family was allowed onto the cemetery grounds, but onlookers were corralled outside the entrance.\nArthur Everett, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Chicago field office, said the vault came out of the ground easily. He described the moment it left the ground as a relief for agents and "sublime" for Till's family.\nEverett, who is black, grew up in the South and was born the year Till was slain. "For me, personally, the event signifies that even though the system of justice sometimes turns very slowly, it still turns," he said.\nThe Justice Department announced last year it would reopen an investigation into Till's slaying, saying it was triggered by several pieces of information including a documentary by New York filmmaker Keith Beauchamp.\nTill, who was raised in Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in the tiny Mississippi Delta community of Money on Aug. 28, 1955, reportedly for whistling at a white woman. His mutilated body was found by fishermen three days later in the Tallahatchie River.\nTill's mother insisted that her son's body be displayed in an open casket at his funeral, forcing the nation to see the brutality directed at blacks in the South at the time. The slaying helped galvanize the civil rights movement.\nTwo white men charged with Till's murder -- store owner Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam -- were acquitted by an all-white jury but later confessed to Look magazine. They have since died.
(06/02/05 12:12am)
UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan fired a staffer for his role in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, a spokesman said Wednesday, describing the first dismissal stemming from alleged corruption in the multibillion-dollar program.\nJoseph Stephanides, dismissed Tuesday, was the first U.N. official said to be fired in the wake of an independent probe into allegations of wrongdoing in the $64 billion program.\nThe United Nations had accused Stephanides, head of the U.N. Security Council Affairs Division, of interfering in the competitive bidding process for an oil-for-food contract.\nAnnan concluded that Stephanides had committed "serious misconduct," U.N. associate spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.\n"Mr. Stephanides was advised accordingly yesterday and was separated from service with immediate effect," Dujarric said.\nThe probe, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, had accused two other U.N. staff members of wrongdoing in the program, established to help ordinary Iraqis cope with sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein's government after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.\nIraq was allowed to sell oil, provided the proceeds were used primarily to buy humanitarian goods, including food and medicine.\nU.N. action against former oil-for-food chief Benon Sevan has been suspended until Volcker's probe finishes its work. Sevan was accused of a "grave conflict of interest" in soliciting oil deals from Iraq.\nDileep Nair, the now-retired chief of the U.N. watchdog agency, allegedly paid an employee with money from the program even though the staffer's work was not directly tied to it. Annan sent a letter expressing disappointment but took no action.\nStephanides, head of the U.N. Security Council Affairs Division, had been accused of tainting the competitive bidding process for a company to inspect humanitarian goods entering Iraq under the program.\nHis contacts with an unnamed U.N. mission led to Lloyd's Register Inspection Ltd. winning the contract even though there was a lower bidder, it said.\nReached by The Associated Press after the announcement was made, Stephanides rejected the charges and said he would file an appeal shortly.\n"I am very disappointed by this decision," Stephanides said. "I look to the appeal process in the confident hope that justice will be made and I will be exonerated because I have committed no wrongdoing."\nStephanides, 59, had planned to retire in September, when he turns 60.
(06/02/05 12:12am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide bomber attacked the main checkpoint to Baghdad International Airport on Wednesday, wounding at least 15 Iraqis, the military said.\nThe explosion shortly after 9 a.m. destroyed several vehicles, sent up a huge cloud of black smoke, and was followed by militants firing machine guns at security forces. It also underscored the difficulties U.S. and Iraqi authorities face in curbing the rampant insurgency.\nIn New York, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said U.S.-led forces must remain in Iraq until the country's own soldiers and police can take responsibility for securing the nation amid its continuing insurgency.\nU.S. soldiers captured four wanted militants in a number of separate raids since Monday, including a former spy in Saddam Hussein's secret service believed to be financing several terrorist groups in western Baghdad's Ghazaliyah district, the military said.\nThe former spy also was suspected of working as a cameraman for a terrorist group, apparently filming attacks on coalition forces that later were posted on Internet sites or distributed to the media.\nIraqi authorities are trying to take the fight to insurgents, who have launched attacks that have killed at least 765 people since the new government was announced April 28, according to an Associated Press count. Many of the killings have come as a result of suicide bombings, with about 100 attacks being carried out in May, according to an AP count.\nDr. Sabah al-Araji of the Health Ministry said 434 civilians were killed in May, up from 299 killed in April.\nAn Interior Ministry official said 151 police were killed in May, compared with 86 in April, up 75 percent. A Defense Ministry official said 85 Iraqi soldiers were killed in May, compared with 40 in April.\nDefense Ministry spokesman Radhi Badir, who has been collating the figures of insurgents killed in Iraq, told the AP that more than 260 insurgents were killed in May.\nIt was unclear if the three ministries were working with the same set of data.\nThe suicide bomber exploded his vehicle at the main checkpoint to Baghdad's airport, the U.S. military and police said. The airport is located at the end of a 10-mile-long highway dubbed by many Iraqis the "Street of Death" because it is the frequent target of suicide bombings and ambushes.
(05/26/05 3:34am)
WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Priscilla Owen as a federal appellate judge, ending the four-year ordeal of the Texas jurist who was thrust into the center of the partisan battle over President Bush's judicial nominations.\nThe 56-43 vote to appoint Owen to the New Orlean-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a consequence of an agreement reached earlier this week that averted, for the time being, a bitter dispute over Democratic use of the filibuster to block Bush's judicial choices.\nBush, pleased with the vote on a nominee he said would bring "a wealth of experience and expertise" to the bench, said it should be followed by others. "I urge the Senate to build on this progress and provide my judicial nominees the up-or-down votes they deserve," the president said in a statement.\nOwen, said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., "withstood an orchestrated partisan \nattack on her record."\nDemocrats had used their filibuster powers four times in the past to prevent a vote on Owen, who they said was too conservative for the lifetime position. On Tuesday, following the filibuster agreement, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to end the stalemate and bring the nomination to a vote.\n"A supremely qualified nominee received the up-or-down vote she deserved," said fellow Texan Sen. John Cornyn. The vote, the Republican senator said, was "something we could have done four years ago."\nOwen, a Texas Supreme Court justice since 1994, was one of 10 circuit court judge nominees thwarted by Democrats during Bush's first term by filibuster tactics that emerged as a topic in last year's election and a priority issue for GOP-allied conservative groups. She was nominated early in Bush's first term.\nFrist, after several years of warnings, this week threatened to impose new rules on the Senate to disallow the use of the filibuster on judicial nominations,. Democrats in turn threatened to disrupt the work of the Senate if they lost their right to keep talking unless 60 members voted to end debate.\nOn Monday seven Republicans and seven Democrats helped prevent that meltdown with an agreement under which the minority's right to filibuster was retained but Democrats said they would use that right only in "extraordinary circumstances."\nThe compromise also opened the way for votes on other long-stalled nominees, including William Pryor Jr. for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and Janice Rogers Brown for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.\nSenate leaders also announced Tuesday that they had agreed to take up the long-pending nominations of three Michigan judges.\nFrist characterized the Texas Supreme Court justice as "a gentle woman, an accomplished lawyer, and a brilliant jurist" who was "unconscionably denied an up-or-down vote" for four years.\nThe GOP leader also expressed regret that the deal had sidetracked his attempt to permanently bar the minority from using the filibuster to block judicial nominations.\nUse of procedural delaying tactics to stop nominations was "a new and dangerous course" and "a power grab of unprecedented proportions," he said.\nDemocratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the Senate should put the filibuster dispute behind it and get back to work on other issues. "We should just move on," he said. "It's over with."\nIt wasn't easy for Owen, 50, to get to this point. She was subjected to nine hours of hearings, answered more than 500 questions and endured 22 days of floor debate.\nWith Owen, confirmed, Frist also planned to begin debate Wednesday on the nomination of John R. Bolton to be U.N. ambassador. Bolton, the outspoken conservative who has been accused of bullying subordinates and discounting intelligence data that contradicted his ideology, seemed likely to be confirmed by week's end.\nOwen on Tuesday visited the White House, where she told the president she would remember "that you expect judges to follow the law."\n"She is my friend, and more importantly, she's a great judge," Bush said.\nLawmakers on both sides of the filibuster issue questioned whether the compromise would hold.\n"This is merely a truce, it is not a treaty yet," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, an advocate of restricting judicial filibusters. "An awful lot depends on good faith."\nSeveral Republican signers said the deal would survive only if Democrats abided by that vague condition. "The fact that you are a conservative is no longer an extraordinary circumstance," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.\nSen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, described Owen as an "exceptional jurist who is committed to the Constitution" and was widely admired across the state.\nReid said he was voting against her because of her "extreme ideological approach to the law." He said she consistently ruled in favor of big business and corporate interests and against consumers and workers.\nOwen was born in 1954 in Palacios, Texas, a small fishing and agriculture community on the Gulf Coast. Her father died of polio shortly before her first birthday.\nShe earned a law degree from Baylor University in 1977, finishing at the top of her class and scoring highest among those taking the bar before entering private practice in Houston.\nShe easily won election to the Texas Supreme Court in 1994 and re-election in 2000.
(05/26/05 3:33am)
HADITHA, Iraq -- Helicopters swept down near palm tree groves and armored vehicles roared into this Euphrates River city before dawn Wednesday as 1,000 U.S. troops launched the second major offensive in less than a month aimed at uprooting insurgents.\nFierce gunbattles broke out and six insurgents were killed in central Haditha, the U.S. military said, adding that another four were killed in separate clashes.\nMarines brought by helicopters blocked one side of Haditha, while other troops on foot and in armored vehicles established checkpoints and moved toward the city's center. U.S. warplanes circled overhead.\nTwo Marines were wounded and evacuated, Capt. Christopher Toland told an Associated Press reporter embedded with U.S. forces.\nAlso Wednesday, an Islamic \nmilitant Web site statement claimed that Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi has fled to an unidentified "neighboring country" with two Arab doctors treating him for gunshot wounds to his lung. The claim could not be authenticated and messages on another Web site quickly denounced it as untrue and unauthorized by the terror group.\nThe assault, called Operation New Market, focused on this city of about 90,000 people, where the U.S. military says fighters are using increasingly sophisticated tactics. Insurgents have killed more than 620 people since a new Iraqi government was announced on April 28.\nHaditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, lies along a major highway used by travelers moving from western Iraq to major cities such as Mosul and Baghdad in the central and northern parts of the country.\nEarlier this month, fighters operating from a Haditha hospital killed four U.S. troops in a well-coordinated ambush that included a suicide car bomber, a roadside bomb and gunfire. The hospital was partially destroyed in the attack.\nSeveral other attacks have \noccurred in Haditha this year, including the April 17 killing of a police chief and the discovery three days later of the bodies of 19 fishermen. U.S. military officials say it's unclear if the fishermen were killed in a tribal dispute or by insurgents.\n"Right now there's a larger threat than should be in Haditha and we're here to tell them that they're not welcome," said Lt. Col. Lionel Urquhart, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, which is part of the operation.\nU.S. officials said they hoped their presence would allow locals to feel safe enough to provide tips to the military.\n"The people out there know who wrecked the hospital and those who target their power source," said Urquhart, referring to the hydroelectric dam that is said to provide about a third of Iraq's electricity.\nA small reconnaissance unit of Iraqi soldiers was participating in the attack on the northwestern city, Urquhart said, but the offensive reflected the continued need for U.S. operations to clear out insurgents from Sunni-dominated areas of the country. Haditha has no functioning police force.\nMarines took over several homes, using them as observation and control centers while other troops fanned out through mainly empty streets in an attempt to flush out insurgents. At least one loud explosion rocked the city early Wednesday morning, but the source of the blast was not known.\n"A lot of this is like bird hunting. You rustle it up and see what comes up," said Marine Col. Stephen W. Davis, commander of the operation made of troops in Marine Regimental Combat Team 2.\nShortly before the U.S. assault began, insurgents fired a mortar at a dam facility where hundreds of Marines are based.\n"Hold on, we'll be there in a minute," yelled Marine Sgt. Shawn Bryan, of Albuquerque, N.M., assigned to the 3rd Marine Battalion, from a platform on the dam as Marines scrambled into vehicles to try to locate the attackers.\nEarlier this month, American forces conducted a weeklong operation in the city of Qaim and other Iraqi towns near the Syrian border aimed at rooting out militants allied to al-Zarqawi and destroying their smuggling routes into Syria. At least 125 militants were killed in that operation, along with nine U.S. Marines, the military said.\nSyria is under intense pressure from the United States and the Iraqi government to stop foreign fighters from entering Iraq across their porous 380-mile border.\n"There are responsibilities of the Syrian government to hamper and prevent this flow of terrorists from coming across," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said at a joint news conference with visiting Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini.\nViolence continued elsewhere Wednesday, a day after four U.S. soldiers were killed, pushing the number of U.S. troops killed in four days to 14, part of a surge in attacks that also have killed about 60 Iraqis.\nA roadside bomb exploded next to a U.S. patrol in Baghdad, wounding one American soldier, U.S. military and police officials said.\nA suicide car bomber also blew himself up but missed a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad, police Capt. Firas Ghaiti said. The attack left one civilian dead and four wounded.\nGunmen killed Iraqi army Capt. Ali Abdul-Amir as he left his house in the town of Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, army Col. Abdullah al-Shammari said.\nIn Mosul, Col. Mukhlef Moussa of the Facility Protection Service, a U.S.-trained civilian guard force, was shot to death as he walked on the campus of Mosul University, Brig. Gen. Wathiq Mohammed said.\nIn Dahuk, 250 miles northwest of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed a traffic policeman and wounded 10 people, including seven policemen, police Col. Nazim Silevani said.\nSunni and Shiite clerics and politicians also have been intensifying efforts to find a way out of a sectarian crisis that threatens a civil war. Sunnis opposed to the new government are thought to make up the insurgency's core, and some Sunni extremists have been attacking Shiites.\nAbout 3,000 Iraqi Shiite Muslim protesters staged a noisy demonstration Wednesday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, to denounce recent comments made by a prominent Sunni leader who accused a Shiite militia of killing Sunni clerics.\nThe claim that al-Zarqawi had fled the country came a day after a message in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq appeared on another Web site, saying the Jordanian-born militant was wounded. U.S. officials cautioned they did not know if that posting was authentic and privately said the information also may have been designed to mislead on purpose.\nAlso Wednesday, the Iraqi government said security forces have killed Sabhan Ahmad Ramadan, a senior al-Zarqawi aide in northern Iraq.
(05/26/05 2:25am)
LONDON -- Amnesty International branded the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay a human rights failure Wednesday, calling it "the gulag of our time" as it released a report that offers stinging criticism of the United States and its detention centers around the world.\nThe 308-page report accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections and said Washington has instead created a new lexicon for abuse and torture.\nIn the harshest rebuke yet of U.S. detention policies, Amnesty International called for the camp to be closed.\n"Attempts to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak, such as 'environmental manipulation, stress positions and sensory manipulation,' was one of the most damaging assaults on global values," the annual report said.\nThe U.S. Department of Defense said abuse allegations are investigated and it was continuing to evaluate whether detainees should be sent home.\nReview tribunals also "provided an appropriate venue for detainees to meaningfully \nchallenge their enemy combatant designation," the department said in a statement.\n"The detention of enemy combatants is not criminal in nature, but to prevent them from continuing to fight against the United States in the war on terrorism," it added. "This is an unprecedented level of process being provided to our enemies in a time of war." the Department of Defense said, adding that abuse allegations are investigated.\nSome 540 prisoners from about 40 countries are being held at the U.S. detention center in Cuba. More than 200 others have been released, though some have been jailed in their countries; many have been held for three years without charge.\n"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time," Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan said.\nThe report also warned other governments from Sudan to Congo that victims in other conflicts around the world were being forgotten in the fight against terrorism.\nAt least 10 cases of abuse or mistreatment have been documented and investigated at Guantanamo. Several other cases are pending.\n"During the year, released detainees alleged that they had been tortured or ill-treated while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Evidence also emerged that others, including Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and the International Committee of the Red Cross, had found that such abuses had been committed against detainees," the report said.\nThe Geneva-based ICRC is the only independent group to have access to the Guantanamo detainees. Amnesty has been refused access to the prison camp, although it was allowed to watch the pretrial hearings for the military commissions. The commissions, which could try 15 prisoners facing charges, were stalled by a U.S. court's decision that is under appeal.\n"There's a myth going around that there's some kind of rule of law being applied," said Rob Freer, an Amnesty official who specializes in detention issues.\nAmnesty acknowledged the human rights deficiencies came with a rash of terrorist actions, including the televised beheadings of captives in Iraq.\nKhan also singled out Sudan as one of the worst human rights violations of last year, saying that not only had the Sudanese government turned its back on its own people, but that the United Nations and the African Union acted too late to help.\nShe also said the African Union needed to do more about speaking out against human rights abuses in Africa, singling out Zimbabwe. She talked about human rights failures being compounded by big business' complicity.\nAmnesty's report also pointed to Haiti, saying human rights violators were allowed to regain positions of power after armed rebels and former soldiers ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last year.\nAmnesty said Congo's government offered no effective response to the systematic rape of tens of thousands of women and children and warned of a downward spiral of lawlessness and instability in Afghanistan.\nIn Asia, the report said violence and discrimination against women was rampant last year, ranging from acid attacks for unpaid dowries in Bangladesh to forced abortion in China, rape by soldiers in Nepal and domestic beatings in Australia.\nAmnesty also said the ouster of the conservative Islamic Taliban regime in 2001 by U.S.-led forces did little to bring relief to women.\nIn the western Herat region, Amnesty reported that hundreds of women had set fire to themselves to escape violence in the home or forced marriage.\n"Fear of abductions by armed groups forced women to restrict their movements outside the home," Amnesty said. Even within families, "extreme restrictions" on women's behavior and high levels of violence persisted, it said.\nWhile criticizing the detention mission at Guantanamo, Amnesty said one sign of hope was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in June that let prisoners challenge the basis of their detention. It also said it was encouraging that Britain's high court lords ruled on the indefinite detention without charge or trial of "terrorist suspects."\n"The challenge for the human rights movement is to harness the power of civil society and push governments to deliver on their human rights promises," Khan said.
(05/26/05 2:24am)
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- Runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks was indicted Wednesday on two charges of lying to police about being kidnapped.\nThe 32-year-old woman faces one felony count making of false statement and one misdemeanor count of making a false police report.\nThe felony charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and the misdemeanor up to a year in jail if she is convicted. She could also face up to $11,000 in fines and be ordered to reimburse authorities for the cost of the search.\n"We believe this is a reasonable next step in the case. We believe the grand jury made the right decision," said Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter.\n"At some point you just can't lie to the police," he said.\nA bench warrant will be issued for Wilbanks' arrest within the next few days, he added. He said he was confident arrangements could be made for Wilbanks to turn herself in. No court date has been set.\nThe indictment does not rule out a plea agreement to lesser charges, Porter said. Authorities had said they were talking to the Wilbanks family about a possible deal.\nThe office of Wilbanks' attorney, Lydia Sartain, said no statements will be issued until next week. Sartain has said she does not think Wilbanks committed a crime in Gwinnett County. Authorities in Albuquerque had said they would not charge Wilbanks.\n"The citizens of the county will be ill-served by an attempted prosecution," Sartain said before Wednesday's charges were announced. She did not return a phone call seeking further comment Wednesday morning.\nWilbanks, a nurse, had claimed she was going for a jog before she disappeared from her Duluth home on April 26, four days before her planned wedding.\nWhile Georgia authorities looked for her, Wilbanks took a bus to Las Vegas and then Albuquerque, N.M. There, she called authorities with a story about having been abducted and sexually assaulted.\nUnder questioning, she recanted and said she fled Georgia because of unspecified personal issues. She returned to Georgia on April 30, the day she was to have been married in a ceremony with 14 bridesmaids and groomsmen.\nHer family has said she entered a medical facility after her return but did not say where.\nHer disappearance prompted a massive search and nationwide publicity. City, county and state officials spent about $50,000 looking for her.\nSeveral state and county agencies already said they will not ask her to reimburse them for a total of $10,000 spent in additional search costs. The city of Duluth still is seeking repayment of about $40,000 and Mayor Shirley Lassetter said her city attorney has been in negotiations with Sartain.
(05/23/05 6:26pm)
CAIRO, Egypt -- Egyptian authorities arrested the fourth-highest official in the powerful Muslim Brotherhood early Sunday, one of 25 members of the outlawed movement picked up in a major crackdown ahead of a referendum on presidential election rules the group opposes.\nMahmoud Ezzat, secretary-general of the Islamist group and head of its Cairo operations, is the highest-profile Brotherhood arrest since 1996, said a police official. Egyptian police policy is to only speak to reporters on condition of anonynmity.\nEzzat and 24 others were picked up in dawn sweeps of several provinces, police and Brotherhood officials said. Brotherhood deputy leader Mohammed Habib confirmed Ezzat's arrest. Three of the others also held senior positions within the banned group, which advocates the peaceful establishment of an Islamic state.\nProsecutors have begun questioning the detainees on charges of membership in -- or in the case of Ezzat and the three others, leadership of -- a banned group and organizing demonstrations without a permission from the government.\n"The arrest is an escalation against the Brotherhood and a message to the group that no one is beyond arrest," Abdel-Galil el-Sharnoubi, editor of the group's Web site, said.\nThe Egyptian regime "is arresting the leading figures who are capable of moving the people in the street to boycott the \nreferendum. Arrests, at this time, affect the people stance," he added.\nWednesday's referendum allows Egyptians to approve or reject changes to the constitution that will allow the nation's first multi-party presidential elections in \nSeptember.\nOpponents of President Hosni Mubarak, including the Brotherhood, have urged a boycott of the referendum, saying the changes will provide little more than window dressing to the current yes-no, one candidate system.\nMubarak, who has served 24 years as president, has always been handily reinstalled in referendums in which there were no other candidates. The Brotherhood commands a substantial following in Egypt and it alone among Mubarak's opponents could prove a tough challenger.\nMore than 800 members of the outlawed Brotherhood have been detained in connection with May protests in several Egyptian provinces, part of a growing opposition campaign for truly democratic political reform.\nAt times, the Brotherhood has protested alongside secular opposition groups that also have complained steps toward multi-candidate presidential elections don't go far enough.\nEzzat, 60, was arrested under former President Gamal Abdel Nasser who banned the Brotherhood in 1954. Arrested in 1965 during the days of harsh crackdowns on a group that sought to overthrow the regime and replace it with an Islamic system, Ezzat was sentenced to 10 years in prison.\nHe was released in 1974. By then, the Brotherhood was heading toward peaceful advocacy of an Islamic system for Egypt.\nEzzat was arrested in 1995 -- once again an election year -- for his activities, and he was sentenced by a military court to five years in prison.
(05/23/05 6:25pm)
BUCHAREST, Romania -- Three Romanian journalists and their Iraqi-American guide were freed Sunday after nearly two months in captivity in Iraq, the president's office said.\nThe release came a day after five representatives from the Romanian Islamic and Cultural League traveled to Baghdad, where they joined Islamic groups in Iraq in urging the captors to free the captives.\n"They are unharmed and we will announce to the public when they will return to the country," said Adriana Saftoiu, a spokeswoman for Romanian President Traian Basescu.\nThe three Romanians -- newspaper reporter Ovidiu Ohanesian, TV reporter Marie-Jeanne Ion and cameraman Sorin Miscoci -- were kidnapped in Iraq on March 28, along with their Iraqi-American guide and translator, Mohammed Monaf.\nTheir kidnappers had threatened to kill the hostages unless Romania pulled its 800 troops out of Iraq. Basescu refused, saying Romania would not negotiate its foreign policy with the kidnappers or pay a ransom.\nA video aired on Al-Jazeera TV had shown the journalists in handcuffs with pistols pointed at their heads. Ion, a reporter for Prima TV, could be seen talking to the camera and clutching her hands as if pleading. In a separate audio message, they asked Romania's government to save their lives.\nMiscoci, of Prima TV, said he would be the first killed if the Romanian troops were not withdrawn. Al-Jazeera reported that Monaf, who has U.S. citizenship and is married to a Romanian, appealed to President Bush to intervene.\nIn recent weeks, Romanian authorities said they were in contact with the kidnappers and called on them not to kill the hostages. The government on Sunday gave no details about the conditions of their release.\nRomanians held rallies and prayer vigils urging the release of the three journalists and the guide.\n"It's over. The nightmare has ended. We are waiting for them to come home now," said Petre Mihai Bacanu, managing director of the newspaper that employs Ohanesian, Romania Libera.\nIon's father, Vasile Ion, said Basescu informed him about his daughter's release. Vasile Ion, a senator with the opposition Social Democratic Party, had urged Parliament to take a stand on the captors' demands.\n"I feel like a piece of me that was missing has now been restored," he told radio Europa FM. "I never lost hope."\nMiscoci's mother, Elena, thanked Basescu, the Arab community in Romania and the pan-Arabic television station Al-Jazeera for helping save her son. "I am happy ... I escaped from this continuous nightmare," she said.\nMore than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed in April 2003. Some kidnappers have sought ransom, while others pursued political motives such as the withdrawal of foreign companies and troops from Iraq. More than 30 hostages have been killed.
(05/23/05 6:24pm)
MEXICO CITY -- President Vicente Fox on Sunday defended his commitment to minorities and human rights on a U.S. radio program, in his first public response to his controversial comment that Mexicans take the U.S. jobs that "not even" blacks want.\nU.S. civil rights activist Jesse Jackson pressed the Mexican president for an apology for the remark that has strained already tense relations between U.S. blacks and Hispanics, during an interview on a Chicago gospel station.\n"I very much regret the misinterpretation," said Fox, touting laws created under his administration that outlaw discrimination and protect minorities.\nFox met with Jackson behind closed doors on Wednesday in Mexico City after the president's comments about blacks ignited a firestorm of criticism from the black community and angered the U.S. government. The president had explained himself only through his spokespeople until Sunday's on-the-air encounter with Jackson.\n"Why not apologize?" Jackson asked.\n"My government has proven its high commitment to human rights," responded Fox, adding that he is eager to work with minority groups in the United States to improve labor conditions. \n"That's why I feel so well in my conscience and well in my position: Because I am a passionate defender of human rights and integration of minorities and full respect to every person in his aspirations," Fox said. "My comment was fully oriented in that direction."\nJackson thanked Fox for "showing a contrite spirit."\nBut the 30-minute interview may not be the end of hard questions for Fox. Activist Al Sharpton has demanded that Fox apologize when the two meet Monday in Mexico City, 10 days after Fox's controversial comment.\nMany Mexicans were at first puzzled by the outcry over Fox's comment, saying that president was justified in his reaction to new U.S. immigration policies that include extending walls along the border and cracking down on illegal migrants.\nBut Fox's comment unveiled to the world Mexico's obsession with skin color, which dictates people's status in society in a way few Mexicans are comfortable discussing.\nMuch of Mexico's population is of mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry, and Indians are overwhelmingly poor with little access to education.\nJackson asked Fox whether any blacks served in his government. But it was not clear from his answer whether Fox -- who spoke in English -- fully heard or understood the question. Few if any people from Mexico's tiny black population serve in the top ranks of Mexican government.
