July Death Toll
They are reunited now...
Lyndon Johnson, 26, poses with his new bride, former Lady Bird Taylor, in front of the capitol in Washington in this 1934 family photo from the Johnson Library. Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady who championed conservation and worked tenaciously for the political career of her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday, July 11, 2007, a family spokeswoman said. She was 94. (AP Photo/Johnson Library)
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Unless it is done so for non-profit educational reasons
-as here, on the Lugubrious Blog!
And the educational lesson here is:
death is NOT the end.
Capisce, A.P.?
A Diva Is Dead -
Beverly Sills "is no more"...
Our Loss; Heaven's Choirs' Gain!
In this undated graphic released by Marvel Entertainment, Inc.,, six of his fellow Superheroes carry the casket bearing the remains of Marvel comic book character Captain America. After 66 years of battling villains from Adolph Hitler to the Red Skull, Captain America will be laid to rest in the in the latest issue of Marvel Comics, which will hit the newstands on July 5, 2007. (AP Photo/Marvel Entertainment, Inc.)
Marvel buried Captain America - just in time for the 4th of July too!
No more feeling superior to 90% of the All-Star Squadron, All-Winners Squad, original JSA, Liberty Legion, original Global Guardians, Invaders, Crusaders, original Seven Soldiers of Victory, Freedom Fighters and the like - now, you too have bitten the dust, Cappo!
Suffice it to say, no one is eternal - NO ONE.
Not even fictional fluffy ones.
Cappo joins a long list now of recent casualties in the four-color world of superheroic schtick - a list that includes most of the "New Warriors" stand-ins, most of the "Alpha Flight" team, most of Uncle Sam's original team of "Freedom Fighters" indeed, the original Charlton heroes known as The Question and Blue Beetle, an ever-growing list of casualties of DC heroes that is nearing the 200 mark now - apparently including the one true Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas.
Speaking of Cappo - we can also talk about the TV demise of Farfour then...
As surely as some conspiracy theorists will claim that DC's Deadshot did Cappo in; there will be those who will claim that WDW's Mickey is behind the unceremonious killing off of Farfour...
Back to true demises now: among the luminaries who have, seemingly (to the naked eye only, really) been extinguished, there is Opera diva Beverly Sills (pictured above,) the Brooklyn-born star of opera, who was gravely ill and finally succumbed to cancer just BEFORE the 4th of July, at the age of 78.
A bit of synchronicity for me there, as I couldn't help but notice that her daughter Meredith has the nickname of "Muffy" - the same as one of the three daughters of one Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, whose whereabouts these days were of no interest to anyone until so very recently, since the latest tragedy that impacts the Hart clan (as it also impacts upon the Horsemen clan as well, unfortunately...)
I wonder what were the odds of hearing about two grown women being embarrassed in the exact same way, both times due to one or several deaths in their entourage/family - on the same week even...?
But I am digressing...
Actor Charles Lane attended a special tribute to him, which included a live interview and screening of the 1962 film 'The Music Man', at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, California, back in October the 23rd, 2005. Lane, the prolific character actor whose lean, bespectacled face was far better known to moviegoers than his name, died Monday July 10th, 2007, in Los Angeles at the venerable age of 102.
REUTERS/LP Embellishing
Picture (if still visible): REUTERS/Phil McCarten
Charles Lane and Melvin B. Lane both died this month - I am not sure if they were related. Likely not.
Jessie Davis and Chloe Davis sure are.
If you see their names below, amongst the labels for this post, and do not recognize them, you will be able to read the horrific tale of their end right away - in the comments section. Jessie was a 26-year-old. And Chloe was an unborn child.
And they were both murdered by the one person who supposedly loved them more than anything else in the world.
May they rest in peace - as their presumed assassin is punished for this unscrupulous despicable act.
A photo from the 1960s shows Bergman teaching his son Daniel how to handle a
camera while Kibi Laretai, Bergman's wife and Daniel's mother, watches [AFP]
Ingmar Bergman is no more (or, really, no longer "with us") -
he died at 89.
And he was not the only great film director to leave us this month either - Michelangelo Antonioni also died on the very last day of this torrid month of July, at the age of 94.
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Labels: Antonioni, Bartholomew Kinch, Beverly Sills, Bill Walsh, Charles Lane, Ingmar Bergman, Jake, Jessie Davis and Chloe Davis, Lady Bird Johnson, Scott Coolbaugh, Skip Prosser, Tammy Faye, Tom Snyder
posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ @ 3:59 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Back to real life again...
Another burial - A REAL FUNERAL - kicked off the month; that of Jessie Davis and her unborn child who was to be named Chloe.
Funeral held for slain pregnant woman
By THOMAS J. SHEERAN, Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 30, 6:12 PM ET
AKRON, Ohio - Funeral services were held Saturday for a pregnant woman whose body was found in a park more than a week after she went missing.
Family members sobbed quietly as they approached the casket for 26-year-old Jessie Davis in front of about 750 mourners at the House of the Lord church.
"Our faith is challenged by what's going on," said Bishop F. Josephus Johnson II.
Authorities say Davis was killed by her police officer boyfriend in her home near North Canton on June 14. Her body was found nine days later after thousands of volunteers spent three days searching the area.
Her mother, Patricia Porter, said that even at a young age, her daughter wanted to help the needy through Christian missionary work.
"She always had a heart for God and a heart for people," Porter said.
Porter said her daughter had been a committed God-fearing person after doing overseas missionary work but at some point "she took a wrong turn somewhere."
Davis realized in church a few weeks ago that she needed to reform her life, her mother said. At the time Davis was unmarried and pregnant for a second time, apparently by the same married man now charged in her slaying.
Porter said her daughter told her, "Mom, I feel like God has really spoken to me today because I need to get my life in order."
Canton police officer Bobby Cutts Jr., 30, has been charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of Davis and her unborn baby, who was to be named Chloe. Davis had been due to deliver the baby Tuesday.
Marvel Comics buries Captain America
By COLLEEN LONG, Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 30, 4:48 PM ET
NEW YORK - It's a funeral fit for a superhero.
In the drizzling rain at Arlington National Cemetery, thousands of grieving patriots solemnly watch as the pall bearers — Iron Man, the Black Panther, Ben Grimm and Ms. Marvel — carry a casket draped with an American flag.
Yes, folks, Captain America is dead and buried in the latest issue of Marvel Comics, due on newsstands the morning after Independence Day. After 66 years of battling villains from Adolf Hitler to the Red Skull, the red, white and blue leader of the Avengers was felled by an assassin's bullet on the steps of a New York federal courthouse.
He was headed to court after refusing to sign the government's Superhero Registration Act, a move that would have revealed his true identity. A sniper who fired from a rooftop was captured as police and Captain America's military escort were left to cope with chaos in the streets.
But the sniper didn't act alone, and didn't even fire the shot that killed the captain.
Writer Jeph Loeb has been busy working through the stages of grief in the most recent issues of Marvel Comics. A book centered on Wolverine dealt with denial; one with the Avengers covered anger; and Spider-Man battled depression.
With the story line so relevant to present-day politics, and the timing of the latest issue so precise, it's hard not to think the whole thing is one big slam on the government.
"Part of it grew out of the fact that we are a country that's at war, we are being perceived differently in the world," Loeb said. "He wears the flag and he is assassinated — it's impossible not to have it at least be a metaphor for the complications of present day."
But Loeb says he was working with more personal material: the death of his 17-year-old son from cancer.
"So many people have lost their sons and daughters over the years, for the greater good or to cancer or other horrible things," said Loeb, an executive producer for NBC's "Heroes." "I wanted this to be something people would identify with."
In the final frames of the book, the Falcon delivers a eulogy asking superheros old and young to stand up and honor Captain America. Loeb did a similar thing at his son's funeral.
"It was this moment where I realized that we were all different, but this boy, my son, made us all connected," he said. "It was powerful."
Captain America, whose secret identity was Steve Rogers, was an early member of the pantheon of comic book heroes that began with Superman in the 1930s.
He landed on newsstands in March 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor — delivering a punch to Hitler on the cover of his first issue, a sock-in-the-jaw reminder that there was a war on and the United States was not involved.
Since then, Marvel Entertainment Inc., has sold more than 200 million copies of Captain America magazine in 75 countries.
In the most recent story line, he became involved in a superhero "civil war," taking up sides against Iron Man in the registration controversy, climaxed by his arrest and assassination.
Marvel says you never know what will happen. He may make it back from the dead after all, although Loeb says that question isn't really important right now.
"The question is, how does the world continue without this hero?" he said. "If that story of his return gets told further down the line, great. But everyone's still been dealing with his loss.
"They aren't going to wake up and it's a dream, like it's some episode of 'Dallas.'"
___
On the Net:
http://www.marvelcomics.com
Hamas TV kills off Mickey Mouse double
Fri Jun 29, 2:48 PM ET
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A Mickey Mouse lookalike who preached Islamic domination on a Hamas-affiliated children's television program was beaten to death in the show's final episode Friday.
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In the final skit, "Farfour" was killed by an actor posing as an Israeli official trying to buy Farfour's land. At one point, the mouse called the Israeli a "terrorist."
"Farfour was martyred while defending his land," said Sara, the teen presenter. He was killed "by the killers of children," she added.
The weekly show, featuring a giant black-and-white rodent with a high-pitched voice, had attracted worldwide attention because the character urged Palestinian children to fight Israel. It was broadcast on Hamas-affiliated Al Aqsa TV.
Station officials said Friday that Farfour was taken off the air to make room for new programs. Station manager Mohammed Bilal said he did not know what would be shown instead.
Israeli officials have denounced the program, "Tomorrow's Pioneers," as incendiary and outrageous. The program was also opposed by the state-run Palestinian Broadcasting Corp., which is controlled by Fatah, Hamas' rival.
Triple meurtre: Un ex-juge parmi les victimes
2007-07-01 16:52:37
La police tente de faire la lumière sur les circonstances entourant la mort de l'ancien magistrat Alban Garon, de son épouse et d'une voisine.
La police d'Ottawa poursuit son enquête à la suite du meurtre de trois personnes à Ottawa.
Des proches ont indiqué que les corps retrouvés samedi matin sont ceux du juge fédéral à la retraite Alban Garon, de son épouse Raymonde et d'une voisine, Marie-Claire Beniskos. La police n'a toutefois pas encore officiellement confirmé l'identité des victimes.
Appelés vers 10 h 30 samedi matin, les policiers ont découvert les corps des trois victimes dans un condominium du luxueux édifice où résidait l'ancien magistrat.
Des informations préliminaires laissent croire qu'elles auraient été retrouvées ligotées. Les enquêteurs ne détiennent aucun suspect pour le moment.
Selon des voisins, l'immeuble est protégé par un important dispositif de sécurité, ce qui laisse penser que les victimes connaissaient peut-être le, ou les meurtriers.
Alban Garon a notamment été juge en chef de la Cour canadienne de l'impôt.
Crews tackle Utah wildfire that killed 3
Sun Jul 1, 6:01 PM ET
NEOLA, Utah - A wildfire that has scorched about 46 square miles in northeastern Utah and killed three people has prompted the evacuation of hundreds of people from nearby towns and forced authorities to close a national forest to the public.
The fire started Friday morning north of Neola, about 100 miles east of Salt Lake City, and on Sunday morning crews had it about 5 percent contained. The cause had not been determined.
The fire began spreading into the Ashley National Forest Sunday afternoon, prompting federal authorities to close it to public use.
The small communities of Whiterocks, Farm Creek, Paradise and Tridell were evacuated Saturday. Some residents in Tridell had been allowed to return.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said about 300 people are under a mandatory evacuation. Another 150 homes in Dryfork Canyon, about 8 miles northeast of the fire, could be threatened by Tuesday, said Derek Jensen, a FEMA spokesman.
"We are seeing extreme fire behavior and the potential for growth is still there. We haven't had a change in weather or change in fuel type or dryness," said Louis Haynes, a spokesman for the national forest.
At nearby Vernal, there was little wind Sunday, the temperatures hit 95 degrees and midday humidity was only 10 percent, according to the National Weather Service.
Edson Gardner, of Fort Duchesne, went to Farm Creek to evacuate his mother, whose home was burned to the ground.
"It came down the canyon like a herd of horses," he said Saturday. "The sheriff told us we had five minutes to get out."
Uintah County Sheriff Jeff Merrell said buildings had been destroyed but he didn't have a count.
A U.S. Forest Service command team that travels the country fighting the largest fires joined local crews Sunday and took over direction of the firefighting efforts.
Eleven-year-old Duane Houston escaped the fire but his father, 43-year-old Tracy Houston, and his grandfather, 63-year-old George Houston, were killed by the flames Friday as they worked in a hay field, authorities said. The owner of the field, 75-year-old Roger Roberson, died at a hospital, officials said Saturday.
The Houstons had gone to buy hay from Roberson, and were helping him move irrigation sprayers on his field in an attempt to block the flames.
Duane said he was told to run for their truck as flames and smoke filled the air.
"I ran and couldn't find the truck, so I kept running through trees, climbed two fences and followed the road," he told The Salt Lake Tribune. He was treated at a hospital and released.
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman's request for aid from FEMA was granted on Sunday. A federal grant will pay 75 percent of the state's eligible firefighting costs.
In Montana, fire managers on Sunday were reducing personnel assigned to a blaze that had burned nearly 6 square miles in the Gallatin National Forest. Evacuation orders remained in effect Sunday for several dozen summer homes, the Madison Arm Resort, some campgrounds and a ranger station.
In California, crews battled a wildfire Sunday that had blackened more than 700 acres of brush in a rugged area of Santa Barbara County near popular campsites and swimming holes.
That fire, which started Saturday evening, was 50 percent contained Sunday morning, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Robert Rainwater said. The blaze had closed some campgrounds, but no residents had been ordered to leave their homes, he said. The cause of the fire was under investigation.
Fire crews north of Los Angeles had a 19-square-mile blaze 90 percent contained, state fire department spokesman Shawn Sternick said. Twelve houses and six other buildings had been destroyed since the fire broke out a week ago in steep canyons south of the San Joaquin Valley, officials said.
Opera star Beverly Sills dies of cancer
By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 3, 1:07 AM ET
NEW YORK (AP) — Beverly Sills, the Brooklyn-born opera diva who was a global icon of can-do American culture with her dazzling voice, bubbly personality and management moxie in the arts world, died Monday of cancer, her manager said. She was 78.
Weeks after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, Sills died Monday evening at her Manhattan home, her family and doctor at her side, said her manager, Edgar Vincent. She had never been a smoker.
Beyond the music world, Sills gained fans worldwide with a style that matched her childhood nickname, Bubbles. The relaxed, red-haired diva appeared frequently on "The Tonight Show," "The Muppet Show" and in televised performances with her friend Carol Burnett.
Together, they did a show from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera called "Sills and Burnett at the Met," singing rip-roaring duets with one-liners thrown in.
Long after the public stopped hearing her sing in 1980, Sills' rich, infectious laughter filled the nation's living rooms as she hosted live TV broadcasts, conducting backstage interviews for the Metropolitan Opera's high-definition movie theater performances as recently as last season.
Sills first gained fame with a career that helped put Americans on the international map of opera stars. She graced the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazines.
Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, she quickly became Bubbles, an endearment coined by the doctor who delivered her, noting that she was born blowing a bubble of spit from her little mouth.
In 1947, the same mouth produced vocal glory for her operatic stage debut in Philadelphia in a bit role in Bizet's "Carmen." Sills became a star with the New York City Opera, where she first performed in 1955 in Johann Strauss Jr.'s "Die Fledermaus."
"She was one great lady," New York City Opera chairwoman Susan Baker said. "She was just a life force — brilliant, witty and warm, funny, exquisitely talented. ... In addition to being an icon of the American opera world, she went on to become a great leader in the world of the arts."
But it was not until 1975, when she was already famous, that she made her Met debut in Rossini's "The Siege of Corinth." In her memoir, she said longtime Met general manager Rudolf Bing "had a thing about American singers, especially those who had not been trained abroad: He did not think very much of them."
Abroad, Sills sang at such famed opera houses as Milan's La Scala, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, The Royal Opera in London and the Deutsche Opera in Berlin.
She retired from the stage in 1980 at age 51 after a three-decade singing career and began a new life as an executive and leader of New York's performing arts community. First, she became general director of the New York City Opera.
Under her stewardship, the City Opera, known as the "people's opera company," became the first in the nation to use English supertitles, translating for the audience by projecting lyrics onto a screen above the stage.
In 1994, Sills became chairwoman of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She was the first woman and first former artist in that position.
After leading Lincoln Center through eight boom years and launching a redevelopment project, she retired in 2002, saying she wanted "to smell the flowers a little bit."
Six months later, she was back as chairwoman of the Met.
"So I smelled the roses and developed an allergy," she joked. "I need new mountains to climb."
As Met chairwoman, Sills was instrumental in proposing Peter Gelb, now general manager, for his position. He helped push up ticket sales and pull the Met into a larger spotlight.
Citing personal reasons, Sills bowed out as chairwoman in January 2005, saying, "I know that I have achieved what I set out to do." At the time, she had recently suffered a fall and was using a wheelchair.
Still, the word around New York was that if you needed to raise several million dollars in one night, you could turn to Sills, whose name drew donors in droves.
Described by former Mayor Ed Koch as "an empire unto herself," Sills sat on several corporate boards, including those of Macy's and American Express.
Sills raised money not only for Lincoln Center but also non-artistic causes such as the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the March of Dimes, a job she called "one of the most rewarding in my life."
She also lent her name and voice to the Multiple Sclerosis Society; her daughter, Meredith, has MS and was born deaf.
At a 2005 Manhattan benefit for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Sills told an audience that included her daughter: "One of the things that separates the two-legged creatures from the four-legged ones is compassion."
Added the host for that evening, Barbara Walters: "She can go from doing a duet with Placido Domingo to doing a duet with a Muppet."
Sills' nurturing extended to her autistic son and to her husband, Peter Greenough, a former journalist who lived with her at their home as his Alzheimer's disease progressed. He died last year.
For most of her life, she had balanced the challenges of her private life with the joy of singing, stepping onstage and transforming herself into characters that made her forget her troubles.
She was acclaimed for performances in such operas as Douglas Moore's "The Ballad of Baby Doe," Massenet's "Manon" and Handel's "Julius Ceasar."
Her 1958 appearances as Baby Doe would become among her best known, in a rags-to-riches tale of a silver-mine millionaire who leaves his wife for his sweetheart and eventually dies penniless.
"I loved the role," Sills wrote in her 1976 autobiography. "I absorbed her so completely in those five weeks of studying the opera that I knew her inside and out. I was Baby Doe."
But as a child star, she was not above singing radio commercials with lyrics such as: "Rinso White, Rinso Bright, happy little washday song."
A coloratura soprano, Sills was for years the prima donna of the New York City Opera, achieving stardom with critically acclaimed performances in Verdi's "La Traviata" and Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor," among dozens of roles.
She is credited with reviving musical styles that had gathered dust, such as the Three Queens — the trio of heroines of Donizetti's "Anna Bolena," "Maria Stuarda" and "Roberto Devereaux" — in which she starred as Elizabeth, a role she called her greatest artistic achievement.
Stage fright was foreign to her. Before curtain time, she would make phone calls or munch on an apple, then sweep on to deliver her roles with exuberance.
She spoke like she sang: words poured out, sprinkled with good-humored gossip and insights, cheeky jokes and probing questions.
She grew up in a "typical middle-class American Jewish family," as she put it. As a child, she took voice, dance and elocution lessons and at 4 appeared on a local radio show called "Uncle Bob's Rainbow Hour."
When she was 7, her name was changed to Beverly Sills — a friend of her mother's thought it was a more suitable stage name — and she won first place in the "Major Bowes Amateur Hour," going on to sing on the radio, at ladies' luncheons and at bar mitzvahs. At 16, billed as "the youngest prima donna in captivity," she joined the touring J.J. Shubert operetta company, starring in Gilbert and Sullivan productions.
Her opera debut came in 1947, in the role of Frasquita in "Carmen" with the Philadelphia Civic Opera. She also performed in the Catskills and at a Manhattan after-hours club.
Sills' artistic pinnacle may well have been her 1966 City Opera performance as Cleopatra in Handel's "Julius Caesar."
"When the performance was over, I knew that something extraordinary had taken place," Sills wrote. "I knew that I had sung as I had never sung before, and I needed no newspapers the next day to reassure me."
Besides Greenough's three children from a previous marriage, the couple had two children of their own, Peter Jr., known as "Bucky", and Meredith, known as "Muffy."
Former cabinet minister Gullage dies at 63
Wed Jul 4, 1:40 PM
ST. JOHNS (CBC) - Former cabinet minister Eric Gullage, who pushed a plan to amalgamate Newfoundland and Labrador municipalities during the Clyde Wells era, has died of cancer.
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Gullage, 63, passed away Tuesday.
A former St. John's city councillor, Gullage leapt to provincial politics in 1987, when he won a surprise byelection victory for the Liberals in the St. John's-area district of Waterford Kenmount.
The byelection presaged the Liberals' breakthrough in the 1989 general election, with wins in several city-area seats.
As municipal affairs minister, Gullage advanced proposals on amalgamating towns and cities, including an option to make a "supercity" in the St. John's area.
Cabinet, however, backed away from that model in St. John's, instead distributing unincorporated land to several municipalities on the northeast Avalon Peninsula.
In an interview with CBC News last fall, Gullage said amalgamation still made sense, and neighbouring communities were competing with each other rather than planning services jointly. "That was unhealthy, and certainly uneconomic and didn't make any business sense at all," he said.
Gullage was defeated in the 1993 election. He was later appointed commissioner of the review tribunal of the former Workers' Compensation Commission.
Six Canadians, one Afghan killed as armoured vehicle hit by roadside bomb
Wed Jul 4, 10:39 PM
By Stephanie Levitz
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - A powerful roadside bomb killed six Canadian soldiers and an Afghan interpreter Wednesday, overwhelming the sturdy armour of a vehicle designed to withstand mine blasts as it was moving along a gravel road in southern Afghanistan.
The RG-31 Nyala patrol vehicle is considered one of the military's strongest in protecting against the deadly scourge of roadside bombs, but it failed to save the lives of the seven people inside its armoured body.
Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, the top Canadian commander in Afghanistan, said it's not clear why this particular bomb managed to defeat the Nyala's defences.
An investigation is underway and until it's completed it won't be known whether the vehicle's use should be questioned, he said.
Wednesday's blast was the deadliest for Canadians since Easter Sunday, April 8, when another roadside bomb killed six Canadian soldiers in what was then the worst single-day toll for the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. Those six were inside a LAV-3, another light armoured vehicle.
The identities of four of the dead were released late Wednesday afternoon: Cpl. Cole Bartsch, of Whitecourt, Alta.; Capt. Matthew Johnathan Dawe and Pte. Lane Watkins, from Clearwater, Man., all of 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Edmonton and Master Cpl. Colin Bason, a reservist from The Royal Westminster Regiment based in New Westminster, B.C.
The next of kin of the other two killed have not yet agreed to the release of their names.
Dawe, 27, was identified by the Kingston Whig-Standard newspaper as the commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion's C company.
Dawe, midway through a tour of Afghanistan, was in charge of Pte. Joel Wiebe, Sgt. Christos Karigiannis and Cpl. Stephen Bouzane when their unarmoured Gator vehicle was blasted by a roadside bomb June 20, the Whig-Standard reported. All three were killed.
Dawe's father, Peter, a Kingston resident, is a retired Canadian Forces lieutenant-colonel and two of Dawe's bothers have also served in Afghanistan.
A statement by 39 Canadian Brigade Group, to which Bason's Royal Westminister Regiment belonged, said: "Cpl. Bason was a seven-year member of the 'Westies,' joining in April 2000."
"During his career, Cpl. Bason attained the appointment of master corporal and relinquished his appointment in order to participate in the (Afghan) tour. Cpl. Bason, as do all reserve soldiers, volunteered to go over to Afghanistan to help the Afghan people in their ongoing effort to establish a society founded on freedom, democracy and universally accepted human rights."
"Cpl. Bason died doing what he wanted to do. Our heart-felt sympathies are with the Bason family and the families of the other five soldiers killed with Cpl. Bason."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper a statement in Ottawa saying: "It is with deep sorrow that I have learned of today's tragic event in Afghanistan that took the lives of six Canadian soldiers."
"On behalf of all Canadians, my most sincere condolences go out to the family, friends and colleagues...They are all in our thoughts and prayers"
Altogether, 66 Canadian soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2002, along with one diplomat.
The six soldiers were returning to a forward operating base after a joint mission with Afghan security forces around 11 a.m. local time when their vehicle struck the improvised explosive device, Grant said.
The vehicle was on a well-travelled route, used by army and locals alike, in an area of Kandahar province considered among the safer zones.
The troops had been on a cordon-and-search operation, following intelligence that Taliban militants were in the area. They had been passing through the village of Salavat, 20 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city, when the bomb went off.
It's not the first time a Canadian soldier has been killed while riding in a Nyala.
In October, Trooper Mark Andrew Wilson died from injuries sustained when his Nyala was hit by an improvised explosive device - or IED - in the same district.
Though the military has said the rising use of roadside bombs is a sign of a desperate insurgency, their deadly blasts have claimed more lives during the current rotation of Canadian troops than any other weapons - 19 of the 22 soldiers killed so far.
"Clearly they have managed to kill six great young Canadians today which is an absolute tragedy, but the other parts of this is that they are killing lots of Afghans," Grant said.
"These are not the tactics of anything other than terrorists."
Grant pointed out while deadly IED explosions are widely reported, there are many that are discovered and neutralized by the military before causing any harm.
"We're not perfect and we do miss some, as we have seen today, but the battle against the Taliban and the battle against their choice of weapons, IED, is successful," Grant insisted.
"And more often than not we do find them and we do disarm them."
Though IED strikes seem to have become one of the Taliban's preferred tactics in Kandahar province, they have not been used with the same regularity in other areas.
In neighbouring Helmand province, British forces regularly engage in firefights with insurgents and say they haven't seen the same use of the explosives as their Canadian counterparts.
Lt.-Col. Jean Trudel, chief of staff for the National Command Element of Joint Task Force Afghanistan, said the growing use of IEDs represents a loss of control by Taliban in Afghanistan.
"They are incapable of success, they are incapable of winning," Trudel said in French.
"For every successful attack by insurgents with these devices, there are dozens of successful missions against the Taliban using conventional tactics and we find and detonate these explosives."
Grant maintained Panjwaii is still much safer than the nearby district of Zhari, despite Wednesday's attack and the one in June that killed the three Canadian soldiers.
Canadian forces have been conducting a series of operations in Zhari for months, trying to flush out the stubborn Taliban insurgency. But Panjwaii is often heralded as a military-reconstruction success story after heavy fighting last fall.
"Panjwaii is an area we are comfortable in travelling in, we have great relationships with local elders and the district leadership and the people on the ground," he said.
"So this is an area that while the Taliban operate in it, they do not operate freely."
The current rotation of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan is due to return home at the end of this month.
Grant said that as professional soldiers they know they'll need to grieve and move on.
"They understand that their work here is not done yet," Grant said.
"It won't be done till they get on the plane to go home."
The next Canadian battle group due to arrive in August are some 2,000 soldiers of the Royal 22nd Regiment, known as the Van Doos, from Valcartier, Que.
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Canadian death toll in Afghanistan: 66 soldiers, one diplomat
Since 2002, 66 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan. Here is a list of the deaths:
2007
July 4 - Cpl. Cole Bartsch, Capt. Matthew Johnathan Dawe and Pte. Lane Watkins, all of 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Edmonton; and Master Cpl. Colin Bason, a reservist from The Royal Westminster Regiment based in New Westminster, B.C., killed by a roadside bomb west of Kandahar city.
June 20 - Sgt. Christos Karigiannis, Cpl. Stephen Frederick Bouzane and Pte. Joel Vincent Wiebe, all of 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry killed by a roadside bomb west of Kandahar.
June 11 - Trooper Darryl Caswell, 25, of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, by a roadside bomb north of Kandahar.
May 30 - Master Cpl. Darrell Jason Priede, killed when a U.S. helicopter was reportedly shot down by the Taliban in Helmand province.
May 25 - Cpl. Matthew McCully, 25, killed by an improvised explosive device in Zhari District.
April 18 - Master Cpl. Anthony Klumpenhouwer, who served with elite special forces, died after falling from a communications tower while on duty conducting surveillance in Kandahar City.
April 11 - Master Cpl. Allan Stewart and Trooper Patrick James Pentland killed when their Coyote vehicle struck an improvised explosive device.
April 8 - Sgt. Donald Lucas, Cpl. Aaron E. Williams, Pte. Kevin V. Kennedy, Pte. David R. Greenslade, Cpl. Christopher P. Stannix and Cpl. Brent Poland killed when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb.
March 6 - Cpl. Kevin Megeney, 25, killed in accidental shooting at NATO base in Kandahar.
2006
Nov. 27 - Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Girouard and Cpl. Albert Storm killed by suicide car bomber.
Oct. 14 - Sgt. Darcy Tedford and Pte. Blake Williamson killed in ambush.
Oct. 7 - Trooper Mark Andrew Wilson killed by roadside bomb.
Oct. 3 - Sgt. Craig Gillam and Cpl. Robert Mitchell killed in series of mortar, rocket attacks.
Sept. 29 - Pte. Josh Klukie killed by explosion in Panjwaii while on foot patrol.
Sept. 18 - Pte. David Byers, Cpl. Shane Keating, Cpl. Keith Morley and Cpl. Glen Arnold killed in suicide bicycle bomb attack while on foot patrol in Panjwaii.
Sept. 4 - Pte. Mark Graham killed when two NATO planes accidentally strafed Canadian troops in Panjwaii district.
Sept. 3 - Sgt. Shane Stachnik, Warrant Officer Frank Robert Mellish, Pte. William Cushley and Warrant Officer Richard Francis Nolan killed in fighting in Panjwaii district.
Aug. 22 - Cpl. David Braun killed in suicide attack.
Aug. 11 - Cpl. Andrew Eykelenboom killed in suicide attack.
Aug. 9 - Master Cpl. Jeffrey Walsh killed by apparent accidental discharge of rifle.
Aug. 5 - Master Cpl. Raymond Arndt killed when his G-Wagon patrol vehicle collided with truck.
Aug. 3 - Cpl. Christopher Reid killed by roadside bomb. Sgt. Vaughan Ingram, Cpl. Bryce Keller and Pte. Kevin Dallaire killed in rocket-propelled grenade attack.
July 22 - Cpl. Francisco Gomez and Cpl. Jason Warren killed when car packed with explosives rammed their armoured vehicle.
July 9 - Cpl. Anthony Boneca killed in firefight.
May 17 - Capt. Nichola Goddard killed in Taliban ambush. She was first Canadian woman to be killed in action while serving in combat role.
April 22 - Cpl. Matthew Dinning, Bombardier Myles Mansell, Lt. William Turner and Cpl. Randy Payne killed when their G-Wagon destroyed by roadside bomb.
March 29 - Pte. Robert Costall killed in firefight with Taliban.
March 2 - Cpl. Paul Davis and Master Cpl. Timothy Wilson killed when their armoured vehicle ran off road.
Jan. 15 - Glyn Berry, British-born Canadian diplomat, killed in suicide bombing.
2005
Nov. 24 - Pte. Braun Woodfield killed when his armoured vehicle rolled over.
2004
Jan. 27 - Cpl. Jamie Murphy killed in suicide bombing while on patrol.
2003
Oct. 2 - Sgt. Robert Short and Cpl. Robbie Beerenfenger killed in roadside bombing.
2002
April 17 - Sgt. Marc Leger, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer, Pte. Richard Green and Pte. Nathan Smith killed when U.S. F-16 fighter mistakenly bombed Canadians.
60 feared killed after landslide engulfs bus in Mexico
1 hour, 25 minutes ago
PUEBLA, Mexico (AFP) - As many as sixty people were feared dead early Thursday after a landslide swallowed a bus in Puebla state in central Mexico.
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Emergency workers expressed little hope of recovering any survivors, as the army worked alongside them overnight at the sight of the accident to dig up the bus.
The first body, of a 40-year-old woman, was recovered by rescuers late Wednesday more than 12 hours after the accident, announced Mario Marin, the governor of Puebla.
But Marin refused to speculate on whether the rest of the passengers had perished in the accident.
The bus was completely engulfed in mud, earth and rocks in a sudden landslide around 7:00 am (1200 GMT) Wednesday morning near the mountain village of Zacacoapan, in the Sierra Negra area of Puebla.
"We know that there were more than 40 passengers on board, according to witnesses who said the bus was full," said a local official. Others said the number could have been as many as 60 passengers.
Rescuers worked for hours after the mishap hauling mud and rocks away from the accident scene before reaching the bus.
"We went all around the scene, we found that the bus is totally buried, and has a huge amount of earth on top of it. So we sent in machinery to try to clean it out," said Asuncion Cid, a town official from near the accident scene.
Hundreds of townspeople were distraught at the travelers' fate.
"I was driving my SUV, we were behind the bus when we saw the landslide," witness Mario Jimenez told AFP.
"We tried to dig with bare hands and shovels, but got nowhere," he said.
China nightclub blast kills 25, injures 33: report
2 hours, 35 minutes ago
By Chris Buckley
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BEIJING (Reuters) - An explosion in a nightclub in northeast China killed 25 people and injured 33, state media reported on Thursday as investigators sought to pin down the cause.
The blast hit an entertainment club in Benxi county, Liaoning province, at about 9 p.m. (1300 GMT) on Wednesday, the China News Service reported.
After authorities finished rescue efforts on Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency reported the death toll, citing province officials, but it did not say how badly hurt the injured were or explain the cause of the explosion.
A county official at the scene told Reuters that investigators were trying to work out whether the blast was accidental or deliberate.
"It's too early to announce any conclusions," said the official, who gave his surname a Chi.
The Communist Party chief of Liaoning province, Li Keqiang, ordered harsh punishment of anyone found to be responsible for the explosion, the news service said.
Also on Wednesday night, a fire swept through a cinema complex in Hengyang city in central Hunan province. Xinhua reported that one person died.
Israel kills three Hamas gunmen in Gaza raid
1 hour, 15 minutes ago (on the 4th of July that is!)
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli troops and amour crossed into the central Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing three Hamas gunmen in clashes, Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said.
They said the gunmen were killed in Gaza's al-Maghazi refugee camp. Two other gunmen were wounded, medics said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
The Islamist Hamas movement seized control of Gaza last month after routing the Fatah forces of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation, but has carried out armed incursions and air strikes in efforts to stop Palestinian militants firing rockets into the Jewish state.
On Wednesday, BBC journalist Alan Johnston was freed after being held for 114 days as a hostage in Gaza. Hamas struck a deal with the al Qaeda-inspired clan group that kidnapped him in March.
SOME ARE BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY -
OTHERS ARE CONVICTED ON THE 4TH OF JULY!
Rwandan convicted of killing Belgian peacekeepers
Wed Jul 4, 1:27 PM
By Julien Ponthus
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian court found a former Rwandan army major guilty on Wednesday of murdering 10 Belgian peacekeepers and an undetermined number of civilians in the early days of the African republic's 1994 genocide.
However, the jury acquitted Bernard Ntuyahaga of involvement in the murder of then Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and in the killing of civilians in the district of Butare between June and July 1994.
The Belgian U.N. soldiers were killed a day after the Rwandan president's plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, triggering the genocide in which Hutu-led government forces and ethnic militias killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Prosecutors said Ntuyahaga took the peacekeepers from the residence of the prime minister, whom they were trying to protect, and handed them over to fellow soldiers at a military camp in the capital, Kigali, where they were beaten to death, shot or slain with machetes.
Ntuyahaga's defense said he was a political scapegoat, who had only been passing the prime minister's residence by chance and had given the Belgians a ride at their request.
"Sooner or later the truth will triumph, I believe that. I remain patient and I keep faith, thank you," Ntuyahaga told the court moments before the jury retired to consider its verdict.
The 12 jurors will reconvene on Thursday to decide on the sentence. The maximum penalty is life imprisonment.
"I did not have any illusions," Ntuyahaga's Lawyer Luc De Temmerman told reporters, adding his client would appeal against the verdict on procedural grounds.
Belgian law does not allow appeals on the substance of the case at this stage of procedure.
"ATROCITIES"
"I am happy, I hope he will get life," said Joseph Plescias, brother of Louis Plescias, one of the 10 soldiers killed.
Christine Dupont, widow of Belgian peacekeeper Christophe Dupont, said families of victims felt relieved the emotionally draining trial was reaching its end.
"It's a very important day, a day we have been waiting for for the last thirteen years," she told Reuters Television before the verdict was announced.
"Those weeks have been long and tough for the families with all the atrocities we heard during this trial," she added.
The killing of the peacekeepers triggered the pullout of U.N. forces, opening the way for the genocide to spread.
"If Belgian troops had stayed (in Rwanda) we could have saved hundreds of thousands of people," Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt told the court in his testimony in May.
The trial was held at a time when the role of the French and Belgian governments is being increasingly questioned.
Documents published by the French daily Le Monde on Monday suggested Paris was aware in early 1994 that genocide was being planned but did not stop supporting the Hutu-led government.
Belgium has been seeking justice for its murdered soldiers for 13 years. Judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda dropped genocide and war crimes charges against Ntuyahaga in 1999.
After lengthy attempts to extradite him, the former officer flew to Belgium voluntarily in 2004 but the trial only began in April this year.
It is not the first time Rwandans have stood trial in Belgium over the genocide. Two Catholic nuns, a university professor and a businessman were sentenced in 2001 to between 12 and 20 years' jail for aiding the mass murders.
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11 militants killed in Gaza clashes
By DIAA HADID, Associated Press Writer 33 minutes ago
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli forces killed 11 militants Thursday in one of the deadliest days of combat since Hamas wrested control of Gaza last month, putting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back at center stage after months of Palestinian infighting.
Israel called in aircraft, tanks and bulldozers to press its campaign against Gaza rocket squads, while Islamic militants laid mines and fired mortars at soldiers at the main Gaza-Israel passage.
Since sweeping out its Fatah rivals in a lightning campaign, Hamas has sought to solidify its regime administering crowded, chaotic, poverty-stricken Gaza. It has initiated few attacks on Israel, but also has not stopped other groups from firing rockets at Israeli towns almost daily, provoking Israeli military action and drawing Hamas forces in.
Fighting escalated quickly Thursday after an Israeli patrol just inside Gaza spotted armed militants approaching and called in an airstrike. That clash erupted close to the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, a site of frequent clashes between gunmen and the Israeli army.
Witnesses reported a heavy exchange of fire as Israeli tanks and bulldozers moved in and soldiers took positions on rooftops. Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants hit back with small-arms fire, laid mines in front of the soldiers and fired mortars at the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza.
The army said two mortar shells hit on the Israeli side of the passage, which has been closed to most traffic since Hamas seized Gaza. No one was hurt, but the explosions ignited a fire in a road, the army said.
Hospital officials said nine militants were killed, and Hamas identified six as its members. The other three were not immediately identified. Among the dead was Mohammed Siam, 37, the Hamas field commander in central Gaza, Hamas TV said.
Israeli aircraft later fired missiles at targets in the area, the army said. Hospital officials said two militants were killed. Hamas said both were its members.
Israel frequently sends troops a short distance into Gaza, where they look for tunnels that might be used for infiltration or attacks. Also, military bulldozers often move into border areas to flatten land used by militants to launch their short-range homemade rockets.
Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said Thursday's fighting began when Hamas gunmen fired at an Israeli undercover unit. The clash set off the bloodiest day of conflict since June 27, when 12 Palestinians were killed in fights with Israeli forces.
Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, who was fired as Palestinian prime minister by President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas defeated Fatah in Gaza, and a spokesman for Fatah both condemned the Israeli operation and urged Palestinians to fight back.
"We assert that our people have the full right to defend themselves and to confront these aggressions," Haniyeh said. Fatah official Hazem Abu Shanab echoed the sentiment.
However, the two rival movements squabbled on another front, when about 400 Fatah civil servants were prevented from entering their Gaza offices in an argument over the official weekend.
The Hamas-dictated work week in Gaza is Saturday to Wednesday, with Thursday and Friday designated the weekend. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who was appointed by Abbas to head a new government that excludes Hamas, recently announced the work week runs Sunday through Thursday.
On Thursday, Hamas militiamen barred people from entering government offices, saying they were closed because it was the official weekend. Most Palestinian civil servants are loyal to Fatah.
"We told them that the government in Ramallah announced new weekend days, but they said the people in Ramallah are not the government," said Imad, 40, who works at the public works ministry. He refused to give his last name for fear of Hamas retribution.
"We are not coming on Saturday because it's the official weekend. This is the beginning of the battle against the coup government in Gaza," he said.
Abu Dajana, a Hamas security officer, said the orders of the "legitimate government" in Gaza would be implemented.
On Wednesday, Gaza government employees loyal to Fatah collected their first full salaries in 15 months, but civil servants who sided with the bloody Hamas takeover of Gaza were not paid.
Woman guilty in husband's turnpike slaying
AKRON, Ohio, July 6 (UPI) --
A Pennsylvania woman was convicted Friday of arranging to have her wealthy doctor husband killed along an Ohio highway in order to inherit his estate.
The federal court jury in Akron, Ohio, returned with the verdict against Donna Moonda following nine hours of deliberation.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said Moonda protested her innocence as the verdicts were read. She was found guilty on four counts alleging she crossed state lines to commit a murder with a firearm.
A sentencing hearing was set for July 16. Moonda could receive the death penalty.
The newspaper said Moonda was accused of conspiring with her lover to kill her husband at a rest stop on the Ohio Turnpike in 2005. Moonda was said to be unwilling to settle for the amount contained in a prenuptial agreement and instead decided to kill the doctor for his entire $3 million fortune.
Dr. Gulam Moonda, 69, was killed May 13, 2005, while in his car stopped along the highway. Donna Moonda said the killing took place during a robbery attempt.
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Suicide blast kills 26 in Iraqi village
By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer Fri Jul 6, 6:33 PM ET
BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber struck outside a cafe in a tiny Kurdish village near the Iranian border Friday, killing 26 people in a remote part of a province where U.S. forces are waging an offensive against Sunni insurgents, police said.
The blast ripped through the coffee shop near a market of Iranian goods in the village of Ahmad Maref, 87 miles northeast of Baghdad, said an official at the joint security coordination committee of Diyala province. At least 33 people were wounded, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The village is home to about 30 Kurdish families who had been expelled under Saddam Hussein's rule and returned after his fall. Many Kurds in the area are Shiite Muslims.
The village lies in the remote end of Diyala, a province where U.S. forces have been waging two offensives since mid-June, one focusing on Baqouba, Diyala's capital northeast of Baghdad, the other on Salman Pak, a region southeast of the capital. The sweeps aim to close off an escape route for insurgents fleeing a security crackdown in Baghdad and to uproot al-Qaida militants and other fighters who use the region as a staging ground for attacks in the capital.
Although violence appears to have eased somewhat in Baghdad in past months as U.S. forces stepped up security operations, Diyala has continued to see heavy attacks.
An alleged al-Qaida militant, meanwhile, was executed for his role in one of Iraq's first major bombings, an August 2003 blast that killed a Shiite leader and 84 other people and foreshadowed the four-year insurgency that followed, a Justice Ministry official said Friday.
Oras Mohammed Abdul-Aziz was hanged Tuesday in Baghdad after being sentenced to death in October, Ministry Undersecretary Busho Ibrahim told The Associated Press.
The execution announcement was the first word that a suspect had been tried in the killing of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim.
Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack — a huge car bomb that went off outside the Shrine of Ali in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites, and killed al-Hakim.
Al-Hakim was the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and was poised to become a major figure in Iraqi politics following Saddam's fall. His brother, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, now heads the group, the largest Shiite party in parliament.
Ibrahim said Abdul-Aziz, from the northern city of Mosul, was affiliated with al-Qaida in Iraq and confessed to other attacks, including the 2004 killing of Abdel-Zahraa Othman, the president of the Governing Council, the U.S.-appointed body that ran Iraq following Saddam's ouster.
Also Friday, the military said a U.S. soldier died of wounds sustained in combat Thursday in western Baghdad. With his death, at least 3,592 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians.
A church leader said gunmen waylaid a minibus outside the northern city of Kirkuk and seized four Christian men. Rt. Rev. Louis Saka, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop in Kirkuk, said a 21-year-old Christian woman was on the bus when it was stopped south of the city Thursday but was released by the captors, who are demanding a $40,000 ransom.
Thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled their homes since the 2003 invasion because of threats by Islamic extremists and criminal gangs.
Suicide Bomb Kills Over 100 in Iraq
Jul 7, 5:06 PM (ET)
By YAHYA BARZANJI
(AP) A man cover the face of Iraqi intelligence officer Hecor Mohammed, after he died in the hospital... Full Image
TUZ KHORMATO, Iraq (AP) - A suicide truck bomber blasted a Shiite town north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing more than 100 people, police said, in a sign Sunni insurgents are pulling away from a U.S. offensive around the capital to attack where security is thinner.
The marketplace devastation underlined a hard reality in Iraq: There are not enough forces to protect everywhere. U.S. troops, already increased by 28,000 this year, are focused on bringing calm to Baghdad, while the Iraqi military and police remain overstretched and undertrained.
The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, told The Associated Press he expected Sunni extremists to try to "pull off a variety of sensational attacks and grab the headlines to create a 'mini-Tet.'"
He was referring to the 1968 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Tet offensive that undermined public support for the Vietnam War in the United States.
The U.S. military on Saturday also reported that eight American service members were killed in fighting in Baghdad and western Anbar province over two days, reflecting the increased U.S. casualties that have come with the new offensives. A British soldier was killed in fighting with Shiite militias overnight in the southern city of Basra.
In Saturday's attack - Iraq's deadliest since February - the truck detonation ripped through the market in the farming town of Armili at around 8:30 am, as crowds had gathered for morning shopping.
It demolished several dozen old mud-brick homes and shops, burying dozens of people under the rubble, and set cars on fire, survivors said.
While residents and police dug through the wreckage for hours, victims were ferried in farmers' pickup trucks 30 miles to the nearest hospital, in Tuz Khormato.
Weeping and screaming relatives searched Tuz Khormato's hospital frantically for word of loved ones. Ali Hussein read the names of victims being moved further north to Kirkuk for treatment. "My cousin died in the explosion, but I don't know the fate of my brother," he said in tears.
(AP) A bombing casualty from the village of Armili is treated in a hospital in Kirkuk, Saturday, July 7,... Full Image
Abdullah Jabara, deputy governor of Salahuddin province where the town is located, told Iraqi state television that 115 died - nearly three-quarters of them women, children and elderly - and blamed al-Qaida. Police gave a similar death toll, along with more than 200 wounded, though Tuz Khormato's police chief, Col. Abbas Mohammed Amin, put the toll at 150 dead.
The attack's location suggested it was carried out by Sunni extremists fleeing the three-week old U.S. offensive centered at the city of Baqouba, 60 miles to the south on Baghdad's northern doorstep. The sweep aims to uproot al-Qaida militants and Sunni insurgents using the area to stage car bomb attacks in the capital.
But U.S. commanders acknowledge that many insurgents fled Baqouba before the assault, and they may have found easier ground for attacks further north.
"Because of the recent American military operations, terrorists found a good hideout in Salahuddin province, especially in the outskirts areas in which there isn't enough number of military forces there," said Ahmed al-Jubouri, an aide of the provincial governor.
Armili, 100 miles north of Baghdad, is a town of 26,000, mostly Shiites from Iraq's Turkoman ethnic minority. Residents say tensions are constantly high with Sunni Arabs who dominate the surrounding villages. Iraqi security presence is scant in the remote region, near the border with neighboring Diyala province.
(AP) A bombing casualty from the village of Armili is treated in a hospital in Kirkuk, Saturday, July 7,... Full Image
"The number of Iraqi police and army in this area is too low. This is a farming area with a lot of empty areas, so it's neglected. There's not even much presence of government officials," said Haytham Khalaf, 37, an Amirli resident whose niece was injured. He accused local Sunnis of helping al-Qaida set up a presence there.
Extremists hit a similarly isolated location hours before the Armili blast. Friday night, a suicide car bomber hit a funeral tent in the Kurdish Sunni village of Zargosh, about 75 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing 22 people.
The U.S. military may be forced to tolerate attacks further north as they focus on pacifying Baghdad and its surroundings, hoping that calm in the capital will give the government time to take key political steps. Washington is pressing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to pass measures to encourage Sunni Arabs to turn away from support of the insurgency to back the government.
Attacks have fallen in recent weeks in much of Baghdad. Still, a suicide car bomber blasted an Iraqi army patrol in an eastern commercial district of the capital, killing five soldiers and a civilian, police said.
Roadside bombings killed five U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Friday and another on Thursday, the U.S. military said in its latest statements on U.S. casualties. Two Marines were killed in fighting Friday in western Anbar province, it said.
(AP) U.S. soldiers from Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade...Full Image
Dozens of Sunni Muslim sheiks and tribal leaders met Saturday in the western city of Ramadi, pledging to fight terrorism and restore peace to Anbar province - for years the heart of the insurgency.
Among them were members of the Anbar Awakening, which was formed in April by more than 200 Sunni sheiks whose followers are now cooperating with U.S. forces against al-Qaida and other insurgents. The meeting also called for the release of security detainees who had not been convicted of crimes and for a bigger role for their group in representing Sunni interests.
In the far south of Iraq, British troops came under heavy attack by militants in Basra, killing one soldier and wounding three, the British military said Saturday.
Britain has withdrawn hundreds of troops from Iraq, leaving a force of around 5,500 based mainly on the fringes of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad. British bases come under frequent mortar attacks from Shiite militias. The U.S. currently has about 155,000 troops in Iraq.
---
AP correspondent Robert H. Reid in Baqouba contributed to this report.
Dozens of wildfires ravage West; 1 dead
By JOE KAFKA, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 45 minutes ago
HOT SPRINGS, S.D. - One of dozens of fires across the West raced out of a canyon in South Dakota's Black Hills "with a vengeance" on Sunday, killing a homeowner and destroying 27 homes, authorities said.
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Residents of about 50 homes had fled the wildfire near Hot Springs, which also injured two firefighters and closed a section of a state highway, state and federal officials said. An area of roughly 9 square miles has burned since the fire was sparked Saturday by lightning.
One person was killed trying to retrieve possessions from a home. The person's identity was withheld until relatives could be notified, authorities said.
"This thing blew up because of extreme hot temperatures and the winds," said Joe Lowe, state wildland fire coordinator. "It came out of the canyon with a vengeance."
Gov. Mike Rounds toured the area Sunday and noted that the trees around some houses were charred but the dwellings were intact.
"I don't know how in the world you saved some of those homes," he told firefighters at an evening briefing.
More than two dozen homes had no damage because of a high-tech gel made of water-filled bubbles.
High wind near Wenatchee, Wash., overnight spread a brush fire that threatened homes. By Sunday morning, 250 to 270 homes had been evacuated, and at least three outbuildings were destroyed.
In fire-swept Nevada, about 1,500 evacuees from Winnemucca were allowed home hours after a wildfire destroyed an electrical substation and several outbuildings, shut down Interstate 80, delayed trains, and killed livestock. No injuries were reported.
"It was pretty hairy for quite a while, and people thought they would go back to nothing," Humboldt County Undersheriff Curtiss Kull said Sunday. "It was a huge wall of flame coming at the homes. It's amazing that no homes were lost."
It was unknown how much of the fire was contained Sunday, and no estimate was provided on when full containment would be reached, said Jamie Thompson, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
A fire in Arizona burned at the base of a mountain that is home to several expensive telescopes. A spokesman at Kitt Peak told KSAZ-TV that he was concerned but not alarmed. Tankers were dropping retardant between the fire and the observatory, the station reported.
In Utah, the largest wildfire in state history grew to 283,000 acres on Sunday. The blaze has swept through about 442 square miles of extremely dry sagebrush, cheat grass and pinion juniper in central Utah.
"This fire just ran away from us, and we couldn't put a dent in it," said Mike Melton, fire management officer for Utah's Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.
The fire burned along the edge and in the median of Interstate 15 Sunday, forcing a 60-mile closure of the highway between Interstate 70 near Cove Fort and Beaver for nearly five hours, Utah Highway Patrol Lt. Steve Winward said. I-15 reopened Sunday evening but could be closed again if the wind shifts, he said.
Other fires blackened the landscape in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Oregon.
Quick-moving flames burned through more than 53 square miles in California's Inyo National Forest, skirting the popular John Muir Wilderness north of Mount Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48 states. At least one home was destroyed.
The blaze was less than 10 percent contained Sunday, though a break in the 60-mph wind and triple-digit temperature gave firefighters a chance to dig in, Inyo National Forest spokesman John Louth said.
"When an ember lands in the sagebrush, there's a 100 percent chance of it catching," said fire information officer Jim Wilkins. "You put a spark on it, it will ignite into fire."
Flames up to 40 feet high threatened major power lines in the area feeding the eastern Sierra front and greater Los Angeles, Wilkins said.
A 45,000-acre fire in Idaho was contained Saturday, officials said. Crews on Sunday raced to repair fire-damaged transmission lines that threatened rotating power failures.
___
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jennifer Dobner in Salt Lake City, Martin Griffith in Reno, Nev., Rachel Konrad in San Francisco and Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho.
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A fire smolders on Sunday, July 8, 2007, near Hot Springs, S.D. A state official said the blaze is the most intense wildfire ever recorded in the Black Hills. (AP Photo/Joe Kafka)
AP Photo: A fire smolders on Sunday, July 8, 2007, near Hot Springs, S.D. A state official...
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After talks fail, Pakistan launches mosque attack
(what else was there to do - eh?)
Pakistani troops storm mosque; nearly 60 dead
By Faisal Aziz 16 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani forces stormed a mosque compound on Tuesday, killing about 50 militants, as they fought their way through an Islamic school where they believed a rebel cleric was hiding with women and children hostages.
Militants mounted a last stand in the basements of the madrasa, and military spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad said cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi had barricaded himself in.
Eight soldiers were killed and 29 wounded, Arshad said.
Fifty militants were captured or surrendered.
The assault to end a week-long standoff at Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, was still in progress 10 hours after it began.
"There is intense engagement ... Militants are taking positions in almost every room, they're fighting from room to room, they have positions in the basement, on the stairs," said the military spokesman.
He said there were more than 70 rooms and the basements in the sprawling mosque-school complex, and the militants were armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
With more than two-thirds of the mosque-school complex secured, some 30 children and 24 women had managed to get out. It was unclear how many more women and children remained in the complex, but earlier officials had said hundreds could be inside.
Six of the children said they had been kept in the basement of the mosque but fled when their guards disappeared after commandos overran it, Arshad said.
FIRING FROM MINARETS
By early afternoon, loud blasts still rocked the heart of Islamabad and militants had resumed firing from the mosque's minarets, Arshad said.
Commandos backed by paramilitary troops first seized the mosque then swept resistance from the rooftop of the madrasa and worked their way down through the building.
Explosions and sustained gunfire had erupted before dawn, immediately after talks to end a week-long standoff broke down.
There were fears the militants might resort to using suicide bombs. Officials said on Monday militants had distributed vests packed with explosives.
Heavy loss of life among women and children could have serious repercussions for President Pervez Musharraf, who had been under pressure to confront the militants for some time.
The Lal Masjid has been a centre of militancy for years, known for its support for Afghanistan's Taliban and opposition to Musharraf's backing for the United States.
TOO SCARED TO SURRENDER
Thick smoke shrouded the compound that had been surrounded by troops since clashes with armed students broke out on July 3.
Beyond the razor wire barriers several hundred meters away, about a dozen anxious parents and relatives waited, most too upset to speak, but some voicing anger with the government.
Lali Gul, a father from the northwestern town of Charsadda, said he last spoke to his 16-year-old son Abdullah on Friday.
"He said they were willing to come out but feared Rangers would fire on them," Gul said, referring to paramilitary forces.
Before the assault began, at least 21 people were killed in the week-long standoff that followed months of mounting tension between the mosque's hardline clerics and the government.
About 1,200 students left the mosque early on in the siege.
The government has been demanding radical cleric Ghazi and his scores of hardcore fighters, who authorities say include wanted militants, surrender unconditionally.
Ghazi refused, saying he would prefer martyrdom. He said he and the followers of his Taliban-style movement hoped their deaths would spark an Islamic revolution.
The action against the mosque has raised fears of a militant backlash. A wanted Pakistani militant vowed revenge on Monday if the mosque were assaulted.
For all the uncertainty, the Karachi Stock Exchange index breached life highs on Monday, gaining 0.5 percent. The rupee, which trades under the central bank's managed float, was steady.
Standards & Poor's Rating Services, however, cut its outlook on Pakistani debt to stable from positive partly because of growing concern over the "deteriorating security environment."
(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider and Kamran Haider)
China executes ex-food and drug chief
By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 54 minutes ago
BEIJING - China executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog on Tuesday for approving untested medicine in exchange for cash, the strongest signal yet from Beijing that it is serious about tackling its product safety crisis.
The execution of former State Food and Drug Administration director Zheng Xiaoyu was confirmed by state television and the official Xinhua News Agency.
During Zheng's tenure from 1998 to 2005, his agency approved six medicines that turned out to be fake, and the drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to previous state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.
"The few corrupt officials of the SFDA are the shame of the whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems," agency spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said at a news conference held to highlight efforts to improve China's track record on food and drug safety.
Yan was asked to comment on Zheng's sentence and that of his subordinate, Cao Wenzhuang, a former director of SFDA's drug registration department who was last week sentenced to death for accepting bribes and dereliction of duty. Cao was given a two-year reprieve, a ruling which is usually commuted to life in prison if the convict is deemed to have reformed.
"We should seriously reflect and learn lessons from these cases. We should step up our efforts to ensure food and drug safety, which is what we are doing now and what we will do in the future," Yan said.
Zheng, 63, was convicted of taking cash and gifts worth $832,000 when he was in charge of the State Food and Drug Administration.
His death sentence was unusually heavy even for China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, and indicates the leadership's determination to confront the country's dire product safety record.
Fears abroad over Chinese-made products were sparked last year by the deaths of dozens of people in Panama who took medicine contaminated with diethylene glycol imported from China. It was passed off as harmless glycerin.
Yan said she did not have any information about whether the Chinese manufacturer, Taixing Glycerin Factory, and the Chinese distributor, CNSC Fortune Way, had been punished.
"We will try to get more information from the department concerned and we will release it to you," Yan said. She wouldn't elaborate.
China admitted last month that it was the source of the deadly chemical that ended up in cough syrup and other treatments but insists the chemical was originally labeled as for industrial use only. Beijing blames the Panama traders who eventually bought the shipment for fraudulently relabeling it as medical-grade glycerin.
In North America earlier this year, pet food containing Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine was blamed for the deaths of dogs and cats.
Since then, U.S. authorities have turned away or recalled toxic fish, juice containing unsafe color additives and popular toy trains decorated with lead paint.
Yan said the food and drug administration was working to tighten its safety procedures and create a more transparent operating environment. The administration has already announced a series of measures to tighten safety controls and closed factories where illegal chemicals or other problems were found.
But Yan acknowledged that her agency's supervision of food and drug safety remains unsatisfactory and that it has been slow to tackle the problem.
"China is a developing country and our supervision of food and drugs started quite late and our foundation for this work is weak, so we are not optimistic about the current food and drug safety situation," Yan said.
Chinese officials have already said the country faces social unrest and a further tarnished image abroad unless it improves the quality and safety of its food and medicine.
The government has faced increasing pressure from its international trading partners to improve quality controls after a series of health scares attributed to substandard or tainted Chinese food and drug exports.
The list of food scares within China over the past year includes drug-tainted fish, banned Sudan dye used to color egg yolks red, and pork tainted with clenbuterol, a banned feed additive.
China has also stepped up its inspections of imported products and said some U.S. products are not safe.
In the latest case, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday that a shipment of sugar-free drink mix from the United States had been rejected for having too much red dye.
Last week, China's food safety watchdog said almost 20 percent of products made for consumption within China were found to be substandard in the first half of 2007. Canned and preserved fruit and dried fish were the most problematic, primarily because of excessive bacteria and additives, the agency said.
Pakistani troops seize Red Mosque
By ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani troops raided Islamabad's Red Mosque on Tuesday and attempted to flush out the remaining militants entrenched inside a women's religious school in fierce fighting that left at least 50 militants and eight soldiers dead, the army said.
The troops stormed the mosque compound before dawn. More than 10 hours later, they were still trying to root out the well-armed defenders said to be holding a number of hostages. Officials said at least 50 women were allowed to go free from the complex. Some 26 children had earlier escaped.
Clashes this month between security forces and supporters of the mosque's hardline clerics prompted the siege. The religious extremists had been trying to impose Taliban-style morality in the capital through a six-month campaign of kidnappings and threats. At least 80 people have been killed since July 3.
Amid the sounds of rolling explosions, commandos attacked from three directions about 4 a.m. and quickly cleared the ground floor of the mosque, army spokesman Gen. Waheed Arshad said.
Arshad said hostages were still being held and that fighting continued to be intense.
"We are taking a step-by-step approach so there is no collateral damage," he told reporters. "We are fighting room by room." He added that stun grenades were being used to avoid casualties among the hostages.
In addition to the women, Arshad said about 50 suspected militants, some of them youngsters, have been captured or emerged from the mosque since the fighting erupted Tuesday.
He said the army attack was now focused on the women's school but that some militants were still firing from the tops of the mosque's minarets. He said the entire compound included 75 rooms, large basements and expansive courtyards.
An officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media said troops had cornered the mosque's chief cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, in the basement of the school but held back from an all-out assault because a number of children were being held there as hostages.
Troops demanded four times that he surrender but his followers responded with gunfire and Ghazi said he was ready to die rather than give up, the officer said.
The government, eager to avoid a bloodbath that would damage President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's embattled administration, had earlier said it would not storm the mosque so long as women and children remained inside.
The mosque itself has been cleared of the militants — who are armed with machine guns, rocket launchers and gasoline bombs. They put up tough resistance from the basement of the mosque, Arshad said, adding rebels also fired from minarets and booby trapped some areas. "Those who surrender will be arrested, but the others will be treated as combatants and killed," he said.
Pakistan's Religious Affairs Minister Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq — quoting the mosque's leader — said foreign militants were among the defenders. He did not give the numbers or their nationalities.
The assault began minutes after a delegation led by a former prime minister left the area declaring that efforts to negotiate a peaceful end to a week-old siege had failed.
Ghazi told Geo TV that his mother had been wounded by gunshot. There was no immediate official confirmation of his claim but one of Ghazi's aides, Abdul Rahman, later said she had died.
"The government is using full force. This is naked aggression," he said. "My martyrdom is certain now."
He said that about 30 militants were resisting security forces but were only armed with 14 AK-47 assault rifles.
A senior civilian official said troops had arrested dozens of people inside the compound and that part of the madrassa had caught fire. The official requested anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to media.
Tuesday's attack followed a botched commando raid on the high-walled mosque compound over the weekend.
On Monday, Musharraf assigned ex-premier Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain to try and negotiate a peaceful end to the standoff.
But Hussain and a delegation of Islamic clerics returned crestfallen from the mosque before dawn Tuesday after about nine hours of talks with Ghazi via loudspeakers and cell phones.
"We offered him a lot, but he wasn't ready to come on our terms," Hussain told reporters waiting at the edge of the army cordon.
Rehmatullah Khalil, a senior cleric who was part of a 12-member delegation of mediators, accused Musharraf of sabotaging a draft agreement to end the siege.
He said Hussain had prepared an agreement under which Ghazi was to be briefly held in protective custody, and the government would agree to free the students. Only those being sought by police were to be detained.
"We were happy and hoping that the nation will hear a good news, but the government changed almost all clauses of the draft agreement," he told The Associated Press. "We were stunned on seeing changes in the draft agreement, and we don't know why the government did so."
"The government is responsible for today's bloodshed."
Hussain rejected the claim that the president's office had made changes to the draft. "No this is not correct," he said.
Ul-Haq said the negotiations broke down on the issue of what would happen to foreign militants within the compound.
The minister said that during the talks, Ghazi suddenly asked what would happen to the foreign militants. The government side, he said, responded that they would be dealt with according to the law.
"On hearing it, Ghazi stopped the telephone conversation," ul-Haq said.
He said it was the first time that Ghazi acknowledged that foreign militants were present inside the mosque.
Several loud explosions were heard just as the vexed looking delegates were getting into their cars and sporadic shooting was also heard.
About two dozen relatives of people trapped inside the complex waited anxiously at the army cordon during the assault.
The government has said wanted terrorists are organizing the defense of the mosque, while Ghazi has accused security forces of killing scores of students.
In his comments on Tuesday, Ghazi said he had offered to show the mediators that they had no heavy weapons, foreign militants or other wanted people inside the mosque.
The siege has given the neighborhood the look of a war zone, with troops manning machine guns behind sandbagged posts and from the top of armored vehicles.
As the siege was under way, at least two protests against the army attack were staged elsewhere in the country.
Hundreds of armed tribesmen near the northwestern town of Batagram blocked a road that leads to neighboring China, said police official Habib Khan. The tribesmen fired their rifles into the air and shouted slogans against the government and Musharraf, he said.
More than 500 Islamic religious school students rallied in the eastern city of Multan, chanting "Down with Musharraf" and blocking a main road by burning tires.
On Monday, some 20,000 tribesmen, including hundreds of masked militants wielding assault rifles, held a similar protest in the northwest frontier region of Bajur.
___
Associated Press writers Zarar Khan and Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad and Habibullah Khan in Khar contributed to this report.
Former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson Dies
Email this Story
Jul 11, 8:54 PM (ET)
By KELLEY SHANNON
(AP) Lady Bird Johnson smiles as she listens to details about the Summer White House of President Calvin...
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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady who championed conservation and worked tenaciously for the political career of her husband, Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday, a family spokeswoman said. She was 94.
Johnson, who suffered a stroke in 2002 that affected her ability to speak, returned home late last month after a week at Seton Medical Center, where she'd been admitted for a low-grade fever.
She died at her Austin home of natural causes and she was surrounded by family and friends, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Christian.
Even after the stroke, Johnson still managed to make occasional public appearances and get outdoors to enjoy her beloved wildflowers. But she was unable to speak more than a few short phrases, and more recently did not speak at all, Anne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the LBJ Library and Museum, said in 2006. She communicated her thoughts and needs by writing, Wheeler said.
Lyndon Johnson died in 1973, four years after the Johnsons left the White House.
The longest-living first lady in history was Bess Truman, who was 97 when she died in 1982.
Bush and first lady Laura Bush remembered Mrs. Johnson as a "warm and gracious woman."
"President Johnson once called her a woman of "ideals, principles, intelligence, and refinement. She remained so throughout their life together, and in the many years given to her afterward," President Bush said.
Other former first ladies remembered Johnson on Wednesday as deeply devoted to her family and the environment.
(AP) Lady Bird Johnson is kissed on the hand by a Thai woman as she tours the floating market in Bangkok...
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"Her beautification programs benefited the entire nation. She translated her love for the land and the environment into a lifetime of achievement," Betty Ford said.
Nancy Reagan said that when Lyndon Johnson was called upon to take the oath of office in the face of tragedy after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, "he did so with his courageous wife beside him." She said Lady Bird Johnson served the nation with honor and dignity.
"I believe above all else that Lady Bird will always be remembered as a loyal and devoted wife, a loving and caring mother and a proud and nurturing grandmother," Reagan said.
The daughter of a Texas rancher, she spent 34 years in Washington, as the wife of a congressional secretary, U.S. representative, senator, vice president and president. The couple had two daughters, Lynda Bird, born in 1944, and Luci Baines, born in 1947. The couple returned to Texas after the presidency, and Lady Bird Johnson lived for more than 30 years in and near Austin.
"I think we all love seeing those we love loved well, and Austin has loved my mother very well. This community has been so caring," Luci Baines Johnson said in an interview with The Associated Press in December 2001.
(AP) Lyndon Johnson, 26, poses with his new bride, former Lady Bird Taylor, in front of the capitol in...
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"People often ask me about walking in her shadow, following in the footsteps of somebody like Lady Bird Johnson," she said. "My mother made her own unique imprint on this land."
Former President George H.W. Bush once recalled that when he was a freshman Republican congressman from Texas in the 1960s, Lady Bird Johnson and the president welcomed him to Washington with kindness, despite their political differences.
He said she exemplified "the grace and the elegance and the decency and sincerity that you would hope for in the White House."
"Like all Americans, but especially those of us who call Texas home, we loved Lady Bird," Bush said Wednesday.
As first lady, she was perhaps best known as the determined environmentalist who wanted roadside billboards and junkyards replaced with trees and wildflowers. She raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to beautify Washington. The $320 million Highway Beautification Bill, passed in 1965, was known as "The Lady Bird Bill," and she made speeches and lobbied Congress to win its passage.
(AP) Former U.S. first lady Lady Bird Johnson, left, talks with Texas first lady Laura Bush during a...
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"Had it not been for her, I think that the whole subject of the environment might not have been introduced to the public stage in just the way it was and just the time it was. So she figures mightily, I think, in the history of the country if for no other reason than that alone," Harry Middleton, retired director of the LBJ Library and Museum, once said.
Lady Bird Johnson once turned down a class valedictorian's medal because of her fear of public speaking, but she joined in every one of her husband's campaigns. She was soft-spoken but rarely lost her composure, despite heckling and grueling campaign schedules. She once appeared for 47 speeches in four days.
"How Lady Bird can do all the things she does without ever stubbing her toe, I'll just never know, because I sure stub mine sometimes," her husband once said.
Lady Bird Johnson said her husband "bullied, shoved, pushed and loved me into being more outgoing, more of an achiever. I gave him comfort, tenderness and some judgment - at least I think I did."
She had a cool head for business, turning a modest sum of money into a multimillion-dollar radio corporation in Austin that flourished under family ownership for more than a half-century. With a $17,500 inheritance from her mother, she purchased a small, faltering radio station in 1942 in Austin. The family business later expanded into television and banking.
(AP) Lady Bird Johnson poses for a birthday portrait in a family sitting room in the second floor...
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"She was very hands on. She literally mopped the floor, and she sold radio time," daughter Luci said of her mother's early days in business.
When Johnson challenged Sen. John F. Kennedy unsuccessfully in 1960 for the Democratic presidential nomination, his wife was his chief supporter, although she confessed privately she would rather be home in Texas.
His nomination as vice president on Kennedy's ticket drew her deep into a national campaign. She stumped through 11 Southern states, mostly alone, making speeches at whistle stops in her soft drawl. In his 1965 memoir, "Kennedy," JFK special counsel Theodore Sorensen recalled her "remarkable campaign talents" in the 1960 campaign.
She was with her husband in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, and was at his side as he took the presidential oath of office aboard Air Force One.
In her book "A White House Diary," she recalled seeing Jacqueline Kennedy with her husband's blood still on her dress and leg. "Somehow that was one of the most poignant sights - that immaculate woman, exquisitely dressed, and caked in blood," she wrote.
(AP) Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as President of the United States of America in the cabin of the...
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Suddenly, the unpretentious woman from Texas found herself first lady of the United States, splitting time between the White House and the Johnson family's 13-room stone and frame house on the LBJ Ranch, near Johnson City west of Austin.
Her White House years also were filled with the turbulence of the Vietnam War era.
The first lady often would speak her fears and hopes into a tape recorder, and some of the transcripts were included in the 2001 book "Reaching for Glory, Lyndon Johnson's Secret White House Tapes, 1964-1965," edited by historian Michael Beschloss.
"How much can they tear us down?" she wondered in 1965 as criticism of the Vietnam War worsened. "And what effect might it have on the way we appear in history?"
She quoted her husband as saying: "I can't get out. And I can't finish it with what I have got. And I don't know what the hell to do."
(AP) U.S. Sen. Lyndon Johnson, D-Texas, poses with his wife, Lady Bird, and waves farewell before flying...
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Lady Bird Johnson served as honorary chairwoman of the national Head Start program and held a series of luncheons spotlighting women of assorted careers and professions.
Both daughters married while their father was president. Luci married Patrick Nugent, in 1966 at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. That marriage ended in divorce and she wed Canadian banker Ian Turpin in 1984. Daughter Lynda Bird married Charles Robb, later governor and U.S. senator from Virginia, in a White House wedding in 1967.
After she and her husband left Washington, Lady Bird Johnson worked on "A White House Diary," published in 1970. She also served a six-year term starting in 1971 as a University of Texas regent.
She and her daughters remained active in her wildflower advocacy and with the LBJ Library in Austin after the former president's death in 1973. Into her 90s, Lady Bird Johnson made occasional public appearances at the library and at civic and political events, always getting a rousing reception.
President Gerald Ford appointed her to the advisory council to the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, and President Jimmy Carter named her to the President's Commission on White House Fellowships. Her long list of honors and medals include the country's highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom, bestowed in 1977 by Ford.
(AP) Then-President Clinton, left, leans in to listen to former President Bush, right,over Lady Bird...
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She was born Claudia Alta Taylor on Dec. 22, 1912, in the small East Texas town of Karnack. Her father was Thomas Jefferson Taylor, a wealthy rancher and merchant. Her mother was the former Minnie Lee Patillo of Alabama, who loved books and music.
Lady Bird Johnson received her nickname in infancy from a caretaker nurse who said she was as "pretty as a lady bird." It was the name by which the world would come to know her. She disliked it, but said later, "I made my peace with it."
When Lady Bird was 5, her mother died, and her aunt, Effie Patillo, came to care for her and two older brothers.
She graduated from Marshall High School at age 15 and prepared for college at St. Mary's Episcopal School for Girls in Dallas. At the University of Texas in Austin she studied journalism and took enough education courses to qualify as a public school teacher. She received a bachelor of arts degree in 1933 and a bachelor of journalism in 1934.
A few weeks later, through a friend in Austin, she met Lyndon Johnson, then secretary to U.S. Rep. Richard Kleberg, a Democrat from Texas. The day after their first date, Lyndon Johnson proposed. They were married within two months, on Nov. 17, 1934, in San Antonio.
Lyndon Johnson caught the eye of Congressman Sam Rayburn of Texas, who later became the U.S. House speaker. Rayburn persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 to appoint Johnson director of the National Youth Administration for Texas.
When Rep. James Buchanan, D-Texas, died two years later, Johnson ran for the House seat. His wife borrowed $10,000 from her father to finance the campaign, and Johnson won easily.
Johnson lost a 1941 special election for the U.S. Senate, but narrowly won the seat in 1948, after he was declared the victor by just 87 votes in a Democratic primary runoff against former Gov. Coke Stevenson.
In December 1972, the Johnsons gave the LBJ Ranch house and surrounding property to the United States as a National Historic Site, retaining a life estate for themselves. The property is to transfer to the federal park service after her death.
The family's privately held broadcasting company - later overseen by Luci Baines Johnson - was sold in March 2003 to Emmis Communications of Indianapolis. Lady Bird Johnson had been a director of the radio company in her later years and even attended most board meetings before her 2002 stroke.
On her 70th birthday, in 1982, she and Helen Hayes founded the National Wildflower Research Center near Austin, later renamed the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. The research and education center is dedicated to the preservation and use of wildflowers and native plants.
"I'm optimistic that the world of native plants will not only survive, but will thrive for environmental and economic reasons, and for reasons of the heart. Beauty in nature nourishes us and brings joy to the human spirit," Lady Bird Johnson wrote.
In addition to her two daughters, survivors include seven grandchildren, a step-grandchild, and several great-grandchildren.
Mrs. Johnson will lie in repose at the LBJ Library and Museum from 1:15 p.m. Friday until 11 a.m. Saturday. A private funeral service will be held Saturday afternoon and a ceremonial cortege will carry Mrs. Johnson to Stonewall for burial in the Johnson family cemetery.
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On the Net:
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/
http://www.wildflower.org/
Ex-Red Wings Coach Skinner Dies at 90
Jul 11, 9:48 PM (ET) Email this Story
By DAVID N. GOODMAN
DETROIT (AP) -Former Detroit Red Wings coach Jimmy Skinner, who led a team starring Hall of Famers Gordie Howe and Ted Lindsay to the Stanley Cup in 1955, died Wednesday. He was 90.
The team and family did not announce the cause of death, but Skinner had been in declining health, said Eddi Chittaro, chairman of the Windsor/Essex Sports Hall of Fame in Windsor, Ontario.
The group inducted Skinner in 2006, and he spoke briefly at the awards ceremony.
"He coached with the likes of Gordie Howe and all the great teams they had back in the '50s," Chittaro said. "He was still mentally sharp. He had lots of great stories."
The Stanley Cup that Detroit won in Skinner's first year as coach was the team's seventh. The Wings were 123-78-46 under him.
Skinner was born on Jan. 12, 1917, in Selkirk, Manitoba.
After a minor league playing career, he coached the Windsor Spitfires before the Red Wings made him their head coach for the 1954-55 season, after Tommy Ivan left to coach the Chicago Blackhawks. Skinner coached the team through 38 games of the 1957-58 season, when the Wings replaced him with Sid Abel.
Skinner then held a variety of management jobs with the club, including scouting and farm team development. He was general manager from 1980-82, when Mike Ilitch bought the team.
"It's a big loss to the Red Wings," said longtime Detroit left wing Marcel Pronovost, who skated for Skinner as a junior player for the Spitfires in 1947-49 and later as a member of Detroit's 1955 NHL championship team.
"He was good with the kids," Pronovost said.
Far from being an autocratic boss, Skinner relied heavily on his captains and other veteran team members, Pronovost said from his home in Windsor.
"He was very much dependent on the older players on the team," said Pronovost, who skated for the Red Wings from 1949-65. "He worked them as a family."
Associated Press
Life Term for Frenchman Who Murdered 3
By MARIE-FRANCE BEZZINA 07.11.07, 6:55 PM ET
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A man with a history of crime and psychiatric troubles was convicted Wednesday of viciously murdering two girls and a woman and sentenced to life in prison for the series of macabre slayings that shocked France three years ago.
Pierre Bodein, nicknamed "Pierrot le fou," or "Crazy Pierre," was charged with raping, killing and mutilating the two young victims - Jeanne-Marie Kegelin, 11, and Julie Scharsch, 14. He also allegedly murdered and mutilated Edwige Vallee, 38, and attempted to kidnap two other girls.
All the incidents occurred in June 2004 in various locations in Alsace, near France's border with Germany. One body was found floating in a creek, another in a vineyard.
The judges acquitted 16 other members of the Yenish community, a group of "travelers" living in trailers in eastern France, who were accused of various degrees of complicity in the crimes.
Bodein, 59, who denied wrongdoing and claimed to be the victim of a plot, stared blankly as he was led from the courtroom. He will have to spend at least 30 years in jail before becoming eligible for parole.
"It's ... the maximum possible sentence, so in that sense there's a sense of satisfaction. But it won't give us Julie back. It won't soothe our pain and make up for the loss our family feels," said Francoise Scharsch, the mother of one victim.
The defense lawyer, Marc Vialle, said before the verdict that Bodein would appeal if he was convicted.
Bodein already has spent more than 30 years in jail and psychiatric institutions since 1969, once escaping from a hospital and going on a crime spree that included attacks on a girl and an elderly woman.
He had been conditionally released from prison three months before the 2004 murders, after serving more than a decade of what originally was a 28-year sentence for various crimes. That sentence was later reduced to 20 years even though doctors warned against an early release.
Associated Press writer Jan Sliva contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
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Afghan forces kill 11 suspected Taliban
Thu Jul 12, 7:09 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops clashed with suspected Taliban militants in eastern Afghanistan Thursday, killing 11 rebels.
The U.S.-led troops called in airstrikes on the Taliban fighters after the joint U.S.-Afghan patrol was ambushed by the militants in Uruzgan province, the coalition said in a statement. There were no reports of U.S. or Afghan casualties in the clash.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol vehicle left five officers dead and another wounded in Khost province, said Wazir Pacha, a spokesman for the provincial police chief.
The victims were part of a joint U.S-Afghan patrol, Pacha said. No U.S.-led coalition troops were injured in the morning blast.
Also Thursday, a NATO soldier was killed and two others were wounded during an operation in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said in a statement.
NATO did not disclose soldiers' nationalities or the exact location of the operation.
Violence has spiked in Afghanistan in the last six weeks. More than 3,200 people, mostly militants, have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according a count by The Associated Press based on numbers from Afghan and Western officials.
THEY WILL LONG PONDER HOW IN BLUE BLAZES (...) COULD CAPTAIN AMERICA HAVE DIED...
AND, HOLY MOLEY - THE QUESTION IS DEAD TOO; AND WE DON'T KNOW WHO HAS THE ANSWER!
THE SEA KING IS DEAD TOO - LONG LIVE AQUAMAN (?!?)
WITH ALL THAT THOUGH - RECENT AND, TO BOOT, FICTIONAL - HOW CAN WE BLAME THEM FROM INDULGING IN IT WHEN PEOPLE ARE STILL PONDERING DECADES-OLD DEMISES OF THE RICH AND SHAMELESS...?
READ ON...
New questions about Jim Morrison's death
By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press Writer Wed Jul 11, 2:32 PM ET
PARIS - The official story goes like this: On the last night of Jim Morrison's life, the rocker went to a movie in Paris, listened to records, fell ill and died of heart failure in his bathtub at the age of 27.
But rumors have always swirled around the death of The Doors frontman and, 36 years later, a former Paris nightclub manager is telling a different story. In a new book, Sam Bernett says that Morrison died in a toilet stall of his club after what he believes was a heroin overdose.
He writes of his shock on finding Morrison's body: "The flamboyant singer of 'The Doors,' the beautiful California boy, had become an inert lump crumpled in the toilet of a nightclub." Bernett, whose French-language book is called "The End: Jim Morrison," says he believes two drug dealers brought Morrison's body back to his apartment.
Bernett, who was in his early 20s when Morrison died in 1971, went on to become a prominent radio personality, rock biographer and a vice president of Disneyland Paris. Though he was pestered for years by reporters investigating Morrison's death, he kept his story quiet until his wife suggested writing a book last year.
"For me it's a very bad (memory)," Bernett told The Associated Press.
Rumors have long suggested that Morrison died of an overdose and that he had fallen ill at the nightclub, but witnesses did not come forward.
Patrick Chauvel, a noted war photographer and writer, sometimes helped run the bar at the club. He recalls giving a hand to men who were carrying Morrison in a staircase there.
"I think he was already dead," said Chauvel, who considered putting the episode in a 2005 book before his publisher cautioned against it. Chauvel said he thought an ambulance would have been called if Morrison were still alive.
"I don't know," he said. "It was a long time ago, and we weren't drinking only water."
An official at the Paris prosecutor's office said it was very unlikely the case on Morrison's death would be reopened or that anybody could be prosecuted in the affair, because the statute of limitations — the time limit on legal proceedings — had run out.
Stephen Davis, the author of "Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend," says he would not rewrite history because of the new book. Based on his reporting, he believes Morrison did overdose at the club, but that it was shortly before his death — not the same night — and that he survived the experience.
"It just seems likely that if he died in the toilet of a nightclub, it would have come out before now," Davis said.
Morrison came to Paris in March 1971 at a troubled time in his life. At a 1969 concert in Florida, he was accused of exposing his genitals to the audience. He was convicted of indecent exposure and profanity, and the episode led to promoters canceling concerts and earned the band a stream of negative publicity.
Morrison left for Paris with his appeal pending. There, he lived in a Right Bank apartment with his girlfriend, Pamela Courson, and he wandered the streets, sightseeing and toting around a plastic bag containing his writings. In Paris, he gained so much weight as to become almost unrecognizable, and his health suffered.
He also partied. Morrison spent "practically every night" at the Rock and Roll Circus, the hip Left Bank nightclub that Bernett managed, where stars like Roman Polanski and Marianne Faithfull were regulars, Bernett said.
At around 1 a.m. on July 3, 1971, Morrison went to the club and was joined by two men — drug dealers who sold him heroin for Courson, Bernett said. At one point, Bernett noticed that Morrison had disappeared. Later, the bouncer broke down the door of a locked toilet stall, and they discovered Morrison unresponsive, Bernett said.
Bernett says he asked a doctor, a club customer, to examine the singer.
"When we found him dead, he had a little foam on his nose, and some blood too, and the doctor said, 'That must be an overdose of heroin,'" Bernett said. Bernett added that he did not see Morrison take any heroin that night but said the singer was known to sniff the drug because he was afraid of needles.
Bernett says the two drug dealers insisted Morrison was just unconscious and carried him out of the club. Though Bernett says he wanted to call the paramedics and authorities, the club's owner ordered him to keep quiet to avert a scandal.
Bernett believes the dealers brought Morrison's body home and dropped it into the bathtub, a last attempt to revive him.
Morrison's girlfriend, who died three years later of an overdose, told police an entirely different story.
Courson said the couple went to the movies and out for dinner that night, listened to records and fell asleep. According to her testimony in police records, Morrison awoke in the night feeling ill and took a hot bath. Courson said she found him dead in the tub.
Morrison was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery, in a small ceremony without fanfare, on July 7, 1971. No autopsy was ever performed.
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Associated Press Writer Verena von Derschau in Paris contributed to this report.
EVERY BAND HAS A MYSTERIOUS OR TRAGIC DEATH, IT SEEMS...
THE ROLLING STONES, THE DOORS, THE BEATLES, THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS, KISS, THE BEE GEES, THE WHO, JEFFERSON AIRPLANE/STARSHIP...
THE FOUR HORSEMEN - next...
BUT THAT'S A DIFFERENT KIND OF BAND...
Memorial for pro wrestler's wife, son
By TRAVIS REED, Associated Press Writer Sat Jul 14, 3:56 PM ET
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Chris Benoit's professional wrestling colleagues were among the mourners Saturday at a memorial service for his wife and their 7-year-old son.
Benoit killed his wife, Nancy, and son, Daniel, in their home in the Atlanta area three weeks ago, placed Bibles next to their bodies and then hanged himself on the cable of a weight machine, authorities said.
Before the service began at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Jim Ross, the World Wrestling Entertainment announcer known as J.R., called the deaths "a real tragedy."
Nancy Benoit's parents, Paul and Maureen Toffoloni, live in Daytona Beach.
At the family's last-minute request, the service was not open to the media. Some wrestling fans were allowed in.
Anabolic steroids were found in the Benoits' home, leading officials to wonder if the drugs played a role in the killings. Results of toxicology tests on the three have not been released.
Ross said Saturday that drugs shouldn't be the focus.
"It's not a steroid issue," Ross said. "It's a domestic issue. There's a lot of other criteria that has to be involved in it. I still can't believe it even happened."
Benoit, born in Montreal, was a World Wrestling Entertainment star with a wholesome family man image. Nancy Benoit, however, filed for a divorce in 2003 alleging "cruel treatment." She dropped the complaint, as well as a request for a restraining order in which she alleged Benoit threatened her and broke furniture.
Nancy Benoit was a wrestling stage manager who worked under the name "Woman." The two met in the 1990s when she was married to rival wrestler Kevin Sullivan. She left Sullivan and married Benoit in 2000.
"I've known Nancy for 20 years. She was always exuberant and fun to be around," Ross said. "Always laughing, had a great sense of humor. You know, was one of the guys. Had great timing in the ring, was a beautiful lady."
Chris Benoit's father has said private services for him were to be held in Canada. It was unknown Saturday whether those services have taken place.
(SCREW WHAT J.R. HAD TO SAY - RIC FLAIR KNEW NANCY DAUS JUST AS WELL IF NOT BETTER THAN HIM; AND HAD WORKED FAR MORE CLOSELY WITH HER AS WELL. HIS OPINION IS WHAT I WOULD HAVE PREFERED TO HEAR; NOT THAT OF ''GOOD OL' J.R.'' - AT ALL! NOT AT ALL! AS ''WOMAN'' WOULD SAY... WOMAN, OH WOMAN - WON'T YOU MOURN WITH ME NOW?
R.I.P. NANCY DAUS.)
Théâtre: Adieu Ed Mirvish
2007-07-13 14:21:46
De nombreuses personnalités assistent aux obsèques de l'entrepreneur et mécène torontois, mort mercredi. Le chef du NPD et l'ancien premier ministre ontarien Bob Rae y étaient.
De nombreux amis, proches, admirateurs et dignitaires ont assisté vendredi aux funérailles d'Ed Mirvish. L'entrepreneur, mécène et père de la comédie musicale à Toronto, est mort le 11 juillet à l'âge de 92 ans.
Le premier ministre de l'Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, l'ancien premier ministre ontarien, Bob Rae, et le chef du NDP, Jack Layton, ont notamment assisté à la cérémonie. Elle s'est déroulée dans une synagogue de la Ville Reine.
D'Honest Ed au Royal Vic
Issu d'un milieu modeste, Ed Mirvish a fait fortune dans le commerce de détail et le divertissement.
Il a notamment fondé le magasin Honest Ed, au centre-ville de Toronto, qui est devenu une véritable institution.
Cependant, le flamboyant millionnaire restera dans les mémoires pour sa contribution à l'industrie du divertissement.
En 1962, Ed Mirvish a racheté le théâtre Royal Alexandra, alors en difficulté financière, et il l'a rénové.
Le Royal Alexandra est devenu un lieu incontournable du quartier du divertissement de Toronto, qu'Ed Mirvish a contribué à créer.
Le mécène a également acheté et restauré l'Old Vic, à Londres, en Angleterre, avec son fils unique David Mirvish. En 1993, il fait construire le Princess of Wales Theatre à Toronto.
Ses théâtres ont présenté à Toronto des succès comme The Lion King, Mamma Mia et Miss Saigon.
Trial opens in hotel fire that killed 6
By JEFFREY COLLINS, Associated Press Writer Sun Jul 15, 9:00 PM ET
COLUMBIA, S.C. - Brenda Brazell still remembers waking to the screams of "Help! My baby!", then desperately searching a smoke-filled hotel hallway for her son and granddaughter, who were staying a few rooms away.
Brazell's family survived, but the crying woman and her baby boy were among the six guests who died in the early morning hotel blaze in Greenville in 2004.
Jury selection is to begin Monday for Eric Preston Hans, who is charged with one federal count of arson resulting in death.
"If he's guilty, he needs to fry. That baby is what upset me so bad," said Brazell, 60. "We're all hurting, but that poor baby didn't have a chance in the world."
The trial is likely to run into August. If Hans is found guilty, the same jury would hear more testimony to determine whether he should die.
Hans, 37, has maintained his innocence since he was first questioned Jan. 25, 2004, the day after the fire, according to statements given to police.
"I didn't start the fire. I know in my heart I didn't start the fire," Hans told authorities, according to pretrial testimony from Greenville County sheriff's investigator Wes Smith.
On the night of the fire at the Comfort Inn, Brazell and her then-teenage daughter were in a room across the hall from Melba Leshawn Canty, 21, and her 15-month-old son, Jaden.
Around 4 a.m., Canty ran into the hall begging for help because she couldn't find her boy in the smoke.
Prosecutors accuse Hans of starting the fire on the third floor near the rear stairwell to kill Canty. Brazell says investigators told her that Hans had a feud with Canty's boyfriend, Zachary Cromer, who was in the room with Canty and the baby.
Cromer escaped by breaking a window and jumping several feet to an overhang, suffering serious injuries. Ten more guests also were injured and many of the other 46 registered guests rushed into the freezing rain in pajamas. Some shattered windows and waited for firefighters or climbed down bed sheets.
Hans called Canty a true friend and said her death was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, sheriff's Lt. Thomas Seigler has testified.
Hans, jailed awaiting trial, refused an interview request from The Associated Press.
When he was indicted in November 2005, Hans was in state prison serving two years for receiving stolen goods. He also spent time behind bars for hiding in a convenience store until it closed and trying to break into a video poker machine with a saw, according to court records.
Brazell is on the prosecution's witness list and plans to watch at least some of the trial. She said she had a stroke that doctors think was caused by stress of the fire.
Her daughter, now 21, still has difficulty breathing. Her 10-year-old granddaughter had to see a psychiatrist for a year after the fire and still gets upset when someone talks about the blaze, Brazell said.
The family had gone to Greenville from their home in Burnsville, N.C., 2 1/2 hours away, to watch a monster truck show.
"We just went down there for one night to have some fun," Brazell said. "It's sad that someone is that mad enough to kill and injure that many people over a woman."
Man shot, killed in Colorado Capitol
By STEVEN K. PAULSON, Associated Press Writer 35 minutes ago
DENVER - A man carrying a gun and declaring "I am the emperor" was shot and killed Monday outside the offices of Gov. Bill Ritter by a security officer, a spokesman said. Ritter was not injured.
The unidentified man refused orders to drop his gun, spokesman Evan Dreyer said. Four or five shots were heard, but authorities would not say how many times the security officer fired.
The man did not fire his weapon, police spokesman Sonny Jackson said.
Before he was shot, the gunman said, "I am the emperor and I'm here to take over state government," Dreyer said.
The shooting occurred in a hall outside the governor's offices on the first floor of the Capitol. Dreyer said Ritter was in the Capitol at the time but would not say where.
"The governor is fine," Dreyer said. "Everybody is a bit rattled."
Investigators did not know the man's name or his motive, Jackson said. He declined to discuss the gunman's statement but said it was considered threatening.
The Capitol has no metal detectors. They are usually installed temporarily during the governor's annual State of the State address in January but then are removed.
State Rep. Edward Casso said he saw the gunman after the shooting and described him as being in his 30s or 40s, dressed in a white shirt and dark slacks.
Casso said a state patrolman told him to evacuate, adding, "I started to panic a little bit. I was just hoping that was the end of it."
Authorities roped off the area where the man was shot, and an ambulance and eight police cars converged on the building's north entrance.
An hour after the shooting, state troopers and police — some carrying automatic weapons — ordered the Capitol evacuated and began a room-by-room search. They did not say whether the search was a precaution or whether they had reason to believe someone else was involved.
Pat Garriott said he was eating in the basement cafeteria when he heard shots.
"We heard a series of loud bangs, about four," he said. "My partner and I looked up and saw a flash of smoke. We figured out it was probably gunshots."
Security agents rushed them into a basement office for safety and kept them there for about 20 minutes, he said.
Casso, a first-term Democrat, said the Capitol should have metal detectors.
"It's kind of freaky someone could get that close," he said.
___
Associated Press writer Catherine Tsai and AP photographer David Zalubowski contributed to this report.
Copper thieves die trying
By KRISTEN WYATT, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 42 minutes ago
PASADENA, Md. - Firefighters weren't sure what was causing the smoke rising from a former discount store in this Baltimore suburb. The place had been abandoned for years, the interior stripped to the walls.
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When they got inside July 2, they found only one thing burning: a 41-year-old man who became engulfed in flames and died after cutting through a high-voltage line.
Sean Phelps became another ghastly casualty of what authorities say is a deadly national trend: copper wiring thefts.
High copper prices in recent years have thieves breaking into power plants and abandoned factories to rip out the wiring. Vandals are even stealing from gravesites.
There is no national count of people killed in copper theft attempts, but news accounts put the death toll at about two dozen over the past 12 months.
Phelps, a father of nine and a former long-haul trucker who family members say was trying to scavenge scrap metal to help support his family, was found alone in the empty building, next to a set of bolt cutters, a police scanner and the store's lone remaining electrical panel. He wrongly assumed the power would be off, authorities say.
When Phelps cut the wire carrying at least 220 volts, he was hit with a powerful electrical arc, similar to what happens when lightning strikes or a transformer blows.
Most copper thefts are nuisances, such as a recent rash at a Maryland youth baseball park that has left Little Leaguers without lights for night games.
But increasingly, thieves are turning to the highest-quality sources of copper — power substations, utility poles and electrical boxes — and turning over the easy-to-recycle wiring to scrap dealers.
The practice is so dangerous that utility workers refer to it as "a dance with the devil." But it is profitable for those who don't get hurt.
Copper prices have shot up almost fourfold in the past decade, an increase attributed to rising demand from Asia. Copper now trades on financial markets for $3.65 a pound. The metal is hard to trace and retains its value well when recycled, so thieves are even targeting copper alloys such as brass.
Pipes and air conditioners have been stripped from homes and churches. California farmers have had irrigation machinery plucked. In Guam, 34 brass panels on a World War II memorial were stripped earlier this month. Thieves last year stole $10,000 worth of brass toilet flush valves from parks around Honolulu.
Police in Maryland, Ohio and Wisconsin say copper urns or brass plates have vanished from cemeteries.
"They don't realize how much danger they're putting themselves in for $3 a pound," said Betty Kennedy, a spokeswoman for Atlantic City Electric in New Jersey, where a man was hospitalized last month with severe burns on his arms after police say he tried to steal copper wire from a substation in Millville, N.J.
In Ohio, a man was electrocuted Monday when he tried to take down a power line to sell the copper. Sheriff's deputies found the man tangled in the line, and utility workers had to remove the body.
The copper theft spree prompted 20 states to pass laws this year to curb the problem. Much of the attention has gone to metal recyclers, who in many places could buy scrap without asking where it came from.
After several people were electrocuted in Arkansas, legislators passed a law this year requiring people selling scrap metal to supply photo IDs and addresses. That law takes effect at the end of the month.
"We've had too many in our state killed," said state Rep. Bruce Maloch, who sponsored the bill.
Some scrap metal recyclers oppose such laws. Many say they already ask for identification.
"I always ask for ID, to cover myself. I caught a guy last week. If they ask why I need ID, I say, `To make sure it's not stolen,'" said John Clouse, owner of Junkman Recycling in Bullhead City, Ariz. But Clouse opposes further laws regulating scrap metal recycling: "We've got too many laws already."
An industry group, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, does not oppose some ID laws, but is against requirements that dealers hold on to metal scrap for a certain period to make sure it is not stolen.
To discourage theft, Kentucky Utilities of Lexington, Ky., started using a new type of wiring — copper weld, not solid copper — last year. Spokesman Cliff Feltham said the change has not deterred copper thieves so far — one man died and two were seriously injured at Kentucky Utilities properties since the change.
"As long as the prices are high," said Clouse, the scrap dealer, "this is going to happen."
___
On the Net:
Copper Development Association: http://www.copper.org
Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries: http://www.isri.org
Arkansas scrap metal law: http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/ftproot/bills/2007/public/HB2443.pdf
Train hits car in Fla.; 4 dead
1 hour, 27 minutes ago
LAKELAND, Fla. - An Amtrak train struck a car at a railroad crossing Monday, killing four people in the car, police said.
There were no injuries on the train, authorities said.
The car drove around the crossing gate, witnesses said. The impact threw the car into the air, and the train came to a halt about 300 yards down the track, they said.
"The car is totally demolished," Lakeland police spokesman Jack Gillen said.
The Silver Star was traveling from Miami to New York with 161 passengers aboard, Amtrak spokeswoman Tracy Connell said. The train had stopped in Tampa before the accident.
It was not immediately known how fast the train was going or what caused the accident. The authorized speed for that area is 79 mph.
Japan quake causes 9 deaths, nuke leak
By KOJI SASAHARA, Associated Press Writer 29 minutes ago
KASHIWAZAKI, Japan - A strong earthquake shook Japan's northwest coast Monday, setting off a fire at the world's most powerful nuclear power plant and causing a reactor to spill radioactive water into the sea — an accident not reported to the public for hours.
The 6.8-magnitude temblor killed at least nine people and injured more than 900 as it toppled hundreds of wooden homes and tore 3-foot-wide fissures in the ground. Highways and bridges buckled, leaving officials struggling to get emergency supplies into the region.
Some 10,000 people fled to evacuation centers as aftershocks rattled the area. Tens of thousands of homes were left without water or power.
The quake triggered a fire in an electrical transformer and also caused a leak of radioactive water at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world's largest in terms of electricity output.
The leak was not announced until the evening, many hours after the quake. That fed fresh concerns about the safety of Japan's 55 nuclear reactors, which supply 30 percent of the quake-prone country's electricity and have suffered a long string of accidents and cover-ups.
About 315 gallons of slightly radioactive water apparently spilled from a tank at one of the plant's seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co. He said it was not clear whether the tank was damaged or the water simply spilled out.
Officials said there was no "significant change" in the seawater near the plant, which is about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo. "The radioactivity is one-billionth of the legal limit," Oshima said of the leaked water.
Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, said the agency told Japan's government it was ready to provide assistance if needed but had not received any request for help.
Brenner said he didn't have details about the incident. But a U.S. nuclear industry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was a Japanese affair, said the transformer fire and water leak occurred in systems linked to different reactors.
In Kashiwazaki city, the quake reduced older buildings to piles of lumber. Nine people in their 70s and 80s — six women and three men — died, most of them crushed by collapsing buildings, the Kyodo news agency said early Tuesday.
Kyodo reported more than 900 people were hurt, with injuries including broken bones, cuts and bruises. It said 780 buildings sustained damage, and more than 300 of them were destroyed.
"I got so dizzy that I could barely stand up," said Kazuaki Kitagami, a worker at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Kashiwazaki, the hardest-hit city. "The jolt came violently from just below the ground."
The area was plagued by aftershocks, but there were no immediate reports of additional damage or casualties. Near midnight, Japan's Meteorological Agency said a 6.6-magnitude quake hit off the west coast, shaking wide areas of Japan, but it was unrelated to the Niigata quake to the north and there were no immediate reports of damage.
The U.S. Geological Survey put the intital quake's magnitude at 6.6 and the second at 6.8.
First word of trouble at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa power plant was a fire that broke out at an electrical transformer. All the reactors were either already shut down or automatically switched off by the quake. The blaze was reported quelled by early afternoon, and the power company announced there was no damage to the reactor and no release of radioactivity.
But in the evening, the company released a statement revealing the leak of radioactive water, saying it had taken all day to confirm details of the accident. But the delay raised suspicions among environmentalists, who oppose the government's plan to build more reactors.
"The leak itself doesn't sound significant as of yet, but the fact that it went unreported is a concern," said Michael Mariotte at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Maryland-based networking center for environmental activists. "When a company begins by denying a problem, it makes you wonder if there's another shoe to drop."
The accident comes as the government is discussing improving the earthquake resistance of such plants, said Aileen Mioko Smith of the Japan-based environmentalist group Green Action.
The fire indicated that some facilities at nuclear power plants, such as electrical transformers, were built to lower quake-resistance levels than other equipment, like reactor cores, she said.
"That's the Achilles heel of nuclear power plants," said Mioko Smith, who pointed out that it took plant workers two hours to put out the transformer fire.
Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari told the power company early Tuesday not to resume plant operations before making a thorough safety check, Kyodo reported.
The quake, which hit at 10:13 a.m., was centered off the coast of Niigata. The tremor made buildings sway in the capital 160 miles away and was also felt in northern and central Japan. Tsunami warnings were issued, but the resulting waves were too small to cause any damage.
As rescue crews dug through the rubble for survivors or more dead, focus shifted to getting food and water to evacuation centers. Many roads were impassable, though bullet train service to nearby Niigata resumed late Monday.
More than 60,000 homes in the quake zone were without water, 34,000 lost natural gas and 25,000 had no electricity as of late Monday afternoon, local official Takashi Takagi said.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose ruling party is trailing in the polls heading into July 29 parliamentary elections, interrupted a campaign stop in southern Japan to go to the damaged area.
"Many people told me they want to return to their normal lives as quickly as possible," Abe told reporters in Kashiwazaki. "The government will make every effort to help with recovery."
Japan sits atop four tectonic plates and is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries.
In October 2004, a magnitude-6.8 earthquake hit Niigata, killing 40 people and damaging more than 6,000 homes. It was the deadliest to hit Japan since 1995, when a magnitude-7.2 quake killed 6,433 people in the western city of Kobe.
The last major quake to hit Tokyo killed some 142,000 people in 1923, and experts say the capital has a 90 percent chance of suffering a major quake in the next 50 years.
___
Associated Press writers Kozo Mizoguchi, Carl Freire and Chisaki Watanabe in Tokyo and H. Josef Hebert in Washington contributed to this report.
Shooting suspect commits suicide
By MEAD GRUVER, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago
LARAMIE, Wyo. - A military sharpshooter accused of killing his estranged wife as she sang at a bar died Tuesday night after being found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, police said.
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Wyoming Army National Guardsman David Munis was found by a search team shortly before 8 p.m. MDT and was flown to Ivinson Memorial Hospital in Laramie, where he was pronounced dead, said Cheyenne police Lt. Mark Munari.
Munis, 36, apparently shot himself as searchers closed in on him, Munari said.
Authorities had been looking for Munis, 36, in a canyon area north of Laramie near where his pickup was spotted late Monday. He was found in a trailer about 15 miles north of Laramie, near where police had been searching, Munari said.
Munis' estranged wife, Robin Munis, 40, was singing with a classic-rock and country group at the Old Chicago restaurant and bar early Saturday when a bullet pierced a plate glass door and hit her in the head, killing her.
Witnesses at the hospital where Munis was taken said they saw a body covered in a tarp being taken out of a helicopter.
"We were standing outside, and we saw a helicopter come in pretty fast and land," said Evan Maurer, who was helping to install networking and telephone lines at the emergency room. "About eight guys in fatigues, looked like National Guardsman or Army, jumped out with M-16s."
"They grabbed a body out of the copter and started carrying it," Maurer said.
This is a breaking news update. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) — A military sharpshooter accused of killing his estranged wife as she sang at a bar died Tuesday night after being found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, police said.
Wyoming Army National Guardsman David Munis was found by a search team shortly before 8 p.m. MDT and was flown to Ivinson Memorial Hospital in Laramie, where he was pronounced dead, said Cheyenne police Lt. Mark Munari.
Munis, 36, apparently shot himself as searchers closed in on him, Munari said.
Authorities had been looking for Munis, 36, in a canyon area north of Laramie near where his pickup was spotted late Monday. He was found in a trailer about 15 miles north of Laramie, near where police had been searching, Munari said.
Munis' estranged wife, Robin Munis, 40, was singing with a classic-rock and country group at the Old Chicago restaurant and bar early Saturday when a bullet pierced a plate glass door and hit her in the head, killing her.
(HMM... SO 'NICE' A NEWS ITEM, THEY HAD TO REPORT IT TWICE LIKE THAT, ON CYBER NEWSWIRES...?!?
Dave there struck me as some sort of modern-day MOE - from the Three Stooges?
Anyway I think I have the right stooge there; the one with a moppy hairstyle?
He was 36, she was 40 - after Chris Benoit and Nancy Daus, is this the new trend now; men killing their older woman ladyloves?
Say it isn't so, Uncle Sam...)
176 feared dead in Brazil plane crash
By ALAN CLENDENNING, Associated Press Writer
SAO PAULO, Brazil - A passenger jet crashed and burst into flames after skidding off a runway at Brazil's busiest airport Tuesday and barreling across a busy highway, officials said. All 176 people on board were feared killed in what would be Brazil's deadliest air disaster.
The crash happened in a driving rain on a runway at Congonhas airport that had been criticized in the past for being too short. The TAM Airlines jet slammed into a gas station and a building owned by the airline, said Jose Leonardi Mota, a spokesman with airport authority Infraero.
TV footage showed flames and clouds of black smoke billowing into the air after the crash.
"I was told that the temperature inside the plane was 1,000 degrees (Celsius), so the chances of there being any survivors are practically nil," Sao Paulo State Gov. Jose Serra told reporters at the airport. That temperature in Celsius is equivalent to about 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared three days of national morning for the victims, and presidential spokesman Marcelo Baumbach told reporters late Tuesday that no death toll or cause would be immediately released because it was premature to do so.
"His worries now are with the victims and the relatives of the victims. That is main concern," Baumbach said, referring to Lula.
The crash — Brazil's second major disaster in less than a year — highlights the country's increasing aviation woes. In September, a Gol Airlines Boeing 737 collided with an executive jet over the Amazon rainforest, causing the passenger jet to crash, killing 154 people.
Since then, there have been questions about the country's underfunded air traffic control systems, deficient radar system and the airlines' ability to cope with a surge in travelers. Controllers — concerned about being made scapegoats — have engaged in strikes and work slowdowns to raise safety concerns, causing lengthy delays and cancelations.
TAM Airlines said there were 176 people on board the Airbus-320 that crashed — 170 passengers and six crew members. A Brazilian congressman was among those on the flight, his aide said.
Vans used by Sao Paulo's morgue sped away from the site hours after the crash and a doctor helping rescue workers told CBN radio that efforts were being made to identify 30 bodies.
"I can verify 30 burned bodies and I know that there are burned bodies in another location," Dr. Douglas Ferraz said in the interview.
As many as 12 people on the ground were injured and taken to hospitals, Serra said.
TAM worker Elias Rodrigues Jesus, walking near the site just as the crash happened, told The Associated Press that the jet exploded in between the gas station and a warehouse owned by TAM.
"All of a sudden I heard a loud explosion, and the ground beneath my feet shook," Jesus said. "I looked up and I saw a huge ball of fire, and then I smelled the stench of kerosene and sulfur."
TAM Linhas Aereas flight 3054 was en route to Sao Paulo from the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre when the crash occurred upon landing, TAM said in a statement.
Distraught relatives of passengers crowded TAM's check-in counters in Porto Alegre, complaining hours after the crash that the airline had not released a passenger list, Globo TV reported.
Lamir Buzzanelli said his 41-year-old son, Claudemir, had called him from Porto Alegre saying he was in the plane just before it took off.
"I'm still waiting for the official list to come out, but my hopes are not too high because I've been calling him on his cell phone, and all I get is his voice mail," Buzzanelli said, his eyes tearing up.
Critics have said for years that such an accident was possible at the airport because its runway is too short for large planes landing in rainy weather. Two planes had slipped off the runway in rainy weather on Monday, but no one was injured in either incident.
In 1996, a TAM Airlines Fokker-100 skidded off the runway at the airport and down a street before erupting in a fireball. The crash killed all 96 people on board and three on the ground.
A federal court in February briefly banned takeoffs and landings of large jets because of safety concerns at the airport, which handles huge volumes of flights for the massive domestic Brazilian air travel market.
But an appeals court overruled the ban, saying it was too harsh because it would have severe economic ramifications and that there were not enough safety concerns to prevent the planes from landing and taking off at the airport.
After the September airliner crash, a Brazilian judge indicted four flight controllers and the smaller jet's two U.S. pilots on the equivalent of manslaughter charges, but the defendants point to other problems — from holes in radar coverage to the inability of some Brazilian controllers to clearly speak English, the language of international aviation.
Travelers angry over excessive delays and cancellations in recent months have stormed airline check-in counters and runways in Brazil, and fistfights have broken out in waiting areas.
___
Associated Press writers Stan Lehman and Vivian Sequera contributed from Sao Paulo and Brasilia.
SCREW THE TRUCE - LET THE KILLING BEGIN!
Truce over, Pakistan militants kill 70
By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer Sun Jul 15, 6:20 PM ET
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Militants in northwest Pakistan disavowed a peace pact with the government and launched two days of suicide attacks and bombings that killed at least 70 people, dramatically escalating the violence in the al-Qaida infiltrated region.
The attacks Sunday and Saturday followed strident calls by extremists to avenge the government's bloody storming of Islamabad's Red Mosque and a declaration of jihad, or holy war, by at least one pro-Taliban cleric.
Termination of the peace treaty, the hopeful handiwork of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, puts even greater pressure on the military leader as he struggles with both Islamic extremists and a gathering pro-democracy movement.
There is concern in Pakistan that the gathering sense of crisis could prompt Musharraf to cancel elections later this year and declare a state of emergency — despite his repeated denials.
However, Musharraf can also use the turbulence to convince Washington, his key backer, that he remains a vital bulwark against extremists in the Islamic world's only declared nuclear state.
The U.S. national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, expressed concern Sunday about the threat from militants in Pakistan, but supported Musharraf's recent responses.
"He has a safe haven problem in an area of his country where Pakistan's central government has really not been present for decades or even generations. It is a problem for him," Hadley told CNN's "Late Edition."
But in a separate interview on Fox News Sunday, Hadley acknowledged that the United States was dissatisfied with Musharraf's policies.
"The action has at this point not been adequate, not effective," Hadley said. "He's doing more. We are urging him to do more, and we're providing our full support to what he's contemplating."
Abdullah Farhad, a militant spokesman, said the 10-month-old cease-fire was being terminated in North Waziristan, a remote area on the Afghan border where the U.S. worries that al-Qaida has regrouped.
He said Taliban leaders made the decision after the government failed to abide by their demand to withdraw troops from checkpoints by Sunday afternoon. He also accused authorities of launching attacks and failing to compensate those harmed.
"The peace agreement has ended," Farhad told reporters in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province.
The government deployed thousands of troops to restive areas of the province in recent days in hopes of stemming a backlash to the storming of the radical Red Mosque.
But they failed to protect themselves Sunday against suicide attacks and a roadside bomb which together killed 44 people and wounded more than 100.
Two suicide bombers and a roadside bomb struck a military convoy in Swat, a mountainous area northeast of Peshawar, killing 18 people and wounding 47, a government official said, citing an official report being sent to Islamabad.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media, said two explosive-laden vans driven rammed the convoy near the town of Matta. He said seven civilians also died.
Bodies and the wounded were pulled from the shattered military vehicles. Helmets, an engine, and pieces of twisted metal were strewn over a wide area, some of it stained with blood.
Television footage showed about half a dozen roadside houses also destroyed by the blasts. People dug four corpses out of the rubble, among them a young girl.
In the day's second attack, a suicide bomber targeted scores of people taking medical and written exams for recruitment to the police force in the city of Dera Ismail Khan. The blast killed 26 people and wounded 35, said police officer Habibur Rahman.
More than 150 people were on the grounds of the police headquarters when the bomber struck. Police said the bomber's head and suicide vest were found.
On Saturday, at least 26 soldiers were killed and 54 wounded in a suicide car bombing north of Miran Shah, North Waziristan's main town, the army said.
Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said the government was investigating whether the attacks were related to the Red Mosque operation.
Speaking on Pakistan's Geo television, he said militants had violated the Waziristan deal by attacking government targets. Authorities would hold tribal leaders responsible, he said.
Tensions are high in Pakistan after the mosque raid, which ended an eight-day siege with a hard-line cleric and his militant supporters. More than 100 died during the standoff.
The region along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan has seen increased activity by local militants, the Taliban, and — according to a recent U.S. assessment — al-Qaida.
One of the army's apparent targets is Maulana Fazlullah, a radical cleric who has pressed for Taliban-style rule in Pakistan — much like the leaders of the Red Mosque. Fazlullah was accused of telling supporters to prepare for jihad, or holy war, to avenge the mosque assault.
Intelligence officials in Swat say Fazlullah announced on an FM radio station Saturday night that he was fleeing to avoid arrest.
A document announcing the end of the peace pact in North Waziristan was passed around in the bazaar in Miran Shah. The signatories referred to themselves as the Taliban, a term commonly used by militants in northwest Pakistan, though their links with the Taliban fighting in neighboring Afghanistan are murky.
Under the Sept. 5, 2006, truce, the Pakistan army pulled back to barracks tens of thousands of troops that had been involved in bloody operations against suspected Taliban and al-Qaida hideouts, and militants agreed to halt attacks in Pakistan and over the border against foreign troops in Afghanistan. Tribal elders were supposed to police the deal.
Musharraf had clung to the agreement and similar pacts in neighboring areas, arguing that, by empowering tribal leaders to police their own fiefdoms in return for development aid, they offered the only chance of bringing long-term stability.
However, critics have argued that Musharraf's decision to cut a deal effectively handed the Taliban and al-Qaida a safe haven from which to plot attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan and in the West.
____
Associated Press writers Zarar Khan and Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad, Bashirullah Khan in Miran Shah and Ishtiaq Mahsun in Dera Ismail Khan contributed to this report.
Pakistan steps up security; blast toll 16
By Augustine Anthony 27 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Police in the Pakistani capital stepped up security on Wednesday, as the death toll rose to 16 from a suicide attack outside a court where the country's suspended chief justice had been due to speak.
More than 60 people were being treated for wounds after the Tuesday evening attack in a car park in the capital where a stage had been set up for suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to address a rally of lawyers.
Chaudhry, who has become a symbol of opposition to President Pervez Musharraf's eight-year rule, had not arrived to speak to lawyers at the time of the blast.
"Three people died of their wounds overnight," said an official at the city's main hospital, taking the toll to 16.
Pakistan has seen a surge in violence since government forces stormed Islamabad's Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, compound last week, ending a week-long siege and killing 75 supporters of hardline clerics.
Islamabad police chief Iftikhar Ahmed told reporters late on Tuesday that police had information that militant suicide bombers had entered the capital.
"We have beefed up security but it is not possible to stop such attacks," he said.
Police have set up checkpoints on all main roads into the city and roads inside the city. They also mounted extra patrols.
Attacks in the capital are rare compared with the northwest where about 100 people, most police and soldiers, have been killed in a spate of attacks this month.
A roadside bomb in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border wounded up to six civilians, a military official said. Militants in the region vowed to attack security forces after abandoning a 10-month peace pact on the weekend.
APPEAL FOR CALM
Musharraf, who suspended Chaudhry on March 9 after accusing him of misconduct, condemned the blast in Islamabad and urged the public to stay clam, the state news agency reported.
Chaudhry's suspension sparked protests by lawyers defending the independence of the judiciary and opposition parties seeking an end to army chief Musharraf's rule.
Their joint campaign snowballed into the biggest challenge to Musharraf's rule since he took power.
Tuesday's blast went off about 30 meters (yards) from the stage set up for Chaudhry and close to a stall put up by the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
One lawyer with the chief justice said he believed the blast was part of the backlash against the Lal Masjid assault, and was aimed at the PPP because Bhutto had voiced support for the military action against the militants in the mosque.
But another lawyer close to Chaudhry said he believed the chief justice had been targeted by state intelligence agencies.
Bhutto said she was certain her party workers had been targeted, and she believed some "hidden hands" were seeking to create a pretext for Musharraf to impose emergency rule.
Musharraf, an important U.S. ally, has said repeatedly over recent months he would not impose an emergency and elections due around the end of the year would go ahead on time.
A senior U.S. official praised Pakistan on Tuesday for dealing decisively with militancy. Musharraf had also shown determination to bring about the democratic transition that was important to Pakistan's long-term success, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher told reporters in Washington.
BRASILEIROS DA PORRETA...
Fishermen killed 83 dolphins
18/07/2007 12:59 - (SA)
Related news:
# Deaf dolphin gives birth
# Dolphins 'speak' Welsh dialect
# Deadly algae, overfishing linked
Sao Paulo, Brazil - Brazilian fishermen were captured on video killing 83 dolphins and joking about their illegal haul, Brazil's Ibama environmental protection agency said on Tuesday.
The video obtained by an Ibama researcher and broadcast by Globo TV showed the fishermen netting the dolphins, which suffocated because they could not surface to breathe.
The dead dolphins were then hauled from the sea and piled on the boat's deck. Fishermen on board are seen laughing after someone said, "Everyone's going to jail after this filming!"
International dolphin advocates who saw the video said they were appalled and Ibama announced it will try to impose fishing restrictions along parts of Brazil's coast where dolphins are common.
The researcher was contracted by the agency to monitor catches of other fish in the area where the dolphin kill took place off the coast of Amapa state, near where the Amazon River flows into the Atlantic Ocean.
No one has been charged or fined because authorities were still trying to identify the fishermen caught on video, Ibama said in a statement.
The agency said the video was not available to be copied by other media outlets because it was being transported to the capital of Brasilia for the investigation.
After they are identified, "they will suffer the appropriate sanctions", Ibama said.
It was not immediately clear whether the video of the dolphins being killed was made by the researcher or a crew member.
Fishermen who illegally snag dolphins usually sell the meat to other boats to use as bait to catch sharks, Globo TV said.
The images came as a surprise to groups working to protect dolphins around the world.
"Brazil has strict laws to protect whales and dolphins in their waters, and they are very clearly being abused," said Claire Bass, programme manager for marine mammals with the London-based World Society for the Protection of Animals.
"Using nets to kill these extremely sociable and intelligent animals by drowning them is completely diabolical."
Dolphins are also caught off the coast of Africa for shark bait, she said.
Emma Butler, spokesperson at Britain's Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, said she thought the Latin America practice of killing dolphins to use as bait had been "consigned to history".
"It is very regrettable that it appears this is not the case, as Brazil has an otherwise good reputation of protecting its dolphins and whales," she said.
POETIC JUSTICE -
YOUR PEOPLE KILLS INNOCENT DOLPHINS WITHOUT REMORSE?
NOW - DIE!
Brazil plane crash may haunt government
By STAN LEHMAN, Associated Press Writer 36 minutes ago
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil's deadliest jetliner crash was an accident foretold. For months, air safety concerns have been aired in congressional hearings, and pilots and traffic controllers have worried for years about the short, slippery runways at Brazil's busiest airport.
Landing on the 6,362-foot-long runway at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport is so challenging that pilots liken it to an aircraft carrier — if they don't touch down precisely within the tarmac's first 1,000 feet, they're warned to pull up and circle around again. The ungrooved runway becomes even more treacherous in the rain when it turns into a slick landing surface.
The runway appears to have been a key factor in Tuesday's crash, and critics condemned President Luis Inacio da Silva's government Wednesday for failing to invest in safety measures adopted by other urban airports.
None of the 186 people on board survived, TAM Linhas Aereas SA chief executive Marco Antonio Bologna said Wednesday. Three TAM workers on the ground also died and another 11 were hospitalized.
Firefighters pulled at least 171 charred bodies from the site where the Airbus-320 crashed, igniting in a 1,830-degree fireball. The plane slammed into a gas station and a TAM Airlines building after narrowly clearing the airport's perimeter fence and rush-hour traffic on a surrounding highway.
Brig. Jorge Kersul Filho, director of the Air Force's Center for Investigation and Prevention of Air Accidents, said it appeared the pilot had tried to take off again before the crash.
"That he jumped over the avenue was an indication he tried to take off. If he didn't (try to take off) he would have gone nose down at the end of the runway," he said.
Also, video footage of the landing shows TAM Flight 3054 from Porto Alegre coming in much faster than other planes, said Sen. Deonstenes Torres, chief of a Senate commission investigating problems with Brazilian civil aviation.
"On parts of the runway that most planes took 11 seconds to traverse, this plane took three," Torres said.
Torres said the plane's two black boxes would be sent the U.S. for analysis. Meanwhile, French and U.S. safety investigators are assisting the Brazilians in probing the cause of the crash.
International air safety experts have long warned of the danger of just such an accident on the short runway at Sao Paulo's airport, especially in heavy rain. Only the day before, two other planes skidded off the runway's end.
But a top aviation official denied the runway was to blame for the crash.
"I can confirm that there was no possibility of skidding on this runway," said Armando Schneider Filho, director of engineering for the nation's airport authority Infraero.
"Twenty minutes before the accident, Infraero performed a visual inspection of the runway and detected no problems," he added. "It was wet but there was no accumulation of water."
The airport has tried to improve the runway recently by resurfacing it to provide better braking in rainy conditions. However, the new surface hadn't dried enough for the next step, cutting deep grooves into the tarmac.
Schneider said the runway would remain closed for 20 days and grooves would be cut in August or September after the asphalt has hardened sufficiently. He added that few airports in Brazil have the grooves without any major problems.
Like many congested urban airports, Sao Paulo's domestic air travel hub is surrounded by development and has no room for the runway extensions recommended by air safety groups. New York's LaGuardia Airport, by contrast, has a 7,003-foot runway.
But the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations said Wednesday the accident shows the need for the next best thing — braking systems of soft cement beyond the runway, where wheels can sink in and slow the jets to a safe stop.
The soft cement is strong enough to support airport emergency vehicles, but disintegrates into fragments when a heavy aircraft runs over it, thus acting as a brake.
Known as an arrestor bed, the system has prevented several planes from ending up in the bay next to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, said Gideon Ewers, the pilot group's spokesman.
Critics condemned Silva's government for its failure to fix Brazil's air traffic problems in the months since 154 people were killed in the September collision of a Gol Airlines Boeing 737 with a small jet over the Amazon rainforest.
"It's been 10 months since the last worst air accident in Brazilian history and now we've had an accident worse than that," said David Fleischer, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia. "If you look at what's happened since September, the answer is nothing."
"It was a tragedy foretold," said political commentator Lucia Hippolito. "The government has done nothing because of administrative inefficiency and simple incompetence."
Silva has been unable to wrest control of the civil aviation system from the military, which oversees Brazil's air traffic controllers and has filled top positions at the national aviation agency with political appointees with little or no experience.
Defense Minister Waldir Pires warned people not to point fingers.
"It's a moment for caution, and until the results of the investigation are known, it's better to maintain sobriety and avoid quick judgments," Pires said.
The accident is certain to have political ramifications, however, if only because the dead included Rep. Julio Redecker, 51, a leader of the opposition Brazilian Social Democracy Party and vocal critic of Silva's handling of the aviation crisis.
"President Lula needs to act and not speak. Or his term will be marked by the suffering and pain of so many Brazilians that could be still be alive," read a statement from Redecker's party.
Congressional investigations have raised questions about the country's underfunded air traffic control system, deficient radar and lack of investment in infrastructure, even as airlines struggle to cope with a surge in air travel caused by Brazil's booming economy.
Concerned about being made scapegoats, controllers have engaged in strikes and work slowdowns to raise safety concerns, causing months of delays and cancelations. Throughout it all, one of the most glaring problems has been the runway at Congonhas, in the heart of Brazil's biggest city.
In addition to the two planes that skidded off the runway Monday, a Boeing 737-400 overshot it in a heavy rain on March 22, stopping just short of a steep drop-off to the adjacent highway.
In February, a federal court briefly banned three types of large jets from the runway, but was overruled on appeal by a court that said safety concerns weren't sufficient to outweigh the severe economic ramifications. Airbus-320s were not covered under the court's ban.
Most of the 162 passengers and 24 TAM employees on board the domestic flight were Brazilians, but an Argentine man and an Austrian were among the victims, according to their countries' consulates. A Peruvian also was aboard, TAM said.
Outside Sao Paulo's main morgue, dozens of people watched silently as vans carrying the dead bodies arrived.
"We never thought this would happen, but it's not surprising. This is Brazil," said Richard Teofolo, a 30-year-old chauffeur. "There's blame to go all around, but no one's going to take the responsibility in the end."
___
Associated Press writers Michael Astor in Rio de Janeiro and Alan Clendenning in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.
Huge steam pipe blast kills one in NYC
By ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press Writer 24 minutes ago
NEW YORK - An underground steam pipe explosion tore through a Manhattan street near Grand Central Terminal on Wednesday, swallowing a tow truck and killing one person as hundreds of others ran for cover amid a towering geyser of steam and flying rubble. New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said the explosion was not terrorism.
"There is no reason to believe whatsoever that this is anything other than a failure of our infrastructure," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference at the scene of the blast.
Sixteen people were taken to Bellevue Hospital, including the person who died, said spokesman Stephen Bohlen. He said two seriously injured patients were being treated in the hospital's trauma unit. The remainder suffered minor injuries, he said.
Two people were in critical condition at New York Weill-Cornell Medical Center, said spokeswoman Emily Berlanstein.
A plume of steam and mud shot from the center of the blast, generating a tremendous roar. The initial burst of steam rose higher than the nearby 77-story Chrysler Building, one of Manhattan's tallest buildings. The air near the site was filled with debris.
Heiko H. Thieme, an investment banker, had mud splattered on his face, pants and shoes. He said the explosion was like a volcano. "Everybody was a bit confused, everybody obviously thought of 9/11."
Thousands of commuters evacuated the train terminal, some at a run, after workers yelled for people to get out of the building. A small school bus was abandoned just feet from the spot where the jet of steam spewed from the ground.
Debbie Tontodonato, 40, a manager for Clear Channel Outdoor, said she thought the rumble from the explosion was thunder.
"I looked out the window and I saw these huge chunks that I thought were hail," she said. "We panicked, I think everyone thought the worst. Thank God it wasn't. It was like a cattle drive going down the stairs, with everyone pushing. I almost fell down the stairs."
Streets were closed in several blocks in all directions. Subway service in the area was suspended.
The steam cleared around 8 p.m., exposing a crater several feet wide in the street. A red tow truck lay at the bottom of the hole.
Con Edison spokesman Chris Olert said workers were still trying to determine what caused the blast.
There were also concerns about what was spewed into the air. Some of the pipes carrying steam through the city are wrapped in asbestos. Olert said asbestos testing was under way.
Police were wearing gas masks on the street.
Millions of pounds of steam are pumped beneath New York City streets every hour, heating and cooling thousands of buildings, including the Empire State Building.
The steam pipes are sometimes prone to rupture, however. In 1989, a gigantic steam explosion ripped through a street, killing three people and sending mud and debris several stories into the air.
That explosion was caused by a condition known as "water hammer," the result of condensation of water inside a steam pipe.
___
Associated Press writers Eric Vora and Richard Pyle contributed to this report.
Japan nuke plant leak worse than thought
By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 18 minutes ago
KASHIWAZAKI, Japan - An earthquake-wracked nuclear power plant was ordered closed indefinitely Wednesday amid growing anger over revelations that damage was much worse than initially announced and mounting international concern about Japan's nuclear stewardship.
Toyota and other Japanese automakers, meanwhile, suspended production at factories across the country because a major parts supplier sustained damage from Monday's magnitude-6.8 quake, which killed 10 people and left tens of thousands without power or water.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. warned that the nuclear plant shutdown could lead to power shortages in Japan. It has asked six other power companies to consider providing emergency electricity to prepare for rising demand from summer air conditioning, spokesman Hiroshi Itagaki said.
The mayor of Kashiwazaki, a city of 93,500 on the northern coast, called in the head of the nation's biggest power company and ordered the damaged nuclear station closed until its safety could be confirmed, escalating a showdown over a long list of problems at the world's most powerful generating plant.
"I am worried," Mayor Hiroshi Aida said in ordering the closure. "The safety of the plant must be assured before it is reopened."
Officials at Tokyo Electric, operator of the plant, said damage caused by the quake posed no danger to people or the environment.
But damage was widely visible on the site, from cracked roads and buckled sidewalks to the charred outside wall of an electrical transformer building that caught fire.
"To be honest, it's a mess," said company President Tsunehisa Katsumata, but he insisted fears of radioactive contamination were unfounded.
That did little to calm anger over the company's slow revelations of damage at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, which generates 8.2 million kilowatts of electricity. The plant, like much of the nuclear industry in Japan, has been plagued with mishaps, such as a radioactive leak in a turbine room in 2001.
On Tuesday, the utility shocked the nation by releasing a list of dozens of problems triggered by the quake, after earlier reporting only the transformer fire and a small leak of radioactive water.
The new list of problems included the transformer fire, broken pipes, water leaks and spills of radioactive waste. It also said the leak of radioactive water into the Sea of Japan was 50 percent bigger than announced Monday night.
"We made a mistake in calculating the amount that leaked into the ocean," the company said in a statement. Spokesman Jun Oshima said the amount was still "one-billionth of Japan's legal limit."
Even that list had to be revised. Tokyo Electric said later Wednesday that about 400 barrels containing low-level nuclear waste had tipped over at a storage facility at the plant during the quake, revising an earlier figure of 100.
The lids were knocked off about 40 barrels, spilling their contents onto the floor, spokesman Tsutomu Uehara told reporters in Tokyo. Uehara said no radiation had been detected outside the facility.
Concerns about nuclear safety echoed across Japan, which depends on 55 reactors for about 30 percent of its electricity needs.
"Japan has a dense population so the human damage would be major here. There would be many deaths," Hideyuki Ban, a director of the civil group Citizen's Nuclear Information Center, told reporters. "I think that a quake-prone country should phase out its use of nuclear power."
The International Atomic Energy Agency pressed Japan's government to undertake a thorough investigation of the damage to see if lessons could be applied to nuclear plants elsewhere.
Speaking in Malaysia, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei offered help from his U.N. watchdog agency.
"I would hope, and I trust, that Japan would be fully transparent in its investigation of that accident," he said. "The agency would be ready to join Japan through an international team in reviewing that accident and drawing the necessary lessons."
Katsumata, Tokyo Electric's president, said the company would thoroughly study the impact of the earthquake.
"We will conduct an investigation from the ground up. But I think fundamentally we have confirmed that our safety measures worked," he said. "It is hard to make everything go perfectly."
Yet, while Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, executives at the plant admitted they had not foreseen such a powerful temblor hitting the facility.
The plant's deputy superintendent, Masakazu Minamidate, said the strongest known quake in the region previously was a magnitude 6.5. "This was stronger than we expected," he said.
New data from aftershocks following Monday's offshore quake suggested a fault line may run underneath the power plant itself, which was only 12 miles from the epicenter.
Minamidate said an onshore survey of fault lines had been completed, but not one offshore. While it was unclear how close the fault line involved in the quake is to the plant, Meteorological Agency official Osamu Kamigaichi said it might stretch under the site.
Japan's Coast Guard said it would launch a study of the ocean floor off Kashiwazaki starting Friday to better map fault lines in the area.
Repercussions from the quake also were felt in the business world.
Shares of Tokyo Electric Power Co. fell in trading on Tuesday and Wednesday, and were at 5 percent below their closing price last week. They ended at $29.5 Wednesday — their lowest level since early December — on heavy trading of more than 13 million shares.
The temporary closure of auto parts maker Riken Corp.'s plant at Kashiwazaki forced Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. to scale back production.
Toyota, Japan's No. 1 automaker and challenging General Motors Corp. for world leadership, will stop production lines at a dozen factories centered in central Aichi prefecture Thursday afternoon and all day Friday, Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco said.
Several thousand Kashiwazaki residents remained in gymnasiums and civic centers Wednesday night because their homes had either been destroyed or damaged or because water service remained off.
Search teams pulled a 10th body from the rubble Wednesday night, and one man was listed as missing.
Décès de Marc-Olivier Moutier
L'Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de Lanaudière enquête
L'Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de Lanaudière a ouvert une enquête afin de faire la lumière sur la mort tragique du jeune Marc-Olivier Moutier 14 ans, victime d'un grave accident, dont les délais de transport ambulancier ont pris près d'une heure.
Selon l'Agence, ce qui s'est passé est inacceptable. Le délai d'un appel semblable est habituellement de 15 minutes, alors que l’adolescent a dû attendre plus de 50 minutes avant d’être transporté du Centre hospitalier Pierre-Le-Gardeur vers l’hôpital Sainte-Justine.
L'Agence souhaite vérifier si les procédures ont été respectées. Les ambulanciers ou les compagnies pour lesquelles ils travaillent qui sont impliqués dans cette affaire pourraient être sanctionnés.
Les Services préhospitaliers Laurentides-Lanaudière rejettent les allégations que l'entreprise aurait refusé d'affecter des ambulanciers en temps supplémentaire pour effectuer le transport du jeune Moutier vers Sainte-Justine.
Quant à la compagnie, Ambulances Lanaudière, qui dessert également l'hôpital Pierre-Le-Gardeur, elle aurait refusé d'effectuer le transfert de l’adolescent parce que ça ne relevait pas de son service.
Marc-Olivier Chayer est décédé à son arrivée à Sainte-Justine.
Monster croc executed
GREG McLEAN
15Jul07
A MONSTER croc with a taste for fishing boats has been found peppered with bullets from a high-powered rifle.
The 5.5m saltie - nicknamed Elizabeth by locals - had to be put down by police after a tour guide spotted him labouring on the banks of the Daly River with gunshot wounds to the head.
Prestige Inland and Coastal owner Jeff Wenban, 31, was sightseeing with his family from interstate on Friday morning when he came across his "old mate" about 35km west of the Woolianna boat ramp on the Daly.
Mr Wenban believes he had been shot in the head several times with a high-powered rifle.
The monster croc was notorious around Daly River for stalking fishermen and sometimes biting their boats for encroaching in his waters.
"He's grabbed hold of the back of my boat in the past, but he only did it because we were in his area," Mr Wenban said.
"He certainly used to let people know he was around and everyone knew about him.
"He was a big old fella, he could have been 100 years old, and you never want to see an animal like that die in those circumstances.
"Having him around was great for me because everyone wants to see the big crocs and he was massive.
"Everyone on the river knows him as my mate and it's sad to see him go out like that.
"He was a bit of a danger, but if someone wanted to get rid of him that badly they could have arranged to take him out to a wildlife park."
Officer-in-charge of Daly River police Ian Kennon said problem crocs should be reported to police or Parks and Wildlife.
Anyone caught and successfully prosecuted for shooting crocodiles faces up to five years' jail or a fine of up to $55,000.
Anyone with information about the shooting can call police on 131 444.
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(WELL... I RECKON THAT YOU DON'T KNOW THE LAW AS I DO THEN, ireckon.com & NTNews!!! Brush up on it all, pallies - HERE.)
2 US soldier charged with murder in Iraq
By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer 15 minutes ago
BAGHDAD - Two U.S. Army soldiers have been charged with the premeditated murder of an Iraqi, and a lieutenant colonel has been relieved of command in connection with the case, the U.S. military announced Thursday.
Sgt. 1st Class Trey A. Corrales, of San Antonio and Spc. Christopher P. Shore of Winder, Ga., were charged with one count of murder in the death, which allegedly occurred June 23 near the northern city of Kirkuk, the U.S. said in a statement.
Meanwhile, four U.S. soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in east Baghdad. The blast occurred Wednesday during operations to disrupt the flow of explosives into the capital, the U.S. military announced Thursday.
On Wednesday, the U.S. command announced the arrest of an al-Qaida leader it said served as the link between the organization's command in Iraq and Osama bin Laden's inner circle, enabling it to wield considerable influence over the Iraqi group.
The announcement was made as the White House steps up efforts to link the war in Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, with a growing number of Americans opposing the Iraq conflict. Some independent analysts question the extent of al-Qaida's role in Iraq.
Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani was the highest-ranking Iraqi in the al-Qaida in Iraq leadership when he was captured July 4 in Mosul, U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner said.
Bergner told reporters that al-Mashhadani carried messages from bin Laden, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, to the Egyptian-born head of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri.
"There is a clear connection between al-Qaida in Iraq and al-Qaida senior leadership outside Iraq," Bergner said.
He said al-Mashhadani had told interrogators that al-Qaida's global leadership provides "directions, they continue to provide a focus for operations" and "they continue to flow foreign fighters into Iraq, foreign terrorists."
The relationship between bin Laden and the al-Qaida in Iraq leadership has long been the subject of debate. Some private analysts believe the foreign-based leadership plays a minor role in day-to-day operations.
Analysts also have questioned U.S. military assertions that al-Qaida in Iraq is the main threat to U.S. forces here.
Former Pentagon analyst Anthony Cordesman quoted a background brief by U.S. military experts in Iraq this month that said al-Qaida in Iraq was responsible for only 15 percent of the attacks here in the first half of 2007.
Even before al-Mashhadani's arrest, U.S. military officials have insisted that links exist between the local al-Qaida group and the bin Laden clique. From time to time, officials have released captured letters indicating a flow of policy instructions to the group's commanders in Iraq.
Although numerous armed groups operate here, al-Qaida in Iraq's signature attacks — high-profile truck bombings against civilian targets — were largely responsible for unleashing the wave of sectarian slaughter last year that transformed the character of the conflict, U.S. officials say.
"What we've learned from not just from the capture of al-Mashhadani but from other al-Qaida operatives is that there is a flow of strategic directions of prioritization, of messaging and other guidance that comes from al-Qaida senior leadership to the al-Qaida in Iraq leadership," Bergner said.
Al-Qaida in Iraq was proclaimed in 2004 by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He led a group called Tawhid and Jihad, responsible for the beheading of several foreign hostages, whose final moments were captured on videotapes provided to Arab television stations.
Al-Zarqawi posted Web statements declaring his allegiance to bin Laden and began using the name of al-Qaida in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Diyala province in June 2006 and was replaced by al-Masri.
Although al-Qaida in Iraq's rank-and-file are mostly Iraqis, the Iraqi group's top leadership is dominated by foreigners, Bergner said. That includes al-Masri, who joined an al-Qaida forerunner in Egypt in the 1980s and later helped train fighters who drove the Soviet army from Afghanistan.
Pointing to the foreign influence within al-Qaida in Iraq could undermine support for the organization among nationalistically minded Iraqis, including some in insurgent groups that have broken with al-Qaida.
In an effort to give al-Qaida an Iraqi face, Bergner said al-Mashhadani and al-Masri established a front organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq, which the general described as "a virtual organization in cyberspace."
In Web postings, the Islamic State of Iraq has identified its leader as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a name indicating Iraqi origin, with the Egyptian al-Masri as minister of war. There are no known photos of al-Baghdadi.
Bergner said al-Mashhadani had told interrogators that al-Baghdadi is a "fictional role" created by al-Masri and that an actor with an Iraqi accent is used for audio recordings of speeches posted on the Web.
"In his words, the Islamic State of Iraq is a front organization that masks the foreign influence and leadership within al-Qaida in Iraq in an attempt to put an Iraqi face on the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq," Bergner said.
Proclamation of the Islamic State is widely seen as a blunder by al-Qaida because it alienated independently minded insurgent groups that opposed the religious zealots' goal of an Islamic caliphate.
Fearing they would be marginalized by al-Qaida, Sunni sheiks and insurgent leaders began turning against the terror movement, in some cases cooperating with U.S. forces, notably in Anbar province.
White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters Wednesday that he didn't know why news of al-Mashhadani's arrest was withheld for two weeks. He dismissed a suggestion that the timing was linked to the Senate debate over withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
The soldiers charged with the premeditated murder of an Iraqi are assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, which is part of the 25th Infantry Division based in Hawaii. The unit is attached to Multinational Division - North.
The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael Browder, was relieved of his command in connection with the investigation although he is not a suspect and has not been charged, the military said.
No further details were released, but the statement noted that the charges are allegations and neither of the two soldiers has been convicted.
Also Wednesday, the U.S. military said three American soldiers were killed the day before in separate bombings in the capital. Two were killed in west Baghdad and another died in east Baghdad, the military said.
Four other Americans were wounded in the east Baghdad blast, the command said. Two insurgents responsible for the attack were identified, engaged and killed, the statement added.
At least 12 people were killed Wednesday in a series of bombings in mostly Shiite areas of eastern Baghdad. Seven of them died in two back-to-back bombings near a gas station in the Amin district, police said.
Eight civilians were killed when gunmen opened fire in the city of Khalis, a Shiite enclave in a mostly Sunni area 50 miles north of Baghdad, police said.
All the police spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release the information.
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22 killed in Mumbai building collapse
By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 5 minutes ago
MUMBAI, India - At least 22 people were killed and nine others wounded when a seven-story building collapsed in Mumbai, officials said Thursday as rescue workers continued to dig through the rubble for survivors.
At least 10 others were feared trapped in the rubble of the residential building in Mumbai's Borivali neighborhood, said Gopal Shetty, a state lawmaker. The building collapsed late Wednesday.
Rescue workers toiled through the night, often pulling aside chunks of masonry with their bare hands, in an attempt to find survivors.
"The priority is to rescue people who may be trapped inside," Shetty said.
By Thursday morning, cranes were brought in to lift large slabs of concrete and workers began removing bodies from the rubble.
Four people, including two women, were rescued from under mounds of concrete, twisted metal bars and mud by rescuers who carried the survivors to the nearby Bhagwati hospital on makeshift stretchers.
The building housed several stores and a clinic in addition to residences.
It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse.
Shetty said poor quality cement may have been used in the construction of the 20-year-old building.
However, J. Phatak, a senior city official, said residents reported extensive renovations to the building by a jewelry store on the ground floor of the building.
Mumbai authorities routinely demolish shoddy buildings ahead of the monsoon rains but this building was not listed as dangerous, Phatak said.
Building collapses are frequent in India — where construction is often hastily done with little regard for safety regulations.
Convoy attack kills 17 Pakistan soldiers
By DENIS D. GRAY, Associated Press Writer 19 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Militants bombed an army convoy then raked it with gunfire Wednesday, killing 17 soldiers and continuing a wave of violence that has stirred doubts about Pakistan's stability.
At least five suspected militants also died in clashes with security forces in North Waziristan, a Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold on the Afghan border where a disputed peace deal has collapsed and Pakistani troops have moved in.
On Thursday, a suicide car bomber attacked a policy academy in another frontier area in the northwest, killing up to six people, officials said.
Academy chief Attaullah Wazir said the blast in the town of Hangu, 45 miles southwest of Peshawar, killed two policemen. However, an official at Hangu's hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to the media, said five policemen and one passer-by had died.
In southern Pakistan, assailants detonated a bomb and fired on a convoy carrying Chinese workers near the port city of Karachi, police said. At least 13 Pakistanis were killed and 30 others were injured, but none of the Chinese was hurt.
The dead included police guards and civilians in the area. The motive was unclear.
Pakistan stepped up security for the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 Chinese nationals in the country after Beijing protested the killing of three Chinese men in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The three are among more than 240 people killed this month in suicide attacks, bombings and shootings blamed on Islamic extremists and in a bloody army siege of radicals in Islamabad's Red Mosque.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf urged moderate Pakistanis, many of whom are pressing him to stand down and restore civilian rule, to help him take on the extremists. Still his military-led government on Wednesday also challenged U.S. claims that al-Qaida was regrouping near the Afghan frontier.
Adding to the tension, a suicide bomber killed 16 people Tuesday at a rally for Pakistan's suspended chief justice, whose legal battle with Musharraf has galvanized opposition to military rule. A verdict in the case is expected as early as Friday.
Critics accuse Musharraf of leading the country toward civil war and using the crisis to shore up U.S. support for his 8-year-old military regime. There is growing concern that this year's elections will be postponed.
However, Musharraf insisted Wednesday that the vote would go ahead and dismissed speculation he would declare a state of emergency. He also claimed that al-Qaida was on the run.
"Al-Qaida has weakened because of the actions taken by Pakistani forces," Musharraf was quoted by spokesman Rashid Quereshi as telling newspaper editors.
The army said militants attacked one of its convoys 25 miles west of North Waziristan's main town of Miran Shah with a remote-control bomb, then fired on the surviving soldiers. Seventeen soldiers were killed and more than a dozen wounded, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said.
The army said several militants were killed in retaliatory fire, and five other militants died in a clash in the town of Mir Ali.
Two local security officials said security forces also shot and killed men in a car after they refused to stop near Miran Shah. Weapons were found in the vehicle, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. Earlier, an explosion hit another convoy near Miran Shah, wounding one soldier and up to six civilians, Arshad said.
The bloodshed has clouded government efforts to resurrect a peace pact that militants disavowed over the weekend.
Musharraf insists the accord — under which the military scaled back its operations in the U.S.-led war on terror in return for pledges from tribal leaders to contain militancy — offers the best long-term hope of pacifying the region.
However, U.S. officials have expressed concern that it gives Islamic extremists breathing space to strengthen their operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond.
At a briefing in Washington on an intelligence report Tuesday, analysts said the pact had given al-Qaida new opportunities to set up terror training camps, improve international communications and bolster operations.
Al-Qaida was using its burgeoning strength in Pakistan, as well as Iraq, to plot terror strikes on American soil, according to the latest U.S. National Intelligence Estimate.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry rejected that assessment as unsubstantiated.
"We would firmly act to eliminate any Al-Qaida hideout on the basis of specific intelligence or information," a ministry statement said Wednesday.
"It does not help simply to make assertions about the presence or regeneration of Al-Qaida in bordering areas of Pakistan. What is needed is concrete and actionable information and intelligence sharing," it said.
It also reiterated that no foreign security forces would be allowed to pursue militants in Pakistan.
"We have deployed troops, established checkposts and done selective fencing. Any further action that needs to be taken against terrorist elements will be taken," the ministry said.
___
Associated Press writers Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Bashirullah Khan in Miran Shah, and Munir Ahmad and Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Attack on Chinese in Pakistan kills 13
By ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press Writer 12 minutes ago
KARACHI, Pakistan - Assailants detonated a powerful remote-control bomb and opened fire on a convoy carrying Chinese workers in southern Pakistan Thursday, killing at least 13 Pakistanis and injuring about 30, police and doctors said.
None of the Chinese workers was hurt in the incident, which occurred in Hub, just north of the port city of Karachi, said Faizullah Korejo, Hub's deputy police chief.
The Chinese citizens worked at a lead extraction plant in Dudhar, a town in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, and were temporarily leaving the area for Karachi due to security concerns, police said.
While it was unclear who carried out the attack, it follows a spate of violence blamed on Islamic militants that included the July 8 slaying of three Chinese men in a rickshaw workshop in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
Referring to the recent attacks on Chinese citizens in Pakistan, Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan on Tuesday urged his Pakistani counterpart to "take measures to further ensure the safety of Chinese people" in the country, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Another senior police officer said the last two vehicles of a five-vehicle convoy came under attack. Vehicles carrying about 10 Chinese engineers and workers already had passed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity since he was not authorized to speak with the media.
The dead included policemen and civilians along the road.
About 30 people, many in critical condition, were evacuated to a Karachi hospital, said Dr. Tariq Kamal.
An AP Television News reporter on the scene said the attack took place in the town's main bazaar area and shattered more than 20 roadside shops. Several cars rammed into one another in the chaos that followed the explosion.
A gun battle then erupted between the surviving police and the attackers, Korejo said.
After the July 8 attack, China sent a protest to Pakistan, a close economic and military ally. In response, Islamabad vowed to step up security for an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 Chinese nationals in the country.
Officials have suggested the Peshawar attack was linked to the then-ongoing army operation against Islamabad's Red Mosque. Troops moved in after Islamic radicals from the mosque kidnapped several Chinese women they accused of being prostitutes.
"The incident would not shake the foundation of the friendship between China and Pakistan, but I hope the government of Pakistan will take measures to further ensure safety of Chinese people in Pakistan," Cao was quoted as telling Pakistani Defense Secretary Kamran Rasool.
Pakistan suicide bombings kill 36
By ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 28 minutes ago
KARACHI, Pakistan - Suicide bombers hit a convoy of Chinese workers in southern Pakistan and a police academy in the north, killing 36 people and wounding 54 in the latest violence in the week since the army stormed a mosque held by Islamic extremists.
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The convoy was passing though the main bazaar in Hub, a town in Baluchistan province near the port city of Karachi, when a moving car blew up next to a police vehicle, officials said.
Hub Police Chief Ghulam Mohammed Thaib said 29 people were killed, including seven police. About 30 other people were wounded, some critically.
"It was laden with very heavy explosives but due to our spacing and our security measures, Allah has been very kind," said Maj. Gen. Saleem Nawaz, a commander of Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Constabulary.
The police "sacrificed their lives and the Chinese friends were absolutely safe," Nawaz said on Dawn News television.
The Chinese citizens worked at a lead extraction plant in Dudhar in Baluchistan and were temporarily leaving the area for Karachi due to security concerns, police said.
Some officials suggested the bomb was remote-controlled. But Thaib and Nawaz, whose men also were guarding the minibus carrying some 10 Chinese technicians and engineers, said it was a suicide attack.
Television reports showed how the blast ripped off the front of several roadside shops. Several damaged cars and buses lay rammed into one another among a tangle of bricks and clothing.
In Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to telephone and fax requests for comment.
In the northwest, a suicide car bomber detonated his explosives when guards prevented him from entering the parade ground of the police academy in Hangu, 45 miles southwest of Peshawar.
The bomber killed six bystanders and one policeman, and another 24 people were wounded, academy chief Attaullah Wazir said.
Suicide attacks, bombings and shootings blamed on Islamic extremists and a bloody army siege of radicals in Islamabad's Red Mosque have killed about 270 people in Pakistan so far this month, stirring doubts about the country's stability.
Much of the recent violence has been in North West Frontier Province, especially the region of North Waziristan, where pro-Taliban militants last weekend declared the end of a 10-month-old peace deal. The government has since been trying to revive it.
On Thursday, 30 elders from several tribal regions in the northwest traveled to North Waziristan in the latest government-backed effort to persuade militants to reverse their decision.
"Our urgent demand is that there should be a cease-fire so that we can find a peaceful solution to this problem in a peaceful atmosphere according to tribal traditions," said the group's leader, Malik Waris Khan Afridi.
On Wednesday, militants bombed and strafed an army convoy near Miran Shah, North Waziristan's main town, killing 17 troops. At least eight militants died in clashes with security forces in the area.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf insists the accord — under which the military scaled back its operations in the U.S.-led war on terror in return for pledges from tribal leaders to contain militancy — offers the best long-term hope of pacifying the region.
Intelligence analysts in Washington say the pact has given al-Qaida new opportunities to strengthen their operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond.
Pakistan said this assessment lacks substance.
"It does not help simply to make assertions about the presence or regeneration of al-Qaida in bordering areas of Pakistan. What is needed is concrete and actionable information and intelligence sharing," the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
Musharraf on Wednesday urged moderate Pakistanis — many of whom are pressing him to resign and restore civilian rule — to help him take on extremists.
Adding to the tension, a suicide bomber on Tuesday killed 16 people at a rally for Pakistan's suspended chief justice, whose legal battle with Musharraf has galvanized opposition to military rule. A verdict in the case is expected as early as Friday.
Critics accuse Musharraf of leading Pakistan toward civil war and using the crisis to shore up U.S. support for his eight-year-old military regime. There is growing concern that year-end elections will be postponed. However, Musharraf insisted Wednesday the ballot would go ahead.
The Hub attack follows the July 8 slaying of three Chinese men in a rickshaw workshop in Peshawar, which drew a protests from Beijing, a key ally of Pakistan, and a pledge from Islamabad to protect some 2,000 to 3,000 Chinese nationals here.
Officials have suggested the Peshawar attack was linked to the then-ongoing army operation against Islamabad's Red Mosque. Troops moved in after Islamic radicals from the mosque kidnapped several Chinese women they accused of being prostitutes.
However, ethnic Baluch insurgents have been blamed for at least two past attacks on Chinese nationals.
"These anti-state elements were also involved in the previous attacks against Chinese citizens," Baluchistan Interior Minister Mir Shoaib Nosherwani said.
China is helping build a deepwater port in Gwadar near the Iranian border that Baluch nationalists view as a symbol of the resource-rich but impoverished province's exploitation.
___
Associated Press writers Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Riaz Khan in Peshawar and Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Tamil Tiger rebels kill soldiers
Last Updated 17/07/2007, 18:28:57
Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels say they have killed four government soldiers and wounded six others in fighting in the north of the island.
The Tigers say one of their own fighters was also killed in the clash.
There's been no immediate comment from the Sri Lankan military.
Reports of the fighting in the north come five days after security forces captured a key Tamil rebel base in the east of the country.
Tamil Tigers vow to take revenge on army
By Tom Farrell in Killinochchi
Last Updated: 2:12am BST 18/07/2007
The political leader of the Tamil Tigers has threatened "crippling" retaliation against the Sri Lankan army as the government prepares to celebrate a major victory over his rebel force.
Sri Lankan soliders: Tamil Tigers vow to take revenge on army
Sri Lankan soldiers triumphant after capturing the Tigers’ last eastern bastion Thoppigala
Speaking at his office in Killinochchi, the de facto rebel capital in the north of the island, SP Thamilselvan told The Daily Telegraph that the Tigers would now switch to guerrilla tactics to recapture territory lost in the east.
"The government of [President] Mahinda Rajapakse has pushed the Tamil people into a position where they have no option other than to take up an offensive position and retake their territory," Mr Thamilselvan said.
His comments will raise fears in the capital Colombo that the separatist movement will return to the suicide bombings of its bloody past.
The Sri Lankan government tomorrow holds a "national day of celebration" of last week's capture of Thoppigala, which had been the Tigers' eastern stronghold for years.
But Mr Thamilselvan, head of the political wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), insisted the movement will reassert itself.
Shortly after he spoke, the secretary of the Eastern Province, Herath Abeyweera, was shot dead in Trincomalee. It bore all the hallmarks of the Tigers, although the group denied responsibility.
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At the weekend there was fierce fighting as government troops advanced into no-man's land in the north, with at least 10 troops killed.
The government rarely grants access across its lines to LTTE territory, but granted permission to British reporters after months of requests.
At the last government-held checkpoint of Omanthai there was a slew of paperwork and security checks, before our vehicle proceeded past International Red Cross facilities through several hundred yards of no-man's land into the LTTE side.
Killinochchi lies a further 50 miles along the A9 highway. In the city, many buildings are empty and roofless, their walls chipped and gouged by gunfire. Day and night, the thump of artillery fire can be heard. Last month the air force struck just outside the town.
At a co-operative shop, Kangaruby Suthakar, a 25-year-old housewife, was buying milk powder for her baby. Her first child was lost in the 2004 tsunami. "Our people die two ways, through fear and hunger," she said.
Tamil leader SP Thamilselvan
Tamil leader SP Thamilselvan
Her fisherman husband can only fish sporadically; the seas here witness regular battles between the Sri Lankan navy and the Sea Tigers, the LTTE's "navy" of armed vessels.
But for all the hardships imposed by renewed war, the Tigers run a strict regime with their own courts, police stations and banks.
Mr Thamilselvan is at the heart of the regime. A former bodyguard of the Tigers' reclusive overall leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran, he was nicknamed the Cobra after a diplomat said he had a tendency to bob his head and smile, "just like a cobra before it strikes".
He greeted his foreign guests at the LTTE's Peace Secretariat, a spacious, air conditioned building that might pass for an ordinary office were it not for his three bodyguards carrying walkie-talkies and machine guns.
Mr Thamilselvan was defiant in the face of the government's progress. "If you go back to the beginning of the war, there have been ups and downs always," he said.
Map of Sri Lanka
Of any military incursion into the north, he said: "We would deliver a crippling blow that will be a multi-faceted approach and it will definitely nullify the strength of the Sri Lankan forces."
Analysts worry a "multi-faceted" approach would include the return of suicide bombings in Colombo, a frequent occurrence during the bloodiest phases of the 30-year campaign for a separate homeland that has claimed 70,000 lives.
New peace talks seem a remote possibility after the high expectations that followed a 2002 ceasefire agreement when the LTTE hinted it would accept federal autonomy instead of independence.
But the aftermath of the tsunami led to bitter squabbles over the provision of aid, then Mr Rajapakse's election in 2005 ushered in a tougher approach towards the Tigers.
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Tammy Faye Messner Dies at 65
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Jul 21, 11:36 PM (ET)
By STEVE HARTSOE
(AP) Tammy Faye Messner gestures during an interview with talk show host Larry King, on CNN's "Larry...
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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Tammy Faye Messner, who as Tammy Faye Bakker helped her husband, Jim, build a multimillion-dollar evangelism empire and then watched it collapse in disgrace, has died. She was 65.
Messner had battled colon cancer since 1996 that more recently spread to her lungs. She died peacefully Friday at her home near Kansas City, Mo., said Joe Spotts, her manager and booking agent.
A family service was held Saturday in a private cemetery, where her ashes were interred, he said.
She had frequently spoken about her medical problems, saying she hoped to be an inspiration to others. "Don't let fear rule your life," she said. "Live one day at a time, and never be afraid." But she told well-wishers in a note on her Web site in May that the doctors had stopped trying to treat the cancer.
In an interview with CNN's Larry King two months later, an emaciated Messner - still using her trademark makeup - said, "I believe when I leave this earth, because I love the Lord, I'm going straight to heaven." Asked if she had any regrets, Messner said: "I don't think about it, Larry, because it's a waste of good brain space."
For many, the TV image of then-Mrs. Bakker forgiving husband Jim's infidelities, tears streaking her cheeks with mascara, became a symbol for the wages of greed and hypocrisy in 1980s America.
She divorced her husband of 30 years, with whom she had two children, in 1992 while he was in prison for defrauding millions from followers of their PTL television ministries. The letters stood for "Praise the Lord" or "People that Love."
Jim Bakker said in a statement that his ex-wife "lived her life like the song she sang, 'If Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Lemonade.'"
"She is now in Heaven with her mother and grandmother and Jesus Christ, the one who she loves and has served from childbirth," he said. "That is the comfort I can give to all who loved her."
(AP) Tammy Faye Bakker Messner and her then husband Jim Bakker are shown in an Oct. 24, 1987 file photo...
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Messner's second husband also served time in prison. She married Roe Messner, who had been the chief builder of the Bakkers' Heritage USA Christian theme park near Fort Mill, S.C., in 1993. In 1995, he was convicted of bankruptcy fraud, and he spent about two years in prison.
Through it all, Messner kept plugging her faith and herself. She did concerts, a short-lived secular TV talk show and an inspirational videotape. In 2004, she cooperated in the making of a documentary about her struggle with cancer, called "Tammy Faye: Death Defying."
"I wanted to help people ... maybe show the inside (of the experience) and make it a little less frightening," she said.
More recently, Tammy Faye kept in the public eye via her Web site.
"I cry out to the Lord knowing that many of you are praying for me," Messner wrote in a July 16 post in which she indicated she weighed 65 pounds. "In spite of it all, I get dressed and go out to eat. ... I crave hamburgers and french fries with LOTS of ketchup! When I can eat that again, it will be a day of victory!"
(AP) Tammy Faye Bakker and her then-husband, television evangelist Jim Bakker, talk to their TV audience...
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In 2004, she appeared on the WB reality show "The Surreal Life," co-starring with rapper Vanilla Ice, ex-porn star Ron Jeremy and others. She told King in 2004 that she didn't know who Jeremy was when they met and they became friends.
Messner was never charged with a crime in connection with the Bakker scandal. She said she counted the costs in other ways.
"I know what it's like to hit rock bottom," she said in promotional material for her 1996 video "You Can Make It."
In the mid-1980s, the Bakkers were on top, ruling over a ministry that claimed 500,000 followers. Their "Jim and Tammy Show," part TV talk show, part evangelism meeting, was seen across the country. Heritage USA boasted a 500-room hotel, shopping mall, convention center, water-amusement park, TV studio and several real-estate developments. PTL employed about 2,000 people.
Then in March 1987, Bakker resigned, admitting he had a tryst with Jessica Hahn, a 32-year-old former church secretary.
Tammy Faye Bakker stuck with her disgraced husband through five stormy years of tabloid headlines as the ministry unraveled.
Prosecutors said the PTL organization sold more than 150,000 "lifetime partnerships" promising lodging at the theme park but did not build enough hotel space with the $158 million in proceeds. At his fraud trial, Jim Bakker was accused of diverting $3.7 million to personal use even though he knew the ministry was financially shaky. Trial testimony showed PTL paid $265,000 to Hahn to cover up the sexual encounter with the minister.
Jim Bakker was convicted in 1989 of 24 fraud and conspiracy counts and sentenced to 45 years. The sentence was later reduced, and he was freed in 1994. He said that his wife's decision to leave him had been "like a meat hook deep in my heart. I couldn't eat for days."
While not charged, his then-wife shared during the 1980s in the public criticism and ridicule over the couple's extravagance, including the reportedly gold-plated bathroom fixtures and an air-conditioned doghouse.
There was even a popular T-shirt satirizing her image. The shirt read, "I ran into Tammy Faye at the shopping mall," with the lettering on top of what look like clots of mascara, traces of lipstick and smudges of peach-toned makeup.
In a 1992 letter to her New Covenant Church in Orlando, Fla., she explained why she finally was seeking a divorce.
"For years I have been pretending that everything is all right, when in fact I hurt all the time," she wrote.
"I cannot pretend anymore."
In the end, there wasn't any property to divide, her attorney said. The Bakkers lost their luxury homes in North Carolina, California and Tennessee, their fleet of Cadillacs and Mercedeses, and their vintage Rolls-Royce.
Her autobiography, "I Gotta Be Me," recounts a childhood as Tammy Faye LaValley, one of eight children of a poor family in International Falls, Minn. Her biological father walked out. She was reticent about her age, but a 2000 profile of her in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis said she was born in March 1942.
She recalled trying eye makeup for the first time, then wiping it off for fear it was the devil's work. Then she thought again.
"Why can't I do this?" she asked. "If it makes me look prettier, why can't I do this?"
She married Bakker in 1961, after they met at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. Beginning with a children's puppet act, they created a religious show that brought a fundamentalist Protestant message to millions.
A secular TV talk program, the "Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show" with co-host Jim J. Bullock, lasted just six weeks in early 1996. Shortly after it went off the air, she underwent surgery for colon cancer.
She said afterward that she endured bleeding for a year because she was embarrassed to go to a male doctor. And she wore her makeup even in surgery.
"They didn't make me take it off," she said. "I had wonderful doctors and understanding nurses. I went in fully made up and came out fully made up."
Survivors include her husband and her two children, Jamie Charles Bakker of New York City and Tammy Sue Chapman of Charlotte.
Spotts said that the family is considering a public memorial service for the coming weeks, but that nothing had been finalized Saturday.
---
On the Net:
http://www.tammyfaye.com
26 Polish pilgrims killed in French Alps coach crash
Sun Jul 22, 10:35 AM ET
GRENOBLE, France (AFP) - Twenty-six people were killed Sunday when a coach carrying Polish pilgrims skidded and fell down a ravine near Grenoble in the French Alps, emergency services said.
Twenty-four people were injured, 14 of them seriously.
The coach, with 48 passengers and two drivers on board, was going down a steep and winding road between Gap and Grenoble when it had problems with its brakes at around 9:30 am (0730 GMT) near the town of Vizille, officials said.
The party was returning from the Roman Catholic shrine of Notre Dame de la Salette, where the Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared to two children in 1846.
The Polish-registered vehicle smashed through the safety barrier on the side of the road and hurtled 40 metres (130 feet) onto the banks of the river Romanche below.
It burst into flames as it came to rest beside the river and was gutted by fire. Local people rushed to the scene and tried to put out the blaze with buckets of water.
Large numbers of rescue workers were at the scene after the local officials activated an emergency plan. The injured were shuttled to hospitals by ambulance and helicopter.
Divers were called to the scene to search for victims who might have been thrown into the river.
Five hours after the accident, rescue workers said all on board were accounted for. Nine charred and unidentifiable bodies were found on the coach.
Most of the pilgrims were elderly and came from the Szczecin region of northeast Poland, officials said in Warsaw. They were on a tour of European Roman Catholic shrines and had spent the night at Notre Dame de la Salette.
"They left Poland on July 10 and were on their way back," said foreign ministry spokesman Robert Szaniawski. The ministry set up a telephone hotline for families.
The Polish and French presidents Lech Kaczynski and Nicolas Sarkozy were to visit the scene later Sunday, French officials said.
"During these painful moments, I wish to express my heartfelt emotion and and my deepest sympathy. The French people naturally stand beside you in this ordeal," Sarkozy said in a message to his counterpart.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon and Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo -- who has the road transport portfolio -- also travelled to Vizille. Borloo said he had asked officials to draw up a list of accident black spots in France.
Known as the Route Napoleon because it was the road taken by the emperor on his return from Elba in 1815, the tortuous RN85 from Gap to Grenoble has been the scene of many accidents over the years.
Three coach crashes at exactly the same spot in the 1970s caused 77 deaths.
Investigators were likely to concentrate on the condition of the Polish coach. The descent is authorised for use by buses only if they are equipped with electronic braking.
Romania: Death toll from heat wave 18
40 minutes ago
BUCHAREST, Romania - A heat wave that has hit Romania in the past week has killed at least 18 people and caused hundreds to collapse in the street, authorities said Monday.
Temperatures are set to hover above 100 in the south and east for the next two days, with some areas forecast to reach 108.
Most of the deaths were caused by dehydration, Heath Minister Eugen Nicolaescu said.
Some 670 other people — 160 in the capital of Bucharest — have collapsed or fainted in the street due to the heat, the national ambulance service said.
In Bucharest and other cities, tents were set up offering water and first aid.
There were power outages throughout the capital, including at government headquarters, due to heavy use of air conditioning.
Authorities said that Tuesday would be even hotter in Bucharest, and state institutions would close in midmorning and reopen in the evening. Employers were providing free water and reducing work schedules. Elderly residents were urged to not go out during the day.
Interior Minister Cristian David issued warnings for 20 of Romania's 42 counties, and forestry officials were on alert for possible fires.
Drought was also affecting much of the country. In southern Romania, many wells dried up, leaving residents without water. Authorities sent workers to dozens of villages to dig new, deeper wells.
Baseball mourns death of minor league coach struck by line drive
By The Associated Press
July 23, 2007
A Colorado Rockies minor league coach died after being struck in the head by a line drive as he stood in the first-base coach's box during a game in North Little Rock, Ark.
Tulsa batting coach Mike Coolbaugh was knocked unconscious by Tino Sanchez's line drive during the ninth inning of Sunday night's game against the Double-A Arkansas Travelers, according to a statement on the Drillers' Web site. The former major leaguer was taken to Baptist Medical Center-North Little Rock, where he was pronounced dead.
The Drillers said Monday night's game against the Wichita Wranglers in Kansas has been postponed, and baseball teams and executives expressed sadness over the former major leaguer's death.
"This was a tragic event that took a great teammate and a wonderful human being from us far too soon," Houston Astros general manager Tim Purpura said.
North Little Rock police Sgt. Terry Kuykendall said Coolbaugh was alive when he was put in an ambulance but stopped breathing as the ambulance arrived at Baptist Medical Center-North Little Rock. The 35-year-old was pronounced dead at the hospital at 9:47 p.m. CDT.
Travelers spokesman Phil Elson said Coolbaugh was hit on either the right side of his head or the forehead and immediately collapsed.
Coolbaugh is survived by his wife, Mandy, and two young sons, Joseph and Jacob, all of San Antonio. Mandy Coolbaugh is expecting another child in October.
"Our entire organization grieves at the death of Mike Coolbaugh," Rockies president Keli McGregor said. "We were shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the accident on Sunday evening. Mike was a great husband, father, brother and friend to so many throughout the baseball community. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family, wife Mandy and sons Joseph and Jacob, and to all of those whose lives were touched by Mike over his career and his life."
Coolbaugh played 44 games in the major leagues for the St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers in the 2001 and 2002 seasons. He spent a decade in the minor leagues with affiliates of the Astros, Texas Rangers and other teams.
"Mike was a kind and hard-working individual who lived life and played the game with great passion," said Reid Nichols, Brewers special assistant to the general manager and director of player development. "He will be greatly missed."
The St. Louis Cardinals, who were off Monday, planned a moment of silence before Tuesday's home game against the Chicago Cubs honoring both Coolbaugh and former St. Louis Browns pitcher Rollie Stiles, who died Sunday at age 100.
"We express our condolences to his family and friends," Cardinals spokesman Brian Bartow said of Coolbaugh. "He and his brother Scott were members of our Cardinals family and he'll certainly be missed."
Scott Coolbaugh played 167 major league games over four seasons with Texas, San Diego and St. Louis in the early 1990s.
Minor League Baseball president Mike Moore asked all minor league clubs to fly their flags at half-staff and observe a moment of silence before Monday night's games.
"The hearts and prayers of the minor league baseball world go out to his entire family," he said.
Coolbaugh joined the Tulsa staff on July 3 as a batting coach. He played for the team briefly in 1996.
Drillers first baseman Aaron Rifkin said recently that Coolbaugh's coaching style had already helped the team.
"He came in and didn't try to change guys, just fine-tune what they were doing. He's been great for me," Rifkin told the Tulsa World newspaper.
A native of Binghamton, N.Y., Coolbaugh went to high school in San Antonio and was drafted in 1990 by the Toronto Blue Jays in the 16th round.
He played third base and bounced around the minors for a decade, reaching the major leagues in 2001 with the Brewers. He played 39 big league games that season and five for the Cardinals in 2002. He hit two home runs in 70 major league at-bats.
The Travelers, an Angels affiliate, led 7-3 when the game was suspended with no outs and a runner on first in the top of the ninth inning. Officials said no date had been set to finish the game.
Updated on Monday, Jul 23, 2007 3:15 pm, EDT
Six Alpine climbers die in cold wave
By Francesca Micheletti Wed Jul 25, 4:33 AM ET
MILAN (Reuters) - Six mountain climbers have died of exposure in the Alps when temperatures plunged to well below freezing, Italian and French officials said on Wednesday.
The six died in three separate incidents on Tuesday while much of Italy was grappling with a heatwave that spawned brush fires that killed at least two people.
French authorities found four dead climbers on the Bionassay crest, on the French side of Mont Blanc, Europe's highest peak, French police in Chamonix said.
Three of the climbers were identifed as being from Chile, France and from New Zealand. Authorities are trying to confirm the nationality of the fourth person.
"These climbers did not have a tent and their clothing was absolutely inadequate to deal with the sudden weather changes," Italian daily Corriere della Sera quoted French police official Olivier Kim as saying.
The four were students in the French city of Grenoble and between 20 and 25 years old, Italian newspapers said. French authorities could not confirm their ages.
A fifth climber, a Belgian man in his 50s, died in the Italian Alps in the Trentino area of northeastern Italy, police officials said.
A sixth person died near Monte Rosa, about 40 km (25 miles) east of Mont Blanc, an Italian civil protection official said late on Tuesday.
Italian newspapers identified the victim as a 49-year-old German woman.
A seventh climber, a German woman, is recovering in hospital in Zermatt, Switzerland, the Italian civil protection official said.
Forecasts had warned that bad weather was on the way, with temperatures falling from 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) to as low as minus 15C (5F), Italian papers reported.
European heat wave death toll hits 35
By ALISON MUTLER,
Associated Press Writer
Tue Jul 24, 11:29 PM ET
BUCHAREST, Romania - Southern Europe sizzled under a heat wave Tuesday, with temperatures hitting triple digits for a seventh day in Romania, blazes forcing the evacuation of tourists in Croatia and Italy, and wildfires in Macedonia and Greece exploding shells from long-ago wars. At least 35 heat-related deaths were reported.
Romanian authorities warned residents to stay indoors during the midday heat in the capital of Bucharest, one of five Romanian counties put on high alert because of the weather.
At least 27 people have died in Romania since last week, with 12 deaths reported Monday, said Health Minister Eugen Nicolaescu. The victims, all over 70, collapsed in the street and had not taken precautions, such as wearing a hat, he said.
Some 870 people collapsed Monday from the heat and nearly 19,000 people contacted emergency services, Nicolaescu added.
As temperatures in Bucharest hit 105 on Tuesday, heavy use of air conditioning caused power outages in the city, and Finance Minister Varujan Vosganian said energy consumption had surged by more than 50 percent.
State institutions were closed in midmorning and operating into the evening to lessen the need for air conditioning. Employers provided free water and cut work schedules.
Temperatures are set to hover around 104 in the south and east Wednesday but will drop Thursday, forecasters said.
Dozens of fires raged in central and southern Italy, destroying hundreds of acres of forest, amid high temperatures and winds.
Two charred bodies were found in a burned car in Puglia, while two other people were suffocated by smoke on a nearby beach, the ANSA news agency said.
A firefighting plane crashed in Italy's central Abruzzo region Monday, killing the pilot and seriously injuring a crew member.
Fires forced the rescue of about 250 beach-goers by boat on the Gargano peninsula, above the heel of the Italian boot, where temperatures hit 107 degrees, ANSA said.
Firefighters put out a blaze on the Amalfi coast, while in Castel Gandolfo — where the pope has a vacation home he usually visits in August — 247 acres of forest burned and two hotels were evacuated, news reports said. Other fires were reported in the region that includes Naples, Sardinia and central Italy.
In Croatia, authorities evacuated 1,400 residents and tourists from the southern island of Solta.
Long-buried ordnance from wars past posed another, unexpected threat in fires sparked by the hot, dry weather.
In Macedonia, wildfires exploded some World War I shells, said Kostadin Popovski, head of an army mine division. Southern Macedonia was the scene of heavy fighting in the war, during a drive by Allied forces in 1916 to support Serbia.
"A lot of this ordnance could be set off by the high temperatures and there is a risk for large explosions," said Kostadin Popovski, head of an army mine division. "We have already had several explosions."
Fires raged near Macedonia's second-largest city, Bitola, killing one man. Rescuers saved 20 people from burning homes.
Thousands of firefighters and residents battled the huge blaze, while President Branko Crvenkovski mobilized army units.
"We managed to defend the city and now have the fire under control. There is no threat to Bitola any more," said Ivica Bocevski, a government spokesman.
Temperatures in Macedonia also reached 107 degrees amid a declared national emergency.
Old ordinance also exploded in northern Greece. Fires outside Kastoria ignited World War II shells, while others from the Greek Civil War of 1946-49 exploded in Epirus province.
Greek state services, including hospitals, remained on alert. Athens was expected to reach 113 degrees Wednesday, with high humidity and air pollution levels.
Greece's power consumption hit an all-time record Monday, state-run Public Power Corporation said. As three damaged power stations remained inoperative, officials asked for air conditioners to be set above 77 degrees, and Development Minister Dimitris Sioufas asked for restraint between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
A 75-year-old man died Monday in Corfu, probably of heat stroke, authorities said, and 13 others were hospitalized.
Several forest fires burned in northern Greece, while others were reported at Aegio, near the western city of Patras, and in Vrilissia, northern Athens. Two firefighters were killed Monday when their plane crashed in Evia.
In Serbia, about 2,500 acres of forest were also destroyed by wildfires.
Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin for help. Russia had sent a firefighting plane to Serbia via Bulgaria, but it was used there and will fly to Serbia on Wednesday, authorities said.
Wildfires swept across Kosovo on Monday, as NATO peacekeepers and local authorities led evacuations. NATO sent helicopters over the weekend to help firefighters.
___
Associated Press writers Boris Grdanoski in Bitola, Macedonia, Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, and John F.L. Ross in Athens, Greece, contributed to this story.
My condolences to all the bereaved parties - especially the Davis family, one of the most traumatized among all of them cited here.
+++
Rockets kill 10 in northwest Pakistan
By RIAZ KHAN,
Associated Press Writer
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Suspected militants fired four rockets into a city in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 10 people as they slammed into houses and a mosque, police said.
The rocket attack hit Bannu, a troubled city in North West Frontier Province, at about 2 a.m., said Khwaja Mohammed, a city police official. He described the attack as "terrorist activity." But he said it was too early to say more about who was behind it.
Police said 10 civilians were killed and that seven police officers were among 40 others wounded.
A confrontation between Islamic militants and the U.S.-backed government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has escalated this month after a bloody raid on a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad, and the redeployment of the army to North Waziristan, the tribal region closest to Bannu.
A key Taliban leader killed himself with a hand grenade on Tuesday to avoid capture — one of more than 300 people who have died in the violence across the country this month.
Bannu and other cities in the northwest have seen a string of shootings and bombings blamed on Taliban militants who have been expanding their influence from strongholds in the tribal belt along the Afghan border.
On Tuesday, a Taliban veteran of Guantanamo Bay who became one of Pakistan's most-wanted rebel leaders killed himself with a hand grenade after he was cornered by security forces, officials said.
The death of Abdullah Mehsud, a stout, round-faced man in his early 30s who lost a leg years ago fighting for the Taliban, was a boost for Pakistani authorities under pressure from the U.S. to crack down on Taliban and al-Qaida militants fighting on both sides of the Afghan border.
Mehsud was wanted in "many terrorist cases," Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said. "He was a supporter of the al-Qaida terror network and an active Taliban commander in Pakistan."
A Pakistani intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to reporters, said Mehsud was intercepted on his way back from Afghanistan's Helmand province, where he had fought with the Taliban for the past year or more.
Police surrounded Mehsud and three other men before dawn in the home of an Islamist politician in Zhob, a town 160 miles from the southwestern city of Quetta, officials said. Cheema said security forces had trailed Mehsud for three days before moving in.
"Thanks be to God that only he was blown up and our men were safe," Zhob police chief Atta Mohammed said.
Mehsud was incarcerated in the jail for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after he was captured by U.S.-allied Afghan forces in northern Afghanistan in December 2001. It remains unclear why he was released from Guantanamo in March 2004.
He quickly took up arms again, leading local and foreign militants in Pakistan's South Waziristan, a mountainous stronghold of militants in the tribal belt considered a possible hideout for al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.
Mehsud was wanted for the kidnapping that year of two Chinese engineers, one of whom died in a rescue raid by Pakistani commandos. But he escaped a manhunt by the Pakistani army.
Zahid Hussain, an author and expert on Pakistan's militant groups, said Mehsud's defiance made him a hero among fellow militants — even after he adopted a lower profile.
"Even if he wasn't seen, he was an inspiration," Hussain said. "In that way, (his death is) a big gain for the Pakistani forces."
The intelligence official said there was no evidence Mehsud organized violence that has flared across Pakistan since a deadly military raid on a radical mosque in Islamabad this month. Most of the more than 300 people who have died were members of the security forces.
Much of the trouble has been in North Waziristan, a tribal region where a 10-month-old peace deal between the government and militants has broken down.
Washington has described the pact as a failure that gave breathing room to al-Qaida to regroup — and perhaps plot another big attack on the United States.
Pakistan still hopes to resurrect the peace deal, under which tribal elders pledged to evict foreign fighters and stop cross-border raids.
Nevertheless, the army's redeployment in the region, backed by helicopters and artillery, has elicited a fierce response.
On Monday, militants distributed pamphlets in the area warning troops they faced more attacks by suicide bombers who "love death more than you love your salary of four, five thousand rupees, your photos of naked Indian actresses, your wine and kebabs."
On Tuesday morning, the beheaded bodies of two soldiers abducted the night before were found in the Bajur tribal area, north of Waziristan. A note found in the hand of one of the slain men said that spies for President Bush or Musharraf would meet the same fate, said Sardar Yousaf, a local government official.
___
Associated Press writers Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Bashirullah Khan in Miran Shah, Habibullah Khan in Khar and Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Anglo-Hungarian playwright George Tabori dies at 93
By Adam Williams
Tue Jul 24, 6:10 PM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - George Tabori, a Hungarian-born playwright and director regarded as one of the most significant figures in 20th-century theater, died Monday at the age of 93, a spokesman for the Berliner Ensemble theater said.
Tabori was born into a Jewish family in Budapest. Having begun his career as a journalist in Berlin in the 1930s, he fled the Nazi regime to London in 1936, becoming a British citizen in 1941.
During World War Two he worked for the BBC and the British secret service in the Middle East. In 1947 he went to the United States where he became a Hollywood scriptwriter, writing for Alfred Hitchcock, whom he described as a "control freak."
Tabori's friends in the German exile community included author Thomas Mann, film director Lion Feuchtwanger and playwright Bertolt Brecht, who he came to regard as his mentor.
In the 1950s, he was added to the "blacklist" of artists suspected of "un-American activities" because of his left-leaning political views. As a result he was unable to find work either in film or television.
Apart from his mother, Tabori's family was killed in Auschwitz and Nazi history was a common theme in his plays.
Perhaps his most famous work is an anti-Hitler farce entitled "Mein Kampf," which he also directed and acted in when it was first performed in Vienna in 1987.
Tabori's plays sought to encourage the audience to laugh at the monsters and murderers on stage, something not always understood in Germany, where he lived and worked since 1971.
German actor Gert Voss, who took the lead roll in Tabori's production of Othello, was quoted as saying Tuesday that the playwright was "an indescribably good person, with a burning curiosity, a great sense of humor and enormous tolerance."
Sept. 11 rescue dog with cancer dies
By VERENA DOBNIK,
Associated Press Writer
Thu Jul 26, 9:59 AM ET
NEW YORK - A black Labrador that burrowed through smoking debris after Sept. 11 and flooded rubble after Hurricane Katrina in search of survivors has died after developing cancer.
Owner Mary Flood had 12-year-old Jake put to sleep Wednesday after a last stroll through the fields and a dip in the creek near their home in Oakley, Utah. Flood said Jake had been in pain, shaking with a 105-degree fever as he lay on the lawn.
No one can say whether the dog would have gotten sick if he hadn't been exposed to the toxic air at the World Trade Center, but cancer in dogs Jake's age is common.
Some owners of rescue dogs who worked at ground zero claim their animals have died because of their work there. But scientists who have spent years studying the health of Sept. 11 search-and-rescue dogs have found no sign of major illness in the animals.
Many human ground zero workers have complained of health problems they attribute to their time at the site: the largest study conducted of about 20,000 ground zero workers reported last year that 70 percent of patients suffer respiratory disease years after the cleanup.
The city earlier this year added to its Sept. 11 death toll a woman who died in 2002 of lung disease, five months after she was caught in the dust cloud of the collapsing twin towers.
The results of an autopsy on Jake's body will be part of a medical study on the Sept. 11 dogs that was started by the University of Pennsylvania more than 5 years ago.
Flood adopted Jake as a 10-month-old puppy. He had been abandoned on a street with a broken leg and a dislocated hip.
"But against all odds he became a world-class rescue dog," said Flood, a member of Utah Task Force 1, a federal search-and-rescue team that looked for human remains at ground zero.
On the evening of the team's arrival in New York, Jake walked into a fancy Manhattan restaurant wearing his search-and-rescue vest and was treated to a free steak dinner under a table.
Flood eventually trained Jake to become one of fewer than 200 U.S. government-certified rescue dogs — an animal on 24-hour call to tackle disasters such as building collapses, earthquakes, hurricanes and avalanches.
After Katrina, Flood and Jake drove from Utah to Mississippi, where they searched for survivors in flooded homes.
In recent years, Jake helped train younger dogs across the country. He showed them how to track scents, even in the snow, and how to look up if the scent was in a tree.
He also did therapy work with children at a Utah camp for burn victims and at senior homes and hospitals.
"He was a great morale booster wherever he went," Flood said. "He was always ready to work, eager to play — and a master at helping himself to any unattended food items."
She said Jake's ashes would be scattered "in places that were important to him," such as his Utah training grounds and the rivers and hills near his home where he swam and roamed.
From a saintly pooch
to a devious pussycat we go...
(Ok - maybe not devious
merely a bad omen, that's all?
Believe you me,
you don't want to pet Oscar the Cat!
Seeing this kitty come your way
is worse than a dozen black cats
under as many ladders - plus one!)
Oscar the cat predicts patients' deaths
By RAY HENRY,
Associated Press Writer
Wed Jul 25, 7:25 PM ET
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.
"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.
The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.
After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.
Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. "This is not a cat that's friendly to people," he said.
Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill
She was convinced of Oscar's talent when he made his 13th correct call. While observing one patient, Teno said she noticed the woman wasn't eating, was breathing with difficulty and that her legs had a bluish tinge, signs that often mean death is near.
Oscar wouldn't stay inside the room though, so Teno thought his streak was broken. Instead, it turned out the doctor's prediction was roughly 10 hours too early. Sure enough, during the patient's final two hours, nurses told Teno that Oscar joined the woman at her bedside.
Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don't know he's there, so patients aren't aware he's a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advanced warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.
No one's certain if Oscar's behavior is scientifically significant or points to a cause. Teno wonders if the cat notices telltale scents or reads something into the behavior of the nurses who raised him.
Nicholas Dodman, who directs an animal behavioral clinic at the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and has read Dosa's article, said the only way to know is to carefully document how Oscar divides his time between the living and dying.
If Oscar really is a furry grim reaper, it's also possible his behavior could be driven by self-centered pleasures like a heated blanket placed on a dying person, Dodman said.
Nursing home staffers aren't concerned with explaining Oscar, so long as he gives families a better chance at saying goodbye to the dying.
Oscar recently received a wall plaque publicly commending his "compassionate hospice care."
___
Science writer Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
New England Journal of Medicine: http://content.nejm.org/
Bomb kills 25 in Shiite area of Baghdad
By HAMID AHMED,
Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 3 minutes ago
BAGHDAD - A parked car bomb exploded near a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 25 people and wounding 74, police said.
The U.S. military also said five American troops had died in fighting this week — four northeast of the capital and one in Baghdad.
Smoke billowed into the sky and fires burned on the ground after the thunderous explosion, which struck as the market in Karradah was packed with shoppers. The blast also burned nine cars and set a three-story building on fire, according to police and hospital officials who gave the casualty toll. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose information.
It was the deadliest in a series of attacks nationwide that left at least 50 people dead.
The three U.S. Marines and a sailor died Tuesday in combat in Diyala province — the site of a major military operation against a Sunni insurgent stronghold, the military said Thursday. It announced earlier that a U.S. soldier was killed Wednesday during a gunbattle in southern Baghdad.
A Marine also died Sunday in a non-combat related incident in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the military said separately.
At least 64 U.S. troops have died this month, a relatively low number compared with American death tolls of more than 100 for the previous three months, according to an Associated Press tally based on military statements.
Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top day-to-day U.S. commander in Iraq, expressed cautious optimism over the lower number, with a week to go before the end of the month.
He said it appeared that casualties had increased as fresh U.S. forces expanded operations into militant strongholds as part of the 5-month-old security operation aimed at clamping off violence in the capital, but were going down as the Americans gained control of the areas.
"We've started to see a slow but gradual reduction in casualties, and it continues in July," he said at a news conference with Iraqi military commander Maj. Gen. Abboud Qanbar. "It's an initial positive sign, but I would argue we need a bit more time to make an assessment whether it's a true trend."
The death toll over the months of April, May and June was unusually high. The toll the preceding three months ranged from 81 to 83. In July 2006, the toll was 43.
Odierno also said the U.S. military has noted a "significant improvement" in the aim of attackers firing rockets and mortars into the heavily fortified Green Zone in the past three months.
Faris Hamza, a 42-year-old who works in a clothing store near the site of the blast in Baghdad, said the market was packed with shoppers. He described a scene of chaos with vendors helping to carry the wounded to hospitals and wounded women and children begging for help.
"The stalls were turned upside down because of the powerful explosion. There were many shoppers in the market and most of the store owners were looking forward to good sales but instead they had to close their shops and run away," he said, his shirt soaked with blood. "This violence is not only killing people, it is also starving them."
Also Thursday, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said increased U.S. troop strength had brought down violence, but it was impossible to rush political reconciliation or to predict when conditions would allow the United States to begin reducing its involvement.
With less than two months remaining before Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, are to report to Congress about progress in Iraq, the top diplomat also told the AP that reconciliation is going to be "a long, hard pull."
"The surge (increase of 30,000 American troops) has done very well indeed in making a difference in security conditions. There's no question, in the Anbar (province) and Baghdad area. But it's not a light switch. You don't just flip something up and everyone is reconciled," Crocker said in an interview.
Pressed on when he thought U.S. troop levels could be reduced and other American involvement might be scaled back, Crocker said: "It's going to take longer than September."
The ambassador defended Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is under heavy U.S. pressure for his failure to shepherd benchmark legislation through parliament, as being "as frustrated as anybody else here or at home.
"He would like to get things done and as he points out, he understands the importance of the benchmarks for us. He'd like to get those done," Crocker said.
Meanwhile, the head of Britain's armed forces said British troops are likely to hand control of the southern city of Basra to local forces by the end of the year.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said a decision on exactly when responsibilities would be ceded to Iraq's police and military will be made in the coming months.
"We are very close to being able to hand over Basra in my judgment," Stirrup told BBC radio. "Just when we will reach that point is at the moment uncertain but I am fairly confident it'll be in the second half of the year."
About 5,500 British troops are in Iraq. That will go down by 500 once British forces vacate a base in central Basra later this summer.
Odierno said networks continue to smuggle powerful roadside bombs and mortars across the border from Iran despite Tehran's assertions that it supports stability in Iraq, though he offered no proof. Iran has denied the U.S. allegations about its activities in Iraq.
His remarks came two days after the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors to Iraq met in Baghdad and agreed to establish a security committee to jointly address the violence amid Washington's allegations that Tehran is fueling the violence by support Shiite militias. Odierno said the military also believes training of extremists is being conducted in Iran.
Iraqi government advisers said details of the committee had been worked out and the panel would have its first meeting on Saturday.
"One of the reasons why we're sitting down with the Iranian government ... is trying to solve some of these problems," Odierno said at a news conference in the Green Zone, which is home to the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government headquarters.
"We have seen in the last three months a significant improvement in the capability of mortarmen and rocketeers to provide accurate fires into the Green Zone and other places and we think this is directly related to training that is conducted in Iran," Odierno said. "So we continue to go after these networks with the Iraqi security forces."
Attacks against the sprawling complex along the Tigris River in the center of Baghdad have increased in recent months, adding to the concern over the safety of key Iraqi and international officials and thousands of U.S. soldiers and contractors who live and work there.
___
Associated Press writer Bushra Juhi and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.
The game's loss
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
July 26, 2007
Dan Wetzel
Yahoo! Sports
Coaches love little inspirational sayings. They adopt them as a motto, hang them from walls, print up T-shirts. They are as much about coaching, especially at the still youthful high school and college level, as Xs and Os.
Skip Prosser, being a coach, loved them, too. Only Prosser, being an insatiable student, a former high school teacher and one of the last true educators in college athletics, liked it with a twist.
He never fell back on the trite and easy, the sayings that didn't challenge his players' minds as well as their mettle. Why give them "Refuse to Lose" when, say, Thomas Paine is available?
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink …" Prosser would write on a chalkboard during a rough stretch for one of his teams. His players would have to read and think and contemplate at a real depth the magic of some long gone American patriot speaking to them through the centuries. The next day he'd write up another from Thoreau or Nietzsche or Shakespeare.
Prosser, a coach like almost no other, passed away Thursday, a heart attack while jogging at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., ending his profound and powerful life at 56.
This isn't so much about me or many others losing a friend. This is about college athletics as a whole losing one, too.
Prosser was a man's man and a coach's coach; too good in so many ways for the cut-throat business of college hoops, a place he found great success in nonetheless.
There wasn't a better teacher in the game; which shouldn't be confused with a teacher of the game. Perhaps there were some more adept at boxouts or fast breaks, although his 291 career victories and .667 winning percentage at Wake Forest, Xavier and Loyola (Md.) attest that he could more than hold his own.
But it always, truly, was about more with Prosser. Not just in words, but in actions.
This was the guy who you'd send your son to play for, work for and learn from. When you were around him, he made you want to be a better man. His hobby was reading – long biographies, history, philosophy and politics. He forever was challenging everyone, not just his players. Every conversation I ever had with him began with him asking what I was reading, and if it wasn't up to intellectual snuff, he'd let me know and recommend a shelf full of serious.
Prosser loved to take his teams on those summer exhibition tours. For so many schools now, for so many coaches, these are nothing but extra practice time. Too many teams skip touring the capitals of Europe and head to Canada or the Bahamas – less travel, more mindless fun. What's the Sistine Chapel when jet skiing is an option?
Not Prosser. Every trip was about taking in the history, soaking up the culture. In the spring semester before the trip, he'd get a professor on campus to conduct a one-credit class on the country the team would be visiting, mandatory for every last player and student manager.
Then, as a bonus, Prosser would attend the class, too, writing the term paper even, banging out four to six pages on the role of Patrick Pearse in the Irish uprising of 1916 like he hadn't long ago mastered the subject matter.
There was simply nobody else like him in big-time college sports; a Division I success story who never turned his back on his Division III ideals. He grew up in little Carnegie, a hardscrabble Western Pennsylvanian, attended the Merchant Marine Academy and once hitchhiked across the country. He never lost his love of Pittsburgh, Guinness or the possibility of tomorrow.
Although he always said he still would be happy coaching and teaching at Central Catholic in Wheeling, W.Va. (one of his first jobs), he was too good for that. The guy was a winner, his intelligent, challenging, man-up motivational ways connecting with so many players through the years. He had a powerhouse going at Xavier, bringing in stars such as David West, until in 2001, at age 50, he got offered a job in the venerable ACC and decided, "Why not try to win a national championship?"
And so he tried. He coached Josh Howard and Chris Paul, reached the Sweet Sixteen and just this summer had put together what was expected to be a top-five recruiting class. He was making things work at a small, academically elite school while privately frustrated at the rampant rule breaking and dishonesty around him. If there ever were a coach who followed the rules, someone for everyone to root for, this was one.
Prosser was proof that good guys could succeed, that ethics and education still were possible in the billion-dollar enterprise of NCAA basketball.
He never won his national championship, of course. Never quite put all the pieces together for a Final Four.
But Thursday, as the shocking, awful news of his death swept the country, as phone calls were exchanged from nearly every person he ever touched, ever challenged, ever showed the right way with his dignified yet approachable manner, as all the old stories and all the old sayings he'd scribble on those blackboards were recounted and recalled, his victories were mounting fast, his life carrying on in a way that no basketball victory could ever challenge.
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist. Send Dan a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
Updated on Thursday, Jul 26, 2007 7:54 pm, EDT
New violence at reopened Pakistan mosque
By SADAQAT JAN,
Associated Press Writer
49 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A suspected suicide bomber killed 13 people at a hotel near Islamabad's Red Mosque on Friday as the government reopened the religious complex for the first time since a bloody army raid ousted Islamic militants from the site.
Hundreds of students clashed with security forces outside the mosque and occupied it for several hours before being dispersed. They denounced President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and demanded the return of a pro-Taliban cleric who was detained during the siege earlier this month.
The bomb struck the Muzaffar Hotel, in a downtown market area about a quarter mile from the mosque. Local television showed victims — many of them bleeding or badly burned, with their clothing in tatters — being carried from the wreckage to waiting ambulances.
Amir Mehmood, a witness, said he saw blood, body parts, and shreds of a Punjab police uniform inside the hotel.
Khalid Pervez, Islamabad's top administrator, said 13 people were killed, including seven police, and 71 were wounded.
Kamal Shah, another top Interior Ministry official, said initial reports suggested it was a suicide attack targeting police. Authorities recovered human remains that led them to suspect the bombing had been carried out by a suicide attacker, a senior police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said investigators had also recovered a head believed to be that of the attacker.
Cheema said the government had received intelligence information about a possible suicide bombing in Aabpara, the market area where the hotel is located. "There will be an inquiry for the security lapse," he said.
There was no claim of responsibility, but Islamic militants will be suspected in what is the latest in a series of attacks in Pakistan since the July 10 army raid at the mosque left at least 102 people dead.
Neighboring shops and food stalls also were hit by the blast.
"I heard the blast and I came running. A policeman got blown into the air and landed away from the blast site," said another witness, Imtiaz Ahmed.
The bombing came soon after police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters who called for hard-line cleric Abdul Aziz lead the prayers at the mosque.
The demonstrators threw stones at an armored personnel carrier and dozens of police in riot gear on a road outside the mosque. After the demonstrators disregarded calls to disperse peacefully, police fired tear gas, scattering the crowd.
"Musharraf is a dog! He is worse than a dog! He should resign!" students shouted.
Over mosque loudspeakers, protesters vowed to "take revenge for the blood of martyrs."
The students had forced a government-appointed cleric assigned to lead prayers to retreat, and a cleric from a seminary associated with the mosque eventually led the prayers.
Police later retook control of the mosque, said Zafar Iqbal, the city police chief. Some protesters resisted and about 50 people were arrested.
Friday's reopening was meant to help cool anger over the siege, which triggered a flare-up in militant attacks on security forces across Pakistan. Public skepticism still runs high over the government's accounting of how many people died in the siege, with many still claiming a large number of children and religious students were among the dead. The government says the overwhelming majority were militants.
The mosque's clerics had used thousands of its students in an aggressive campaign to impose Taliban-style Islamic law in the capital. The campaign, which included kidnapping alleged Chinese prostitutes and threatening suicide attacks to defend the fortified mosque, raised concern about the spread of Islamic extremism in Pakistan.
Militants holed up in the mosque compound for a week before government troops launched their assault, leaving it pocked with bullet holes and damaged by explosions.
Friday's crowd shouted support for the mosque's former deputy cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who led the siege until he was shot and killed by security forces after refusing to surrender. Ghazi was the public face of a vigilante, Islamic anti-vice campaign that had challenged the government's writ in the Pakistani capital.
"Ghazi, your blood will lead to a revolution," the protesters chanted.
Police stood by on the street outside the mosque, but did not enter the courtyard where the demonstration was taking place.
Islamabad commissioner Khalid Pervez said police forces did not want to go inside the mosque in case it led to a clash with protesters, but maintained the situation was under control. He said the reaction of Aziz's supporters was understandable and predicted things would calm down.
In a speech at the mosque's main entrance, Liaqat Baloch, deputy leader of a coalition of hard-line religious parties, the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, condemned Musharraf as a "killer" and declared there would be an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.
"Maulana Abdul Aziz is still the prayer leader of the mosque. The blood of martyrs will bear fruit. This struggle will reach its destination of an Islamic revolution. Musharraf is a killer of the constitution. He's a killer of male and female students. The entire world will see him hang," Baloch said.
Pakistan's Geo television showed scenes of pandemonium inside the mosque, with dozens of young men in traditional Islamic clothing and prayers caps shouting angrily and punching the air with their hands.
Officials were pushed and shoved by men in the crowd. One man picked up shoes left outside the mosque door and hurled them at news crews recording the scene.
Wahajat Aziz, a government worker who was among the protesters, said officials were too hasty in reopening the mosque.
"They brought an imam that people had opposed in the past," he said. "This created tension in the environment. People's emotions have not cooled down yet."
Security was tightened in Islamabad ahead of the mosque's reopening, with extra police taking up posts around the city and airport-style metal detectors put in place at the mosque entrance used to screen worshippers for weapons.
In the southwestern city of Quetta, meanwhile, gunmen killed a border province's government spokesman, police said.
Raziq Bugti, spokesman and special adviser to the chief minister of Baluchistan province, died after unknown assailants fired a barrage of shots into his vehicle as he drove past a Quetta school, said Javid Ahmed, a police officer.
The attackers fled on a motorcycle, Ahmed said.
The nationalist rebel group Baluch Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the attack, said Babrak Baluch, a purported spokesman for the organization.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz condemned Bugti's killing, describing it as a "terrorist act."
Baluchistan has experienced scores of attacks on military and government targets, most blamed on ethnic Baluch tribesmen and nationalist groups demanding more royalties and control over the province's resources, such as natural gas.
Taliban militants have used the province to launch attacks across the border on Afghan and foreign troops.
Earlier this week, government troops raided a Taliban hide-out outside Quetta, where Abdullah Mehsud, a Taliban veteran of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, blew himself up to avoid capture.
Musharraf has angrily rejected claims by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that Mullah Omar hid in Quetta, insisting that the Taliban leader was in Afghanistan's neighboring Kandahar province.
4 dead in Phoenix chopper collision
By JACQUES BILLEAUD,
Associated Press Writer
35 minutes ago
PHOENIX - Two news helicopters covering a police chase on live television collided and crashed to the ground Friday, killing all four people on board in a plunge that viewers saw as a jumble of spinning, broken images.
Both helicopters went down in a park in central Phoenix and caught fire. No one on the ground was hurt.
TV viewers did not actually witness the accident because cameras aboard both aircraft were pointed at the ground. But they saw video from one of the helicopters break up and begin to spin before the station abruptly switched to the studio.
Television station KNXV reported that it operated one of the choppers. The other was from KTVK. A pilot and photographer aboard each chopper were killed.
KNXV reporter Craig Smith, who was among the dead, was reporting live as police chased a man driving a construction truck who had fled a traffic stop. The man was driving erratically, hitting several cars and driving on the sidewalk at times.
Police had blown the truck's tires, and the man eventually parked it, then carjacked another vehicle nearby.
Just before the picture broke up, Smith said, "Oh geez!"
The station then switched to the studio and briefly showed regular programming, a soap opera, before announcing that the helicopter had crashed.
The man fleeing from police was later taken into custody. Police Chief Jack Harris suggested he could be charged in connection with the collision.
"I believe you will want to talk to investigators, but I think he will be held responsible for any of the deaths from this tragedy," Harris told reporters at the scene. He did not elaborate.
The two choppers came down on the grass lawn in front of a boarded-up church at the park. Firefighters swarmed to the area as thick black smoke rose from the scene.
Rick Gotchie, an air conditioning contractor, was working nearby when he noticed the helicopters overhead. He said they began circling closer as he continued watching, and one appeared to get too close to the other.
"I kept saying 'Go lower, go lower,' but he didn't," Gotchie said. "It was like a vacuum. They just got sucked into each other, and they both exploded and pieces were flying everywhere."
He said he ran to the crash site, but "no one got out."
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the pilots of the five news helicopters and one police chopper over the chase were not talking to air traffic controllers at the time, which is normal.
"Typically air traffic controllers clear helicopters into an area where they can cover a chase like this," Gregor said. "Once they are in the area, the pilots themselves are responsible for keeping themselves separated from other aircraft."
Pilots generally use a dedicated radio frequency to talk to each other and maintain their positions, Gregor said.
"There is a high degree of coordination," Gregor said. "To fly for a TV station you have to have a commercial rating, which means more (flight hours), more training."
Keith McCutchen, a past president of the National Broadcast Pilots Association and a news pilot for 11 years in Indianapolis, said pilot awareness is vital while on the scene of a story because of the many distractions that could spell trouble.
"You are watching the scene. You have to bring your attention inside to look at the monitors to see what the audience is seeing so you can converse. But you're also having to direct your attention to the other aircraft flying around you.
"You have to have your head on a swivel in those kinds of situations," he said.
In Indianapolis, when news choppers descend on a story, they pick different altitudes and radio their positions to other pilots.
"I may be live on the air and one of the other guys may say, `Hey, I'm coming up on your left side,'" McCutchen said. "I'll break away from what I'm doing on the air and say, `Roger,' and then go back to talking."
Killed on board the KTVK chopper were pilot Scott Bowerbank and photographer Jim Cox. Smith and photographer Rick Krolak were aboard the KNXV aircraft, the stations reported.
Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association in Washington, said the group does not track fatalities among helicopter news pilots, but she could not recall another example of two news choppers colliding while covering a story.
"These pilots, they are very professional. They combine the skills of pilots and skills as journalists," she said.
___
Associated Press writers Chris Kahn, Pauline Arrillaga and Terry Tang contributed to this report.
Another angle...
TV news helicopters collide, killing 4
By JACQUES BILLEAUD,
Associated Press Writer
36 minutes ago
PHOENIX - Federal investigators hope to determine why two news helicopters covering a police chase on live television collided and crashed to the ground, killing all four people on board.
Both helicopters from local TV stations went down in a grassy park in central Phoenix and caught fire Friday afternoon. No one on the ground was hurt.
TV viewers did not witness the accident because cameras aboard both aircraft were pointed at the ground, but they saw video from one of the helicopters break up and begin to spin before the station abruptly switched to the studio.
Killed on board the KTVK helicopter were pilot Scott Bowerbank and photographer Jim Cox, the station reported. On board the KNXV aircraft were reporter-pilot Craig Smith and photographer Rick Krolak, that station said.
A Federal Aviation Administration investigator was at the crash scene by late Friday and National Transportation Safety Board investigators were expected to arrive Saturday.
The helicopters were covering the police pursuit of a work truck. Just before the collision, the driver had jumped out of the nearly disabled flatbed pickup and carjacked another truck. The man was later taken into custody by a SWAT team after barricading himself inside a house.
Just before the picture broke up, Smith said, "Oh geez!"
Police identified the suspect as Christopher J. Jones, 23, and said he was booked into jail late Friday night on two counts of vehicle theft, four counts of aggravated assault on a police officer and one count of resisting arrest with other charges expected to be filed later.
Earlier on Friday, Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris suggested the suspect could "be held responsible for any of the deaths from this tragedy."
The two helicopters came down on the lawn in front of a boarded-up church at the park. Firefighters swarmed to the area as thick black smoke rose from the scene.
Rick Gotchie, an air conditioning contractor, was working nearby when he noticed the helicopters overhead. He said they began circling closer as he continued watching, and one appeared to get too close to the other.
"I kept saying 'Go lower, go lower,' but he didn't," Gotchie said. "It was like a vacuum. They just got sucked into each other, and they both exploded and pieces were flying everywhere."
He said he ran to the crash site, but "no one got out."
FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said the pilots of the five news helicopters and one police chopper over the chase were not talking to air traffic controllers at the time, which is normal.
"Typically air traffic controllers clear helicopters into an area where they can cover a chase like this," Gregor said. "Once they are in the area, the pilots themselves are responsible for keeping themselves separated from other aircraft."
Pilots generally use a dedicated radio frequency to talk to each other and maintain their positions, Gregor said.
"There is a high degree of coordination," Gregor said. "To fly for a TV station you have to have a commercial rating, which means more (flight hours), more training."
Gregor said the FAA has not had major safety problems with news chopper operations.
Keith McCutchen, a past president of the National Broadcast Pilots Association and a news pilot for 11 years in Indianapolis, said pilot awareness is vital while on the scene of a story because of the many distractions that could spell trouble.
"You are watching the scene. You have to bring your attention inside to look at the monitors to see what the audience is seeing so you can converse. But you're also having to direct your attention to the other aircraft flying around you. You have to have your head on a swivel in those kinds of situations."
___
Associated Press writers Chris Kahn, Pauline Arrillaga and Terry Tang contributed to this report.
4 others - elsewhere...
4 killed, 10 hurt by car bomb in Baghdad
By BUSHRA JUHI,
Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 54 minutes ago
BAGHDAD - A parked car bomb exploded in a busy shopping street in predominantly Shiite eastern Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least four people and wounding 10, police said.
The bomb was the latest in a series of explosions targeting commercial centers.
The blast struck about noon, a peak time for street vendors and nearby stores along the Maaskar al-Rashid street, a popular gathering point for people selling tires and spare parts for automobiles. Police who gave the casualty toll said several stores also were damaged.
The attack came two days after explosions struck another Shiite market district in the Karradah neighborhood in central Baghdad as it was packed with shoppers, setting buildings and cars on fire and sending three huge columns of smoke billowing into the sky.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said the death toll in that attack had nearly doubled to 61 after more bodies were pulled from the rubble. He gave the number of wounded as 94.
He also provided a new explanation for the blasts, saying a single parked truck bombing had caused secondary explosions of two large generators and 10 nearby cars.
Iraqi police in the area said earlier that a garbage truck exploded near the market at about the same time as a Katyusha rocket slammed into a three-story residential building about 100 yards away.
Nobody claimed responsibility for either blast, but the market districts that dot Baghdad frequently have been targeted by suspected Sunni insurgents seeking to maximize the number of casualties in bombings despite a more than 5-month-old U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown.
Despite the unrelenting bombings, U.S. and Iraqi officials have claimed some success in reducing violence as they fight to gain control of the capital and surrounding areas ahead of a pivotal progress report to be delivered to the U.S. Congress in September.
But criticism has grown over failures of Iraq's leadership on the political front as parliament prepares to recess for an August vacation without passing key U.S.-backed legislation aimed at promoting national unity.
On Friday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government denounced the country's largest Sunni Arab bloc for its threat to quit the ruling coalition, a move that would leave his Cabinet limping along with about a third of its members missing.
The National Accordance Front announced Wednesday it was suspending its membership in al-Maliki's government for now, but would quit it altogether if its demands were not met in a week's time. The 11 demands include a pardon for security detainees not charged with specific crimes, a firm commitment to human rights and the participation of all coalition partners in the handling of security issues.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh contended the criticism contained many "distortions" and amounted to an attempt to hinder the political process.
"The policy of threats, pressure and blackmail is useless," al-Dabbagh said in a four-page statement, which charged that the Front, which has six Cabinet members and 44 of parliament's 275 seats, has contributed to some of the policies it criticized.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, also called the move "unacceptable" and said in an interview with U.S.-funded Alhurra television that the Iraqi Accordance Front should have discussed its demands with the country's political leadership in private rather than publicizing them.
U.S. troops captured 16 suspected insurgents during raids targeting al-Qaida in Iraq Saturday in raids in the northern cities of Samarra and Tarmiyah, the military said. The detainees included an alleged bombmaker who also was believed responsible for kidnappings, assassinations and extortion operations, according to a statement.
A fierce gunbattle broke out Friday after a joint U.S.-Iraqi force arrested a rogue Shiite militia leader in the holy city of Karbala, some 50 miles south of Baghdad, leading to an airstrike and the deaths of some 17 militants, the military said.
The military has promised to crack down on Shiite militias, which have been blamed for thousands of execution-style killings and roadside bombings, as well as on Sunni extremists usually blamed for suicide attacks and other bombings.
July 28th, 2007
Search crews find body of second missing sewer worker
* Story Highlights
* Two workers were swept away Thursday when heavy rain filled sewer tunnels
* Search crews found the first body Friday
* Workers were 150 feet below ground when evacuation order came
* Next Article in U.S. »
ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) -- The body of a second sewer worker who was caught beneath the streets during a heavy rain was recovered Saturday from the Mississippi River, authorities said.
art.river.search.ap.jpg
Family and friends watch in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Friday as rescue teams search for two missing workers.
The body of Joe Harlow, 34, of Plainview, was found about 4:15 p.m. near a spillway where a storm sewer line drains into the river, Ramsey County Sheriff's Cmdr. Joe Paget said.
On Friday evening, crews found the body of Dave Yasis, 23, of Maplewood, in the river near the same spot.
Harlow was married with four children. Paget said he hoped the discovery "helps this family put closure to a tragic incident."
State workplace safety investigators are checking the training and evacuation procedures of the men's employer, the Lametti & Sons construction firm.
Eight people were working as contractors on the city's $4 million sewer restoration project Thursday. They were about 150 feet below ground when they were told to evacuate as a line of thunderstorms approached.
Arnold Kraft, a spokesman for Lametti and Sons, said the workers were told to get out of the sewers shortly after 3 p.m. Two men were lifted out in a bucket by a crane.
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The rest moved to another exit point with a staircase. With the water waist-high, the men climbed the stairs. When they reached the surface, they realized two men were missing, Kraft said.
Kraft said they immediately went back into the tunnel, where the water rapidly receded, and searched all the way to where the sewer enters the Mississippi River but were not able to find the missing men.
The Fire Department was notified at 7:17 p.m. and firefighters searched into the night.
About .44 inches of rain fell in St. Paul in about 30 minutes, according to the National Weather Service.
Robert Kasper, the business agent for the Laborers Union Local 132, which represents the missing men, said union members were grieving.
Kasper said Hugo-based Lametti and Sons Inc. had a good reputation for safety. "It was a fluke thing," he said.
The union was offering counseling to family members. The police chaplain also was at the riverbank to help, and some people showed up with hot dogs, chips and drinks as mourners set up camp along the bank. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Newly immigrated mother, daughter die in B.C. blaze
Sat Jul 28, 8:59 PM
A blaze that engulfed a fourplex in a small southern B.C. town has claimed the life of a mother and teenage daughter who recently immigrated to Canada.
The fire broke out just after 1 a.m. PT Saturday in an apartment in Princeton, a town located between Vancouver and Kelowna.
The father and a son escaped the fire. The family had immigrated to Canada from Korea eight months ago, the father's employer, Steven Kim, told CBC News.
He identified the deceased as Kim Bae and her daughter, Hang. No ages were given.
When fire crews arrived at the scene, the building was engulfed in flames and firefighters struggled to find residents, said volunteer fire Chief Eric Gregson.
"We had crews trying to gain entry in the second floor of the building," Gregson said. "Our members were trying to locate residents to find out exactly how many people were in the building."
These are the first fire-related fatalities in the southwestern B.C. Interior town in more than 30 years, Gregson said.
A fire commissioner is working to determine the cause of the fire, Gregson said. The coroner has not yet officially identified the victims.
Director Ingmar Bergman Dead
Last Update: Jul 30, 2007 7:41 PM
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STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman has died at the age of 89, an official at Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre said on Monday.
Earlier, the local news agency TT cited Bergman's daughter Eva Bergman as saying he died peacefully on Monday in his home on Faro Island in the Baltic Sea.
"I can confirm that he's dead," said Royal Dramatic Theatre spokeswoman Ulrika Nilsdotter Geiger.
Bergman is famous for films such as 'Fanny and Alexander' and 'The Seventh Seal.'
Copyright 2007 Reuters.
Another take...
Film-maker Ingmar Bergman dead
Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish film director widely regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema, has died. He was 89.
Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, confirmed the death on Monday.
Bergman died at his home on the Baltic islet of Faro, north of the tourist island of Gotland, Sweden, said Eva Bergman, one of his nine children.
The cause of his death was not immediately known.
Melancholy works
Bergman inspired a generation of film-makers with his often stark and melancholy works including the films Wild Strawberries, Scenes From a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander.
He made about 60 films before retiring from film-making in 2003.
Bergman and actress Liv Ulmann at a theatre
rehearsal in Stockholm in the '60s [AFP]
"He was one of the great ones," Jorn Donner, who produced Fanny and Alexander, said.
Richard Attenborough, the British actor and director, said: "The world has lost one of its very greatest film-makers. He taught us all so much throughout his life."
His cinematic masterpieces often dwelt on sexual confusion, loneliness and the vain search for the meaning of life, themes that many ascribed to a traumatic childhood in which he was beaten by his father.
He won Oscars for best foreign language film in 1960, 1961 and 1983, and a collection of his work was added last month to the Unesco store of history's greatest archives.
Fanny and Alexander won four Oscars alone in 1983 and in total Bergman's work included 54 films, 126 theatre productions and 39 radio plays.
Cinema as literature
In his films, Bergman's vision encompassed all the extremes of his beloved Sweden: the claustrophobic gloom of unending winter nights, the gentle merriment of glowing summer evenings, and the bleak magnificence of the island where he spent his last years.
Bergman approached difficult subjects such as plague and madness with inventive technique and carefully honed writing, becoming one of the towering figures of serious film making.
"He was one of the world's biggest personalities. There were [Japanese film director Akira] Kurosawa, [Italy's Federico] Fellini and then Bergman. Now he is also gone," Bille August, an academy award winner, said.
Laurent Delmas, a French cinema specialist, said France's national cinema school required aspiring students to analyse a five-minute extract from a Bergman film as part of last year's entrance exams.
"There is not a serious French director out there who has not watched Bergman and taken elements - consciously or unconsciously - from him," Delmas said.
"They watched Bergman not to ape him but because they were blown away by the essential subjects of his films - death, relationships - by his stories and the way he filmed them."
Gilles Jacob, the Cannes Film Festival's director, called Bergman the "last of the greats, because he proved that cinema can be as profound as literature".
Severe discipline
The son of a Lutheran clergyman and a housewife, Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala on July 14, 1918, and grew up with a brother and sister in a household of severe discipline that he described in painful detail in the autobiography The Magic Lantern.
Bergman encouraged young directors not to
make any films without a message [AFP]
The title comes from his childhood, when his brother got a "magic lantern" - a precursor of the slide-projector - for Christmas.
Ingmar was consumed with jealousy, and he managed to acquire the object of his desire by trading it for a hundred tin soldiers.
The apparatus was a spot of joy in an often-cruel young life. Bergman recounted the horror of being locked in a closet and the humiliation of being made to wear a skirt as punishment for wetting his pants.
He broke with his parents at 19 and remained aloof from them, but later in life sought to understand them.
The story of their lives was told in the television film Sunday's Child, directed by his own son Daniel.
Wives and lovers
Bergman's private life often thrust him into the headlines as much as his films.
He was married five times to beautiful and gifted women and had liaisons with his leading actresses.
In a rare interview in 2001 Bergman said personal demons tormented and inspired him throughout his life.
"The demons are innumerable, appear at the most inconvenient times and create panic and terror," he said at the time.
"But I have learnt that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage."
International attention
Bergman first gained international attention with 1955's Smiles of a Summer Night, a romantic comedy that inspired the Stephen Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music.
His last work was Saraband, a made-for-television film that aired on Swedish public television in December 2003.
Nearly a million Swedes - or one in nine - watched the family drama, which was based on the two main characters from his previous TV series, Scenes From a Marriage.
A '70s photo shows Bergman, left, with Sven
Nykvist, his famous cameramen [AFP]
The show starred Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson - two of Bergman's favourite actors - who reprised their roles from Scenes From a Marriage, which was edited and released as a feature film in 1974.
The Seventh Seal, released two years later, riveted critics and audiences.
An allegorical tale of the medieval Black Plague years, it contains one of cinema's most famous scenes - a knight playing chess with the shrouded figure of Death.
"I was terribly scared of death," Bergman said of his state of mind when making the 1957 film, which was nominated for an Academy Award in the best picture category.
The film distilled the essence of Bergman's work - high seriousness, flashes of unexpected humour and striking images.
Stage director
Though best known internationally for his films, Bergman was also a prominent stage director.
He worked at several playhouses in Sweden from the mid-1940s, including the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm which he headed from 1963 to 1966.
He staged many plays by the Swedish author August Strindberg, whom he cited as an inspiration.
Marie Nyrerodand, a Swedish journalist, said on Monday that Bergman died peacefully during his sleep.
After a hip surgery in October last year, Bergman never fully recovered, she told Swedish broadcaster SVT.
"Since then I don't think he really recuperated. They made sure he had company around the clock to help him get up with a broken hip," Nyrerod, who had interviewed him often, said.
Source: Agencies
The preceding was my first news article prickled from Al Jazeera.net!
French actor Michel Serrault dead
Paris, July 30 (AP):
French actor Michel Serrault, whose hit performance as a transvestite in the film and screen versions of ``La cage aux folles'' (The Birdcage) catapulted him to international stardom, has died, his priest said on Monday. He was 79.
Serrault died Sunday of cancer in his home in the northwestern city of Honfleur, Rev. Alain Maillard de La Morandais said.
Serrault appeared in more than 130 films during a career that spanned half a century. After debuting as a comic actor, Serrault became one of France's most versatile stars, playing a serial killer, a grizzled farmer, a crooked banker and accused rapist.
``I'm against those who only want to entertain,'' Serrault said in 2002. ``I am very happy with all the roles I've played, and I take responsibility for them all.''
French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid homage to Serrault's ``impressive filmography,'' calling the actor a ``monument of the world of the theater, the cinema and the television.''
In a statement Monday, Sarkozy said Serrault touched ``each French person with his talents as an actor - both comic and tragic.''
Born on Jan. 24, 1928, in Brunoy, south of Paris, Serrault initially set his sights on the priesthood, briefly entering a seminary. He dropped out, he later explained, because of the vow of chastity.
After studying acting in Paris, Serrault began as his stage career playing in cabarets.
He made his silver screen debut in 1954 in Jean Loubignac's ``Ah! les belles bacchantes'' (Oh, the lovely bacchantes), which was released as ``Peek-a-boo'' in the United States. His first big break came in 1972, with a leading role in Pierre Tchernia's ``Le Viager'' (The Life Annuity.)
But it was his role as flamboyant gay nightclub owner Albin Mougeotte, also known as Zaza Napoli, in the theater and film versions of the mega-hit ``La cage aux folles'' (The Birdcage) that catapulted him to international fame. His performance in director Edouard Molinaro's 1978 movie won him the first of three Cesar awards _ the French version of the Oscar.
In 1995, he starred opposite Emmanuelle Beart in ``Nelly et M. Arnaud'' (Nelly and Mr. Arnaud), winning another Cesar.
Serrault remained active, featuring in films through his late seventies. Among his final films was Pierre Javaux's 2006 ``Les enfants du pays'' (Hometown Boys), about the role of African soldiers in WWII.
Serrault is survived by his wife, Juanita, and daughter, Nathalie.
Serrault was to be buried Wednesday or Thursday in Honfleur, Rev. de La Morandais said.
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KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian police have arrested a woman in connection with the murder of a man whose body was chopped into 11 pieces and stuffed into a refrigerator in a posh apartment in the capital.
The remains were discovered in black bin bags when a man who bought the apartment at a bank auction went to clean the unit, which had been vacant for more than three months, the Star newspaper said on Tuesday.
A strong stench led the owner and security guard to the refrigerator, which had been sealed with masking tape.
Newspapers in neighboring Singapore said the victim was believed to be a Singaporean who had been married to the woman and who had been out of touch with his family for nearly two years.
The Straits Times carried a photograph of the woman, described as an air stewardess from Sarawak, being led away by police, a scarf hiding her handcuffed hands.
It quoted unnamed sources as saying police were hunting for the woman's lover.
Police said they had probably solved the case with the arrest of the woman, The Star newspaper said.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
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Romania Orthodox patriarch dies at age 92
BUCHAREST, Romania,
July 31 (UPI) --
Patriarch Teoctist, the head of the Romanian Orthodox Church has died in Bucharest after prostate surgery at the age of 92.
Teoctist died of heart problems Monday in a Bucharest clinic where he had undergone a scheduled prostate operation, doctors told Rompres.
Church leaders said Teoctist would be buried in Bucharest's Patriarchal Cathedral Friday.
He was named the archbishop of Bucharest and the Romanian patriarch in 1986. In 1999, he arranged for Pope John Paul II to visit Romania, the first such visit by the pontiff to an Orthodox-majority country.
However, many Romanians criticized Teoctist for what they considered a passive stand toward the communist regime of Romania's Nicolae Ceausesu, who ordered numerous churches closed or demolished across the country, the Romanian HotNews Web site reported.
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Romanian anti-communist dissident dies
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) --
Victor Frunza, a Romanian anti-communist dissident and writer, has died in Denmark of a heart attack. He was 72.
Frunza died Friday, a government institute for Romanians living abroad said Monday.
The author was forced to leave Romania in 1980 after writing a letter critical of the communist regime led by dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The letter was published internationally, and Frunza was interrogated by the dreaded secret police.
He and his family later settled in Aarhus, Denmark.
While in Romania, Frunza secretly wrote a history of communism in the country that was published in Denmark in 1984. He also wrote essays championing human rights and published a political magazine.
He returned to his homeland after Romania ended 45 years of communist rule with the 1989 overthrow and execution of Ceausescu.
After the fall of communism, Frunza wrote several books, a play and poetry.
He is survived by his wife and son.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Italian movie director Antonioni dead at 94
By The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
ROME (AP) -- In Michelangelo Antonioni's movies, dialogue was sparse, shots lengthy and action minimal. This abstract style and a ruthless exploration of the malaise of modern man made the Italian director a darling of avant-garde cinema and a celebrated filmmaker across the world.
Antonioni died at 94 in his home, officials said Tuesday, after a career that spanned six decades, an Oscar for lifetime achievement and movies that have become classics such as "L'Avventura," "Blow-Up" and "Zabriskie Point."
His death Monday evening shortly after that of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman leaves European cinema without two of its most significant personalities.
"With Antonioni, cinema loses an author without whom it would not have been the same," Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said.
Along with Federico Fellini, Antonioni helped turn postwar Italian film away from neorealism and toward a cinema more interested in exploring the alienation and fragil e relationships of modern society than the down-to-earth troubles of life.
In the words of Jack Nicholson, one of his actors, Antonioni's movies mourned people's "failures to connect" in a cold, technological world.
Antonioni became a symbol of art-house cinema, if not a crowd pleaser. His critics found his films pretentious and aimless exercises with only vague significance.
A stroke in the mid-1980s significantly slowed down Antonioni's activity, leaving him largely unable to speak.
"If I hadn't become a director," Antonioni once said, "I would have been an architect, or maybe a painter. In other words, I think I'm someone who has things to show rather than things to say."
Antonioni's breakthrough came in 1960 with "L'Avventura," which explores existential malaise through a story based on a woman's disappearance during a boating trip.
Halliwell's Film Guide said the movie made the director "a hero of the highbrows." If critics loved it, the audience hissed when the film was presented at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Many filmgoers were frustrated by the lack of action and the camera's endless lingering on Monica Vitti, one of Antonioni's favorite actresses.
"L'Avventura" opened a trilogy that continued with "La Notte" (1961) and "L'Eclisse" (1962).
The films flesh out Antonioni's most distinctive themes: lovers who drift and fail to connect; unresolved stories played out in comfortable middle-class settings; an attempt to match cinematic visuals to the characters' feelings.
Film historian Peter Bondanella wrote in "Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present" that Antonioni's originality was in his break with conventional plots and "his ability to portray modern neurotic, alienated, and guilt-ridden characters whose emotional lives are sterile � or at least poorly developed � and who seem to be out of place in their environments."
The oppressiveness of environment was never more evident than in Antonioni's first color film, "The Red Desert" (1964), an expressionistic portrayal of a housewife's miserable existence amid smoky factories in an industrial wasteland around Ravenna. It won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion for best picture.
Antonioni's greatest popular success was probably his 1966 English-language film "Blow-Up," about a hip London photographer who suspects he has caught a murder on film. Despite the murder-mystery theme, the plot defies expectations and remains unresolved.
The film won top prize at the Cannes Film Festival and Academy Award nominations for best director and best screenplay.
"Blow-Up" may be best remembered for its racy depiction of free love and rock 'n' roll in '60s London � elements that may seem dated but continue to earn the picture cult status.
Antonioni's next venture was to the United States. "Zabriskie Point" (1970) was shot in the bleakly carved landscape of California's Death Valley and largely seen as an off-target critique of the United States.
Antonioni's last major picture was "The Passenger" (1975), starring Nicholson as a TV reporter who switches identities with a gun runner.
Nicholson presented Antonioni with the career Oscar in 1995. By then Antonioni was a physically frail but mentally sharp 82-year-old, unable to speak more than a few words because of the stroke but still translating his vision into film. The Oscar (and several other film prizes) was stolen from Antonioni's home in 1996.
Condolences from across Europe poured in Tuesday after news of Antonioni's death.
From French President Nicolas Sarkozy to EU chief Jose Manuel Barroso and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, officials praised Antonioni as one of the most significant European intellectuals.
"The death of Michelangelo Antonioni, after that of Ingmar Bergman, deepens the mourning of European cinema," French Culture Minister Christine Albanel said .
Antonioni was born on Sept. 29, 1912, in the affluent northern city of Ferrara. He graduated in economics but soon began writing critiques for cinema magazines.
His first feature film, "Cronaca di un Amore" ("Story of a Love Affair"), in 1950 reflected the influence of neorealism, by then a vigorous artistic movement. But the movie also had hints of Antonioni's future style.
In a 1980 interview with an Italian magazine, Antonioni said he was the "ideal spectator" of his own work.
"I could never do something against my tastes to meet the public," he said. "And then, what public? Italian? American? Japanese? French? British? Austrialian? They're all different to each other."
In 1994, an ailing Antonioni made "Beyond the Clouds," offsetting the effects of the stroke by using a notepad, communicating through his wife or just using his expressive blue eyes. Worried that he would be too frail to finish the movie, investors had German director Wim We nders follow the work in case he needed to step in. But Wenders wound up watching in awe and letting Antonioni put his vision on film.
His last work was the 2004 collaborative film "Eros," to which he contributed a segment.
Antonioni is survived by wife Enrica. He had no children.
The city of Rome said his body would lie in state at City Hall on Wednesday before a funeral scheduled Thursday in Ferrara.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Former Sunset publisher dies at 85
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ATHERTON, Calif. (AP) -- Melvin B. Lane, former publisher of Sunset magazine and a Stanford University trustee, died Saturday of complications from Parkinson's disease. He was 85.
Lane, former co-owner and publisher of Lane Publishing Co. and Sunset Magazine and Books, was a major force at his alma mater, playing key roles in the creation of Stanford's long-range land-use plan, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and the Woods Institute for the Environment. One of his biggest campus projects was a fundraising campaign to restore Stanford's Memorial Church after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
"Mel would climb with potential donors up ladders through the scaffolding to the very dome of the church to show them the work being done," said Robert Gregg, professor emeritus of religious studies and former dean of the chapel at Stanford Memorial Church. "It was a pretty dicey climb."
Lane's family moved from Des Moines, Iowa, to San Francisco in 1928, when his father bought the fledgling travel magazine Sunset. Lane attended Palo Alto High School and Pomona College and graduated from Stanford University in 1944.
After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Lane began working in the family business. He led a new book division dedicated to do-it-yourself home improvements and helped the magazine become one of the nation's best-known regional publications. The family sold Lane Publishing Co. in 1990 to Time Warner.
In 1972, Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed Lane first chairman of the newly formed California Coastal Commission, which oversaw conservation and land-use initiatives along 1,100 miles of coastline. He was also active in other environmental organizations, including the Peninsula Open Space Trust and World Wildlife Fund.
Lane is survived by his wife of 54 years, Joan Fletcher Lane, daughters Whitney Miller and Julie Lane Gay, sons-in-law Richard Miller and Craig Gay, four grandchildren and his brother, L. W. "Bill" Lane, with whom he ran Lane Publishing for nearly 40 years.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
NBC producer dies in NYC building plunge
NEW YORK (AP) -- Eric R. Wishnie, an Emmy-winning former television producer who worked with Tom Brokaw at NBC News, died Monday after falling from his apartment building, police said. He was 44.
Tim Minton, a reporter for WNBC-TV, the local affiliate, quoted police as saying they did not believe foul play was involved.
Wishnie was "an enormously talented former senior producer at NBC News, who had a hand in some of the most monumental and memorable news stories of our time," NBC News President Steve Capus said in a statement.
Wishnie produced stories for Brokaw in the Middle East, along with coverage of the Olympic Games in Athens, Sydney and Atlanta and the first North American interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Wishnie was a former senior producer for "The NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams." He had been a key producer for Brokaw, Williams' predecessor as anchor of the evening news program, traveling with him on assignments such as the war in Iraq and post-tsunami coverage in Indonesia.
In 1993, while based in Chicago, Wishnie and NBC reporter Dawn Fratangelo won Emmy Awards for their coverage of Midwest flooding. They married in October 1997.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
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Obituaries in the News
Film director Antonioni dies at 94
Former Sunset publisher dies at 85
NBC producer dies in NYC building plunge
Former 49ers coach Bill Walsh dead at 75
Film great Ingmar Bergman dies at 89
Broadcaster Tom Snyder dies at 71
Prominent Iranian cleric dies at 85
Michel Serrault dies of cancer at 79
Romanian anti-communist dissident dies
Head of Romanian Church dies
Giuseppe Baldo
ROME (AP) - Giuseppe Baldo, the last survivor of the Italian team that won the gold medal in soccer at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, died Tuesday. He was 93.
The Italian Olympic Committee said Baldo died of natural causes.
Baldo was a midfielder on the Azzurri squad that beat Austria 2-1 in extra time in the Olympic final. Baldo also played seven seasons for Lazio in the Italian league.
---
Melvin B. Lane
ATHERTON, Calif. (AP) - Melvin B. Lane, former publisher of Sunset magazine and a Stanford University trustee, died Saturday of complications from Parkinson's disease. He was 85.
Lane, former co-owner and publisher of Lane Publishing Co. and Sunset Magazine and Books, was a major force at his alma mater, playing key roles in the creation of Stanford's long-range land-use plan, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and the Woods Institute for the Environment. One of his biggest campus projects was a fundraising campaign to restore Stanford's Memorial Church after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Lane's family moved from Des Moines, Iowa, to San Francisco in 1928, when his father bought the fledgling travel magazine Sunset. Lane attended Palo Alto High School and Pomona College and graduated from Stanford University in 1944.
After serving in the Navy during World War II, Lane began working in the family business. He led a new book division dedicated to do-it-yourself home improvements and helped the magazine become one of the nation's best-known regional publications. The family sold Lane Publishing Co. in 1990 to Time Warner.
In 1972, Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed Lane first chairman of the newly formed California Coastal Commission, which oversaw conservation and land-use initiatives along 1,100 miles of coastline. He was also active in other environmental organizations, including the Peninsula Open Space Trust and World Wildlife Fund.
---
Oliver Morgan
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Oliver Morgan, a New Orleans rhythm & blues vocalist best known for his 1964 hit "Who Shot the La La," died Tuesday in Atlanta. He was 74.
Morgan died Tuesday morning at home, his son, Morgan said. He had suffered a heart attack about two weeks ago.
Morgan grew up in New Orleans' 9th Ward alongside Fats Domino, Jessie Hill and Smiley Lewis. He sang in church and with friends from the neighborhood and recorded his first single in 1961 for AFO Records under the pseudonym "Nookie Boy."
Three years later, "Who Shot the La La," a whimsical take on the mysterious 1963 death of singer Lawrence "Prince La La" Nelson - who was not shot, but died of an apparent drug overdose - became his first and only national hit.
The strutting party anthem featured keyboardist Eddie Bo, who is credited as the song's writer even though Morgan claimed to have written it himself.
Morgan toured nationally on the strength of the song but eventually settled back into the life of a local entertainer. In nightclubs and at the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, he performed with his trademark second-line umbrella. He was among the first to incorporate this jazz funeral accessory into a nightclub act, and never hesitated to lead a parade.
Morgan did not release a full-length album until 1998's "I'm Home," which was produced by Allen Toussaint and issued by his NYNO Music label.
Morgan and his wife, Sylvia, lived in the Lower 9th Ward until Hurricane Katrina's breached levees destroyed their home. They moved to Atlanta, where a son and daughter lived, and bought a house there.
---
Alan Maxwell Pottasch
NEW YORK (AP) - Alan Maxwell Pottasch, who was behind such iconic ad campaigns as the "Pepsi Generation," has died, the company said. He was 79.
Pottasch died in his sleep Friday in Los Angeles, where he was working on a TV commercial, PepsiCo Inc. said. Even though he retired in 1991, he continued to work for the company as a consultant.
Pottasch was the creative force behind five decades of Pepsi advertising campaigns, the company said. He started working for the company in 1957, and as a marketer recognized the shift from promoting products to selling a way of life.
He produced ads such as the famous 1980s Pepsi commercials that starred Michael Jackson, as well as those featuring celebrities such as Lionel Richie, Ray Charles, Michael J. Fox, Cindy Crawford, Britney Spears and Beyonce.
He held a bachelor's degree in creative writing from Pennsylvania State University. He also attended directing school in New York and participated in the advanced management program at Harvard Business School.
Pottasch lived in New Fairfield, Conn.
---
Bartholomew Kinch
MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) - Former United Press International editor Bartholomew Kinch, who was one of the last people to interview bandleader Glenn Miller before he vanished and who helped cover events such as man's first moon landing, has died.
Kinch, who was 86, died Sunday, his son Richard Kinch said. He had been hospitalized last week for a series of tests, but they turned up only relatively minor ailments, and the cause of his death remained unclear, his son said.
Kinch was an editor for many years on UPI's national desk in Manhattan, helping to cover major news developments including the anti-Vietnam War movement, the Watergate scandal and the first human landing on the moon.
After growing up in Malverne, Kinch joined the Army during World War II and served as a correspondent with the 8th Air Force in England.
He interviewed Miller in England just before the musician took off in December 1944 in a single-engine Army plane on his fatal flight to Paris.
Kinch, who went by the nickname Bart, joined United Press in August 1946 and retired in 1983.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
Broadcaster Tom Snyder dies at 71
By JASON DEAREN
Associated Press Writer
Late Night Talk Show Host Tom Snyder Dies at 71
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Tom Snyder, who pioneered the late-late network TV talk show with a personal yet abrasive style, robust laugh and trademark cloud of cigarette smoke billowing around his head, has died from complications associated with leukemia. He was 71.
Snyder died Sunday in San Francisco, his longtime producer and friend Mike Horowicz told The Associated Press on Monday.
"Tom was a fighter," Horowicz said. "I know he had tried many different treatments."
Prickly and ego-driven, Snyder conducted numerous memorable interviews as host of NBC's "Tomorrow," which followed Johnny Carson's "Tonight" show from 1973 to '82.
Snyder's style, his show's set and the show itself marked an abrupt change at 1 a.m. from Carson's program. Snyder might joke with the crew in the sparsely appointed studio, but he was more likely to joust with guests such as the irascible science fiction writer Harlan Ellison.
Snyder had John Lennon's final televised interview (April 1975) and U2's first U.S. television appearance in June 1981.
One of his most riveting interviews was with Charles Manson, who would go from a calm demeanor to acting like a wild-eyed, insanity-spouting mass murderer and back again.
Another wacky moment came when Plasmatics lead singer Wendy O. Williams blew up a TV in the studio; in another appearance she demolished a car. Yet another time, Johnny Rotten decided he really wasn't in the mood to be on a talk show, leading to an excruciating 12 minutes of airtime.
In 1982, the show was canceled after a messy attempt to reformat it into a talk-variety show called "Tomorrow Coast to Coast." It added a live audience and co-hostess Rona Barrett - all of which Snyder disdained.
The time slot was taken over by a hot young comedian named David Letterman.
"Tom was the very thing that all broadcasters long to be - compelling," Letterman said. "Whether he was interviewing politicians, authors, actors or musicians, Tom was always the real reason to watch. I'm honored to have known him as a colleague and a friend."
Born in Milwaukee, Snyder began his career as a radio reporter in his home town in the 1960s, then moved into local television news, anchoring newscasts in Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles before moving to late night.
"He loved the broadcast business," said Marciarose Shestack, who co-anchored a noontime newscast with Snyder at KYW-TV in Philadelphia in the 1960s. "He was very surprising and very irreverent and not at all a typical newscaster."
Al Primo, a former TV news director who gave Snyder one of his first TV jobs, said Snyder was the "ultimate communicator," able to look directly into a camera and tell viewers a story without looking at notes.
As an interviewer, Snyder "always used to tell me, I listen to what they're saying and I ask the questions that the average guy would want to ask, not a formulated question," Primo said.
He returned to local anchoring in New York after "Tomorrow" left the air. He eventually hosted an ABC radio talk show before easing back into television on CNBC.
His catch phrase: "Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."
Letterman, a longtime Snyder admirer, brought him back to network television, creating "The Late Late Show" on CBS to follow his own program. (Subsequently, the format and hosts have changed, with Craig Kilborn and now Craig Ferguson.)
Snyder gained fame in his heyday when Dan Aykroyd spoofed him in the early days of "Saturday Night Live." His chain-smoking, black beetle brows (contrasting with his mostly gray hair), mercurial manner and self-indulgent, digressive way of asking questions as well as his clipped speech pattern made for a distinctive sendup.
Briefly in the late 1970s, Snyder was considered a potential successor to John Chancellor as anchor of the "NBC Nightly News." Tom Brokaw got the job instead, as some in NBC management were worried that Snyder's quick and occasionally sharp tongue would get them in trouble, said Joe Angotti, who produced NBC's weekend news then.
"There was a friendly but intense competition between the two of them," Angotti said.
Snyder announced on his Web site in 2005 that he had chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
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Associated Press Writer Brooke Donald in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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Former 49ers coach Bill Walsh dead at 75
By JANIE MCCAULEY
AP Sports Writer
Bill Walsh, 1931-2007
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Bill Walsh could be as serious as they come and he could be down right hilarious. He could be creative and he could be precise.
For those whose lives he touched, the Hall of Fame football coach will be remembered as a teacher who cared deeply about his players and many others whose path he crossed - a man who found new ways to win.
"Bill Walsh personified what it meant to be a human being," said Jim Harbaugh, Stanford's new football coach who knew Walsh for 18 years and once received footwork tips from the coach while playing for the Bears. "Everything that came out of his mind, his heart, his mouth, I hung on every single word."
Nicknamed "The Genius" for his original schemes that became known as the West Coast offense, Walsh died at his Woodside home Monday morning following a long battle with leukemia. He was 75.
Walsh changed the NFL with his innovative offense and a legion of coaching disciples, breaking new ground and winning three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers along the way.
Jerry Rice remembers the time Walsh stood in as a bellman at a hotel and started carrying bags, and the day he showed up at practice sporting tights to match those worn by Rice.
"It blew me away," Rice recalled with a grin. "You have to have a certain body to wear tights."
But most of all, Rice cherishes the chance Walsh gave him. The San Francisco 49ers selected the wide receiver out of Mississippi Valley State in the first round back in 1985.
"He gave me the opportunity to come to a winner, San Francisco out of Mississippi Valley State University," Rice said. "I was the 16th player taken in the first round. It was all because of Bill Walsh and what he stood for. I think that was very unique for him, because he could see talent."
Walsh didn't become an NFL head coach until 47, and he spent just 10 seasons on the San Francisco sideline. But he left an indelible mark on the nation's most popular sport, building the once-woebegone 49ers into the most successful team of the 1980s.
The soft-spoken Californian also produced an army of proteges. Many of his former assistants went on to lead their own teams, handing down Walsh's methods to dozens more coaches in a tree with innumerable branches.
"The essence of Bill Walsh was that he was an extraordinary teacher," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. "If you gave him a blackboard and a piece of chalk, he would become a whirlwind of wisdom."
Walsh went 102-63-1 with the 49ers, winning 10 of his 14 postseason games along with six division titles. He was the NFL's coach of the year in 1981 and 1984.
Few men did more to shape the look of football into the 21st century. His cerebral nature and often-brilliant stratagems earned him his nickname well before his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993.
"This is just a tremendous loss for all of us, especially to the Bay Area because of what he meant to the 49ers," said Joe Montana, San Francisco's Hall of Fame quarterback. "Outside of my dad he was probably the most influential person in my life. I am going to miss him."
Walsh visited with friends until the end, and attended basketball games at Stanford all winter. Tyrone Willingham, now the coach at Washington, and Stanford donor and alumnus John Arrillaga went to see Walsh on Sunday, presenting him with the Stagg Award for his outstanding service to football.
Walsh created the Minority Coaching Fellowship program in 1987, helping minority coaches get a foothold in a previously white-dominated profession. Willingham and Marvin Lewis were among those who went through the program, later adopted as a league-wide initiative.
"The world lost a great man in Bill Walsh. He had a tremendous impact on me, both personally and professionally," said Willingham, who replaced Walsh as Stanford's head coach in 1994. "Bill's development of the minority coaching program at the collegiate and professional levels literally changed the face of football."
Raiders owner Al Davis and Hall of Famer John Madden stopped by to see Walsh on Saturday, and Montana on Friday and also last Wednesday along with Ronnie Lott. Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young was planning to see Walsh on Monday when he received the sad news instead.
"He knew me well before I knew myself and knew what I could accomplish well before I knew that I could accomplish it," Young said. "That's a coach. That's the ultimate talent anyone could have. I said in my Hall of Fame speech that he was the most important person in football in the last 25 years, and I don't think there's any debate about that."
Walsh twice served as the 49ers' general manager, and coach George Seifert led San Francisco to two more Super Bowl titles after Walsh left the sideline. Walsh also coached Stanford during two terms over five seasons.
Even a short list of Walsh's adherents is stunning. Seifert, Mike Holmgren, Dennis Green, Sam Wyche, Ray Rhodes and Bruce Coslet all became NFL head coaches after serving on Walsh's San Francisco staffs, and Tony Dungy played for him. Most of his former assistants passed on Walsh's structures and strategies to a new generation of coaches, including Mike Shanahan, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick, Andy Reid, Pete Carroll, Gary Kubiak, Steve Mariucci and Jeff Fisher.
In 2004, Walsh was diagnosed with leukemia - the disease that also killed his son, former ABC News reporter Steve Walsh, in 2002 at age 46. Walsh underwent months of treatment and blood transfusions, and publicly disclosed his illness in November 2006.
Born William Ernest Walsh on Nov. 30, 1931, in Los Angeles, Walsh's family moved to the Bay Area when he was a teenager.
He was a self-described "average" end at San Jose State in 1952-53. He married his college sweetheart, Geri Nardini, in 1954 and started his coaching career at Washington High School in Fremont, leading the football and swim teams.
Walsh was coaching in Fremont when Marv Levy, then the coach at the University of California, hired him as an assistant.
Walsh did a stint at Stanford before beginning his pro coaching career as an assistant with the AFL's Oakland Raiders in 1966, forging a friendship with Davis that endured through decades of rivalry. Walsh joined the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 to work for legendary coach Paul Brown, who gradually gave complete control of the Bengals' offense to his assistant.
Walsh built a playbook that included short dropbacks and novel receiving routes, as well as constant repetition of every play in practice. Though it originated in Cincinnati, it became known many years later as the West Coast offense - a name Walsh never liked or repeated, but which eventually grew to encompass his offensive philosophy and the many tweaks added by Holmgren, Shanahan and others.
"He was a perfectionist," said Keena Turner, a linebacker with the Niners for 11 years before going on to coach. "When writing his script, he didn't believe that running the football was the way to get there. It had to be prettier than that - beautiful in some way."
By the 1990s, much of the NFL was running some version of the West Coast offense, with its fundamental belief that the passing game can set up an effective running attack, rather than the opposite conventional wisdom.
Walsh also is widely credited with inventing or popularizing many of the modern basics of coaching, from the laminated sheets of plays held by coaches on almost every sideline, to the practice of scripting the first 15 offensive plays of a game.
After a bitter falling-out with Brown in 1976, Walsh left for stints with the San Diego Chargers and Stanford before the 49ers chose him to rebuild the franchise in 1979.
The long-suffering team had gone 2-14 before Walsh's arrival. The Niners repeated the record in his first season. Walsh doubted his abilities to turn around such a miserable situation - but earlier in 1979, the 49ers drafted Montana from Notre Dame.
Walsh turned over the starting job to Montana in 1980, when the 49ers improved to 6-10 - and improbably, San Francisco won its first championship in 1981, just two years after winning two games.
Championships followed in the postseasons of 1984 and 1988 as Walsh built a consistent winner. He also showed considerable acumen in personnel, adding Lott, Charles Haley, Roger Craig and Rice to his rosters after he was named the 49ers' general manager in 1982 and then president in 1985.
"I came to San Francisco, and I found another father, Bill Walsh," Rice said.
Walsh left the 49ers with a profound case of burnout after his third Super Bowl victory in January 1989, though he later regretted not coaching longer.
He spent three years as a broadcaster with NBC before returning to Stanford for three seasons. He then took charge of the 49ers' front office in 1999, helping to rebuild the roster over three seasons. But Walsh gradually cut ties with the 49ers after his hand-picked successor as GM, Terry Donahue, took over in 2001.
He is survived by his wife, Geri, and two children, Craig and Elizabeth.
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AP Sports Writers Greg Beacham and Gregg Bell contributed to this story.
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On the Net:
http://www.coachwalsh.com
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Prominent Iranian cleric dies at 85
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) --
Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, a founding member of Iran's Islamic regime and leader of an important government assembly, died Monday. He was 85.
Meshkini died in a Tehran hospital where he had been receiving treatment since early July, his doctor, Jaffar Aslani, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency. State television said he died of a lung infection.
The ayatollah, or top-ranking Shiite Muslim cleric, was the head of the Assembly of Experts. The 86-member government body can in theory reprimand or even dismiss Iran's supreme leader, a position currently held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In a condolence message reported by IRNA, Khamenei described Meshkini as "a model for his students and followers," and said his demise was "a great loss."
It was not immediately clear who would succeed Meshkini in his assembly position.
Meshkini was a close associate of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whom he supported during the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the religious regime to power.
A hardliner, Meshkini was among the proponents of the theory that the legitimacy of Iran's clerics to rule the country is derived from God, as opposed to pro-democracy reformers who believe the government's authority is derived from popular elections.
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May they all rest in peace now.
+++
Oh, and when I said "HERE" earlier...
I meant HERE!
;)
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