Harrowing Halloweenish October Death Toll...
Any excuse is a good excuse
no matter how morbid it may be
to listen to this unappreciated
GENESIS song:
CONGO.
Truly, this song's lyrics fit the occasion...
The An-26 cargo plane that crashed there,
on October 4th, killed over two dozen people.
My condolences to the victims' families.
to be elected in the state of Virginia
-Jo Ann Davis-
also a mother, wife, grandmother,
lost her fight to cancer
but likely won her election into Heaven
I'll bet that she'll like it there
much more than she liked Capitol Hill...
Horsephotos.com
John Henry, a two-time Horse of the Year,
won 39 of 83 races and $6,591,860.
He was euthanized at the venerable age of 32...
Bob Denard is no more -
well, he is not staging coups anymore,
that is for sure.
Bob wasn't even a genuine Bob;
he was a genuine Gilbert...
Read his complete sordid story
in the comments section
(around "comment" # 32...)
(ironically...)
Labels: Bob, Castagnetta, Congo, Jo Ann Davis, Joey Bishop, John Henry, Krosa, Marathon Man, Noël, Padilla, Robert Goulet
posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ @ 11:23 AM
70 comments
70 Comments:
Cargo plane crashes in Congo; 25 killed
By EDDY ISANGO, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 12 minutes ago
KINSHASA, Congo - A cargo plane crashed in a residential neighborhood near the airport in Congo's capital on Thursday, plowing into homes and killing at least 25 people, officials said.
Several destroyed houses near a market in Kinshasa's Kingasani neighborhood were ablaze, and smoke filled the sky, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene.
The An-26 crashed about 10:30 a.m. into a market area of the neighborhood three miles from the airport, said civil aviation chief Alphonse Ilunga.
U.N. peacekeeping spokesman Michel Bonnardeau said 25 people aboard the plane were killed and two survived — a mechanic and a flight attendant who was in critical condition.
The plane's flight manifest indicated there were 16 people aboard, but more had boarded before takeoff, Ilunga said. He said the plane had just taken off from the airport en route to central Congo when it crashed. It was not immediately known what caused the plane to go down.
"The plane clipped several treetops and hit the roofs of three houses, crashing onto its back with its tires in the air," said Japhet Kiwa, who lives in the impoverished neighborhood. "There was a huge explosion."
It was not immediately clear if there were fatalities on the ground. U.N.-funded Radio Okapi cited witnesses in the area as saying the plane damaged 10 houses on three streets.
Laurent Kongolo said he and several other people pulled a woman from the burning wreckage of one of the homes. "She was between life and death," he said. "It was horrible."
There appeared to be little left of the plane. Two detached wheels sat on top of a house, a twisted propeller stuck out of the earth, and charred strips of the plane's fuselage lay on the ground covered by debris and broken concrete blocks.
Friends and relatives of the victims wailed and cried at the site.
Cargo planes in Congo are frequently flown by experienced pilots from former Soviet states but the aircraft are often old, ill-maintained and overcrowded.
Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency reported that the plane, which belonged to Congolese carrier Africa 1, had a Russian crew. The five-year-old Congolese company is one of a host of African airlines banned from flying in the European Union because of safety concerns.
In August, the government suspended the licenses of a number of private local airlines and suspended the national director of civil aviation after an An-12 carrying 3 tons over the recommended capacity crashed in the eastern region of Katanga, killing 14 people.
Some local airline companies operating in Congo flew during back-to-back wars that lasted from 1996 to 2002, when regulations and government controls in the region were even weaker than today.
In 1996, an An-32 turboprop crashed seconds after takeoff from Kinshasa's main airport, skidding across a busy street and plowing into a crowded open-air market. The crash killed at least 300 people, one of the worst air accidents in Congo's history.
Few passable roads traverse Congo after decades of war and corrupt rule, forcing the country's deeply impoverished people to rely on often-unsafe boats and planes for transportation.
___
Associated Press Writer Heidi Vogt in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.
Congo lyrics
You say that I put chains on you
But I don't think that's really true
But if you want to be free from me
You gotta lose me in another world
Send me to the Congo I'm free to leave
There's always somewhere anybody can lead
Send me to the Congo you have to believe
You can do it if you wanna just do what you please
Like a soldier ant
I will wait for the signal to act
To take a walk right through the door
If you don't want me here any more
Send me to the Congo I'm free to leave
There's always somewhere anybody can lead
Send me to the Congo you have to believe
You can do it if you wanna just do what you please
Into my heart you came
And gave a whole new meaning to my life
Into my world you brought a light
I thought it never would go out
Send me to the Congo I'm free to leave
There's always somewhere anybody can lead
Send me to the Congo you have to believe
You can do it if you wanna just do what you please
I would never be the one to say you have no reason
To want me somewhere else far far away
But someday you may understand, someday you will see
That someone who would die for you is all I've ever been,
Congo the Congo, if that's how it's got to be
Congo the Congo, if that's what you want for me
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....
Trois-Rivières
Roulant à très haute vitesse, un motocycliste se tue
Mise à jour : 06/10/2007 10h23
(D’après PC) - Un motocycliste a perdu la vie, dans la nuit de samedi, près du pont Laviolette, à Trois-Rivières.
Le passager a également été blessé légèrement, malgré la violence de l'accident.
Selon la Sûreté du Québec (SQ), la moto circulait à très haute vitesse sur la route 55 sud, près de Bécancour, lorsque le conducteur en a perdu la maîtrise. La moto a heurté une balise, en voulant prendre la voie de service, et les deux occupants ont été projetés sur plus de 200 mètres.
La victime est un homme de 25 ans. Étrangement, son frère avait perdu la vie en moto, presque au même endroit, il y a deux ans, dans des circonstances similaires.
LUMINOUS TRANSLATION:
A biker killed himself due to his excessive speed on the road.
The accident occurred near Laviolette bridge, near Three Rivers, on the night of Friday to Saturday. A passenger was injured during the impact, miraculosuly only slightly so, despite the rather violent collision.
The SQ divulged the following informations: according to them, the biker was speeding on route 55 towards the south, near Bécancour, when he lost control. The motorcycle hit a divider while trying to change lanes - the impact propelled both riders across at least 200 metres from the point of impact.
The deceased was only 25 years of age. Strangely enough, similar events had occurred in the same circumstances, on the same stretch and even in the same family just two years prior - the 25 year-old's brother had perished that time.
Both brothers were wearing the same jacket and riding the same motorcycle each time the fatal accidents took place.
....
Rampage leaves 5 dead in Wisconsin
By ROBERT IMRIE, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago
CRANDON, Wis. - A local law enforcement employee went on a shooting rampage early Sunday in remote northern Wisconsin, killing at least five people, authorities said.
Crandon Police Chief John Dennee, speaking outside the police department about two blocks from the shooting site, would not say whether the suspect was dead. But he said: "We're not looking for anybody anymore."
A dispatcher for the State Patrol who declined to give his full name as a matter of department practice said several of the patrol's officers went to Forest County to help investigators because the suspect is an employee of the Forest County Sheriff's Department and a part-time officer for the Crandon Police Department.
"It's a pretty tragic situation here," said Forest County Supervisor Tom Vollmar, who lives just outside Crandon, a city of about 2,000 people. "There are five or six people dead."
The State Patrol and the Crandon Fire Department detoured a steady stream of traffic from two blocks of U.S. Highway 8 in the downtown area. Some residents stood in nearby front yards.
The northeast Wisconsin town is about 225 miles north of Milwaukee. The area is known for logging, and fishing, hunting and snowmobiling.
RCMP officer shot to death in 'senseless act of violence'
People in Hay River grieve shooting death of Mountie with prayers in church
1 hour, 33 minutes ago
By The Canadian Press
HAY RIVER, N.W.T. - Grieving people were marking the shooting death of a Mountie in Hay River with prayers in the small community's four churches.
Pastor Vivian Smith of the Anglican Church said prayers for Constable Christopher John Worden and his family began as soon as people heard of his death.
"The prayers are continuing and will continue. They are sombre services," Smith said on Sunday.
"It is supposed to be Thanksgiving day for us but we don't feel like it is a day of Thanksgiving."
Smith said the town of 3,600 is a close-knit community and Worden's death has affected people terribly. He is survived by his wife Jody and an eight-month-old daughter.
Worden, 30, of Ottawa had been responding to a call for police assistance at a home at about 5 a.m. on Saturday when his radio went dead.
Colleagues went looking for him, and found he had been shot. They rushed him to hospital, where he died.
Up to 70 RCMP from the N.W.T. and Alberta scoured the town and surrounding area for the gunman, but there has been no word of any arrests.
Mounties set up roadblocks on Saturday on the main highway and were checking vehicles and passengers on the Yellowknife ferry.
However, there were no roadblocks up on Sunday morning, and there appeared to be fewer RCMP on the streets.
In a news release, RCMP said that Worden's family had requested privacy "as they come to grips with this tragedy."
Residents of the community say they are in shock that something so terrible could happen in their midst.
Candace Walker, a clerk at the town's Right Stop grocery store, said the shooting happened across the street from her own home.
"We heard all kinds of rumours about suspects and this and that. Later on that day there was some kind of SWAT team that showed up in front of the Right Stop. They were dressed in army clothes.
"A friend who lives down that way said they were carrying around sniper rifles."
Walker, 25, said a plane spent the day circling the community where she has lived all her life.
"I heard that (the suspects) stole the police officer's shotgun," she said.
RCMP were to hold a news conference on Sunday afternoon to update the public on the investigation.
Police would not say if Worden was working alone or release other details of their investigation, including where he was wounded or how many times he was shot.
Worden joined the Mounties in 2002 and served most of his career in the N.W.T.
Word of his death prompted people to bring flowers to the Hay River RCMP detachment building.
Mounties from the nine-member detachment were relieved by other officers as they tried to cope with the loss of their friend.
....
Report: Deadly bus-train crash in Cuba
HAVANA, Oct. 7 (UPI) --
Cuba's official media says at least 28 have been killed and many more injured in a collision between a bus and a train 500 miles southeast of Havana.
The accident, which occurred on the eastern end of the island nation, is Cuba's worst in years, the BBC reported.
More than 70 people are injured, 15 seriously, the report said.
The train was travelling from Santiago to Manzanillo when it slammed into a bus at a crossing in Yara, the BBC said.
© UPI, Headline News Powered by Bravenet.com
Suicide car bombs kill 24 in Iraq
By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 49 minutes ago
BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber drove his truck into a police station north of Baghdad on Monday, crumbling the squat concrete building and damaging a nearby school in the deadliest in a series of blasts that killed at least 24 people across Iraq.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks in the capital and two northern areas. But they bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq, which has promised an offensive to coincide with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The blast in Dijlah, a village in the Sunni heartland 60 miles north of the capital, tore through a nearby empty school and several stores. At least 13 people — three officers and 10 civilians — were killed, and 22 were wounded, police said.
The station, built in the 1980s on a thoroughfare that links Samarra with Tikrit, was poorly protected. It was surrounded by concrete barriers less than one yard high, even though it had been ambushed less than a month ago by dozens of gunmen.
A suicide car bomber also struck a police checkpoint in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown 80 miles north of Baghdad, killing three officers and one civilian, and wounding 10 other people.
In the capital, a parked car bomb exploded at a market near Baghdad University's technology department, killing five civilians and wounding 15.
A car bombing near the Polish Embassy killed two Iraqis and wounded five, police said. The attack was launched five days after Polish Ambassador Gen. Edward Pietrzyk was wounded in an ambush.
The Polish Charge d'Affaires Waldemar Figaj told The Associated Press that he heard a series of explosions around the embassy Monday morning but the closest appeared to be about 200 yards away and the embassy had no reason to believe it "was targeted in any way."
All police spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
A U.S. soldier was reported killed in fighting Friday near the northern Iraqi city of Beiji, the military said Monday. At least 3,816 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Iran, meanwhile, reopened five border crossing points with Kurdish-run northern Iraq on Monday.
The border points had been closed Sept. 24 to protest the U.S. detention of an Iranian official.
The U.S. military has said the official was a member of Iran's paramilitary Quds Force, which is accused of providing arms and training to Shiite extremists. But Iraqi and Iranian authorities have claimed that the detained Iranian, Mahmoud Farhadi, was in Iraq on official business and demanded his release.
The border points were reopened after a Kurdish delegation traveled to Iran to complain the region should not be punished for something the Americans did.
A spokesman for the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, Jamal Abdullah, said he hoped the resumed flow of traffic and goods would help rising prices plaguing the region since the closures.
The reopening is in the "economic interests of both countries," Abdullah said, adding that Tehran and Baghdad share the responsibility to "prevent gunmen from having access to either side of the border."
Meanwhile, Iraqi authorities claimed that a former prime minister and a hardline Sunni sheik — both opponents of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — were implicated in clashes earlier this year between U.S. and Iraqi troops and a heavily armed cult of messianic Shiites near the holy city of Najaf.
One of the men detained in the fighting said in a videotaped confessions that former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, and Harith al-Dhari, the head of Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, had contributed financially to the Soldiers of Heaven group.
A lawmaker from Allawi's parliamentary bloc, Izzat al-Shabandar, called the accusations "baseless" and said they were politically motivated. Al-Dhari's representatives said the allegations were still being studied and they had no immediate comment.
___
Associated Press writer Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah contributed to this report.
....
Krosa pounds Taiwan, puts China on alert
BEIJING, Oct. 7 (UPI) --
Typhoon Krosa set its eye on China's east coast Sunday after pounding Taiwan where it reportedly left a trail of death and destruction.
Describing Krosa as a super typhoon, Chinese forecasters expected the storm to make landfall Sunday night or Monday morning along the eastern provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian, Xinhua news agency reported.
Krosa, packing winds speeds of up to 123 miles per hour, was reported to be heading northwestward at about 9 miles per hour.
In Taiwan, the Taipei Times reported a few people were killed by the storm but did not give a count. The report also said several more were injured as strong winds toppled trees, caused power interruptions, and triggered landslides and flooding in low-lying areas.
In China, the government activated a "Level Two" flood control emergency response plan, requiring provinces and cities in its path to closely monitor Krosa, which is the year's 16th typhoon.
So far, 138,000 people from the coastal areas in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces have been relocated and 27,000 fishing boats ordered back to ports, Xinhua said.
Forecasters said Krosa was expected to whip up strong winds, rainstorms and high tides, impacting China's week-long National Day holiday season when thousands of tourists throng to the coastal areas.
© UPI, Headline News Powered by Bravenet.com
....
Mort de Claudio Castagnetta: Québec dit non à une enquête publique. (tqs.ca)
Les proches de Claudio Castagnetta, cet italien de 32 ans mort alors qu'il était détenu par les policiers de Québec, n'obtiennent pas ce qu'ils voulaient.
Le ministre de la Sécurité publique n'a pas l'intention de demander une enquête publique dans le dossier, du moins pour le moment.
La famille de l'homme reproche aux autorités de ne pas avoir vu que l'individu souffrait possiblement de troubles psychologiques, s'infligeant lui-même de graves blessures.
Le ministre soutient qu'il y a présentement une enquête de la Sureté du Québec et que le coroner déposera aussi son propre rapport.
La communauté italienne juge qu'il y a trop de questions qui demeurent sans réponse pour le moment.
Ses proches ne comprennent pas pourquoi il n'a pas vu de médecin au moment de son incarcération.
Claudio Castagnetta était un homme sans problème jusque-là.
Luminous Translation (and commentary!):
Quebec refuses to proceed with an enquiry into the death of Claudio Castagnetta.
The 32 year-old Italian-born man who died while he was in custody of Quebec City police has become a cause to champion for those that were close to him.
These individuals have requested an official enquiry into the circumstances that led to the man's death. They seek to know what truly happened and why Claudio Castagnetta was not referred to a doctor during his tumultuous detention.
Public Security minister Jacques Dupuis is not to demand a public enquiry in this matter for the moment; however, an enquiry led by the SQ (Sureté du Québec) is already underway and the minister is convinced that thi, in conjunction with the coroner's report, shall shed some light on this most unfortunate and deplorable of incidents.
This is not deemed satisfying at all to the members of the Italian community at this time, as they grumble their discontent with these events and apparent cover-up proceeding.
They wonder if it did not transpire simply due to the fact that Mr. Castagnetta was an immigrant with minimal knowledge of French and English. He clearly had an undiagnosed mental ailment which incarceration tirggered into a full-blown crisis. It was during his time in confinement that he injured himself, apparently banging his head on the walls more than once, and instead of taking him to the hospital he was led to another incarceration complex. During the latter transportation, he inflicted himself more injuries and died from those.
Up until these events, Claudio Castagnetta had been a trouble-free man with no criminal record.
It is still unclear why he was arrested at this time; an arrest that could be unjustified and which led to his demise.
....
Congresswoman dies after cancer fight
By LARRY O'DELL, Associated Press Writer Sat Oct 6, 7:37 PM ET
RICHMOND, Va. - U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Davis, a Republican who represented southeastern Virginia for seven years, died Saturday morning after a two-year battle with breast cancer, her office said.
Davis, 57, died at her home in Gloucester.
Davis was found to have breast cancer in 2005 and had a recurrence this year. Her health took a turn for the worse during the past week, her office said.
She became Virginia's first Republican woman elected to Congress in 2000, and she was a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee.
"Her determination to fight the disease is an inspiration to all of us," President Bush said in a statement.
"She was a fine example of a public servant who worked hard to cut government waste to ensure the people's money was used wisely," Bush said. "Her common-sense values will be missed on Capitol Hill."
Gov. Timothy Kaine, a Democrat, will schedule a special election, probably before the end of the year, to fill the remaining year of Davis' term, Kaine spokeswoman Delacey Skinner said.
Her first piece of legislation, passed by the House in 2001, increased the life insurance benefit paid to survivors of military members killed on duty.
Before Congress, Davis served four years in the Virginia House of Delegates.
A conservative who came from modest means, Davis was known for her unquenchable inquisitiveness and how quickly and deeply she learned about any legislative issue.
"I always admired Congresswoman Davis' strong convictions and the tenacity that she brought to bear in acting on them," said U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, a fellow Virginia Republican.
She attended Hampton Roads Business College; she got her real estate license in 1984 and her real estate broker's license four years later. In 1990, she opened Jo Ann Davis Realty.
She underwent chemotherapy treatments and a mastectomy when her cancer was first diagnosed in 2005. When the cancer returned, she underwent chemotherapy again and often monitored hearings from home.
Survivors include her husband, Chuck, two sons and a granddaughter.
(This version CORRECTS that Davis was the first Republican woman elected to Congress from Virginia, instead of the first woman elected to Congress from Virginia.)
....
Heart condition killed Marathon runner
By CARYN ROUSSEAU, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 25 minutes ago
CHICAGO - An autopsy showed a heart condition, not record-setting heat, killed a Michigan police officer who died during an unusually hot and humid Chicago Marathon.
Chad Schieber, who collapsed while running on the city's South Side, had a mitral valve prolapse and did not die from the heat, the medical examiner's office said Monday.
The 35-year-old Schieber, from Midland, Mich., was pronounced dead shortly before 1 p.m. Sunday at a hospital.
Several other people collapsed, and at least two remained in critical condition Monday, as record heat and smothering humidity forced race organizers to shut down the course midway through the event.
"Obviously very sad news, and our thoughts and prayers are with the individual's family," said Shawn Platt, senior vice president of LaSalle Bank, the marathon's sponsor.
Schieber was a 12-year police veteran in Midland, a city of about 42,000 in central Lower Michigan. He worked as a field training officer and community relations officer and implemented the department's child DNA identification program, the Midland Daily News reported.
At least 49 people were taken to hospitals, while another 250 were treated onsite, many for heat-related ailments. Chicago Fire Department officials said they used 30 ambulances from area suburbs.
Also Sunday, an unidentified runner died during the Army Ten-Miler race in Arlington, Va., near the finish line at the Pentagon. The runner collapsed about 200 yards from the finish line. Medics took the runner to George Washington University Hospital. The cause of death was not known.
About 10,000 of the 45,000 registered runners never even showed up for the 30th annual Chicago race, while another 10,934 started but didn't finish, officials said.
The high heat index prompted organizers to stop the race at 11:30 a.m., about 3 1/2 hours into the run. Runners who hadn't reached the halfway point were diverted to the start and finish area, while those on the second half of the course were advised to drop out, walk or board cooling buses, Platt said.
Race director Carey Pinkowski said organizers were concerned that emergency medical personnel wouldn't be able to keep up with heat-related injuries as the weather turned more cruel.
"We were seeing a high rate of people that were struggling," Pinkowski said. "If you were out there at 1 o'clock, it was a hot sun. It was like a summer day, it was just a brutally hot day."
Kenya's Patrick Ivuti won, leaning at the finish line to edge Jaouad Gharib of Morocco by 0.05 seconds. Ivuti, competing in only his second major marathon, was timed in 2 hours, 11 minutes, 11 seconds in the closest finish in the race's history. He was the fifth straight Kenyan to win the race.
Ethiopia's Berhane Adere rallied to successfully defend her women's title, finishing in 2:33:49 after passing a surprised Adriana Pirtea, who had a comfortable 30-second lead after 24.8 miles.
By 10 a.m., temperatures had already reached a race-record of 88 degrees. The previous marathon record of 84 degrees was set in 1979. Pinkowski said it was a tough decision to stop the race, but a prudent one.
Lori Kaufman, a runner from St. Louis, said she was told to start walking by mile No. 14. She said she didn't have enough water or Gatorade.
"We had a lot of spectators just handing us bottles of water, which helped a lot," Kaufman said. "Every medic station that we passed was full of people. I mean, they were not doing well."
Some kept going and helicopters hovered over the race course while police officers shouted through a bullhorn and warned runners to slow down and walk.
Fire hydrants were opened along the course and some residents who live along the race route used garden hoses to spray water on the weary runners.
Paul Gardiner, a runner from England, said the weather made for a "brutal" run.
"We were at about 18 miles and we heard they canceled it and that kind of sent a little bit of concern through the crowd," Gardiner said. "It's just it's impossible to run."
___
On the Net:
http://www.chicagomarathon.com
....
6 die from brain-eating amoeba in lakes
By CHRIS KAHN, Associated Press Writer Sat Sep 29, 12:59 AM ET
PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.
"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."
According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri (nuh-GLEER-ee-uh FOWL'-erh-eye) killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases — three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.
In Arizona, David Evans said nobody knew his son, Aaron, was infected with the amoeba until after the 14-year-old died on Sept. 17. At first, the teen seemed to be suffering from nothing more than a headache.
"We didn't know," Evans said. "And here I am: I come home and I'm burying him."
After doing more tests, doctors said Aaron probably picked up the amoeba a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu, a popular man-made lake on the Colorado River between Arizona and California.
Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria lives almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even dirty swimming pools, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment.
Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose — say, by doing a somersault in chest-deep water — the amoeba can latch onto the olfactory nerve.
The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up into the brain, where it continues the damage, "basically feeding on the brain cells," Beach said.
People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers. In the later stages, they'll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes, he said.
Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have stopped the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.
"Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," he said.
Researchers still have much to learn about Naegleria. They don't know why, for example, children are more likely to be infected, and boys are more often victims than girls.
"Boys tend to have more boisterous activities (in water), but we're not clear," Beach said.
In central Florida, authorities started an amoeba phone hot line advising people to avoid warm, standing water and areas with algae blooms. Texas health officials also have issued warnings.
People "seem to think that everything can be made safe, including any river, any creek, but that's just not the case," said Doug McBride, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Officials in the town of Lake Havasu City are discussing whether to take action. "Some folks think we should be putting up signs. Some people think we should close the lake," city spokesman Charlie Cassens said.
Beach cautioned that people shouldn't panic about the dangers of the brain-eating bug. Cases are still extremely rare considering the number of people swimming in lakes. The easiest way to prevent infection, Beach said, is to use nose clips when swimming or diving in fresh water.
"You'd have to have water going way up in your nose to begin with" to be infected, he said.
David Evans has tried to learn as much as possible about the amoeba over the past month. But it still doesn't make much sense to him. His family had gone to Lake Havasu countless times. Have people always been in danger? Did city officials know about the amoeba? Can they do anything to kill them off?
Evans lives within eyesight of the lake. Temperatures hover in the triple digits all summer, and like almost everyone else in this desert region, the Evanses look to the lake to cool off.
It was on David Evans' birthday Sept. 8 that he brought Aaron, his other two children, and his parents to Lake Havasu. They ate sandwiches and spent a few hours splashing around.
"For a week, everything was fine," Evans said.
Then Aaron got the headache that wouldn't go away. At the hospital, doctors first suspected meningitis. Aaron was rushed to another hospital in Las Vegas.
"He asked me at one time, 'Can I die from this?'" David Evans said. "We said, 'No, no.'"
On Sept. 17, Aaron stopped breathing as his father held him in his arms.
"He was brain dead," Evans said. Only later did doctors and the CDC determine that the boy had been infected with Naegleria.
"My kids won't ever swim on Lake Havasu again," he said.
___
On the Net:
More on the N. fowleri amoeba:
here
....
Christian book seller killed in Gaza
GAZA, Oct. 8 (UPI) --
The body of Gaza's only Christian bookstore manager was found with bullet and stab wounds after he allegedly was abducted by suspected Muslim extremists.
Extremists allegedly kidnapped Rami Ayyad, 31, the father of two children with another one on the way, as he left work Saturday night, The Independent reported. He reportedly was able to call home to let his family know something was going on.
"He said he was going to be with the 'people' for another two hours and that if he was not back by then, he would not be returning for a long, long time," said Ayyad's mother, Anisa. She added Ayyad had "redeemed Christ with his blood."
He also apparently had told friends that on Thursday night he was stalked by bearded men in a car who looked at him strangely.
Attacks on Christians and their property in Gaza are rare, the British newspaper said, but more than 40 video cassette shops and Internet cafes have been bombed in the past year.
© UPI, Headline News Powered by Bravenet.com
....
She added Ayyad had "redeemed Christ with his blood."
Alas, Anisa has it all backwards there...
Must be attributable to the grief...
My condolences...
+++
Then again...
It might be all Bravenet newswires' fault...!
...
Two-time Horse of the Year
John Henry euthanized
Associated Press
Updated: October 9, 2007, 1:06 AM ET
======================
John Henry's Career
• Bay gelding foaled in 1975, by Ole Bob Bowers-Once Double, by Double Jay.
• Career totals: 83 starts, 39 wins, $6,591,860 in earnings
• He won seven Eclipse awards from 1980 through 1984, including Horse of the Year in 1981 and 1984.
• Won the Santa Anita Handicap twice (1981 & 82)
• Only horse to win the Arlington Million twice (1981 & 1984)
• The highest money earning thoroughbred of all time at the time of his retirement.
• Inducted into National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1990
-- The Associated Press
=======================
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Grumpy yet beloved, thoroughbred great John Henry died Monday after 32 years of defying odds -- both in racing success and longevity.
The two-time Horse of the Year, who earned more than $6.5 million before retiring as a gelding to the Kentucky Horse Park where he became an icon, was euthanized Monday night in his paddock at the park.
He had survived several illnesses over the years but never recovered from a recent bout with dehydration, in which he experienced kidney failure that forced him to receive intravenous fluids. The horse was rapidly losing weight.
"John's always been known for his biting and kicking," said Cathy Roby, barn manager at the horse park's Hall of Champions where he was stabled. "He had gotten to the point where he really wasn't trying, where he just wasn't John anymore. He was just tired and he was ready to go."
Mike Beyer, the veterinarian who tended to John Henry until the end, said euthanasia was the only choice.
"We didn't want to get to the point where he didn't have dignity," Beyer said.
John Henry was retired 22 years ago to the park, where he was beloved by the public and, along with stablemate Cigar, one of the park's biggest attractions.
Foaled March 9, 1975, and an average runner early in his career, John Henry was the highest money-earning thoroughbred in history when he retired in 1985.
John Henry, a two-time Horse of the Year, won 39 of 83 races and $6,591,860.
The gelded son of Old Bob Bowers out of Once Double won four Grade I races and Horse of the Year honors at age 6 and 9 and collected seven Eclipse awards from 1980 through 1984.
"Everywhere he raced, his presence doubled the size of a normal race track crowd. He did so much for racing, even after he retired, that he will be impossible to replace. He will be sorely missed but forever in our hearts," Chris McCarron, who rode John Henry in 14 of his last races, said in a statement from the park.
Although he never won a Triple Crown race, he was successful at the highest levels of competition on the dirt and the turf.
John Nicholson, park executive director, said the horse's value was far more than the sum of his pedigree. Schoolchildren who would visit the park often found inspiration from his story, Nicholson said.
In his career, John Henry earned 39 victories, 15 seconds and nine thirds in 83 starts and earned $6,597,947. He was inducted into thoroughbred racing's Hall of Fame in 1990.
Foaled at Golden Chance Farms in Kentucky in 1975, John Henry was called "small," "ugly" and "bad-tempered" as a foal. He was sold at the January mixed sale at Keeneland for $1,100.
He soon became known more for his disposition than his racing ability, often tearing buckets and tubs of the wall of his stall and stomping them flat.
He was sold to Harold Snowden of Lexington for $2,200 in 1977. Snowden chose to geld John Henry with the hope it would calm him and allow him to focus on racing.
He changed hands two more times until native New Yorker Sam Rubin and his wife, Dorothy, bought him for $25,000 sight unseen over the phone. John Henry's new trainer, Bob Donato, thought the horse would fare well on grass, and John Henry won six of 19 starts as a 3-year-old.
As a 4-year-old, John Henry won four of 11 races for trainer Lefty Nickerson. The following year, John Henry was sent to work with trainer Ron McAnally in California and his career blossomed.
McAnally trained John Henry with "carrots, apples and love," the horse park said. He visited during the horse's retirement and had seen him as recently as September, bringing the animal's favorite cookies and carrots, the park said. Lewis Cenicola, John Henry's exercise rider for six years, also visited the horse in September, the park said.
He won six stakes races in a row as a 5-year-old, including four Grade I races -- the San Luis Rey Stakes, the San Juan Capistrano Invitational, the Hollywood Invitational and the Oak Tree Invitational.
That year also saw him claim his first of seven Eclipse awards as the nation's champion turf horse. He finished the 1980 campaign with eight victories and three seconds in 12 starts.
John Henry's remarkable run continued for the next four years as he won 18 of 30 starts. In 1981, he won eight of 10 starts and was named champion grass horse, champion older horse and horse of the year.
As a 9-year-old, John Henry won four straight stakes races, claimed $2.3 million in earnings and again was named champion grass horse and horse of the year.
He won what proved to be his last race, the Ballantine's Scotch Classic at the Meadowlands on Oct. 13, 1984. John Henry was scheduled to run in the inaugural Breeders' Cup Turf Classic that year, but a strained suspensory ligament kept him on the sidelines.
Rubin planned to race John Henry as a 10-year-old but changed his mind in July 1985, after the horse injured a leg during training.
"If he'd have broken down on the race track, I couldn't have lived with it," Rubin said at the time.
Tom Levinson, Rubin's stepson, said in the statement that his mother and Rubin "loved sharing John's victories with his adoring fans and we appreciate their devotion even to this sad day. ... We are sure that if Sam Rubin were here today, he and my mother Dorothy would agree that their wish would be for John Henry to be remembered as the mighty, cantankerous champion we all loved."
Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press
....
Another one bites the dust...
Alas for Cleveland,
it was another one wanting to claim
his 15 minutes of (in)fame(y)
while checking out...
(It is, also, a very bad omen
for the Cleveland Indians
I'd say - as they head into their ALCS series versus the mighty Boston Red Sox, tomorrow...)
Five hurt, gunman killed in Ohio school
By JOE MILICIA,
Associated Press Writer
8 minutes ago
(October 10th, 2007)
CLEVELAND - A 14-year-old suspended student, dressed in black, opened fire in his downtown high school Wednesday, wounding four people as terrified schoolmates hid in closets and bathrooms and huddled under laboratory desks. He then killed himself.
A fellow student at SuccessTech Academy alternative school said Asa H. Coon, who was suspended for fighting two days earlier, had made threats in front of students and teachers last week.
"He's crazy. He threatened to blow up our school. He threatened to stab everybody," Doneisha LeVert said. "We didn't think nothing of it."
Coon was armed with two .38 caliber revolvers, and police found a duffel bag stocked with ammunition and three knives in a bathroom, officials said. Parents were angry that firearms got into a school equipped with metal detectors that students said were intermittently used.
Officials said two teachers and two students were shot, and that a 14-year-old girl fell and hurt her knee while running out of the school.
Witnesses said the shooter moved through the converted five-story downtown office building, working his way up through the first two floors of administrative offices to the third floor of classrooms. Officials said he was wearing a black Marilyn Manson concert shirt, black jeans and black-painted finger nails.
The first person shot, student Michael Peek, had punched Coon in the face right before the shootings began, said student Rasheem Smith, 15.
Coon "came out of the bathroom and bumped Mike and he (Mike) punched him in his face. Mike started walking. He shot Mike in the side." Peek, 14, didn't know Coon had a gun, Smith said.
Antonio Deberry, 17, said he and his classmates hid under laboratory tables and watched the shooter move down the hallway. "I saw him walking past. He didn't see us, we saw him." The shooter swore and shot several times, Deberry said.
LeVert said she hid in a closet with two other students after she heard a "Code Blue" alert over the loudspeaker. She said she heard about 10 shots.
Darnell Rodgers, 18, was walking up to another floor when the stairway suddenly became flooded with students.
"It took me a couple of minutes to realize that I was actually shot, when I felt my arm burning in the area, that's when I realized that I had got shot," Rodgers said.
"They were screaming, and they were saying, 'Oh my God, oh my God.' I knew something was wrong, but thought that it was probably just a fight, so I just kept going," Rodgers said.
Rodgers was released from a hospital after treatment for a graze wound to his right elbow.
Coon had been suspended since Monday for fighting near the school that day, said Charles Blackwell, president of SuccessTech's student-parent organization. He did not know how Coon got into the building Wednesday.
Blackwell said that there was a security guard on the first floor, but that the position of another guard on the third floor had been eliminated.
Student Frances Henderson, 14, said she often got into arguments with Coon, who once told her, "I got something for you all." He was a "gothic" who usually wore a trench coat, black boots and a dog collar, she said.
Students stood outside the building, many in tears, hugging one another and on cell phones. Others shouted at reporters with TV cameras to leave them alone. Family members also stood outside, waiting for their children to be released.
Math teacher David Kachadourian, 57, was in good condition; Michael Grassie, a 42-year-old teacher, was in surgery, but his condition was unavailable. The other two injured teens were taken to a children's hospital, which would not release their names, ages or conditions.
Deberry's mother, Lakisha Deberry, said she was upset that metal detectors at the school were not always in use.
"You never know what's going on in someone's mind," said Deberry, adding that she was required to go through a metal detector and present an identification card whenever she wanted to drop off something at school for her children.
The shooting occurred across the street from the FBI office in downtown Cleveland, and students were being sent to the FBI site.
Classes at all schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District will be canceled Thursday, said Eugene Sanders, chief executive officer of the district. Counseling will be available Thursday for students at recreation centers throughout the city, Sanders said.
SuccessTech Academy is an alternative high school in the public school district that stresses technology and entrepreneurship. It is housed on several floors of the district's downtown Cleveland Lakeside Avenue administration building.
"It's a shining beacon for the Cleveland Metropolitan School system," said John Zitzner, founder and president of E City Cleveland, a nonprofit group aimed at teaching business skills to inner-city teens. "It's orderly, it's disciplined, it's calm, it's focused."
The school has about 240 mainly black students with a small number of white and Hispanic students.
Coon was white and Henderson, the student who said she frequently argued with him, is black, but she said she didn't believe race played a role in the shootings.
The school, opened five years ago, ranks in the middle of the state's ratings for student performance. Its graduation rate is 94 percent, well above the district's rate of 55 percent.
___
Associated Press writers James Hannah, Terry Kinney, Thomas J. Sheeran and Andrew Welsh-Huggins contributed to this report.
+++
Guards fire on car in Iraq, kill 2 women
By KIM GAMEL,
Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 9, 7:42 PM ET
BAGHDAD - Guards working for an Australian-owned security company fired on a car as it approached their convoy Tuesday, killing two women civilians before speeding away from the latest bloodshed blamed on the deadly mix of heavily armed protection details on Baghdad's crowded streets.
The deaths of the two Iraqi Christians — including one who used the white sedan as an unofficial taxi to raise money for her family — came a day after the Iraqi government handed U.S. officials a report demanding hefty payments and the ouster from Iraq of embattled Blackwater USA for a chaotic shooting last month that left at least 17 civilians dead.
The deaths Tuesday at a Baghdad intersection may sharpen demands to curb the expanding array of security firms in Iraq watching over diplomats, aid groups and others.
"We deeply regret this incident," said a statement from Michael Priddin, the chief operating officer of Unity Resources Group, a security company owned by Australian partners but with headquarters in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Priddin said the company would disclose more details of the shooting after "the facts have been verified and the necessary people and authorities notified." Priddin would not comment on whether his guards killed the women.
But initial accounts — from company statements, witnesses and others — suggested the guards opened fire as the car failed to heed warnings to stop and drifted closer to the convoy near a Unity facility in central Baghdad's Karrahah district.
It was not immediately clear whether the guards were protecting a client at the time, but a group that uses its security agents said its personnel were not at the scene.
Four armored SUVs — three white and one gray — were about 100 yards from a main intersection in the Shiite-controlled district. As the car, a white Oldsmobile, moved into the crossroads, the Unity guards threw a smoke bomb in an apparent bid to warn the car not to come closer, said Riyadh Majid, an Iraqi policeman who saw the shooting.
Two of the Unity guards then opened fire. The woman driving the car tried to stop, but was killed along with her passenger. Two of three people in the back seat were wounded.
Priddin's statement offers a similar account: "The first information that we have is that our security team was approached at speed by a vehicle which failed to stop despite an escalation of warnings which included hand signals and a signal flare. Finally shots were fired at the vehicle and it stopped."
Iraqi police investigators said they collected 19 spent 5.56mm shell casings, ammunition commonly used by U.S. and NATO forces and most Western security organizations. The pavement was stained with blood and covered with shattered glass from the car windows.
Majid said the convoy raced away after the shooting. Iraqi police came to collect the bodies and tow the car to the local station.
A second policeman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution, said the guards were masked and wearing khaki uniforms. He said one of them left the vehicle and started to shoot at the car while another opened fire from the open back door of a separate SUV.
The victims were identified by relatives and police as Marou Awanis, born in 1959, and Geneva Jalal, born in 1977. Awanis' sister-in-law, Anahet Bougous, said the woman had been using her car to drive government employees to work to help raise money for her three daughters. Her husband died during heart surgery last year.
"May God take revenge on those killers," Bougous said, crying outside the police station. "Now, who is going to raise them?"
"These are innocent people killed by people who have no heart or consciousness. The Iraqi people have no value to them," said a man who was part of a group of relatives gathered with a Christian priest at the local police station.
Iraqi anger has grown against the private security companies — nearly all based in the United States, Britian and other Western countries — as symbols of the lawlessness that has ravaged their country for more than four years.
Ali al-Dabbagh, Iraq's government spokesman, said: "Today's incident is part of a series of reckless actions by some security companies."
An Iraqi investigation of the Blackwater shooting on Sept. 16 was ordered by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and called for the company to pay $8 million in compensation to the families of each of the 17 victims. The commission also said Blackwater guards had killed 21 other Iraqis in past incidents since it began protecting American diplomats in Iraq shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Unity also has come under scrutiny before.
In March 2006, the company issued an statement of sympathy after one of its guards was blamed for shooting a 72-year-old Iraqi-born Australian, Kays Juma, at a security checkpoint in Baghdad.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Juma was killed because he was in a car that failed to stop. Unity said multi-national forces and Iraqi police also were present at the checkpoint at the time.
Unity provides armed guards and security training throughout Iraq. Its heavily armed teams are Special Forces veterans from Australia, the United States, New Zealand and Britain — as well as former law enforcement officers from those countries.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the shooting did not involve U.S. diplomats. "It was not an American convoy," he said.
RTI International, a group based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., that promotes governance projects in Iraq, said Unity was providing security for the group but none of its staff members "were involved or present when the incident occurred."
The group said Unity was fully cooperating with Iraqi and U.S. officials investigating the incident.
"We are deeply saddened by this loss of life," RTI spokesman Patrick Gibbons said in a statement. "While we have every reason to believe that proper security protocols were followed, that is a matter to be determined by the investigation."
In other violence across Iraq, at least 57 Iraqis were found dead or killed in bombings and shootings.
In Beiji, an oil hub 155 miles north of Baghdad, two suicide bombers drove a minibus laden with explosives into the house of a local police chief and detonated an explosives-packed Toyota Land Cruiser outside the home of a leading member of the local Awakening Council, a group of Iraqis who have turned against al-Qaida in Iraq extremists in the area.
Police in Beiji said at least 19 died in the attacks, which badly damaged a Sunni mosque about 100 yards away from the police chief's house. Three guards there were among the dead. The men targeted in the attacks were not killed, police said.
In Baghdad, a series of four car bombs killed 16.
___
Associated Press writers Katarina Kratovac, Sameer N. Yacoub and Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.
With security like this...
We don't need terrorists!
If I was the Australian owner of this "security company",
I'd look into going into another line of work altogether before winding up in the wrong kind of "OZ"...
The client is king, that is the cardinal rule - but killing everybody else around your client can only undermine your business' reputation!
'Nuff said...
Stepson of Maria von Trapp of 'The Sound of Music' fame dies at 91
Sat Oct 13, 3:47 PM
By Wilson Ring, The Associated Press
MONTPELIER, Vt. - Werner von Trapp, a member of the musical family made famous by the 1965 movie "The Sound of Music," has died, his family said. He was 91.
Von Trapp died Thursday at his home in Waitsfield, Vt.. The cause of death was not announced. The family confirmed his death, but declined to comment further.
"The Sound of Music" was based loosely on a 1949 book by his stepmother, Maria von Trapp, who died in 1987. It tells the story of an Austrian woman who married a widower with seven children and teaches them music.
Born in 1915 in Zell am See, Austria, von Trapp was the fourth child and second son of Captain Georg von Trapp and his first wife, Agathe Whitehead. In the movie "The Sound of Music," Werner von Trapp was depicted by the character named Kurt.
During the 1930s, von Trapp studied cello and became proficient on several other instruments. He sang tenor with his family's choir, The Trapp Family Singers, who won great acclaim throughout Europe after their debut in 1935.
In 1938, he and the rest of his family escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria. After they arrived in New York, the family became popular with concert audiences. The family eventually settled in Vermont.
During the Second World War, Werner von Trapp served in Europe with the U.S. army.
After the war, he returned to his family's farm in Stowe, Vt., and resumed touring with the family choir.
After the Trapp Family Singers retired, Werner von Trapp helped to found a music school in Reading, Penn., called the Community School of Music.
Several years later he brought his family back to Vermont and eventually settled on a dairy farm in Waitsfield where he farmed with his family until he retired in 1979. He spent the years after his retirement travelling and weaving, spinning, and crocheting.
His father died in 1947 and his mother in 1987.
+++
1947...
1987...
2007...
I presume the next Von Trapp to go will do so in 2027 then...?
But the whole world may go "pop" before that, so...
Pay no attention to my calculations here!
I am no Nostradamus -
No numerologist even...!
....
Two dead in tunnel tragedy
SANTA CLARITA, Calif.,
Oct. 13 (UPI) --
A fiery multi-truck pile-up in an Interstate 5 tunnel in California has left two people dead and at least eight more injured, it was reported Saturday.
California Highway Patrol dispatcher David Porter told CNN two victims had died and at least eight more were hurt in the Friday night accident in a trucks-only tunnel near Santa Clarita. Fifteen trucks were believed to be involved, CNN reported.
The accident and subsequent shutdown of Interstate 5 left some motorists stranded for several hours.
Inspector Jason Hurd of the Los Angeles County Fire Department said 20 people escaped the tunnel and one person was unaccounted for.
Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp said chunks of concrete broke off the sides of the tunnel and a state Transportation Department spokesman said the tunnel would need "some shoring up."
"It has impacted the structural stability of the tunnel," Tripp said, but the extent had not been determined.
© UPI, Headline News
Powered by Bravenet.com
....
We got a Tripp and a Von Trapp, back-to-back...
I would be remiss if I didn't ask myself, here and now...
"Howcome I never get anything on a Trump here, on the lugubrious blog?!?"
One day, surely...
Big bucks do not keep the doctor and the Grim Reaper away...
;)
21 killed in Colombia mine collapse
By SERGIO DE LEON,
Associated Press Writer
36 minutes ago
October 13th, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia - A landslide at a makeshift mine in southern Colombia killed at least 21 people and injured another 18 on Saturday after local residents began digging for rumored deposits of gold, authorities said.
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Efforts were under way to find about 10 people missing and presumed trapped under the wave of dirt and rock in the open pit mine, located near the town of Suarez, 220 miles southwest of the capital, Bogota.
"There are still a lot of people to rescue, and we don't know what conditions they're in," police officer Jose Delgado said by telephone from the mine. "Initially they said there were around 50 people trapped."
Officials had recovered 21 bodies and rescued 18 people who were hurt in the morning accident in the open pit mine, Delgado said.
The landslide occurred after local residents began digging in the mine following reports that gold had been found underground, Delgado said. He added that many of them appeared to have little experience in tunneling or mining, and that rescue efforts were hampered by the lack of any registry or count of how many people entered the mine.
Rich in resources, but with limited government presence across much of the country, Colombia is home to many such makeshift mines, particularly in zones where gold or emeralds have been found.
With little to no oversight, mining accidents are a frequent occurrence in this Andean country.
In February a mine explosion killed 32 people. The same month another accident killed 8 more miners.
+++
On a personal note,
how odd it is for me to catch a news item about more strife down in Colombia
- a mere 24 hours after indulging in a very interesting documentary concerning the infamous Pablo Escobar - once the 7th richest man in the world, according to Forbes Magazine...
A fortune built entirely upon drug trafficking...
Nevertheless, it was touching to see this woman who swears that Pablo (or "Pablocito" as she affectionately refers to him) has become, after his violent death, a sort of-guardian angel to her...
Escobar's end evokes a whole lot the Che's - but the two men could not be more different...
Still - such an end could have expiated some of Escobar's sins...?
Perhaps...
....
Pet massacre in Puerto Rico
By MICHAEL MELIA,
Associated Press Writer
Sat Oct 13, 3:37 PM ET
BARCELONETA, Puerto Rico - Elvia Tirado Polanco says she reluctantly handed over her black- and white-spotted mutt to animal control workers after they threatened that she would be evicted from her housing project for keeping a pet there.
The workers promised to take the small dog named "Lucero" — or "Star" — to a shelter. Days later, however, Tirado was horrified to learn that dozens of pets seized this week in Barceloneta on Puerto Rico's north coast were instead thrown to their deaths from a bridge.
"It was barbaric," said Tirado, 56, who wept Saturday as she described caring for the seven-year-old dog. "This has been a really hard blow for all of us."
Several pet owners inside the Antonio Davila Freytes housing project, one of three raided by animal control workers Monday and Wednesday, said they had provided vaccinations and lavished care on the cats and dogs taken from their homes and killed with strays.
The government circulated a letter inside housing projects this month warning that violators of a no-pet policy would be evicted. Mayor Sol Luis Fontanez said the town ordered the removal of the pets, but he blamed the massacre on a contractor hired to take the animals to a shelter.
Fontanez said he would cancel the city's contract with Puerto Rico-based Animal Control Solutions and that city lawyers were considering a lawsuit.
Company owner Julio Diaz said he went to the bridge when he heard of the allegations, but denied that the dead animals were the ones his company collected. He said he would present his records as proof to city authorities on Monday.
"I have the dead dogs in my facility," he said Saturday. "I am a certified animal control officer. I have been doing this for nine years."
Puerto Rico's housing department has opened an investigation into who is responsible for the deaths, said Doris Gaetan, of the department's office of community relations. She said regulations in the U.S. Caribbean territory allow pets in government-funded housing projects if they are small and do not pose a risk to others.
"We do not support the way in which this was done," Gaetan said during a visit to hear the accounts of pet owners at one of the complexes.
A local resident, Jose Manuel Rivera, used a backhoe to bury the bodies of about 50 animals Saturday in a mass grave near the bridge where they were dumped.
He discovered the animals around dawn Tuesday after hearing barking and whimpers from animals who survived the 50-foot fall. He recovered six injured dogs, who were reunited with their owners after they saw their pets on a television news broadcast.
"One had a broken spine, and about all of them had broken legs," Rivera said.
Many of the pets inside the housing project were strays that were adopted by residents after wandering into the low-income neighborhood. Owners said they feel they are now paying the price for the neglect of others on an island with no pet registration law and little spaying or neutering.
"It is not our fault that they come here," said Carmen Valle, 56, who said workers seized two of her dogs. "We are humble people, but we have good hearts. Animals should be treated with decency."
Tirado said she had cared for Lucero for seven years as if the dog were her child, feeding her from the plastic table in her cramped living room and letting her sleep beside her at night.
During the raids, she said workers surrounded the housing complex and prevented anyone from leaving with pets. But she said she wishes she had never let Lucero go.
"I have been crying so much I can barely sleep," she said.
RIP LUCERO
AND ALL THE OTHERS...
+++
Torrential rains kill nine in Tunisia
1 hour, 24 minutes ago
TUNIS (AFP) - At least nine people died and eight others went missing Saturday in torrential rains that caused serious damage in and around the Tunisian capital, national radio reported.
President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali gave instructions "to ensure the situation is monitored in all affected regions and to bring necessary help and assistance to the victims in these exceptional climatic conditions," a presidential spokesman said.
Torrential rains fell mainly on the north of the country on Saturday, filling formerly dry river beds known as wadis and causing them to overflow.
The rains and subsequent flooding blocked traffic on many roads and isolated some towns.
"Rescue services arrived just in time to help several stricken people on the roads ... which kept losses down," said TAP news agency.
Eight people died and eight went missing in the Sabalet Ben Ammar area, northwest of the capital on the road to the port city of Bizerte, while another person was killed in Tunis after his car was swept away.
The president's office said that a ceremony marking the 44th anniversary of the withdrawal of French troops from Bizerte's naval base scheduled for Monday had been cancelled.
+++
Costa Rica landslide kills 10 people
Fri Oct 12, 7:02 PM
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Ten people were killed and three others were missing after heavy rains caused an early morning landslide that engulfed homes in a small town in central Costa Rica, the Red Cross reported on Friday.
Rescue workers were searching through mud and debris for the missing people, who are presumed dead, said the Red Cross spokesman Alexander Porras.
About 2.5 acres (1 hectare) of land on a steep slope gave way and fell on the small town of Atenas, about 20 miles (30 km) west of the Costa Rican capital.
"There was just too much rain. It rained all night," said Porras. October is the height the rainy season in Costa Rica.
+++
Floods kill at least 31 in Haiti: official
Fri Oct 12, 7:36 PM
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Flooding triggered by torrential rains killed at least 23 people in a village in central Haiti on Thursday, a government official said on Friday.
The loss of life in Cabaret, nestled in mountains about 19 miles north of capital Port-au-Prince, brought the toll from floods and mudslides across much of Haiti over the last two weeks to at least 31, civil protection officials said.
Forecasters said on Friday there was no end in sight to the downpours lashing the Caribbean country and some of its neighbors.
"In the Cabaret area alone, 23 people are confirmed dead but there could be more and we are still in the process of assessing the situation," Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime told local radio.
He said efforts were underway to distribute food, water and other supplies to the village, where at least 1,000 people have been made homeless.
Heavy rains have also caused havoc in Cuba and Jamaica.
But Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is far more vulnerable to deadly floods because about 90 percent of its forests have been cleared, mostly to make charcoal for cooking.
In 2004, flooding triggered by the passage of Tropical Storm Jeanne in September killed around 3,000 people in the port city of Gonaives, while spring flooding just a few months before had killed another 2,000 in the south of the country.
In eastern Cuba, more than 20,000 people were evacuated because of heavy rains, state media outlets and a government civil defense official said.
In Jamaica, meanwhile, more than 200 people were rescued by army and police from a low-lying area known as Big Walk Gorge that links the capital Kingston with the tourist resorts of Ocho Rios to the north and Montego Bay in the west.
The rains, which have been lashing Jamaica for the past week, forced the closure of schools across the country on Friday, authorities said.
(Additional reporting by Horace Helps in Jamaica and by Esteban Israel in Cuba)
+++
U.S. says 15 civilians, including 9 children, killed in raid in Iraq
Thu Oct 11, 6:46 PM
By The Associated Press
BAGHDAD - A U.S. attack killed 19 insurgents and 15 civilians, including nine children, northwest of the capital Thursday, one of the heaviest civilian death tolls in an American operation in recent months. The military said it was targeting senior leaders of "al-Qaida in Iraq."
American forces have applied fierce and determined pressure on militants, especially "al-Qaida in Iraq," since the full contingent of additional U.S. troops arrived June 15. But Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has recently confronted top American commander Gen. David Petraeus about what he sees as overly aggressive U.S. tactics that harm innocent civilians, according to Iraqi officials.
The military statement detailing Thursday's air and ground assault said soldiers were acting on intelligence reports about an al-Qaida meeting in the Lake Tharthar region. The southern reaches of the big, man-made lake are about 80 kilometres northwest of the capital.
The American account said U.S. surveillance confirmed "activity consistent with the reports and supporting aircraft engaged the time-sensitive target." The first air attack killed "four terrorists," said the statement.
The military said it then tracked some of those who escaped the initial attack to a place south of Lake Tharthar. It said ground forces moved on the site and came under fire. Air support was called in.
"After securing the area, the ground force assessed 15 terrorists, six women and nine children were killed," the statement said. Two suspected al-Qaida members, a woman and three children were wounded, according to the military account.
The military said its troopers "were reviewing information from the scene (of Thursday's attack) as well as assessing the level of damage involved."
The statement also issued regret "that civilians are hurt or killed while coalition forces search to rid Iraq of terrorism."
On Oct. 5, a pre-dawn U.S. raid on Khalis, a Shiite city north of Baghdad, killed 25 people when U.S. troops called in air strikes after meeting a fierce barrage while hunting suspected smugglers of arms from Iran to Baghdad. Village leaders said the victims included civilians, but the military insisted the 25 killed were militants.
+++
One dead in suspected bomb attack near Indian Muslim shrine
Thu Oct 11, 11:06 AM
JODHPUR, India (AFP) - At least one person was killed and many more injured Thursday in a suspected bomb attack near one of India's most revered Islamic shrines in the northern state of Rajasthan, officials said.
"It was a low intensity explosion. Preliminary information suggests a lunch box appeared to be packed with something which exploded," Rajasthan's home minister, Gulabchand Kataria, told AFP.
The explosion happened outside the Dargah Sharif, or holy Dargah, in the state's pilgrimage town of Ajmer. The Sufi shrine is venerated by Hindus and Muslims.
The minister said he had heard unconfirmed reports that two worshippers had died and 15 others were injured. Witnesses said at least one person was killed.
Sayeed Tariq, an eyewitness, told reporters the blast triggered a stampede in the narrow ally that leads to the shrine.
"Some 10 to 12 people were seen heavily bleeding and one worshipper was killed," Tariq said.
"There was a stampede as people shouted 'bomb, bomb' and ran from the shrine," he said.
Police sealed the area after the blast, and influential Muslim leaders called for calm.
"This is designed to disturb the peace and harmony of our country and we appeal to all to maintain peace," said Kamal Farooqui of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, India's official Muslim welfare body.
Two dead in bomb attack near Indian Muslim shrine
Thu Oct 11, 11:43 AM
JODHPUR, India (AFP) - Two worshippers were killed and nearly a dozen injured Thursday in a bomb attack near one of India's most revered Islamic shrines in the northern state of Rajasthan, officials said.
India sounded a nationwide alert after the attack, with some officials pointing the finger at hardline Muslim militants allegedly backed by neighbouring Pakistan.
"It was a low intensity explosion. Preliminary information suggests a lunch box appeared to be packed with something which exploded," Rajasthan's home minister, Gulabchand Kataria, told AFP.
"These kinds of attacks are aimed at weakening the unity of the country and so we have sounded a nationwide alert," India's junior home minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, also announced in New Delhi.
The explosion, for which there was no immediate claim of responsibility, happened outside the Dargah Sharif, or holy Dargah, in the state's pilgrimage town of Ajmer. The Sufi shrine is venerated by Hindus and Muslims.
Ajmer district's chief civilian administrator Deepak Upreti said at least two Muslim worshippers died instantly.
"These people had gathered for iftar when the explosion occurred," Upreti said, referring to the daily end of the dawn-to-dusk fasting period during the ongoing holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
Nine others, all Muslim men, were injured in the explosion, Upreti told reporters in Ajmer.
The Press Trust of India quoted unnamed federal government officials as labelling the Ajmer blast as a "terror strike" staged by anti-Indian militants.
"The terror outfits, including Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, are against Sufi Islam and they can be prime suspects behind the blast," the news agency quoted one official as saying.
Sayeed Tariq, an eyewitness, told reporters the blast triggered mayhem in the narrow ally that leads to the shrine.
"There was a stampede as people shouted 'bomb, bomb' and ran from the shrine," he said.
Police sealed the area after the blast, and explosives experts have also been rushed to the area -- which is also popular among Western tourists visiting the state's vast desert sites.
Indian Muslim leaders called for calm after the blast, which comes days before Muslims celebrate the end of the fasting month of Ramadan and as Hindus also prepare for their main festive season.
"This is designed to disturb the peace and harmony of our country and we appeal to all to maintain peace," said Kamal Farooqui of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, India's official Muslim welfare body.
The explosion also comes ahead of a scheduled October 22 meeting in New Delhi of senior Indian and Pakistani officials on efforts to combat cross-border militancy.
India blames Pakistan for not doing enough to prevent Islamic extremists from using its soil as a springboard to launch attacks in India, especially in Kashmir, where a separatist revolt has claimed more than 44,000 lives since 1989.
Pakistan, which launched peace talks with India in 2004, denies the charge.
The two countries have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since their 1947 freedom from British colonial rule.
Three killed, 18 hurt in bomb attack at Indian Muslim shrine
Thu Oct 11, 12:11 PM
JODHPUR, India (AFP) - The death toll from a blast at one of India's most revered Muslim shrines in the northern state of Rajasthan rose to three Thursday as a worshipper succumbed to his injuries, police said.
Eighteen others have been hospitalised with injuries after the blast outside the Dargah Sharif, or holy Dargah, in the state's pilgrimage town of Ajmer, Police Inspector-General Nand Kishore told AFP.
"Six of them are in critical condition," he said, adding three of the 18 victims rushed to hospitals were children who were accompanying their parents to the ancient shrine.
Kishore said the complex was packed with 500 worshippers when the blast happened, with two Muslim men had died instantly in the blast.
Number four being that of death - here is the backdrop to it all:
India PM meets IAEA head as nuclear deal clock ticks
Thu Oct 11, 12:15 PM
By Palash Kumar
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog head, Mohamed ElBaradei, made a strong pitch for the India-U.S. nuclear deal on Wednesday saying it was essential for India's economic growth, despite concerns a domestic row could scupper the pact.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief met Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee amid threats from the Indian government's leftist allies to withdraw crucial parliamentary support if the deal, which would open international civil nuclear cooperation with India after over three decades, moves ahead.
Both sides pulled back from the brink in talks on Tuesday, easing fears of imminent elections but raising worries the government was endangering the accord with prolonged debate.
"... the agreement is something for the government to decide but as I said, I'd like to see India become a full partner in the nuclear field and I'd like to see India make use of every technology," ElBaradei told reporters after the meeting.
"Without energy, and not just nuclear energy, but all sources of energy, you will not be able to attain a 10 percent rate of growth," he added.
On the contentious issue of India beginning talks with the IAEA for an agreement to place civilian nuclear reactors under U.N. safeguards, ElBaradei said there was "no deadline" for this.
Earlier end-October was seen as an informal deadline for these talks.
The left parties have said if these talks are started -- which would be the next step in what is seen as a year-long process to implement the deal -- they would withdraw their support to the federal coalition, reducing it to a minority and leading to elections ahead of the 2009 schedule.
ElBaradei's comments came a day after a government and left parties' committee, formed to discuss the nuclear deal, met for the fourth time and decided to meet again, giving an indication the coalition has stepped back from the edge of early elections which could endanger the landmark deal.
"Yesterday we saw the first sign that the election was not inevitable," political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan said.
"The government may decide to go slow, which could put the deal in a coma."
ElBaradei is likely to call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday.
ENERGY VERSUS U.S. SUBSERVIENCE
Underscoring warmer India-U.S. ties, the nuclear deal, which was announced in 2005 but sealed this year, would allow India to import U.S. nuclear fuel and reactors, despite having tested nuclear weapons and not signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The communists insist the deal would make India subservient to U.S. interests, but the government has seemed determined to seal the accord, potentially its biggest foreign policy achievement. Many analysts still see a snap vote as likely which could put the deal at risk, but may not necessarily kill it.
The government can still move ahead with the agreement without parliamentary approval.
But supporters say the deal must be finalized before the Bush administration comes to the end of its office. India still needs clearance from the IAEA, the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group and final approval from the U.S. Congress.
There were signs that smaller coalition parties -- facing possible losses in a snap vote -- were uneasy at the Congress party, which leads the ruling coalition, risking their political future on a deal surveys show is a low priority for most Indians.
Indian markets are worried the government may pass populist measures that would widen the fiscal deficit and that polls would lead to an unstable coalition.
The pact has been criticized by many outside India, including some members of the U.S. Congress who say it undercuts a U.S.-led campaign to curtail the nuclear ambitions of nations like Iran.
(Additional reporting by Alistair Scrutton)
....
I could continue exploring the deterioration of worldly affairs that seems to be slipping into nuclear warfare territory again (Pakistan-India, certainly...)
But that is for another time - and another blog, likely!
Instead, let's veer back to something I just love to do:
quack-bashing!
A.K.A. - medical establishment denouncing!
NHS Trust caused 90 superbug deaths, watchdog says
Thu Oct 11, 6:57 AM
LONDON (AFP) - Significant failings in the management of several Kent hospitals resulted in the death of 90 NHS patients in Britain's worst outbreak of a hospital superbug, the government's health watchdog said on Thursday.
The Healthcare Commission said it will send evidence to police about how lax management at all levels at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust fueled the outbreak of the bacterial infection, Clostridium difficile.
Police have the option of bringing charges of murder, manslaughter or breach of health and safety regulations if the hospitals are found culpable.
The study claims dirty wards, inadequate staffing and pressure to reach government targets were contributing factors in two outbreaks of C. difficile in 2005 and 2006.
The Health Commission investigation of the hospitals found evidence of ingrained blood stains on floors, bedpans that had supposedly been cleaned but still contained traces of faeces and open skips containing bags of old dressings and bodily fluids.
Nurses were found to have told some patients suffering from diarrhoea to "go in their beds" and patients with the bug were also moved between wards, increasing the risk of infection.
The commission concluded that the 90 deaths "definitely or probably" occurred as a result of infection. Sixty of these deaths were found to be a result of the failure to introduce adequate counter-measures
The report also claimed that the hospital's focus on meeting government tatgets, such as A&E waiting times, moved resources away from the problem, resulting in a lack of nurses. This in-turn led to an overworking of the remaining staff who had less time to maitain the neccessary hygeine levels.
Health Minister Ann Keen said: "I would like to offer my sincere condolences to the patients and families who have been affected by these outbreaks. This type of failure must not be repeated.
"Trusts must deliver clean, safe treatment to every patient, every time and where senior management and trust boards fail to act, they must be held accountable."
Anna Walker, the Commission's chief executive, said: "What happened to the patients at this trust was a tragedy and this report fully exposes the reasons for that tragedy.
"I urge all trusts to heed the lessons of this report so that they can look patients in the eye and say that everything possible is being done to protect people from infection."
....
AND THE MONTH HAD BEGUN SO WELL...
October 1, 2007
* Myanmar violence blamed on 'opportunists' backed by 'powerful countries' AFP Mon Oct 1, 7:58 PM
* African peacekeepers in Darfur surprised by rebel attack that came at sunset The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 7:58 PM
* Putin puts his name on parliamentary ticket; eyes prime minister's post The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 7:56 PM
* Britain considering cutting troops in Iraq by 2,000: reports AFP Mon Oct 1, 7:33 PM
* Iraqi deaths fall by 50 per cent; U.S. forces toll lowest in 14 months The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 7:15 PM
* Doctors acquitted in Canada tainted-blood trial Reuters Mon Oct 1, 7:13 PM
* Orange team and its opponents both claim election victory; coalition talks loom The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 7:12 PM
* Putin solves Kremlin riddle: stay on in power Reuters Mon Oct 1, 6:37 PM
* Britain considering cutting troops in Iraq by 2,000: BBC AFP Mon Oct 1, 6:24 PM
* After vote, Ecuador's Correa pushes leftist reforms Reuters Mon Oct 1, 6:18 PM
* Majority of Canadians want to drop monarchy: poll Reuters Mon Oct 1, 5:55 PM
* Correa vows to oust Congress after winning reform vote AFP Mon Oct 1, 5:33 PM
* Ramadan violence haunts Baghdad Shiites AFP Mon Oct 1, 5:17 PM
* Diplomats, rights groups struggle to count dead following Myanmar crackdown The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 5:07 PM
* Canadian ship comes to rescue after deadly volcano erupts on island off Yemen The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 5:01 PM
* Pablo was no friend of mine, Colombia's Uribe says Reuters Mon Oct 1, 4:55 PM
Ah - here's a mention of Pablo again...
* Scottish police arrest more than 170 anti-nuclear protestors AFP Mon Oct 1, 4:55 PM
* US official begins probe into security for diplomats in Iraq AFP Mon Oct 1, 4:31 PM
* South African government denies protecting police chief AFP Mon Oct 1, 4:29 PM
* Taliban, Al-Qaeda 'wanted' as scores killed in Afghanistan AFP Mon Oct 1, 4:16 PM
* Senegal threatens to withdraw troops from Darfur Reuters Mon Oct 1, 4:03 PM
* Palestinian prisoners step into freedom AFP Mon Oct 1, 4:02 PM
* Govt welcomes 'open and competitive' Ukraine election AFP Mon Oct 1, 3:42 PM
* Israel releases dozens of Palestinian prisoners in move meant to bolster Abbas The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 3:40 PM
* Disputed British art prize winners back on show AFP Mon Oct 1, 3:38 PM
* North, South Korean leaders to hold second-ever summit on divided peninsula The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 3:37 PM
* AU vows justice for killers of Darfur peacekeepers AFP Mon Oct 1, 3:34 PM
* U.S. offers $200,000 reward in new 'most-wanted' campaign in Afghanistan The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 3:33 PM
* Austria holds man with explosives near U.S. embassy Reuters Mon Oct 1, 3:27 PM
* Six Yemeni soldiers killed as volcano erupts AFP Mon Oct 1, 3:18 PM
* Huge fibreglass statue of Egyptian god of the dead floats down Thames The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 2:53 PM
* Ukraine president orders probe of vote count Reuters Mon Oct 1, 2:51 PM
* Israel releases 57 Palestinian prisoners CBC Mon Oct 1, 2:49 PM
* Amish gather in Pennsylvania to mark 1st anniversary of school shooting The Canadian Press Mon Oct 1, 2:49 PM
* Conservatives thrash out plans to down Brown AFP Mon Oct 1, 2:40 PM
* Bhutto says she might allow U.S. strike on bin Laden Reuters Mon Oct 1, 2:40 PM
* Four Yemeni soldiers killed as volcano erupts AFP Mon Oct 1, 2:32 PM
* At least 10 killed as Somaliland, Puntland fight over town AFP Mon Oct 1, 2:24 PM
* Volcano erupts off Yemen, soldiers killed Reuters Mon Oct 1, 2:20 PM
Female suicide bomber kills self, 14 others in Pakistan's northwest
Mon Oct 1, 3:38 PM
By Riaz Khan, The Associated Press
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A woman detonated explosives hidden under her burka at a police checkpoint Monday, killing herself and 14 others in what appeared to be Pakistan's first female suicide attack, officials said.
The blast in the troubled town of Bannu underscored the growing Islamic militant threat in Pakistan, five days before President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a U.S. ally, seeks re-election.
Militants attacked a security post in the same northwestern region later Monday and 24 policemen were feared captured, officials said.
The suicide bomber was in a rickshaw when it was pulled over by police at a checkpoint in Bannu, said Ameer Hamza Mahsud, the local police chief.
Investigators determined that it was a suicide attack and that the bomber was a woman who wore the head-to-toe burka veil common in Pakistan's northwest and in neighbouring Afghanistan, Mahsud told The Associated Press.
There was no claim of responsibility. Forensic experts would examine the attacker's dismembered body for clues to her identity, Mahsud said.
However, he said it was possible that the bomber came from the nearby tribal belt along the Afghan frontier, where militants affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida have seized considerable control.
While there have been reports of women being trained to carry out suicide bombings in Pakistan, Monday's blast appeared to be the first confirmation of such an attack in either Pakistan or Afghanistan.
Army spokesman Maj.-Gen. Waheed Arshad said the dead included four police officers and 11 other people, among them the bomber. Mahsud said many of the casualties had been crowded around a nearby bus stop.
Some 150 militants attacked the Richi Fort security post west of Bannu on Monday evening with rockets and gunfire, according to an intelligence official.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the insurgents overran the post and captured 24 paramilitary police officers. Arshad confirmed the attack but said he had no confirmation that anyone was captured.
Bannu is near the North Waziristan tribal region, about 180 kilometres south of Peshawar.
In recent months, militants have staged almost daily attacks on security forces in North Waziristan and surrounding areas since the breakdown of a peace agreement.
The 2006 agreement had drawn criticism from the United States that it had given al-Qaida breathing space to regroup and perhaps plot new attacks on the West.
But the deal's demise and a wave of violence including suicide attacks in otherwise peaceful parts of Pakistan have fanned concern here that the country is sacrificing its stability at the behest of Washington.
That debate has tarnished the standing of Musharraf, but not deterred him from seeking another five-year presidential term.
Allies of Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, are confident that he will win Saturday's ballot among federal and provincial legislators, despite bitter opposition.
The general wants to be re-elected while he is still army chief. Opponents claim that would violate the constitution, although Musharraf has pledged to give up his powerful military post if he wins.
+++
Un accident spectaculaire fait un mort
Un camion-remorque a fait une mise en portefeuille sur l'autoroute 40 à la hauteur de Vaudreuil-Dorion sur la Rive-Sud de Montréal (...)
A luminous attempt at a luminous translation here now...!
(I know my first one lacked a bit - it pluralized "information" for no good reason at all! Mea culpa! :! It won't happen again!)
A spectacular accident cost one life
It took place on the night of October the 12th. In an extremely rare type of incident (thankfully - and even rarer expression-use; "faire une mise en portefeuille" is not seen often, not even in France, I can tell you that!) a truck-trailer driver met an ignominious end on Highway 40 at the height of Vaudreuil-Dorion on the South-Bank of Montreal.
A Toronto native, he was ejected from his truck when he lost control of his vehicle, which rammed into the fencing, rendering manoeuvering impossible. The truck driver, most probably a veteran driver aged of 49 years, was not wearing his seat-belt at the time of impact.
At the moment of his ejection, he fell to his death, down the overpass, never having any chance of survival hence.
Hmm...
I know several Toronto-based truck drivers around that age...
Could it be...
Brien?
Tim...?!?
Nahhhhhhh...
....
Former French mercenary dies at 78
By SAMANTHA BORDES,
Associated Press Writer
Sun Oct 14, 9:08 AM ET
PARIS - Bob Denard, a French former mercenary who staged coups and led uprisings across Africa and the Middle East, has died, his family said Sunday. He was 78.
Denard died in the Paris area and the cause of death was not immediately clear, said a family member on condition of anonymity for privacy reasons. He had been known to suffer from Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular problems.
Once France's top gun for hire, Denard led uprisings starting in 1961 in the Belgian Congo, Nigeria, Angola, Zimbabwe — when it was white-ruled Rhodesia — as well Iran and Yemen. He claims France often covertly supported his actions.
Denard, whose real name was Gilbert Bourgeaud, staged at least three coups on the Comoros, an impoverished chain of islands in the Indian Ocean which he ruled through figurehead presidents from 1978 to 1989 — when France negotiated his departure.
Last year, Denard was handed a five-year suspended prison term by a French court for his role in a failed 1995 coup in the Comoros. He was convicted for leading about 30 French mercenaries ashore in an overnight raid in an attempt to overthrow then-President Said Djohar.
A week later, French troops, acting in the name of a bilateral defense accord between France and the Comoros, freed Djohar and took the mercenaries captive.
In May 1999, Denard was acquitted in the 1989 assassination of Comoros President Ahmed Abdallah, who was shot to death in his office in Moroni, the capital.
A Paris court also sentenced Denard to a five-year suspended sentence in 1993 for his role in an attempted 1977 putsch in the West African nation of Benin.
....
9 die as car bomb blasts minibus in Iraq
By BUSHRA JUHI,
Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 1 minute ago
on October 14th...
BAGHDAD - A parked car bomb struck worshippers heading to a Shiite mosque Sunday in Baghdad, killing at least nine people as Iraqis celebrated a Muslim holiday. Authorities said 18 others died the day before when a suicide truck bomber followed by a swarm of gunmen attacked a regional police station.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq insurgents who had promised an offensive during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to undermine U.S.-Iraqi claims of success in quelling the violence in the capital with an 8-month-old security operation.
The fasting month culminated this weekend with the three-day Eid al-Fitr festival that began on Friday for Sunnis and Saturday for Shiites.
After the bombing in Baghdad, police banned cars from the area surrounding the shrine in the Kazimiyah district in northwestern Baghdad until further notice, a police officer said.
Earlier Sunday, police found a parked booby-trapped minibus in the same area — home to Baghdad's holiest Shiite shrine — but were able to detonate it without casualties, added the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to release the information.
In other violence in Iraq, an Iraqi soldier was killed Sunday and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb targeted their patrol in Khan Bani Saad, just northeast of Baghdad in the volatile Diyala province. Near the southern town of Hilla, a police officer was fatally shot by gunmen from a speeding car.
Also Sunday, police raised the casualty toll from a suicide truck bombing a day earlier in the northern city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. Police fatally shot a suicide bomber Saturday but his explosives-laden fuel tanker blew up near Samarra's police headquarters, killing 18 and wounding 27 others.
Immediately after the blast, about 20 vehicles with at least 60 gunmen drove up to the site and fought with police, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.
At least three police officers were wounded in the ensuing fighting, which ended after U.S. military helicopters flew overhead.
An American military official in the area said the gunmen were armed with rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons. The official credited Iraqi police with preventing further casualties.
Although no one claimed responsibility for the attacks Sunday and Saturday, they bore the hallmarks of the al-Qaida terror network.
Samarra lies in the heartland of the Sunni-led al-Qaida insurgency in Iraq and was the scene of the Feb. 2006 bombing that destroyed the golden dome of a famous Shiite shrine there. That bombing set in motion relentless bloodletting along the sectarian fault line that has threatened to divide the country.
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI made a public appeal in Rome on Sunday for the release of two Catholic priests kidnapped a day earlier on their way home from a funeral in northern Iraq.
Gunmen ambushed the priests' car, dragged them out and took them away, Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, Mosul's head of the Syrian Catholic Church, one of the branches of the Roman Catholic Church.
Casmoussa himself was kidnapped in January 2005 and released a day later without ransom after the abductors realized his identity.
The pope asked the kidnappers to "let the two religious men go" during his traditional Sunday blessing to pilgrims and tourists gathered in St. Peter's Square.
The Christian community in Iraq is about 3 percent of the country's 26 million people.
In Saddam-era Iraq, the country's estimated 800,000 Christians were generally left alone, but after U.S. forces toppled the regime and sectarian clashes broke out, their situation grew more precarious.
In the summer of 2004, insurgents launched a coordinated bombing campaign against Baghdad churches. A second wave of anti-Christian attacks hit in September 2006 after Benedict made comments perceived to be anti-Muslim. Church bombings spiked and a priest, also in Mosul, was kidnapped and later found beheaded.
Many churches are now nearly empty, with their faithful either gone or too scared to attend.
+++
Gas explosion in Ukraine kills 11 people
DNEPROPETROVSK, Ukraine,
Oct. 13 (UPI) --
A household gas explosion at an apartment building in Ukraine Saturday killed at least 11 people, witnesses said.
The BBC reported that the emergency ministry put the total of injured at 23. The blast that rocked a nine-story apartment building in the city of Dnepropetrovsk was blamed on a sudden increase in gas pressure.
The ministry Web site said 70 people had been evacuated from the building and emergency workers were searching the rubble for other residents.
Area residents were also evacuated as a precautionary measure. Officials said three neighboring buildings, an apartment house and two single-family homes, were damaged by the blast.
© UPI, Headline News
Powered by Bravenet.com
....
23 dead in flood-ravaged Haitian town
Last Updated:
Saturday, October 13, 2007
12:13 PM ET
CBC News
At least 23 people are dead as a result of flooding that swamped a town in central Haiti, government officials say.
A rain-swollen river overflowed in Cabaret on Wednesday, sending water 1.5 metres deep through the mountain community.
Word of the flooding didn't reach the capital Port au Prince, 30 kilometres to the south, until Friday due to poor roads and communications.
Efforts were underway to distribute food, water and other supplies to the town, where at least 1,000 people have been made homeless.
The loss of life in Cabaret brought the death toll from floods and mudslides across much of Haiti over the last two weeks to at least 31, civil protection officials said.
Deforestation has made the country extremely vulnerable to flooding caused by torrential rains. It's estimated about 90 per cent of Haiti's forests have been cleared, mostly to make charcoal for cooking.
With files from the Associated Press
+++
Landslide at mine in Colombia kills at least 21
Last Updated:
Saturday, October 13, 2007
11:01 PM ET
The Associated Press
A landslide triggered by local residents digging for rumoured deposits of gold in an abandoned mine killed at least 21 people and injured another 26 Saturday in southern Colombia, authorities said.
Seven of those injured were in serious condition, Cauca provincial Gov. Juan Jose Chaux said in a statement.
Chaux said the search for survivors at the mine, located near the town of Suarez, 355 kilometres southwest of Bogota, was suspended Saturday evening because of darkness and bad weather, which made the open pit mine unsafe.
It was unclear how many people were missing, but earlier police officer Jose Delgado had told the Associated Press that about 50 people may have been in the mine at the time of the landslide.
But he added there was no registry or official count of how many people entered the mine.
Images broadcast by RCN news showed the mine as a pit about eight metres deep and 50 metres in diameter. Rescuers waded waist-deep through the mire, and heavy machinery also worked to remove the mud.
Local residents had begun digging in the mine after it was reported that gold had been found underground, Delgado said by telephone from the scene. He added that many of them appeared to have little experience in tunneling or mining.
The governor said in the statement that the Suarez mayor had ordered the mine closed, but "the people went in despite being warned" it was dangerous. The site was owned by mining company Agromineros, it said.
© The Canadian Press, 2007
....
Man charged as accessory in shooting death of Mountie
Last Updated:
Sunday, October 14, 2007
12:59 AM ET
CBC News
A 21-year-old Edmonton man has been charged in connection with the shooting death of a N.W.T. Mountie, a day after police arrested Emrah Bulatci, who is charged with first-degree murder.
The RCMP announced Saturday that Jarred Dale Nagle has been charged as an accessory after the fact to murder. He was remanded in custody and is to appear in Edmonton Court of Queen's Bench on Monday.
Nagle and an adult female had been in the west Edmonton home where Bulatci surrendered Friday following a standoff with police that lasted several hours.
Bulatci had been on the run for seven days following the death of Const. Christopher Worden, who was found shot on Oct. 6 after he responded to a call alone in the town of Hay River, N.W.T.
Nagle and the woman were taken into custody about four hours before Bulatci, with the woman later being released without being charged.
Bulatci appeared before a justice of the peace in Edmonton on Saturday and was remanded in custody on a six-day remand to enable authorities to transport him back to the Northwest Territories.
Continue Article
Meanwhile, an RCMP spokesman said Saturday that details about the slaying of Worden, 30, likely wouldn't be made public unless the suspect in the death goes to trial.
Cpl. Wayne Oakes said the courts are the only avenue where there's a legal ability to get that type of information into the public domain.
"If we were to start releasing those details [about the crime] … we'd be in violation of privacy laws and it might be viewed as infringing on the accused's guarantee of a fair trial by putting evidence out into the public domain," Oakes said in an interview.
RCMP have declined to answer questions about Worden's death, including what they know about the fatal attack, the cause of death and the type of firearm used.
"It's not that we don't want to [release information], or we're refusing to, we can't," Oakes said.
"We have to be very careful that we don't violate those aspects of the law."
With files from the Canadian Press
....
Plane crashes on Vancouver Island, killing 3
Last Updated:
Sunday, October 14, 2007
11:38 AM ET
CBC News
A small plane crashed east of Bamfield on Vancouver Island on Saturday, killing three people, the RCMP says.
The Cessna 172, carrying a pilot and two tourists, went down between Port Alberni and Bamfield, the RCMP said late Saturday.
The bodies of two men and a woman were later recovered, said Port Alberni RCMP Cpl. Denis Sauve. He said one of the victims was from Lake Cowichan.
The names of the victims and other details were being withheld until next of kin were notified.
The group had travelled from Lake Cowichan to the fishing village of Bamfield and were on the return trip, officials said.
"The plane's emergency locator was picked up by satellites" just after 4 p.m. PT, said Capt. David Burneau of the Victoria Search and Rescue Centre.
"A Buffalo aircraft and a Cormorant helicopter were dispatched out of CFB Comox. They found the crash site. But the three people on board were deceased."
The RCMP in Port Alberni and the Transportation Safety Board are heading up the investigation into the accident.
....
Aggressive actions led police to use Taser on man who died at Vancouver airport
2 hours, 31 minutes ago
By Elianna Lev,
The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER - A man who acted erratically after arriving at Vancouver International Airport early Sunday died after police used a Taser on him.
Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre said the man was out of control, sweating profusely and yelling in what was believed to be an Eastern European language.
"He was pounding on the glass windows that was there, he actually grabbed a computer at one of the work desks and threw that to the ground," he said.
Airport security called the RCMP, who were one level above, to help contain the man.
When they arrived, officers tried to motion to the man, who didn't appear to speak English, to calm down and put his hands on a desk. Police said the man didn't respond to their requests and reached to throw something.
It was at that point an officer used a Taser on the 40-year-old twice in an attempt to immobilize him. However, Lemaitre said the man continued to be combative.
"(The Taser) didn't seem to have any kind of effect on him," he said.
Police held the man down in an attempt to subdue him, and he was handcuffed. The man, who was still flailing, then lapsed into unconsciousness.
He died shortly after paramedics arrived.
A coroner is investigating the incident and a toxicology report will be done to determine if there were drugs in the man's system.
"We don't know if it was intoxication," said Lemaitre. "It was certainly not normal behaviour. An autopsy from the coroner's office is going to be of great help to us to determine if it was alcohol or drugs or some other kind of medical condition."
He also said the incident was likely not related to terrorism.
Because the man died while at the hands of police, the Commission for Public Complaints were contacted to investigate the incident.
Investigators will determine where the man came from and what he may have been doing prior to the incident. Interpol will be contacted to verify the man's identity. He was travelling with identification.
Lemaitre said the man appeared to be alone and no one was waiting for him at the arrivals area.
International arrivals had been rerouted but there were no delays in flight schedules.
....
Bob Padilla, 71: Ex-Blue Bombers linebackers coach
Oct 18, 2007 06:04 PM
THE CANADIAN PRESS
WINNIPEG – Bob Padilla, a football coach at various levels for 35 years including a stint with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, died earlier this week. He was 71.
Padilla died at his home in Madera, Calif., on Monday.
The native of Santa Ana, Calif., was a member of the Blue Bombers staff from 1987 until 1991, serving as the team's linebackers coach during that time. He helped the Bombers win Grey Cup championships in 1988 and 1990.
His college coaching career began at Fresno State in 1968, followed by stints at San Jose State (1973-76), Michigan State (1976-78), a return to Fresno State as head coach (1978-80), Washington State (1980-82) and Arizona State (1982-84).
He served as a scout for the St. Louis Rams after leaving the Blue Bombers.
Padilla also coached at Lindsay, Sanger, Parlier and Central high schools.
He is survived by his wife Carol, their four children, eight grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, two brothers and three sisters.
+++
Joey Bishop, last of the Rat Pack, dies at 89
Thu Oct 18, 2:47 PM
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian Joey Bishop, the last surviving member of the super-hip team of entertainers known as the Rat Pack and led by Frank Sinatra, has died at age 89, his longtime friend and publicist, Warren Cowan, said on Thursday.
Bishop, born Joseph Abraham Gottlieb on February 3, 1918 in the Bronx, died on Wednesday night of multiple causes at his home in Newport Beach, California, south of Los Angeles, Cowan said.
The self-styled "mouse" of the Rat Pack, Bishop was part of a group of leading performers from the late 1950s and '60s comprising Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford.
With Sinatra's death in 1998, Bishop was the last surviving member of that group, who performed together as a legendary nightclub act and in such films as "Some Came Running," "Ocean's Eleven" and "Sergeant's 3."
Bishop, who started out as a burlesque comic, got his big break when he met Sinatra in 1952. The two teamed up for a series of gigs at the famed Copacabana nightclub in New York City and remained friends for life.
Referred to by Sinatra as the "Hub of the Big Wheel" and the "Speaker of the House," Bishop was one of the few who could get away with zinging the "Chairman of the Board" in public, even joking about Sinatra's long-rumored ties to organized crime.
In one famous exchange with their audience, Bishop announced: "Mr. Sinatra will now speak of some of the good things the Mafia has done."
The fast-talking, stone-faced comedian developed a successful television career in his own right. He hosted "The Joey Bishop Show" from 1967-69, ABC's late-night talk show entry opposite NBC's dominant "The Tonight Show" starring Johnny Carson.
Bishop's sidekick for the show was Regis Philbin, who went on to co-star in his own long-running morning TV show, currently titled "Live with Regis and Kelly." Dick Cavett later took the late-night reins from Bishop on ABC.
Bishop -- the master of ceremonies at President John F. Kennedy's inaugural gala in January 1961 -- starred in a sitcom, also called "The Joey Bishop Show," on NBC from 1961-64 and then on CBS from 1964-65.
+++
'Rat Pack' member Joey Bishop dies
By Jeff Wilson,
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES - Joey Bishop, the stone-faced comedian who found success in nightclubs, television and movies but became most famous as a member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack, has died at 89.
He was the group's last surviving member. Peter Lawford died in 1984, Sammy Davis Jr. in 1990, Dean Martin in 1995, and Sinatra in 1998.
Bishop died Wednesday night of multiple causes at his home in Newport Beach, publicist and longtime friend Warren Cowan said Thursday.
The Rat Pack became a show business sensation in the early 1960s, appearing at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in shows that combined music and comedy in a seemingly chaotic manner.
Reviewers often claimed that Bishop played a minor role, but Sinatra knew otherwise. He termed the comedian "the Hub of the Big Wheel," with Bishop coming up with some of the best one-liners and beginning many jokes with his favourite phrase, "Son of a gun!"
"He was the perfect match for the Rat Pack. He fit right in like an old shoe," Hollywood's honorary mayor, Johnny Grant, said Thursday.
The quintet lived it up whenever members were free of their own commitments. They appeared together in such films as "Ocean's Eleven" and "Sergeants 3" and proudly gave honorary membership to a certain fun-loving politician from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, at whose inauguration gala Bishop served as master of ceremonies.
The Rat Pack faded after Kennedy's assassination, but the late 1990s brought a renaissance, with the group depicted in an HBO movie and portrayed by imitators in Las Vegas and elsewhere. The movie "Ocean's Eleven" was even remade in 2003 with George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the lead roles.
Bishop defended his fellow performers' rowdy reputations in a 1998 interview.
"Are we remembered as being drunk and chasing broads?" he asked. "I never saw Frank, Dean, Sammy or Peter drunk during performances. That was only a gag. And do you believe these guys had to chase broads? They had to chase 'em away."
Away from the Rat Pack, Bishop starred in two TV series, both called "The Joey Bishop Show."
The first, an NBC sitcom, got off to a rocky start in 1961. Critical and audience response was generally negative, and the second season brought a change in format. The third season brought a change in network, with the show moving to ABC, but nothing seemed to help and it was cancelled in 1965.
In the first series, Bishop played a TV talk show host.
Then, he really became a TV talk show host. His program was started by ABC in 1967 as a challenge to Johnny Carson's immensely popular "The Tonight Show."
Like Carson, Bishop sat behind a desk and bantered with a sidekick, TV newcomer Regis Philbin. But despite an impressive guest list and outrageous stunts, Bishop couldn't dent Carson's ratings, and "The Joey Bishop Show" was cancelled after two seasons.
Bishop then became a familiar guest figure in TV variety shows and as sub for vacationing talk show hosts, filling in for Carson 205 times.
He also played character roles in such movies as "The Naked and the Dead" ("I played both roles"), "Onion-head," "Johnny Cool," "Texas Across the River," "Who's Minding the Mint?" "Valley of the Dolls" and "The Delta Force."
His comedic schooling came from vaudeville, burlesque and nightclubs.
Skipping his last high school semester in Philadelphia, he formed a music and comedy act with two other boys, and they played clubs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They called themselves the Bishop Brothers, borrowing the name from their driver, Glenn Bishop.
Joseph Abraham Gottlieb would eventually adopt Joey Bishop as his stage name.
When his partners got drafted, Bishop went to work as a single, playing his first solo date in Cleveland at the well-named El Dumpo.
During these early years he developed his style: laid-back drollery, with surprise throwaway lines.
After 3 1/2 years in the army, Bishop resumed his career in 1945. Within five years he was earning $1,000 a week at New York's Latin Quarter. Sinatra saw him there one night and hired him as opening act.
While most members of the Sinatra entourage treated the great man gingerly, Bishop had no inhibitions. He would tell audiences that the group's leader hadn't ignored him: "He spoke to me backstage; he told me 'Get out of the way."'
When Sinatra almost drowned filming a movie scene in Hawaii, Bishop wired him: "I thought you could walk on water."
Born in New York's borough of the Bronx, Bishop was the youngest of five children of two immigrants from Eastern Europe.
When he was three months old the family moved to South Philadelphia, where he attended public schools. He recalled being an indifferent student, once remarking, "In kindergarten, I flunked sand pile."
In 1941 Bishop married Sylvia Ruzga and, despite the rigours of a show business career, the marriage survived until her death in 1999.
Bishop, who spent his retirement years on the upscale Lido Isle in Southern California's Newport Bay, is survived by son Larry Bishop; grandchildren Scott and Kirk Bishop; and longtime companion Nora Garabotti.
-
Associated Press Writer Bob Thomas contributed to this report.
+++
Bhutto blames extremists for bomb attack
By PAISLEY DODDS,
Associated Press Writer
KARACHI, Pakistan - Benazir Bhutto blamed al-Qaida and Taliban militants Friday for the assassination attempt against her that killed at least 136 people, and declared she would risk her life to restore democracy in Pakistan and prevent an extremist takeover.
The former premier presented a long list of foes who would like to see her dead — from loyalists of a previous military regime that executed her politician father to Islamic hard-liners bent on stopping a female leader from modernizing Pakistan.
"We believe democracy alone can save Pakistan from disintegration and a militant takeover," Bhutto said at a news conference less than 24 hours after bombs exploded near a truck carrying her in a festive procession marking her return from eight years of self-imposed exile.
"We are prepared to risk our lives and we are prepared to risk our liberty, but we are not prepared to surrender our great nation to the militants," the pro-Western leader added.
Bhutto, who came home to lead her party in January parliamentary elections, said she had been warned before returning that Taliban and al-Qaida suicide squads would try to kill her, saying a "brotherly" nation provided her with a list of telephone numbers of suicide squads.
She said she warned of that threat in a letter Tuesday to Pakistan's current military leader, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, with whom she has been negotiating a possible political alliance.
"There was one suicide squad from the Taliban elements, one suicide squad from al-Qaida, one suicide squad from Pakistani Taliban and a fourth — a group — I believe from Karachi," she said.
Bhutto said it was suspicious that streetlights failed as her procession made its way from Karachi's airport toward downtown Thursday night. She said cell phone service also was out.
"I'm not accusing the government, but certain individuals who abuse their positions and powers," she said.
She pointed to supporters of the former military regime of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977 and hanged her father, deposed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Zia also jailed Benazir Bhutto several times before his death in a mysterious plane crash in 1988.
Bhutto said the military thugs of the 1970s who terrorized her family and today's Islamic militants share the same thirst "to kill and maim innocent people and deny them the right to a representative government."
All of them want to destabilize Pakistan, and the suicide bomb attack was part of that campaign, she said.
"It was an attack by a militant minority that does not enjoy the support of the people of Pakistan, that has only triumphed in a military dictatorship," she said.
Washington said the blasts showed the challenges as Pakistan tries to build a moderate Islamic democracy.
"It tells you a lot about the kinds of people we are battling against every day, that any flicker of democracy they want to find a way to beat it down and stamp it out," said White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto.
Pakistani officials, who said Thursday night's bloodshed would not disrupt election plans, said one suicide bomber staged the attack.
Authorities said the assault bore the hallmarks of a Taliban-allied warlord and the al-Qaida terror network — with a man first throwing a grenade into the sea of people around Bhutto's convoy and then blowing himself up with a bomb wrapped in bolts and other pieces of metal.
Pakistani television showed video of what it said was the severed head of the suspected bomber, an unshaven man in his 20s with curly hair and green eyes.
Officials said the warlord was Baitullah Mehsud, a leader on the unstable Afghan border who threatened earlier this month to meet Bhutto's return to Pakistan with suicide attacks, according to local media reports. An associate of Mehsud denied Taliban involvement.
Bhutto diputed the government's version of the attack, saying that there were two suicide bombers and that her security guards also had found a third man armed with a pistol and another with a suicide vest.
Bhutto's procession had been creeping toward the center of Karachi for 10 hours Thursday when a small explosion erupted near the front of her truck as well-wishers swarmed around it. A larger blast quickly followed, destroying two police vans.
Party officials said the 54-year-old Bhutto had left the open top of the truck and gone inside to rest her swollen feet only a few minutes earlier. She was reviewing a speech with an adviser when they heard a loud bang.
"Something in my heart told me that this is not a firecracker, it is a suicide attack," she said at the news conference. "You could see the light, and then as we waited for 30 seconds to 60 seconds, we heard the sound and saw the huge orange light and bodies spilling all over."
She praised her security guards. "They refused to let the suicide bomber, the second suicide bomber, get near the truck. So the second suicide bomber hit the security guard wall ... he couldn't hit the truck."
Rejecting criticism that she had endangered her supporters, Bhutto said it was the right decision to return to help her homeland and she was willing to pay the price.
Bhutto predicted extremists would now try to attack her homes in Karachi, the country's biggest city, and her hometown of Larkana. Officials of her Pakistan People's Party guarded her Karachi residence Friday, forming a human chain around the building to keep people back.
The attack that wrecked Bhutto's jubilant homecoming parade was one of the deadliest in Pakistan's history, with six hospitals reporting a total of 136 dead and some 250 wounded.
While the carnage underlined the threats to stability, the attack also was likely to push Bhutto and Musharraf toward an alliance that would be backed by the U.S. and others in the West.
Musharraf, who phoned Bhutto on Friday to express his condolences, is a longtime rival but they share moderate views and support working with the United States in fighting militant groups.
Information Minister Mohammed Ali Durrani said the parliamentary ballot would go ahead as planned in January. "Elections will be held on time," he said.
Bhutto served twice as prime minister between 1988 and 1996, but both of her governments ended amid allegations of corruption and mismanagement. She left Pakistan after Musharraf seized power in 1999 and corruption charges were filed against her.
She was able to return after her power-sharing talks with the general brought her immunity covering the corruption cases.
Musharraf won re-election to the presidency in a vote this month by lawmakers that is being challenged in the Supreme Court. If confirmed for a new five-year term, he has promised to quit the military and restore civilian rule.
___
Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington contributed to this report.
(This version CORRECTS ADDS graf on Pakistani warlord identified by officials as suspect in bomb attack. corrects that Bhutto's comment about four suicide squads referred to warning she received before returning home, not Thursday night's attack. AP Video.)
In other words:
the majestuous, regal Benazir Bhutto puts the blame squarely on the damn terrorists again -
it isn't her fault people DIED because she stubbornly returned to the land she should have made her personal sacrifice never to return to...
She washes her hands of the 136 deaths she caused by simply returning there...
Great.
And they say that Benazir is on par with Catherine The Great, Boadicea, Rainha Isabel de Portugal, Elizabeth I and other great female rulers throughout history...?
A great ruler, of the crowned variety or not, would put the people's safety first - over any caprice.
And her unmitigated desire to be back sure was and is a CAPRICE.
A Mary Stuart would have sacrificed her own desires and power aspirations to avoid bloodshed.
An Evita Peron as well...
Benazir Bhutto clearly is neither.
13 Turkish soldiers killed in attack
By SUZAN FRASER,
Associated Press Writer
ANKARA, Turkey - Separatist Kurdish rebels attacked a military unit near Turkey's border with Iraq and Iran on Sunday, killing 13 Turkish soldiers, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.
The attack came four days after Turkey's Parliament passed a motion allowing its military to launch an offensive into neighboring northern Iraq to stamp out the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, hiding there. Turkish leaders have said the motion did not mean that Turkey would immediately order a cross-border offensive
But Sunday's death toll raises the number of soldiers killed in PKK attacks in the past two weeks to around 30. And although it was not immediately clear exactly where the rebels in the latest attack were based, the clash is likely to increase calls for the military to stage an incursion into Iraq.
The U.S. and Iraq oppose any unilateral action by Turkey, fearing it could destabilize northern Iraq, the most stable part of the country.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was cutting short a visit to Istanbul to return to the capital, Ankara, CNN-Turk television reported. He urged calm following the attacks and said Turkey's leaders would hold an emergency anti-terrorism meeting later in the day.
Labor Minister Faruk Celik said "These latest developments, I believe, will make us implement sharper measures."
The rebels attacked the military unit, based near the Turkish town of Yuksekova, in Hakkari province, with heavy machinery, Anatolia said. Some 15 soldiers were also injured, it said.
NTV television said the fighting occurred some three miles from the border with Iraq.
Turkey has been pressing the United States and the Iraqi government to crack down on the rebels who have found safe havens in the remote, mountainous areas of northern Iraq. On Saturday, Erdogan said Turkey expected the United States to take action against the PKK but would take its own measures if it saw no results in the fight.
The U.S. lists the PKK as a terrorist organization and has repeatedly condemned its attacks in Turkey. However, Washington has called on the Turkish government to work with the Iraqis.
Rebels have been fighting for autonomy for Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast. More than 30,000 people have died in the conflict that began in 1984.
Turkish leaders have repeatedly said a cross-border military operation would target only the PKK camps in northern Iraq.
+++++++++++++
US: Raid of Baghdad's Sadr City kills 49
By STEVEN R. HURST,
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said its forces killed an estimated 49 militants during a dawn raid to capture an Iranian-linked militia chief in Baghdad's Sadr City enclave, one of the highest tolls for a single operation since President Bush declared an end to active combat in 2003.
Iraqi police and hospital officials, who often overstate casualties, reported only 15 deaths including three children. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said all the dead were civilians.
Al-Dabbagh said on CNN that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, had met with the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, to protest the action.
Associated Press photos showed the bodies of two toddlers, one with a gouged face, swaddled in blankets on a morgue floor. Their shirts were pulled up, exposing their abdomens, and a diaper showed above the waistband of one boy's shorts. Relatives said the children were killed when helicopter gunfire hit their house as they slept.
One local resident said some of the casualties were people sleeping on roofs to seek relief from the heat and lack of electricity. The Iraqi officials said 52 were wounded in the raid on the sprawling district.
The U.S. military said it was not aware of any civilian casualties, and the discrepancy in the death tolls and accounts of what happened could not be reconciled. American commanders reported no U.S. casualties.
The raid on the dangerous Shiite slum was aimed at capturing an alleged rogue militia chief, one of thousands of fighters who have broken with Muqtada al-Sadr's mainstream Mahdi Army. The military did not say if the man was captured. He was also not named.
The Shiite cleric has ordered gunmen loyal to him to put down their arms. But thousands of followers dissatisfied with being taken out of the fight have formed a loose confederation armed and trained by Iran.
The U.S. operation was the latest in a series that have produced significant death tolls, including civilians, as American forces increasingly take the fight to Sunni insurgents, al-Qaida militants and Shiite militiamen.
The intensity and frequency of American attacks and raids have grown since the arrival of the last of 30,000 additional soldiers on June 15.
The reinforcements were ordered into Iraq earlier this year by Bush and have inflicted a heavy toll on militants on both sides of Iraq's sectarian divide. American commanders credit the troop buildup for a sharp drop in the number of attacks and deaths of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians, particularly in the past two months.
As U.S. forces pounded Sadr City, the potential grew for a fresh explosion of fighting on a new front, Iraq's northern border with Turkey.
Early Sunday, Kurdish separatist rebels who take shelter in the rugged mountains on the Iraqi side of the frontier ambushed a military unit inside Turkey and killed at least 12 soldiers. Turkish forces responded by lobbing at least 15 artillery shells toward mainly abandoned Kurdish villages inside Iraq, according to Iraqi border guard Col. Hussein Rashid. He said there were no casualties.
In the Sadr City raid, the U.S. military said forces killed "an estimated 49 criminals" in three linked attacks during an intelligence-driven raid to capture the rogue Shiite kidnapper who was partially funded by Iran.
U.S. troops returned fire under attack from automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades from nearby buildings as they began raiding structures in the district, according to a statement. It said 33 militants were killed in the firefight. Ground forces then called in helicopter airstrikes, which killed six more militants.
As American soldiers left the zone, troops were hit by a roadside bomb and continued heavy fire, killing 10 more combatants.
"All total, coalition forces estimate that 49 criminals were killed in three separate engagements during this operation. Ground forces reported they were unaware of any innocent civilians being killed as a result of this operation," the military said.
A local resident who goes by the name Abu Fatmah said his neighbor's 14-year-old son, Saif Alwan, was killed while sleeping on the roof.
"Saif was killed by an airstrike and what is his guilt? Is he from the Mahdi Army? He is a poor student," Abu Fatmah said.
An uncle of 2-year-old Ali Hamid said the boy was killed and his parents seriously wounded when helicopter gunfire pierced the wall and windows of their house as they slept indoors.
Relatives gathered at Sadr City's Imam Ali hospital where the emergency room was overwhelmed with bloodied casualties. The dead were placed in caskets covered by Iraqi flags.
APTN video showed three bloodied boys sitting on hospital tables and an elderly man being treated for a head wound. Mourners tied wooden coffins onto the tops of minivans with a plume of smoke in the background. Other footage showed a U.S. helicopter flying over the area while black smoke rose.
The sweeps into Sadr City have sent a strong message that U.S. forces plan no letup on suspected Shiite militia cells despite objections from the Shiite-led government of al-Maliki, who is working for closer cooperation with Shiite heavyweight Iran.
An Iraqi military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said the government would ask the Americans for an explanation of Sunday's raid and stressed the need to avoid civilian deaths.
The government has issued mixed reactions to the raids and airstrikes, particularly those that have targeted Sunni extremists.
U.S. troops backed by attack aircraft killed 19 suspected insurgents and 15 civilians, including nine children, in an operation Oct. 11 targeting al-Qaida in Iraq leaders northwest of Baghdad.
Al-Maliki's government said those killings were a "sorrowful matter," but emphasized that civilian deaths are unavoidable in the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq.
++++
Easy death toll calculation:
49 + 1 = 50
But the one death we add now being an AMERICAN - the newswires devoted a whole article to it...
And not anything more than a single one for the other forty-nine...
Just observing...
------------------
Wind-driven fires rage in Calif.; 1 dead
By NOAKI SCHWARTZ, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago
MALIBU, Calif. - More than a half-dozen wildfires driven by powerful Santa Ana winds spread across Southern California on Sunday, killing one person near San Diego and destroying several homes and a church in celebrity-laden Malibu.
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No details were immediately available about the death in San Diego County, but four firefighters and four other people were injured and taken to hospitals, said Roxanne Provaznik, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry.
The fire was among at least eight blazes stretching from north of Los Angeles to San Diego, as hot weather and strong winds marked the height of the traditional wildfire season.
The fire responsible for the death and eight injuries burned about 2,500 acres near a highway. A second charred about 3,000 acres in northern San Diego County and was threatening homes near Witch Creek, Provaznik said.
Meanwhile, in Malibu, about 500 firefighters worked to protect about 200 homes in several upscale communities nestled in the hills, officials said.
The blaze, which started in Malibu Canyon, had charred at least 1,000 acres and destroyed a church and several homes, one of them a landmark castle. No residents or firefighters were injured, Los Angeles County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman said.
The winds carried embers across the Pacific Coast Highway, closing the popular road and setting fire to cars and trees in the parking lot of a shopping center where a supermarket, drug store and other shops were damaged.
TV footage showed several buildings in flames in the area, including clusters of beach-side homes.
"This fire is zero percent contained, which means we're at the mercy of the wind," acting Malibu Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich said.
In all, three homes and two commercial buildings had been confirmed lost throughout the Malibu area, Freeman said. Nine more homes were damaged, he said.
The fire is expected to burn for another two to three days, he said. Until the blaze is extinguished, "there will literally be thousands of homes that will be threatened at one time or another," he said.
Fire crews early Sunday found downed power lines, which may have started the fire, Capt. Mike Brown said.
Late Sunday morning, palm trees bent in half and embers were carried through the air as winds gusted to 60 to 65 mph. Thick smoke obscured the sun.
Susan Nuttall sat in her black Mercedes in a cul-de-sac just off the Pacific Coast Highway, saying she had fled her condo just below Pepperdine University.
"We're all scared to death, and we have nowhere to go," said Nuttall, 51, still wearing a bathrobe and holding her Chihuahua.
Flames consumed the landmark Castle Kashan, a stately fortress-like home with turrets and arched windows, as about a dozen residents watched from across a street. Chunks of brick fell from the exterior of the burning building overlooking the coast.
Erratic wind gusts hampered efforts to drop water from aircraft and pushed flames toward HRL Laboratories, a research and engineering facility jointly owned by Boeing Co. and General Motors Corp. about a mile north of Pepperdine. One outbuilding caught fire, Boeing spokeswoman Diana Ball said.
Flames engulfed Malibu Presbyterian Church, which had been evacuated, said youth pastor Eric Smith. "That's the really good news, that everyone's out and safe," Smith said.
Faculty and staff at the 830-acre Pepperdine campus had been urged to evacuate in the morning and students were instructed to gather in the school's cafeteria and basketball arena.
But by early afternoon, the campus was "secure," Freeman said. Flames were no longer visible in the hills around the school and power to the campus had been restored, Pepperdine spokesman Jerry Derloshon said.
About 200 homes had been evacuated in the communities of Malibu Colony, Puerco Canyon, Monte Nido and Sweetwater Canyon, Brown said.
To the north, fire officials were focused on protecting Piru, a Ventura County town of 1,200 people across a small lake from the blaze. A condor preserve was also potentially threatened.
"There could be homes threatened by the end of the day Sunday if the fire continues to push to the south and southwest," U.S. Forest Service spokesman Stanton Florea told KNX radio.
Wildfires had been widely expected in Southern California during the weekend as the Santa Ana winds made their arrival from the desert.
Malibu, home to about 13,000 people, including many celebrities, stretches along 27 miles of Pacific coastline. Last January, a wildfire driven by Santa Ana winds destroyed the home of actress Suzanne Somers and three other multimillion-dollar residences.
The community also is home to about 25 rehabilitation facilities, including Promises Residential Treatment Center, whose guests have included Britney Spears, Ben Affleck, Charlie Sheen, Diana Ross and Matthew Perry.
___
Associated Press writers Andrew Dalton, Gary Gentile and Jacob Adelman in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
So sad - if that PRTC facility goes up in flames, where will all our venerable American so-called "stars" go rehabilitate themselves - hmm?
:(
Shocking news
out of Chicago
(even worse than what Cubs fans have to put up with usually - yes)
Homicide victims buried without autopsy
CHICAGO, Oct. 22 (UPI) --
Many Chicago homicide victims are inadvertently buried without autopsies, authorities say.
Such burials happen "all the time," Cook County Chief Medical Examiner Nancy Jones told The Chicago Sun-Times Sunday.
Andrew Cook, for example, died Aug. 21 -- seven weeks after he was beaten, stabbed and left on a Chicago sidewalk. Although the attack was still being investigated when Cook died, his body was not examined before he was buried, the Sun-Times said.
The error forced his family to endure the process of exhuming his body and then burying him again.
In Cook's case, a doctor's instructions caused the mistake. After Cook died at the nursing home where he was forced to spend the last few weeks of his life, a doctor listed "coronary disease" as the cause of death on the death certificate and also checked the "no autopsy" box, the newspaper said.
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Pakistan terrorism may be hard to tackle
No kidding -
even the 7-0 New England Patriots might have trouble handling them - eh?
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan,
Oct. 22 (UPI) --
Last week's deadly blasts in Karachi have raised questions whether any leader can contain terrorism in Pakistan, The Christian Science Monitor reported.
The bombings, which occurred during the homecoming of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, killed more than 130 people. Prior to her return, Bhutto had vowed to fight the Islamic militants in the restive tribal regions of the country.
Some experts doubt if any Pakistani leader or the military can resolve the problem in the short term, the newspaper reported Monday.
The report said the setbacks President Pervez Musharraf's military has suffered in the tribal areas -- where the terrorist groups have regrouped -- show even the army may be ill-suited to tackle the growing threat.
Moeed Yusuf, with a think tank in Islamabad, told the Monitor, "If this continues, the Army will tone it down because there will be too many losses."
Other experts say the United States, which considers the Musharraf government an ally in the war against terrorism, may have to lower its expectations of Pakistan.
"The Army officers have started realizing that this battle is not worth the cost," Harvard's Hassan Abbas told the newspaper.
But Yusuf warned Pakistan's future threat won't be from neighboring India but from internal forces which may go on for years.
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....
Groups: Holocaust went beyond Jews
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.,
Oct. 22 (UPI) --
Some non-Jewish survivors of German concentration camps say they are being denied their place in the history books.
Experts estimate some 1.9 million Polish Catholics died in the Holocaust, and other groups like Gypsies and homosexuals were also targeted, The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reported Sunday.
It is about time The Floridian Times reports this, I'd say - it's old news to me and about 3/4 of the Earth - the educated Earth, that is! *lol*
Now those groups are mobilizing to ensure they are not just a footnote in discussions of World War II atrocities.
Wallace M. West, who heads the American Institute of Polish Culture in Pinellas Park, Fla., takes every opportunity to talk about the suffering Polish people endured in concentration camps, the newspaper said, including giving talks at public schools.
Similar groups across the United States are also making an effort to raise public awareness about the Polish experience.
But such groups face an uphill battle. Public knowledge is limited, and if they demand too much attention they face charges of anti-Semitism, the newspaper said.
Some efforts are being made to tell a broader story of the Holocaust, however. At the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, for example, space is devoted to telling the stories of non-Jewish groups included in the Holocaust.
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2 Burned Bodies Are Found in Calif.
Oct 25, 12:46 PM (ET)
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
SAN DIEGO (AP) - Crews found two burned bodies in a gutted house, authorities said Thursday, and flames drew perilously close to thousands of homes in Southern California's firestorm despite a break in the harsh winds and a massive aerial assault.
Medical examiners were trying to establish the identities of the bodies found near Poway, north of San Diego, Sheriff Bill Kolender said.
The number of victims could rise as authorities return to neighborhoods where homes burned. Flames have claimed the life of a 52-year-old man in Tecate. The San Diego medical examiner's office listed five other deaths as connected to the blazes because all who died were evacuees.
The grim announcement came as the firefighters, aided by the calming Santa Ana winds and dropping temperatures, looked to gain control of some of the most severe fires.
Some evacuees were being allowed back into their neighborhoods, and shelters were emptying. Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, which sheltered more than 10,000 people at the height of the evacuations, had just 2,500 people left Thursday morning.
The hot, dry Santa Ana winds that have whipped the blazes into a destructive, indiscriminate fury since the weekend were expected to all but disappear. "That will certainly aid in firefighting efforts," National Weather Service meteorologist Jamie Meier said.
But electricity was a concern. A wildfire cut a main power link with Arizona, while another blaze near Camp Pendleton was threatening the main north-south power corridor that connects San Diego with the rest of California. Additional power was being shipped from Mexico, said Sempra Utilities Chief Operating Officer Michael Niggli.
About 19,500 customers were without power Wednesday either because of downed lines or to ensure the safety of firefighters, officials said.
Even with the slackening winds, the San Diego County remains a tinderbox. Firefighters cut fire lines around the major blazes, but none of the four fires was more than 40 percent contained. More than 8,500 homes were still threatened.
Towns scattered throughout the county remained on the edge of disaster, including the apple-picking region around Julian, where dozens of homes burned in 2003.
To the northeast, in the San Bernardino County mountain resort of Lake Arrowhead, fire officials said 6,000 homes remained in the path of two wildfires that had destroyed more than 300 homes.
The fires remained out of control, but were being bombarded by aerial tankers and helicopters that dumped more than 30 loads of water.
President Bush, who has declared a major disaster in a seven-county region, was scheduled Thursday to take an aerial tour of the burn areas with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"It's a sad situation out there in Southern California," Bush said outside the White House before leaving for California. "I fully understand that the people have got a lot of anguish in their hearts. They just need to know a lot of folks care about them."
So far, at least 15 fires have destroyed about 1,500 homes in Southern California since late Saturday.
The burn area of nearly 460,000 acres - about 719 square miles - stretches in a broad arc from Ventura County north of Los Angeles east to the San Bernardino National Forest and south to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Losses total at least $1 billion in San Diego County alone, and include a third of the state's avocado crop. The losses are half as high as those in Southern California's 2003 fires, but are certain to rise.
The more hopeful news on the fire lines came a day after residents in some hard-hit San Diego County neighborhoods were allowed back to their streets, many lined with the wreckage of melted cars.
In upscale Rancho Bernardo, house after house had been reduced to a smoldering heap. Cheryl Monticello, 38 and eight months pregnant, had to see for herself that her home was gone. Only the white brick chimney and her daughter's backyard slide survived the inferno.
"You really need to see it to know for sure," Monticello said Wednesday.
Running Springs resident Ricky Garcia returned to his house in the San Bernardino Mountains on Wednesday, panicked that his street had been wiped out and his cats, Jeff and Viper, were lost.
But his house, newly built on a cleared lot, was unscathed, unlike those of his neighbors. Hiding underneath a porch and mewing loudly was Jeff, his long, black hair gray with ash. Viper was nowhere in sight.
"I'm excited to see my cat and my house, but absolutely devastated for my neighbors," he said, preparing to evacuate again.
As nature's blitzkrieg starts to recede, many of the other refugees will be allowed back to their neighborhoods. More than 500,000 people were evacuated in San Diego County alone, part of the largest mass evacuation in California history.
"We are focusing more on recovery and getting these people back up on their feet again," County spokeswoman Lesley Kirk said.
In the middle of the arc of fire, the Santiago Fire in Orange County had burned nearly 20,000 acres and destroyed nine homes. Only 50 percent contained, it is a suspected arson fire.
Agents from the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were sent to help investigate. Authorities said a smaller, more recent fire in Riverside County also is linked to arson.
Police shot and killed a man who fled Tuesday night when officers approached to see if he might be trying to set a fire in San Bernardino. The man, whose name was not released, had led police on a chase then backed his car into a police cruiser, police said.
---
Associated Press Writers Allison Hoffman in San Diego, Martha Mendoza in Running Springs, Scott Lindlaw in Julian, and Thomas Watkins and Jeremiah Marquez in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
+++
Is it 20
Is it 30
Only the Grim Reaper Knows For Sure...
Suicide bomb kills 20 in Pakistan
By RIAZ KHAN,
Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 9 minutes ago
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suicide car bomber struck a military truck in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 20 people two days after troops were sent to the lawless region to quell pro-Taliban militants.
The blast came a week after the bloody assassination attempt in the southern city of Karachi on ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who plans to start traveling elsewhere in Pakistan on Saturday.
The latest attack underlined the worsening security situation in the country, particularly in the conservative tribal region near the border with Afghanistan where militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida increasingly hold sway. The rise of militancy in the region has shaken the authority of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in its war on terror.
The bomber hit a truck carrying about 45 Frontier Constabulary forces near the main police station in Swat district, where 2,500 paramilitary troops were deployed this week to counter a militant cleric. The blast tipped the truck on its side and detonated ammunition inside.
Police officer Ajab Khan said 20 people were killed and 34 wounded, mostly soldiers. Some bystanders in shops and restaurants along the road were also hit.
"It was a huge explosion. Then the truck was on fire. There were flames, smoke and people crying. People were scared to go near because bullets were going off," said Taj Mohammed Khan, 23, a college student who was drinking tea at a nearby restaurant.
Police said it was a suicide attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The paramilitary troops were deployed to the area Tuesday to confront militants loyal to Maulana Fazlullah, who has called for Taliban-style rule and holy war against the government.
But Fazlullah's spokesman denied the cleric's involvement in the bombing, saying he wanted peace in the region. The cleric was only trying to impose Shariah, or Islamic law, by punishing criminals, including "murderers, abductors and wine drinkers."
"There is absolutely no need for the army here," spokesman Sirajuddin, who goes by one name, told The Associated Press by phone. "This happens when the army comes here."
Fazlullah is the leader of Tehrik Nifaz-e-Sharia Mohammed, a banned pro-Taliban militant group which sent thousands of volunteers to fight in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
Bhutto, whose grand homecoming to Pakistan after an eight-year exile was shattered by a suicide bombing that killed 136 people, is widely seen as a possible partner of Musharraf in fighting extremism if she fares well in upcoming parliamentary elections.
On Thursday, Bhutto announced a plan to travel to her hometown of Larkana on Saturday to pay homage at her father's tomb, about 270 miles northwest of Karachi.
She has also indicated that she plans to travel to Lahore and the capital of Islamabad, despite her professed fear that she will be attacked again.
On Thursday, she told reporters that authorities had yet to meet her requests for a vehicle with darkened windows, for her guards to carry guns, and for four police cars to escort her car, instead of the current two.
"I should be made to feel secure. I should not made to feel insecure," she said.
Police in Larkana said they were confident they could protect her. Some 300 police were already deployed at the airport or along roads that she might use.
"We have received no intelligence report so far suggesting any threat to Benazir Bhutto's life here in her hometown," said Nisar Channa, a senior police officer.
Bhutto has been staying at her heavily guarded Karachi residence for the past week, taking only a couple quick trips to the city, once to visit victims of the bombing in a hospital.
Bhutto has blamed Islamic militants for the attack on her convoy, but also accused elements in the government and security services of complicity in assassination plots, demanding international experts be called in to help in the investigation. The government has rejected such a move.
___
Associated Press writers Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad and Zarar Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.
30 dead in Pakistan blast
Thu Oct 25, 12:21 PM ET
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - A blast tore through a security forces vehicle in restive northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing 30 people and wounding dozens more, officials said.
The attack in scenic Swat valley in the North West Frontier Province was the latest in a wave of violence targeting the military since government troops stormed the Al-Qaeda-linked Red Mosque in Islamabad in July.
The blast comes just one day after Pakistan deployed more than 2,000 military troops to the area to bolster efforts to stem the rising violence, which is linked to pro-Taliban militants.
The truck -- carrying paramilitary soldiers and packed with ammunition -- was travelling on a road outside the valley's main city of Mingora when the explosion occurred, the security official said.
"Thirty people were killed in the explosion including 17 paramilitary soldiers. The damage was high because the truck was packed with ammunition," the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
Swat mayor Fazlur Rehman said most of the dead were paramilitary soldiers.
"At least 30 people have died and most of the bodies are completely burned, they are beyond recognition," Rehman said.
"The blast was so powerful that it destroyed 10 shops and hit a three-wheeler (rickshaw) killing all passengers inside it," he added.
The government said 20 people were dead but warned the figure may go up.
"Some injured are in critical condition and the death toll may rise," interior ministry spokesman Javed Cheema said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Security sources said a suicide bomber had detonated his explosives near the truck, but Cheema said the vehicle's cargo could have triggered the explosion.
"The nature of the blast is not clear and it is being ascertained. There was ammunition in the truck which caused the damage," Cheema told AFP.
Most of the attacks in Pakistan since the Red Mosque raid have been suicide blasts that have killed more than 400 people, according to an AFP tally.
The Swat valley was once one of Pakistan's premier tourist attractions, but the area in the conservative province bordering Afghanistan has become a stronghold of banned group Tahreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM).
The group, led by radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah, has close ties to pro-Taliban fighters who have been mounting attacks on government officials and security forces in the area.
A doctor at a local hospital said 10 bodies had been brought in so far, along with 35 wounded. "Some of the bodies are charred," Nisar Khan told AFP.
The truck caught fire immediately after the explosion in Nawakilli area on the outskirts of Mingora, and firefighters struggled to contain the blaze, senior police officer Akbar Ali said.
The military said Wednesday that it had deployed the extra troops to the Swat valley in a bid to improve law and order in the troubled region.
A local government official also warned Wednesday that 400 militants under Fazlullah's command had been attacking local security forces.
Local home secretary Badshah Gul Wazir told a news conference in the provincial capital Peshawar that the TNSM group was also trying to seize control of dozens of villages.
TNSM was banned by President Pervez Musharraf in 2002 after it sent more than 10,000 volunteers to fight in Afghanistan against US forces who led an invasion to oust the country's hardline Taliban regime.
Hundreds of Taliban militants fled back over the Afghan border into Pakistan's nearby tribal areas after the fall of the extremists in 2001.
++++++++++
++++++++++
++++++++++
Maybe it will be 31
before too soon...
Bhutto Receives New Death Threat, Aide Says
By SALMAN MASOOD
Published: October 24, 2007
Olivier Matthys/European Pressphoto Agency
Members of the Pakistan Peoples Party guarded Benazir Bhutto’s home in Naudero Tuesday.
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KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct. 23 — Adding to concerns about the security of the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, a close aide said Tuesday that Ms. Bhutto had received a new death threat, in the form of a two-page handwritten letter.
The letter, written in Urdu, came Tuesday morning in Karachi to Farouq Naek , the lawyer for Ms. Bhutto.
“There was great emphasis on two things in the letter,” Mr. Naek, who is also a senator, said in a telephone interview. “First, the letter read that no woman can be a prime minister and second, the assassination attempt will be made with a knife.”
The letter, he said, warned Ms. Bhutto of a “big surprise” and the possibility of being attacked by a “woman commando.” It was not signed, but mentioned that it came from a “head of suicide attacks and a friend of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin,” Mr. Naek said.
Mr. Naek said he had written to Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the chief justice of Pakistan, to advise him of the threats and to ensure Ms. Bhutto’s security.
Last Thursday, 140 people were killed in this sprawling port city when two explosions detonated close to Ms. Bhutto’s armored truck, as supporters and workers from her party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, rallied to welcome her home after eight years of self-imposed exile. More than 500 people were wounded.
The party also said Tuesday that Ms. Bhutto was being restricted from leaving the country. Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Ms. Bhutto, said her name had been placed on an exit control list a day after her arrival in Pakistan. “This is against the Constitution,” Mr. Babar said. A letter to the Interior Ministry asking for the removal of her name has been sent, he said.
Muhammad Ali Durrani, the Pakistani information minister, said he was unaware of any such step by the government. He said he would check on it.
Sherry Rehman, the information secretary of Ms. Bhutto’s party, said Ms. Bhutto remained undeterred by the threats, but added that Ms. Bhutto had asked the government to provide security not only for her, but for all political leaders.
The government has rejected demands by the Pakistan Peoples Party to invite foreign law enforcement agencies to join the inquiry into the suicide attacks.
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Californians endure 7 days of wildfires
By PAULINE ARRILLAGA,
AP National Writer
SAN DIEGO - They know what the winds can do. They forecast them. Fight the fires the winds fan. Ready for evacuations that, in years past, never came. They thought they knew, until seven days of fury began a week ago.
From almost the beginning, this Santa Ana was different somehow.
Meteorologist Philip Gonsalves recognized it when he saw the smoke through the picture windows of the National Weather Service station in Rancho Bernardo, closing in on the office itself. He had helped forecast the tempest: an ominous combination of strong gusts, low humidity and soaring temperatures. In weather speak: red flag fire conditions.
Fire Battalion Chief Tom Zeulner understood it, too, when en route to his first blaze of the week, his wife called to tell him five more had begun.
Dan Crane thought it was "situation normal," his words for the Santa Ana fire season that torments Californians every October through February, when blustery winds blow out of the desert. He's lived through a half-century of them, and never once had to evacuate — not even during the two-week onslaught of 2003, when fires burned 750,000 acres and killed 22 people.
This time, he awoke to neighbors honking and smoke wafting through his windows.
By Saturday, more than a half-million acres would be gone, 1,700 homes destroyed, with the damage surpassing $1 billion.
Stunned homeowners who just last weekend were setting out Halloween decorations and watching football would find themselves sifting through kindling and ash, mumbling things like: This used to be my kitchen. This used to be my bedroom.
This used to be ...
Even a week after it all started, several thousand would remain evacuated as blazes burned on relentlessly.
There would be questions about prevention in the midst of persistent drought, lack of preparation in a fire-plagued state and whether resources were put to use as fast as possible.
But first, before all of that, came the winds.
They were different, undoubtedly, although no one could have predicted just how deadly and destructive.
___
Gonsalves is a man who usually takes things in stride, especially the weather, perhaps because he knows it so well. He knows how easily a fire can kick up when the winds get going, and computer models at work had predicted a nasty Santa Ana for days.
And so, on Sunday morning when he stepped out of church and sniffed smoke, he was hardly surprised.
"It's begun," he thought. "Here we go again."
The surprise came hours later, when Gonsalves arrived home from the gym and turned on the news.
Fires — plural — were everywhere:
The Ranch Fire, sparked at 9:42 p.m. the night before, racing through 500 acres some 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
The Canyon Fire, ignited at 4:50 a.m. in Malibu, forcing 1,500 people — even Hollywood's elite — to evacuate.
The Harris Fire, begun at 9:23 a.m. southeast of San Diego, exploding to 500 acres in just over three hours.
The Witch Creek Fire, burning at 12:37 p.m. in a mountain town northeast of San Diego, consuming 3,000 acres in two hours.
At the Weather Service office in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo, Gonsalves' colleagues watched as satellite images showed plume after plume of smoke roaring over a swath of Southern California. Their computers are programmed to display wildfire hot spots as little red squares. Red squares seemed to cover the lower half of the state.
By evening, the forecasters had to shut off the air conditioning to stop smoke from seeping into the office. Back at home, on his day off, Gonsalves was thinking about what to pack — just in case his own family had to flee.
Sunday was an off-day for Zeulner, as well. He, too, had gone to church, near his home in San Luis Obispo, and was having lunch when he got word: "You guys are going."
A battalion chief with the city fire department, Zeulner commands a 20-member strike team that operates five, Type 1 fire engines, ideal for defending homes and structures. The team, when called upon, can be dispatched anywhere.
They were summoned to the Ranch Fire, to help protect homes in the tiny citrus-growing village of Piru.
"Immediate need," Zeulner had been told. In other words: Get there fast.
By 2 p.m., the caravan of engines was on the road, Zeulner monitoring AM radio for fire updates. The 33-year veteran was alarmed by what he heard. Winds were gusting from 60 to 80 mph; in some places, they exceeded 100 mph.
"That's hurricane force," thought Zeulner, who knew from experience that anything over 60 mph was unusual during Santa Ana season.
When the team arrived at the fire, they were told to bed down and be ready to work at dawn the next day. Zeulner set up camp in a park under the smoky sky, but rest was hard to come by.
His sleeping bag rocked back and forth throughout the night, the mighty winds tossing him about like a leaf.
___
Crane awoke early Monday and looked at the clock: 4 a.m. He smelled smoke coming through his bedroom window, but when he got up to shut it, he heard something on the street below. A car honking, he thought. He peered outside.
Rancho Bernardo's Lancashire Way, Crane's home for 20 years, looked like an erupting volcano.
"We gotta go!" he yelled to his wife, Sherry, still in bed. "Now!"
Their neighbor's wooden fence was ablaze, the palm trees in front of that house igniting like matchsticks. Glowing embers shot horizontally across the street. To the north and east, a line of flames lit up the ridge near a subdivision called The Trails. To the south, Battle Mountain, directly behind Crane's home, went up like a Roman candle.
Terrified neighbors roused one another with phone calls and knocks on the door, driving past police officers who cruised a nearby street, shouting through bullhorns, "Evacuate! Now!"
Elsewhere across San Diego County, reverse 911 calls alerted residents to fires that had gone out of control overnight. In a day, the Witch Creek Fire grew from 3,000 acres to 30,000, eating through the communities of Rancho Bernardo, Escondido, Rancho Santa Fe, Poway — taking out multimillion-dollar estates and modest ranch homes.
The biggest evacuation in California state history was just getting started. Some 560,000 would be forced from their homes in San Diego County alone. Qualcomm Stadium, home to the NFL's San Diego Chargers, was opened to evacuees in a scene reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina. The Del Mar Fairgrounds and schools housed others.
At the Weather Service office, Gonsalves arrived just after 6 a.m. to start his regular shift. He saw the smoke hanging low out the window, the line of cars snaking down West Bernardo Drive. Three hours later, the forecasters received a reverse 911.
They, too, packed up and decamped.
By nightfall, more than 500 homes had already been demolished in San Diego County. Two fires that began just that day in the mountain vacation haven of Lake Arrowhead would destroy 300 more. Elsewhere across California, more than a dozen fires were now burning, incinerating 374 square miles in seven counties.
And Monday afternoon, this warning from the Weather Service: "Strong winds are expected to redevelop tonight."
The wrath of the Santa Anas was far from over.
___
All the chatter on the radio was about San Diego. But Zeulner and his crew had their own firefight to deal with — for 4 1/2 hours Tuesday afternoon near Piru, after a blowing ember landed in steep vegetation.
They had spent much of their time doing structure protection: clearing away brush and moving wood piles stacked next to wood-sided homes, work homeowners themselves should have done in this drought-stricken state. The Ranch Fire, 1,000 acres when Zeulner first got the assignment, had grown to almost 40,000.
But he was proud that his crew had yet to lose a home.
In San Diego, Crane couldn't say the same. Tuesday, watching the news with his son at a friend's house where they'd taken refuge, he saw a reporter walking up and down Lancashire Way. Flames still burned from the remnants of some houses.
"Twenty-five homes, on this one block ... have burned to the ground," the reporter was saying.
And, then, he started reading off house numbers.
For a moment, Crane and his son thought they didn't hear 18626. Then: "635 ... 629 ... 626 ..." the reporter said.
Crane and his boy, whose own family lived a mile away but whose house survived, looked at each other.
"Now we know," Crane said.
___
Over the next two days, such heartbreaking discoveries happened again and again across the region. At a blaze farther north in Santa Clarita, Don Benson found his house and prized 1957 Thunderbird in ruins. A neighbor drove by, sending a wish for better days: "I hope God is good to you." "I believe in him," Benson called back, "but sometimes it wears thin."
Zeulner, whose team late Wednesday was dispatched to San Diego to pitch in, escorted an elderly couple to their lost home in Escondido the next day. "We're sorry for your loss," he told them. "We're here to help." What else could he say?
Even as President Bush arrived on Thursday, offering words of comfort, there was more devastating news: A 58-year-old mortgage broker and his 55-year-old wife, a teacher, were found in the rubble of an Escondido home. Another 52-year-old man died after refusing to leave his house during evacuations. The charred remains of four others, believed to be illegal immigrants, were found in the woods near the border. Authorities were investigating whether the deaths were due to the fires.
Word that at least one of the major blazes, in Orange County, was deliberately set spread further outrage.
And still more towns faced new evacuations, among them Julian, an apple-picking hamlet in the mountains northeast of San Diego, and Jamul, a community near the border where homes can go for a million-plus.
There was, however, one reason for optimism. By Thursday night, the ruthless winds that fueled the calamity had finally died.
___
Come Friday, Gonsalves and his colleagues were back at their computers at the weather office, swapping war stories in between work about their own fire encounters. The office was unscathed, but for the lingering stench of smoke.
Gonsalves was lucky; his family never had to evacuate. One colleague remained displaced from his home in Julian, though even that evacuation order had lifted by Saturday morning.
Zeulner was enjoying his first 24 hours off in five days, although, given the circumstances, enjoying hardly seemed the right word. He still had no idea when he might head home, or whether he'd miss a vacation to see his 5-month-old granddaughter.
And at 6 a.m. Saturday, he and his crew reported for yet another day of duty in San Diego.
He joked that he'd better at least be back by Dec. 28 — the day he retires from the fire department.
"I got in the fire service to help people," he said, his eyes reddening with tears because, despite so much loss, he believes he did help people this past week. "It's a good feeling."
At the remains of his home on Lancashire Way, Crane's eyes were noticeably dry of tears. Instead, there was a sense of optimism in him and the neighbors who flooded back to begin cleaning up, and returned Saturday to pick up more pieces. They exchanged hugs and "I'm so sorrys," talked about getting together, already, in the coming days to discuss rebuilding.
"Did I want to start over at this time in my life? No," 60-year-old Crane said. "But my family is fine. I'm fine."
Everything else, he said, "is just stuff. I can make it through this."
Like the soot-covered CorningWare dish, the ceramic salt shaker and his father's old circular saw that he recovered from the ashes — "little miracles," a neighbor called such precious finds, so desperately needed in a week of so few.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Student charged with killing newborn
LOUISVILLE, Ky.,
Oct. 25 (UPI) --
A student-athlete at a Kentucky university was charged Thursday with killing the newborn baby she delivered in a dormitory bathroom.
Kathryn McCoy, a sophomore at Bellarmine University in Louisville, was arrested after being released from a hospital, WAVE-TV reported. She allegedly concealed her pregnancy and lied to police after a suspicious roommate called 911.
Louisville Metro Police said McCoy was charged with murder, concealing the birth of an infant and tampering with evidence, The Louisville Courier-Journal said.
McCoy, of Plainfield, Ind., was a member of the Bellarmine women's golf team and played as recently as Oct. 6.
"From what we know at this time, some witnesses told us they had some knowledge she might be pregnant, but it was never discussed. They had their suspicions but it was never brought up," Homicide Detective Barry Wilkerson told WAVE.
The baby was allegedly delivered over a toilet and fell in, possibly causing its death. When McCoy learned police were on their way to her dorm, Anniversary Hall, investigators say she tried to hide the infant girl, delaying medical attention that might have saved her.
© UPI, Headline News
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N.C. Beach House Fire Kills 7 Students
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What an odd suggestion to make on this one particular article especially, Yahoo...
Morbid, lugubrious indeed...
I approve of that, fear not!
Oct 28, 5:34 PM (ET)
By ESTES THOMPSON
OCEAN ISLE BEACH, N.C. (AP) - Fire ravaged a beach house occupied by more than a dozen college students early Sunday, killing seven and sending several more to a hospital.
Six survivors were released after treatment, including one who jumped from the burning house into a waterway, Mayor Debbie Smith said. Officials had accounted for all of the 13 people believed to be inside the home, Smith said.
"There were three kids sitting on the ground screaming," said newspaper deliverer Tim Burns, who called 911 after seeing a column of smoke rising from the house. "There was one guy hanging out the window, and he jumped in the canal. I know he got out because he was yelling for a girl to follow him."
Burns said he didn't know whether that girl was able to escape.
Smith said she believed 12 of the house's 13 occupants were students at the University of South Carolina; the other attended Clemson University. The private home was being used by the owner's daughter and a group of her friends, she said.
"Nothing like this has ever happened at Ocean Isle Beach," Smith said.
The fire struck the house on Scotland Street sometime before 7 a.m. and burned completely through the first and second floors, leaving only part of the frame standing.
"We ran down the street to get away," said Nick Cain, a student at the University of North Carolina who was staying at a house about 100 feet away. "The ash and the smoke were coming down on us. We were just trying to get away."
Burns said he had to fight to keep several of those who escaped from the fire from going back inside to try to rescue their friends. When he approached the front door, he said, it was too hot to open.
"When I was going up to the entryway, you could hear the windows above me explode," Burns said. "When I knew the flames had taken over, I don't think I've ever felt as helpless in my life."
The waterfront house was built on stilts, and firefighters had to climb a ladder to reach the first living floor.
"I heard somebody hollering 'help.' It was real strong," said neighbor Nell Blanton. "But they were making so much noise last night, I thought they were playing around."
The house had working smoke detectors but no sprinklers, Smith said. It could be a day or more before investigators pinpoint the cause of the blaze, said Randy Thompson, Brunswick County's emergency services director.
Authorities erected a blue tarp to block the view of the fire scene, but neighbor Bob Alexander said he saw investigators removing bodies.
"It's terrible to see somebody's children come out of that house this way," Alexander said.
Family members of some victims gathered in a chapel across the street from the town hall but declined to speak with reporters.
Representatives of the South Carolina school were in touch with officials in Ocean Isle Beach, university spokesman Russ McKinney said. School officials were headed to the scene, about 30 miles north of Myrtle Beach, S.C., he said. The university in Columbia, S.C., planned a news conference later in the day.
Brunswick Community Hospital received six patients from the fire, spokeswoman Amy Myers said. All were treated and released, she said.
The victim's bodies were to be taken to the state medical examiner's office in Chapel Hill, and officials said it would be several days before their identities are released. Authorities from the State Bureau of Investigation and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are leading the investigation, Thompson said.
Ocean Isle Beach is at the far southern end of North Carolina's Atlantic Coast. Only about 500 people live there year-round, but the town is home to several thousand rental and vacation homes and condos.
The burned house sits on one of a series of peninsulas, all tightly packed with homes, that are about two blocks from the beach and connect with the Intracoastal Waterway.
---
Associated Press writers Mike Baker in Raleigh, Daniel Yee in Atlanta, and Page Ivey in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.
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OTHER NATIONAL NEWS HEADLINES
• Fire Survivors Give Thanks As Crews Gain
• Trouble Found on Space Station Device
• N.C. Beach House Fire Kills 7 Students
• Black Lawyers Rare at Supreme Court
• Lack of Ga. Drought Plan Riles Critics
• College Teaches One Class at a Time
• Ill. Officer Fights Abuse Allegations
• Shots Fired at Mo. College, No Injuries
• Minorities Less Likely to Trick or Treat
• Feds Strike ID Deal Over NY Licenses
...
Mother and kids found dead in burning home
SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 29 (UPI) --
Autopsies were scheduled Monday for a Utah mother and her three young children found dead in their suburban home after fire broke out.
Authorities said the deaths of Sharon Al-Shimmary, her two daughters and son is suspicious because of where the fire started, The Salt Lake City Tribune reported.
Investigators said the blaze was concentrated in an upstairs bedroom of the home where all four of the victims were found, two in bed and two others on the floor.
Lt. Paul Jaroscak, a spokesman for the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Department, told the Tribune there was no evidence the family was trapped inside and there were no signs of assault on the bodies of the three children.
"Unless they committed suicide, someone else took their lives," he told the Tribune.
Jaroscak wouldn'ot comment on the condition of the mother's body, the newspaper said.
An autopsy will determine the causes of death and should indicate if family members were alive when the fire began.
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+++
Archbishop Wilton Gregory fighting cancer
ATLANTA, Oct. 29 (UPI) --
Roman Catholic Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta has been scheduled to have surgery Nov. 5 for prostate cancer.
Gregory, 59, was president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2001-04 and was a visible spokesman for the church in its battle with the sexually abusive priest issue. He has also been in the forefront of fights against the death penalty, anti-immigration legislation and abortion, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday.
He informed his staff during the weekend that he had prostate cancer and asked his staff to arrange his schedule to accommodate the surgery and recuperation, the newspaper said.
Archdiocese spokeswoman Pat Chivers told the Journal-Constitution that Gregory "is feeling very peaceful about (the cancer) and very confident it has been found early."
Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of death by cancer for men in the United States but the American Association for Cancer Research said the five-year survival rate for prostate cancer is 100 percent if caught early.
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Good luck
Archbishop Gregory,
sir.
Speaking of the devil...
the devil's advocates...
Uh - I mean the death penalty...
Lawyers' group urges death penalty moratorium
By James Vicini
Mon Oct 29, 10:40 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The American Bar Association said on Monday it was renewing its call for a nationwide moratorium on executions, based on a three-year study of death penalty systems in eight states that found unfairness and other flaws.
The lawyers' group said its study identified key problems, such as major racial disparities, incompetent defense services for poor defendants and irregular clemency review processes, making those death penalty systems operate unfairly.
The American Bar Association in 2001 launched its Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project as the next step toward a nationwide moratorium on executions. The study was part of that project.
The project was created to encourage state government leaders to establish moratoriums and undertake detailed examinations of capital punishment laws and systems in their jurisdictions.
The eight states in the study were Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
The study did not include Texas, which is by far the most active capital punishment state. Since 1976, Texas conducted 405 executions, distantly followed by Virginia with 98, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The study was released as executions appear to be effectively put on hold since the U.S. Supreme Court last month agreed to consider a challenge to the lethal injection method.
On September 25, the high court agreed to decide a challenge to the three-chemical cocktail used under the lethal injection procedures in Kentucky, procedures similar to those used in other states.
So far this year, 42 people have been executed in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Last year, there were 53 executions.
All but one of the 38 U.S. states with the death penalty and the federal government use lethal injection for executions. The only exception is Nebraska, which requires electrocution.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the Kentucky case in January, with a decision likely before the end of June. At issue is whether the lethal injection method constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, inflicting unnecessary pain and suffering.
...
Investigators eye deck in N.C. fire
By ESTES THOMPSON,
Associated Press Writer
25 minutes ago
OCEAN ISLE BEACH, N.C. - For the group of college buddies spending a late-season weekend at a friend's beach house, the deck overlooking a canal was the center of their good times. It was where they talked, listened to music and danced late into the night.
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But investigators fear the deck just two blocks from the beach may also have been the starting point of a fast-moving fire that killed seven people, including a group of high school friends who went off to college together.
"It sounded like they were having a good time. Unfortunately, the fire didn't show any mercy," said Terry Walden, whose 19-year-old daughter, Allison, died in the blaze. "They probably never woke up."
The storm of fire and smoke — so daunting that firefighters radioed for backup before they even arrived at the scene — enveloped the home early Sunday, killing six students from the University of South Carolina and one from Clemson University. Six other South Carolina students in the house survived.
Classes went on as scheduled Monday at South Carolina's Columbia campus, but grief counselors were available for the 27,000 students. Clemson also offered counseling.
Anna Lee Rhea said her older brother, William, was among the dead — a devastating blow to their older brother, Andrew, who made it out of the house alive. "Everybody loved him. Everybody really misses him," she said in a brief telephone interview from the family's home in Florence, S.C. "You couldn't help but love him."
In an interview from Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Walden said his daughter picked USC for its warm weather and vibrant Greek life. Officials have said many of the dead were members of the Delta Delta Delta sorority and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
"It's an awful loss for someone that had a pretty good future in front of her," said Walden, 56, an environmental engineer.
Mayor Debbie Smith said Monday that investigators believe the fire was likely accidental and started in the rear of the house, either on or near the deck facing the canal on the west side of the house. That side of the residence appeared to be the most heavily damaged.
Investigators should be able to locate an area of origin, but may have trouble finding a specific cause, said Dr. Rolin Barrett, a consulting engineer with Raleigh-based Barrett Engineering who has been involved in almost 1,000 fire investigations.
"So many things are consumed in fire that you can't tell what they were like beforehand," he said. "If a cigarette did it, then the cigarette was probably consumed."
As authorities removed the bodies from the charred home, they found most of the victims in the home's five bedrooms. The only person on the top floor who survived did so by jumping out of a window and into the adjacent canal, said Ocean Isle Beach fire chief Robert Yoho.
Investigators quizzed dozens of college students who filled several homes near the site of the disaster. Rebecca Wood, the president of the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity at the University of North Carolina, said she and her friends spent more than two hours talking with police about the deaths of the people they met just hours before.
Authorities wanted "descriptions for anything about the people in the house," Wood said. "We had just met them that day and didn't have last names for anybody ... But they interviewed everybody that set foot in the house."
Police in the beachfront community, which has only about 500 full-time residents and had gone at least two decades without a fatal fire, are working with the State Bureau of Investigation and federal officials. The victims' remains are being sent to the state medical examiner's office in Chapel Hill, where autopsies will take place.
"It may be a few days," spokeswoman Sharon Artis said. "We have not identified any of them yet."
Neighbor Bob Alexander, who lives directly across the canal from the burned home, said the first group of students arrived at the beach house late Friday afternoon. By the time the sun set, the group was out on the deck listening to music. They were up the next day, back out on the deck and getting ready in the afternoon to watch South Carolina's football game at Tennessee.
"We met them that afternoon," Wood said. "The back (decks) faced each other and we were out there joking, making football jokes because both of us had games that day. It was all in good fun. Later, they came over to introduce themselves."
Alexander remembered seeing two people — a college-aged man and one young woman — dancing on the deck around 11 p.m. A short time later, South Carolina's loss to the Volunteers was over, and the Gamecocks had the neighboring Tar Heels over to commiserate. Wood and a few others from UNC stayed up late dancing and munching on leftover football snacks with their new friends.
"For them to open up their house to us was just so nice," Wood said. "We gave them hugs and said we would Facebook later. That's the great thing about the online stuff now — friendships could grow without seeing each other. We got along really well."
Wood left around 1:30 a.m., but Alexander said the lights were still on at the doomed beach house as late as 2:30 a.m. He awoke to the sound of sirens a few minutes after 7 a.m.
"Flames were halfway across the channel," Alexander said. "The fire was roaring and cracking. You could already see inside the house."
___
Associated Press writers Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C, and Jacob Jordan and Seanna Adcox in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.
...
By the way...
I shouldn't apologize for having called for everyone to KILL on this blog - especially when it is merely POP-UPS, eh?
So, indeed, I will not apologize for blatantly throwing in an ad in there, a few comments earlier, for the famed POPSWATTER...
In fact, you all should be glad I called for the MERCILESS KILLING of pop-ups on this lugubrious blog - that, just that and no other forms of slaying at all...!
;)
20 headless corpses found as Iraq province handed over
by Ammar Karim
October 29th
BAGHDAD (AFP) - At least 20 decapited corpses were found and a suicide bomber killed 28 policemen northeast of Baghdad on Monday, as the US military transferred the security control of Karbala to Iraqi forces.
The corpses of men killed recently were found near the village of Gsrine close to Baquba, just hours after a bicycle bomber slaughtered 28 policemen in the violent city, a security official said.
The discovery of bodies was a stark reminder that Iraq's brutal sectarian strife was far from over despite wideranging US and Iraqi military operations, including in the Diyala province of which Baquba is the capital.
Baquba is one of the most dangerous regions in Iraq, where security forces are waging a campaign targeting insurgents, especially Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Earlier on Monday a suicide bomber riding a bicycle blew himself up at the police headquarters in Baquba.
Brigadier General Kudair al-Timimi of Baquba police said the blast killed 28 police and wounded another 21 people, nearly all of them police.
The US military, meanwhile, handed back control of the Shiite province of Karbala to Iraqi forces, making the province only the eighth of Iraq's 18 provinces to be returned by the coalition.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who addressed the Karbala handover ceremony, accused his own military leaders of slow progress in taking back control of the provinces.
"Allow me to say that we are late, very late, to reconstruct, to rebuild our forces for reasons that I do not want to mention here," said Maliki who is under pressure from Washington to speed up the process.
The delay in rebuilding Iraqi forces has hampered US plans to withdraw its forces from the country.
"We demand that the military and police leadership make more efforts to reconstruct and rebuild the security forces in order to take over control of the rest of the provinces," Maliki said.
Washington and Baghdad had hoped that Iraqi forces would take control of most of the provinces this year, and had even declared 2007 the "Year of Security" in Iraq.
But a US congressional report in September said Iraq was 12-18 months away from assuming complete security control, largely because of a corrupt police force.
The report by General James Jones, the former top US commander in Europe, said Iraqi forces were improving "but not at a rate sufficient to meet their essential security responsibilities."
Washington's top officials in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus, said the handover of Karbala was a "positive step towards Iraq's self-reliance."
Karbala, 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Baghdad, is relatively peaceful compared to some other central and western regions of Iraq, but is emerging as a flashpoint of Shiite rivalry.
Home to the shrines of two of Shiite Islam's most revered imams -- Hussein and Abbas --, the city of Karbala was the site of a bloody firefight in August during a major religious festival in which at least 52 people were killed.
The other Iraqi provinces handed over by US-led forces to date are Maysan, Muthanna, Dhi Qar and Najaf in the central and southern regions and the three northern Kurdish provinces of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah.
Maliki on Monday said Iraqi forces would take over the southern province of Basra, currently under the control of around 5,200 British troops, in mid-December.
Iraqi forces rescued on Monday eight of the 11 tribal leaders who were kidnapped on Sunday in northern Baghdad's Al-Shaab neighbourhood. They were freed after a gunbattle with their captors.
"We have rescued eight of the hostages and are working to free the others. We killed four of the kidnappers," defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari told AFP.
The US military said the group of Shiite and Sunni tribal chiefs were kidnapped by Arkan Hasnawi, a rogue militant who had broken away from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
On Sunday, a security official said the 11 tribal leaders were from a local movement in Diyala opposing Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In recent months the US military has been supported by tribal leaders and by nationalist former insurgents in its fight against Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
A top fighter of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Tiba al-Karbuli, was killed Monday after clashes with police in the western province of Anbar along with his two aides, police said, adding he was an Afghan national.
Four members of a family were killed in car bomb explosion near their house in the northern town of Baiji, police said.
++++++++++
++++++++++
Suicide Bomber Kills 32 North of Baghdad
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 29, 2007; 5:17 PM
BAGHDAD, Oct. 29 -- A suicide bomber riding a bicycle killed 32 people and wounded 18 when he detonated his explosives Monday amidst a group of Iraqi police recruits, officials said.
The attack took place in volatile Diyala province, just north of Baghdad, during a morning roll call around 8:15 in the training yard of a police battalion, said Col. Ali Ismael Fattah, the unit's commanding officer.
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Among the wounded were a woman and child near the site of the explosion. Fattah said the casualty reports were preliminary and the death toll might rise. Most of the dead were police recruits, who were undergoing training and scheduled to finish their course soon, Fattah said.
Diyala has been a focus of U.S. counterinsurgency efforts, both on the political and military fronts. Over the summer, U.S. forces pushed into Baqubah, the capital of Diyala, in an effort to regain control of the city from al-Qaeda backed militants. An alliance between local sheiks and the U.S. military has been cited as a successful piece of U.S. strategy.
But it has also made police and local leaders who cooperate with the United States a target of militant violence, a point reemphasized by Monday's bombing and the kidnapping on Sunday of 11 tribal leaders. The bullet-riddled body of one of the sheiks was found late Sunday about 50 yards from where the ambush took place, a police officer said, the Associated Press reported. Some of the sheiks were released Monday, according to a Defense Ministry spokesman, who declined to give more details, the AP said.
The sheiks had banded with U.S. troops to fight the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Shiite and Sunni sheiks, members of the al-Salam Support Council, a group fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq in Diyala, were taken from their cars by gunmen as they were returning home from a meeting in Baghdad with a government official, fellow tribesmen said.
Hadi al-Anbaki, a spokesman for the mostly Shiite council, said the attack was carried out by the Mahdi Army, a militia controlled by the anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "This was an ambush," Anbaki said.
The kidnapping highlighted the complex and quickly shifting nature of the bloodshed convulsing Iraq, with Shiite and Sunni groups increasingly targeting members of their own sects who align themselves with U.S. forces.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Army one-star general was wounded today by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, Army officials said.
Brig. Gen. Jeffery Dorko, commander of the Gulf Regional Division of the Army Corps of Engineers, suffered injuries when a bomb detonated near his convoy, operated by the private security contractor Erinys International, according to an Army release. The private security team evacuated Dorko and another soldier to a U.S. military hospital in the Green Zone, the release said. Dorko, in stable condition, was later evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Hospital in Germany, it said.
It is highly unusual for a U.S. officer with the rank of general to be injured in Iraq, and none has been killed there, the officials said.
And Turkish troops reportedly killed 15 Kurdish separatist guerrillas in southeastern Turkey in the predominantly Kurdish province of Tunceli. The attack took place hundreds of miles from the increasingly tense border with northern Iraq, which Turkey has threatened to cross to root out fighters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
Fighting in Turkey continued on Monday, wire services reported, with Turkish helicopter gunships targeting Kurdish rebel positions in the eastern part of the country.
Violent attacks continued unabated across Iraq. Iraqi police said 20 decapitated bodies were found dumped near a police station on Monday west of Baqubah, Reuters news agency reported. There was no immediate information on the identities of the victims.
A suicide car bomber in the northern city of Kirkuk killed eight people and wounded 25 at a bus terminal, police said. The attack occurred on the northern side of Kirkuk, which has a mostly Kurdish population, at a terminal where passengers depart for the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah.
Also in Kirkuk, armed men kidnapped the managing editor of the Turkmen magazine al-Akhaa, Qasim Muhammad Sari Kahiyah, according to a local journalist.
And in Diyala province, the site of the suicide bomb attack on police recruits Monday, a grave containing 15 bodies, mainly of female students, was found in the al-Ehaimer area, northeast of Baqubah, which is under the control of al-Qaeda in Iraq, local officials said.
Special correspondent Naseer Nouri and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report. Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson contributed from Washington.
© Copyright 1996-20072007 The Washington Post Company
The year 20072007...?
No one will get there, WPC...
NO ONE.
...
Kurds From Iraq Kill 17 Soldiers in Turkey
(But... to read this article and get all the gory details -sic; again- you will have to SUBSCRIBE: here. Goody for you. Me, I don't feel like it right now...)
BTW...
Iraq Casualties (U.S. Military that is - only they count for some, right?) stand at 3,839...
It will soon be 4,000 foot soldiers who were misguided, used, abused and simply didn't know any better...
Cannon fodder.
See the new widget keeping track of these on my sidebar here - a widget that is courtesy of the WPC
and of course
© Copyright 1996-20072007 The Washington Post Company
Some people never learn...
+++
Noël... Noël... Noël... Noël...
They've all gone on to meet
the King of Israël...!
Sorry - I couldn't resist... :!
Noel claims 20 lives in Dominican Republic
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic
Oct. 30 (UPI) --
Tropical Storm Noel screamed across the Dominican Republic and Haiti late Monday, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction.
Dominican Republic national emergency official Manuel Antonio Luna Paulino said least 20 people were reported killed and 20 more were missing as flooding and mudslides swept the Caribbean island nation, the Palm Beach Post reported. While there were no initial reports of fatalities in neighboring Haiti, that country's terrain heightened concern that there would be casualties, as well.
Noel (pronounced knoll) was headed toward southern Florida, although it was not expected to hit the state head-on. Watches and warnings covered the Bahamas, as well as parts of Cuba. At 11 p.m. Monday, Noel was packing winds near 50 miles per hour and its center was about 300 miles south-southeast of Nassau and about 500 miles southeast of Palm Beach.
Noel shorted the Dominican Republic's entire power system early Monday, leaving 9.4 million people without electricity for about two hours, the state-owned electric company said.
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+++
Robert Goulet...
He was 73 - and had been well enough to sing in Boston last April - at the Red Sox home opener
He was a Massachusetts native, did you know that...?
And, a mere 48 hours after his team wins it all - he dies
Singer Robert Goulet dies at 73
By DAISY NGUYEN,
Associated Press Writer
10 minutes ago
on October 30th...
LOS ANGELES - Robert Goulet, the handsome, big-voiced baritone whose Broadway debut in "Camelot" launched an award-winning stage and recording career, has died. He was 73.
The singer died Tuesday morning in a Los Angeles hospital while awaiting a lung transplant, said Goulet spokesman Norm Johnson.
He had been awaiting a lung transplant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after being found last month to have a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis.
Goulet had remained in good spirits even as he waited for the transplant, said Vera Goulet, his wife of 25 years.
"Just watch my vocal cords," she said he told doctors before they inserted a breathing tube.
The Massachusetts-born Goulet, who spent much of his youth in Canada, gained stardom in 1960 with "Camelot," the Lerner and Loewe musical that starred Richard Burton as King Arthur and Julie Andrews as his Queen Guenevere.
Goulet played Sir Lancelot, the arrogant French knight who falls in love with Guenevere.
He became a hit with American TV viewers with appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and other programs. Sullivan labeled him the "American baritone from Canada," where he had already been a popular star in the 1950s, hosting his own TV show called "General Electric's Showtime."
The Los Angeles Times wrote in 1963 that Goulet "is popping up in specials so often these days that you almost feel he has a weekly show. The handsome lad is about the hottest item in show business since his Broadway debut."
Goulet won a Grammy Award in 1962 as best new artist and made the singles chart in 1964 with "My Love Forgive Me."
"When I'm using a microphone or doing recordings I try to concentrate on the emotional content of the song and to forget about the voice itself," he told The New York Times in 1962.
"Sometimes I think that if you sing with a big voice, the people in the audience don't listen to the words, as they should," he told the paper. "They just listen to the sound."
While he returned to Broadway only infrequently after "Camelot," he did win a Tony award in 1968 for best actor in a musical for his role in "The Happy Time." His other Broadway appearances were in "Moon Over Buffalo" in 1995 and "La Cage aux Folles" in 2005, plus a "Camelot" revival in 1993 in which he played King Arthur.
His stage credits elsewhere include productions of "Carousel," "Finian's Rainbow," "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," "The Pajama Game," "Meet Me in St. Louis," and "South Pacific."
Goulet also got some film work, performing in movies ranging from the animated "Gay Purr-ee" (1962) to "Underground" (1970) to "The Naked Gun 2 1/2" (1991). He played a lounge singer in Louis Malle's acclaimed 1980 film "Atlantic City."
He returned to Broadway in 2005 as one half of a gay couple in "La Cage aux Folles," and Associated Press theater critic Michael Kuchwara praised Goulet for his "affable, self-deprecating charm."
Goulet had no problems poking fun at his own fame, appearing recently in an Emerald nuts commercial in which he "messes" with the stuff of dozing office workers, and lending his name to Goulet's SnoozeBars. Goulet also has been sent up by Will Ferrell on "Saturday Night Live."
"You have to have humor and be able to laugh at yourself," Goulet said in a biography on his Web site.
The only son of French-Canadian parents, Goulet was born in Lawrence, Mass. After his father died, his mother moved the family to Canada when the future star was about 13.
He received vocal training at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto but decided opera wasn't for him. He made his first professional appearance at age 16 with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. His early success on Canadian television preceded his breakthrough on Broadway.
When his onetime costar Julie Andrews received a Kennedy Center Honors award in 2001, Goulet was among those joining in singing in her honor.
In his last performance Sept. 20 in Syracuse, N.Y., the crooner was backed by a 15-piece orchestra as he performed the one-man show "A Man and his Music."
Although Goulet headlined frequently on the Las Vegas Strip, one period stood out, evidenced by a photograph that hung on his office wall. It was the mid-1970s, and he had just finished a two-week run at the Desert Inn when he was asked to fill in at the Frontier, across the street.
Overnight, the marquees of two of the Strip's hottest resorts read the same: "Robert Goulet."
"I played there many, many years and have wonderful memories of the place," Goulet told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
His first two marriages ended in divorce. He had a daughter with his first wife, Louise Longmore, and two sons with his second wife, Carol Lawrence, the actress and singer who played Maria in the original Broadway production of "West Side Story."
After their breakup, she portrayed him unflatteringly in a book. "There's a fine line between love and hate," he responded in a New York Times interview. "She went on every talk show interview and cut me to shreds, and I've never done anything like that, and I won't."
___
Associated Press writer Ryan Nakashima in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
http://www.robertgoulet.com
+++
Iraq contractor sued over death of soldier
HOUSTON,
Oct. 30 (UPI) --
A Texas man has sued a private British security firm for causing the death of his son, a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq.
The lawsuit against Erinys, a British firm with ties to controversial Iraqi leader Ahmed Chalabi, claims that Spc. Christopher Monroe was hit by a vehicle driving at 80 mph, The Guardian reported. Lawyer Tobias Cole said that the Erinys convoy was in conditions that did not require evasive tactics or high speed and that its drivers had been warned of U.S. soldiers ahead.
"The family just didn't have the answers that they were seeking," Cole said. "For example, why did their son die on a non-combat mission? There was no reason to have extreme driving, no reason to drive without headlights, no reason to drive at speed through a parked convoy."
Erinys had been hired to guard oil installations in Iraq. At the time that Monroe was killed its employees were providing security for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
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Storm kills 48 in Haiti, Dominican Rep.
By RAMON ALMANZAR,
Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 7 minutes ago
October 31st
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - Floodwaters and mudslides spawned by Tropical Storm Noel killed at least 48 people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, officials said Wednesday, raising the death toll as the storm's center spun slowly across Cuba and toward Florida.
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Thousands on the island of Hispaniola shared by the two countries fled their homes as the tropical system's outer bands dumped heavy rains.
Forecasters projected the storm would emerge over water Wednesday near central Cuba and head northeast toward the Bahamas. Residents of southeastern Florida were advised to monitor the progress of Noel, which could pass close to the state over the next few days.
At 8 a.m. EDT, Noel's top sustained wind was near 40 mph, down from 60 mph a day earlier, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Its center was 65 miles north-northwest of Camaguey, Cuba, about 195 miles south-southwest of Nassau, Bahamas, and about 270 miles south-southeast of Miami. Some strengthening over the ocean could occur as it pulls away from Cuba.
Noel's outer bands pounded Hispaniola on Tuesday evening even as the storm chugged away from the island, which is made vulnerable to flash floods by its many denuded hillsides. Tropical storm-strength winds extended up to 175 miles from the storm's center. Above-normal tides and heavy rain were expected in its path into the Atlantic.
In the Dominican Republic, almost 12,000 people were driven from their homes and nearly 3,000 homes were destroyed, while collapsed bridges and swollen rivers have isolated 36 towns, said Dominican emergency services spokesman Luis Luna Paulino.
"The rains continue to fall and we fear for several families," said Sergio Vargas, a merengue star and Dominican congressman who represents Villa Altagracia, a small town north of the capital, Santo Domingo.
Late Tuesday, Luna raised the Dominican death toll to at least 30 from 16, but did not release specifics of the deaths. Earlier in the day he acknowledged miscalculating a previous toll.
In neighboring Haiti, the death toll rose from six to at least 18, including two women washed away by a river in the town of Gantier, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, director of Haiti's civil protection agency. Red Cross volunteers said a 3-year-old boy drowned as his family tried to rescue him from a raging river in the vicinity of Duvivier.
In Port-au-Prince, thousands slogged through waist-high water that turned streets into brown rivers, carrying their last remaining possessions as they fled drenched shacks and makeshift homes. Refugees were brought by the truckload to the dense seaside slum of Cite Soleil, where they were packed into two schools and given food by volunteers.
About 2,000 people were evacuated from homes in the southern coastal city of Jacmel, where at least 150 residents were stranded on rooftops.
In Cuba, the government said about 1,000 homes had suffered damage, 2,000 people had been evacuated from low-lying areas across the island and schools were closed for several thousand students.
Bahamian authorities closed most government offices and lines formed at grocery stores and gas stations in Nassau, the capital. Rain from the outer bands of the storm forced tourists to cover themselves in trash bags or huddle for shelter in doorways.
"We're expecting a lot of rain and for conditions here to deteriorate starting tonight," Jeffrey Simmons, deputy director of the Department of Meteorology in the Bahamas, said Tuesday.
Warnings were in effect for rough surf for much of South Florida, including the Miami area, as waves were already pounding the region's beaches. Residents of a waterfront condominium in South Palm Beach were urged to evacuate after pounding surf destroyed a retaining wall that had been damaged earlier this month in another storm.
A tropical storm watch may be issued for southeast portions of the U.S. state if Noel shifts west or its wind field expands. A watch means tropical storm conditions are possible within 36 hours. But forecasters said the rains would likely miss drought-stricken Georgia, Alabama and other southeastern states.
___
Associated Press writers Jonathan M. Katz in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Will Weissert in Havana, Jessica Robertson in Nassau, Bahamas and David McFadden in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed to this report.
+++
3 guilty of mass murder in Madrid attack
By PAUL HAVEN,
Associated Press Writer
32 minutes ago
On All-Hallows'Eve...
MADRID, Spain - Spain's National Court convicted the three main suspects in the Madrid commuter train bombings of mass murder Wednesday and sentenced them to tens of thousands of years in prison for Europe's worst Islamic terror attack.
But the verdict was a mixed bag for prosecutors, who saw four other key defendants convicted of lesser offenses and an accused ringleader acquitted altogether.
With much of the case resting on circumstantial evidence, the three judges may have been wary after a number of high-profile Spanish terror cases were overturned on appeal.
Spain's prime minister said the verdict still upheld justice. But victims of the attack, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800 when bombs exploded on four trains on March 11, 2004, expressed shock and sadness over the court's decision.
"The verdict seems soft to us," said Pilar Manjon, who lost her 20-year-old son in the attack and has become a leader of a victims association. "I don't like it that murderers are going free."
Three lead suspects — Jamal Zougam and Othman Gnaoui of Morocco and Emilio Suarez Trashorras of Spain — were convicted of murder and attempted murder and received prison sentences ranging from 34,000 to 43,000 years. Under Spanish law, the most they will spend in jail is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.
Zougam was convicted of placing at least one bomb on a train and Gnaoui of being a right-hand man of the plot's operational chief. Trashorras, who once worked as a miner, was found guilty of supplying the explosives used in the bombs.
One of the biggest surprises was the acquittal of Rabei Osman, an Egyptian already convicted and jailed in Italy for the Madrid bombings.
Italian authorities said Osman bragged in tapped Arabic-language phone conversations that he was the brains behind the Madrid plot. But translations of the taped conversations by two sets of Spanish translators indicated his comments were more nuanced and did not amount to a confession.
The Spanish verdict came just two days after an Italian appeals court upheld Osman's conviction there, but shaved two years off his prison term, sentencing him to eight years.
Osman watched the Spanish proceedings on a videoconference link from the Justice Palace in Milan. The Europa Press news agency reported that he broke down in tears and shouted: "I've been absolved! I've been absolved!"
Four other top suspects — Youssef Belhadj, Hassan el Haski, Abdulmajid Bouchar and Rafa Zouhier — were acquitted of murder but convicted of other charges that included belonging to a terrorist organization. They received sentences of 10 to 18 years in prison.
Fourteen other defendants were found guilty of lesser crimes and six others were acquitted.
Much of the evidence in the 57-session, five-month trial was circumstantial. Bouchar, for instance, was seen on one of the bombed trains shortly before the attack, but at trial no one could definitively identify him and there were no fingerprints or other forensic evidence placing him at the scene.
A senior court official privy to the decision-making told The Associated Press after the verdict that the case against Osman was "flimsy," and that there was "no hard evidence" that Belhadj or Haski were masterminds. The official agreed to discuss the verdict only if not quoted by name.
Circumstantial evidence is admissible in Spanish trials. But the judges may have avoided relying heavily upon it because of a number of high-profile terror cases that were overturned on appeal, including one involving a Spanish cell accused of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., said Fernando Reinares, until recently chief counterterrorism adviser at the Interior Ministry.
He said Spain will have to change the rules of evidence if it is to defeat extremist groups. "Islamic terrorism ... leaves a different kind of footprint" than traditional crimes, said Reinares, now head of terrorism studies at the Elcano Royal Institute, a Madrid think tank.
The trial was perhaps never going to produce the verdict some were looking for, since the seven men considered the true ringleaders of the 2004 attack were not in the dock. They blew themselves up at an apartment on the outskirts of Madrid as police moved in to arrest them three weeks after the bombings.
Three other men are still fugitives, though two are suspected of having killed themselves in suicide attacks against U.S.-led forces in Iraq.
The train bombing suspects were mostly young Muslim men who allegedly acted out of allegiance to al-Qaida to avenge the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, although Spanish investigators say the plotters acted without a direct order or financing from Osama bin Laden's terror network.
Spanish authorities had been on the group's trail in the months before the attack, but had failed to grasp what they were plotting, mistaking the coded language in tapped phone conversations as that of petty criminals arranging a drug deal.
The attack will be forever etched in Spain's collective memory, much as Sept. 11 conjures up so much pain for Americans. March 11 — a day of hellish carnage, wailing sirens and cell phones going unanswered amid the wreckage of blackened, gutted trains — was Spain's worst tragedy since its civil war.
It also probably toppled the government of then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA for the bombings, even as evidence of Islamic involvement emerged.
That led to charges of a cover-up to deflect attention away from Aznar's support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, one of the reasons the bombers gave for carrying out the attack. Aznar's Popular Party was voted out of power in elections three days after the bombings, and the victorious Socialists quickly brought the Spanish troops home.
Even since its defeat, members of the Popular Party have insisted that ETA may have played a role, but the court totally rejected that hypothesis.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the beneficiary of the political upheaval over the bombing, welcomed Wednesday's verdicts. "Justice was rendered today," he said.
"The barbarism perpetrated on March 11, 2004, has left a deep imprint of pain on our collective memory, an imprint that stays with us as a homage to the victims," he said.
___
Associated Press writers Ciaran Giles and Harold Heckle contributed to this report.
...
Tropical storm death toll rises to 81
By JOSE MONEGRO,
Associated Press Writer
28 minutes ago
PIEDRA BLANCA, Dominican Republic - Tropical Storm Noel triggered mudslides and floods in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, pushing the death toll to 81 on Wednesday and forcing some parents to choose which of their children to save from the surging waters.
The storm was slowly moving away from the north coast of Cuba and was projected to skirt Florida and batter the Bahamas, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. A tropical storm watch was issued for parts of southeast Florida.
With rain still falling two days after the storm hit, rescuers were struggling to reach communities cut off by flooding on the island of Hispaniola. As they did, they found a rising toll of death and damage — at least 56 dead in the Dominican Republic, 24 in Haiti and one in Jamaica.
A swollen river overflowed its banks Monday night and swept away the hamlet of Piedra Blanca in the central Dominican Republic, forcing Charo Vidal to climb a tree. She watched her neighbor struggle to do the same nearby, clutching infant twins while water swept an older daughter away.
"She couldn't take care of all three," Vidal said Wednesday. "That is something very significant, to have a child snatched from your hands and you cannot do anything for them."
The mother, Mary De Leon, was inconsolable. "The river tore her from my hands as I held her," she said through tears.
"A lot of people had to choose between losing one child and losing another one," said Liony Batista, a project manager for Food for the Poor, an international Christian relief organization.
Sagrario Diaz, a 42-year-old farmer, also struggled to hold on to his son in the surging waters but failed. "I fought, I swear I tried to save him, but I couldn't," Diaz said. "I would like to die."
A neighbor, Lucia Araujo, said she heard the boy scream: "Daddy, I don't want to drown. Help me, I don't want to drown."
At least seven people died in Piedra Blanca, emergency officials said.
About 200 homes were destroyed in the nearby town of Bonao, Batista said.
Dominican President Leonel Fernandez declared a state of emergency for the next 30 days and asked for international help, especially rescue teams and helicopters. He ordered residents in 36 communities to evacuate because they were in potential flood zones.
At least 58,300 Dominicans fled their homes, some 14,500 of which were damaged, said Luis Antonio Luna, head of the Emergencies Commission. He said at least 56 people had died in the Dominican Republic so far. Flooding also forced the evacuation of about 1,000 inmates from a prison north of the Dominican capital.
Luna said officials were trying to reach dozens of isolated communities, but bad weather, a lack of helicopters and damage to bridges and highways slowed rescue efforts.
The southwestern town of San Jose de Ocoa was in a precarious situation, unreachable by air, land or water, Public Works Secretary Victor Diaz Rua said.
"We have been told that the town has a limited food supply, so we're looking for a way in," Diaz said.
In neighboring Haiti, floods rushed through houses in the capital's Cite Soleil slum, carrying away a 3-year-old boy as relatives frantically shouted for help and tried unsuccessfully to reach him through the muddy, debris-filled water.
Two people were killed when their house collapsed in a mudslide in the hillside suburb of Petionville, and at least three others died in Jacmel, where officials said 150 people were trapped on rooftops awaiting aid.
Some Haitian shelters were overwhelmed by evacuees. One in Cite Soleil, guarded by U.N. troops, had one blanket for every two people.
Noel is the deadliest storm in this part of the Caribbean since Tropical Storm Jeanne hit Haiti in 2004, triggering floods and mudslides that killed an estimated 3,000 people.
For the Atlantic region as a whole, Noel is the second deadliest of the 2007 season. Hurricane Felix, a monster Category 5 storm, killed at least 101 people in early September, mostly along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and Honduras.
At 8 p.m. EDT, Noel was centered about 160 miles south-southwest of Nassau, Bahamas, and about 230 miles south-southeast of Miami. Forecasters said the storm had maximum sustained winds of nearly 60 mph and some strengthening was possible during the next 24 hours.
Eastern Cuba got soaked but apparently escaped major damage.
Rough surf warnings were in effect for much of South Florida. Waves were pounding beaches in the Miami area, and residents of a waterfront condominium in South Palm Beach were urged to evacuate after pounding surf destroyed a retaining wall damaged this month in another storm.
The tropical storm watch was issued for about a 140-mile stretch of Florida from just north of the Keys to Jupiter. Meanwhile, wind and waves washed out beaches from the Georgia border to Miami.
In Andros Island, the Bahamian chain's largest, boatowners tied their vessels down and residents secured loose items around their properties as Noel trekked toward the storm-hardened archipelago southeast of Florida.
Michael Stubbs, a government meteorologist, said Noel was expected to be close to hurricane strength when spinning west of northwest Andros Island at about dawn Thursday. It was forecast to veer east, away from the United States, after churning past the northeast Bahamian island of Abaco.
___
Associated Press writers Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Ramon Almanzar in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Jonathan M. Katz in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Will Weissert in Havana and Jessica Robertson in Nassau, Bahamas, contributed to this report.
...
Ok -
what we do know for sure is that
1) people died in Madrid, 3 years ago... and
2) somebody got convicted this week...
Reports seem to differ greatly as to HOW MANY got the proverbial book thrown at them... though!
(See the "comment" twice removed from this one - scroll up for it!)
Court finds 21 guilty of Madrid train bombings
Wed Oct 31, 1:30 PM
By Jane Barrett
MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish court found 21 people guilty of involvement in the 2004 Madrid train bombings but cleared three men of masterminding Europe's deadliest Islamist attack, which killed 191 people.
Victims were shocked by the sentences, which in many cases were much lower than the state attorney had requested and left them without any clearer idea of who dreamed up the attack that ripped apart four commuter trains like tin cans.
Judge Javier Gomez Bermudez sentenced three men -- two Moroccans and a Spaniard who provided the bombers with explosives -- to as many as 42,924 years in prison. Nobody else got more than 23 years and seven people were acquitted.
The high nominal sentences for the three men reflect their conviction on multiple counts, but the figures are academic as Spanish law says nobody can serve more than 40 years in jail.
Relatives of victims were angry at the acquittals and the shorter sentences given to other defendants.
Isabel Presa, who lost her youngest son in one of the explosions, shook as she told journalists of her disgust at what she regarded as lenient sentences.
"I'm not a judge or a lawyer but this is shameful, outrageous," she said before breaking down in tears.
The biggest surprise was that two men originally accused of planning the attack were convicted only of belonging to a terrorist group, not of the Madrid killings.
A third suspected mastermind Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed or "Mohamed the Egyptian" was cleared of all charges. His lawyer in Italy, where he is in jail for belonging to a terrorist group, said he fell on his knees in prayer when he heard the ruling.
"We're very surprised by the acquittal," said Jose Maria de Pablos, spokesman for a victims' association. "If it wasn't them, we have to find out who it was. Somebody gave the order."
Another victims' group said they planned to appeal the ruling. Lawyers have said some of the accused could also appeal.
THREE MAIN CONVICTS
Ten bombs packed into sports bags and detonated by mobile phones tore through the trains on March 11, 2004, leaving the tracks strewn with bodies and injuring more than 1,800 people.
Three weeks later, seven men including two suspected ringleaders of the train bombings blew themselves up in a suburban apartment after police closed in on them. The explosives were the same as were used in the March 11 attack.
They may have taken with them the main evidence of who was behind the attack, which the magistrate who investigated the bombings said was inspired by, but not directed by, al Qaeda.
The court laid most of the charges at the feet of the three men sentenced to thousands of years in prison.
Jamal Zougam was found guilty of belonging to a jihadist terrorist cell and convicted of terrorist murder. He was seen by three witnesses on the trains that blew up.
Fellow Moroccan Othman el Gnaoui was convicted of the same charges and found guilty of helping to get explosives to a house near Madrid where the bombs were prepared. Spaniard Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras was found guilty of providing the explosives in the knowledge they could be used for a terrorist attack.
At the sentences were handed out, the three men sat silently behind bullet-proof glass staring at the judge or the floor.
As he summed up the trial, Judge Gomez Bermudez again said there was no proof Basque separatist rebels ETA had anything to do with the train bombs, despite some media and victims' support groups still insisting there must be some link to them.
The conservative government in power in March 2004 at first pinned the attack on ETA but as more evidence piled up to show it was the work of an Islamist cell, Spain turned against its leaders and voted them out of power three days later.
(Additional reporting by Anna Valderrama, Teresa Larraz, Ben Harding and Phil Stewart in Rome)
WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID ABOUT THIS NEWS STORY
*
Recommending the death penalty to the killers, will not bring the death to live. As an spaniard living in Toronto, I was horrified by the carnage and the massacre of innocent people committed by those fanatics. Nevertheless, it does not warrant a death penalty for the perpetrators.
POSTED BY: Joseph on THU, NOV 01, 2007 01:01 AM -0500
I 'm a chilean living in Montreal I did see the videos from Spain and a hope one the Internatiional comunity will apply death penalty fot this tipe of carnage
POSTED BY: miguel on WED, OCT 31, 2007 10:51 PM -0500
*
I am a Canadian citizen, living in Spain. I was in Spain on the day of the bombings and was horrified by the carnage, shown on the Spanish TV and in the newspapers. It's a shame that Spain does not have the death penalty for premeditated murder, as was this case!
POSTED BY: que pasa on WED, OCT 31, 2007 04:58 PM -0500
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More...
Iran alarmed by mass dolphin deaths
Mon Oct 29, 8:52 AM
TEHRAN (AFP) - The mysterious "mass suicide" of 152 dolphins washed up on Iran's coast over the past month has alarmed environmentalists, with the blame pointed at regional fishing practices, officials said on Monday.
In September, 79 striped dolphins were found washed up near Jask port in southern Iran, and last week another 73 were found dead in the same area.
Pictures of rows of the corpses have been widely featured in Iranian newspapers, which said the dolphins had "committed suicide" -- behaviour the animals have occasionally exhibited in the wild.
"The suicide of dolphins on Jask's coast continues," Iran's state run-newspaper wrote on Saturday. "Locals tried to put the animals back in the water but they refused to return."
Concern over the deaths of these highly intelligent mammals prompted Iran's environmental protection authorities to show reporters the cut and bruised corpse of a dolphin to explain the "suicides".
Mohammad Baqer Nabavi, deputy head of Iran's environmental protection organisation in charge of marine biology, said the most likely explanation was that the dolphins drowned after becoming entangled in fishing nets.
"We are basing our hypothesis for the suicide on fishing -- either nets left at the bottom of the Persian Gulf or the big fishing nets that ships spread to catch different kinds of fish," Nabavi said.
"As you know, they are marine animals but they need to come up to surface and breathe."
It was unlikely that the deaths were caused by pollution, with no traces found in the tissue of the dolphins examined a month ago, he said.
"We did not spot any kind of pollution in their digestive system that could have been caused from eating poisoned fish, and we also have not spotted any viruses or parasites," he said.
Striped dolphins are normally found in temperate and tropical waters.
WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID ABOUT THIS NEWS STORY
*
Sonar causes this. Military?
POSTED BY: jbeaujazzy on THU, NOV 01, 2007 12:59 AM -0500
Man dies before award for false conviction
EDINBURGH, Scotland,
Oct. 31 (UPI) --
A Scottish man who spent 12 years in prison for a killing he did not commit died of a heart attack Tuesday before receiving compensation.
John McManus of the Miscarriages of Justice Organization told The Scotsman he was with Stuart Gair, 44, when he died at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
"Stuart had been waiting for compensation and the whole thing had put him under a lot of strain," he said. "He had suffered dreadfully, and had only just started to get some counseling."
Gair was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of knifing another man in Glasgow in 1989. He was released in 2000 and cleared last year by an appellate court.
The appeals court determined the defense was never told that Brian Morrison, a key witness who put Gair near the scene of the killing, later told police he was trying to get attention. A note attached to prosecution papers, which later came to light, had said "Morrison and his vivid imagination certainly set the police off on the trail of a red herring initially."
Gair might have received as much as $2 million.
© UPI, Headline News
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And I was saving this one
for last...
Dead man loses fingers despite carrying ID
TIRANA (Reuters) - A dead man's fingers were cut off for identification in Albania even though he was carrying identity papers and his killer confessed.
Police confirmed a media report that shocked the family of the victim, who had returned to Albania to marry his fiancee.
"This action was performed by the investigative team not only to identify the corpse, but also to clarify some doubts about the evidence," the Police Science Institute said on Thursday.
It said the removal of fingers was justified when the body was decomposed.
The man's best friend has confessed to killing him in a dispute about money on October 4. The body was found in a marsh by a shepherd eight days later.
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