Pakistani forces hunt bin Laden

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani forces moved into selected areas along their country's border with Afghanistan after satellite-telephone intercepts indicated al Qaeda members were hiding there, security officials said yesterday.
There was no indication al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was involved in the conversations, but two intelligence officials said participants discussed a man referred to as "Sheik" — a code name for bin Laden.
"Some people who were speaking in Arabic have been heard saying, 'Sheik is in good health,' " one of the intelligence officials said.
The conversations took place last year, the official said, but it was not clear when the United States shared its information with Pakistan. The intelligence officials spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Although security officials caution they have no confirmed information on bin Laden's whereabouts, Pakistani rapid-reaction forces have been deployed to specific areas along the border, a mountainous landscape that runs 2,000 miles from the Himalayas in Pakistan's northern territories to the desert of southwestern Baluchistan.
"We are not close to capturing Osama, but all efforts and operations are directed at finding clues about his whereabouts," a senior government official said. "It is a tiring and long process."

posted by Frodgie at 9:01 AM

 

Pentagon Denies Report of Bin Laden Capture

TEHRAN, Iran — Pentagon and Pakistani officials on Saturday denied an Iranian state radio report that Usama bin Laden (search) was captured in Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan "a long time ago."

The claim came at a time when Pakistan's army was hunting Al Qaeda (search) suspects in a remote tribal region along the border with Afghanistan, believed to be a possible hiding place for the Al Qaeda leader.

The report was carried by Iran radio's external Pashtun service, which is designed for listeners in Afghanistan and Pakistan where the language is widely spoken.

Iran state radio's main news channel — the Farsi-language service for Iranian listeners — did not carry the bin Laden report. Iran state television also did not carry the report.

The director of Iran radio's Pashtun service, Asheq Hossein, said he had two sources for the report. The radio quoted its reporter as saying bin Laden had been in custody for a period of time, but a U.S. announcement of the capture was being withheld by President Bush until closer to the November election.

"Usama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election," he said.

There have been reports that military forces believed they had identified bin Laden's general location and had him encircled, but Pakistani officials have denied any specific knowledge of bin Laden's whereabouts.

The state radio report, quoting an unnamed source, said U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's visit to the region this week was in connection with the arrest.

Larry Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman who traveled with Rumsfeld this week to Afghanistan, denied the report. "I don't have any reason to think it's true," he said Saturday.


posted by Frodgie at 8:59 AM

 

U.S.: N. Korea talks successful

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Despite the lack of any significant breakthrough, the United States says six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis exceeded expectations and declared them "very successful."

The North denounced the United States, saying it was not willing to reach a negotiated settlement.

The four-day meeting concluded Saturday with a tentative agreement to meet again in Beijing and a warning from China that "a long and bumpy road still lies ahead."

No date was immediately announced but there was an additional pledge to create lower-level working groups to help find a resolution to the crisis.

However, intensive last minute negotiations were unable to craft a joint statement to round off the talks.

Analysts say the lackluster conclusion provides little evidence that the diplomatic gulf between North Korea and the United States has narrowed at all, despite various reports during the talks of positive progress towards ending the crisis.

China -- which hosted negotiators from North and South Korea, Japan, Russia and the U.S. -- was hard pressed to put a positive spin on the outcome of the talks.

"Some people are disappointed with the outcome of meetings, which was not as substantial as they have expected," Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said. "However, we should highly value efforts made by all sides in this process."


posted by Frodgie at 8:57 AM

 

Hispanics and whites "all look alike to me."

MIAMI — U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown (search) apologized Thursday for remarks she made a day earlier when she said Hispanics and whites "all look alike to me."

Brown made the statement during a Wednesday briefing on Haiti with Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega (search), a Mexican-American, and the Florida congressional delegation. During the meeting, attended by about 30 people, Brown sat across the table from Noriega and launched an attack on President Bush's policy on Haiti (search).

She said Republican leaders were "racist" in their policies toward the Caribbean nation, which is almost entirely black, and called the president's representatives "a bunch of white men."

"I sincerely did not mean to offend Secretary Noriega or anyone in the room. Rather, my comments, as they relate to 'white men,' were aimed at the policies of the Bush administration as they pertain to Haiti, which I do consider to be racist," Brown said in a statement on Thursday.

Brown added that she was offended that the meeting on the crisis in Haiti, led by administration officials, "turned into a diatribe rebuking the Haitian government and the Haitian people. I was personally insulted by the anti-Haiti sentiment brought to the table by the State Department and by Republican members of Congress in attendance," she said.


posted by Frodgie at 6:22 AM

 

Artificial Leg Used Against Owner

Ever want to yank off someone's leg and beat them over the head with it? A Virginia man may have done just that.

Police in Fredericksburg have charged Rodney Prophitt, 27, with pulling off his neighbor's prosthetic limb and then striking him with it, reports The Free Lance-Star.

The whole thing started Wednesday evening when Michael Clapp, 38, found a bottle of medicine missing from his apartment. He immediately suspected Prophitt and went next door to ask him about it.

Prophitt responded by knocking Clapp to the floor, then tugging off Clapp's fake leg and hitting him with it.

"At some point," city police spokesman Jim Shelhorse told the newspaper, "Mr. Clapp was able to grab his leg back, get back to his apartment and call 911."

Clapp went to the hospital with a broken nose. Prophitt was charged with felonious assault and petty larceny. Shelhorse didn't know what kind of medicine was taken or why Clapp had an artificial leg.


posted by Frodgie at 6:21 AM

 

Dems spar -- gently -- over electability, gay marriage, Iraq

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Heading toward next week's Super Tuesday showdown, Sen. John Edwards tried to open a little political daylight between himself and Democratic front-runner Sen. John Kerry in a debate Thursday night.

Edwards touted himself as a more electable Washington outsider better able to change the country's direction and stand up to special interests.

"We come from different places, and we present different choices," Edwards, of North Carolina, said. "Do you believe that change is more likely to be brought about by someone who has spent 20 years in Washington, or by someone who's more of an outsider to this process?"

Responding to Edwards' populist pitch and son-of-a-mill-worker biography, the blue-blooded Kerry retorted that he, too, had the background to be an agent of change, from his service in Vietnam and more than 20 years in political office.


posted by Frodgie at 6:20 AM

 

Doomsday Cult Leader Sentenced to Death

TOKYO — Former doomsday cult guru Shoko Asahara (search) was convicted and sentenced to hang Friday for masterminding the deadly 1995 nerve gas (search) attack on the Tokyo (search) subway and other crimes that killed 27 people and alerted the world to the danger of high-tech terrorism.

Asahara, founder of the apocalyptic Aum Shinrikyo (search) cult, also was found guilty of ordering his followers to produce and stockpile arsenals of conventional and chemical weapons, including the sarin (search) gas used in the subway attack.

Asahara, 48, stood in silence as the sentence was read. Asahara is the 12th person sentenced to hang for the attacks, and the decision was widely expected.

Presiding Judge Shoji Ogawa, who led a four-judge panel, detailed Asahara's crimes before announcing the sentence, saying they expanded from individual murders to "indiscriminate terror attacks using chemical weapons."

"His crimes not only affected families and relatives of the victims but also threw our country and neighboring countries into extreme fear," Ogawa said. "They involved a series of extremely vicious acts that none of us had experienced before."

The former cult leader's attorneys immediately appealed, arguing that prosecutors had ignored testimony showing Asahara was not behind the crimes, said lead defense lawyer Osamu Watanabe. The move will set into motion further legal proceedings that some say could last another decade.

Watanabe added that the defense team would resign after filing the appeal.

The ruling was the climax of a nearly eight-year-long trial. His attorneys had argued that Asahara -- whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto -- had lost control over his flock by the time of the March 20, 1995, subway attack that killed 12 and sickened thousands.


posted by Frodgie at 6:15 AM

 

Haitian refugees' exodus begins...Great.

More than 500 Haitian refugees are being held aboard Coast Guard cutters at sea as the U.S. government girds for a new wave of refugees seeking to cross 600 miles of ocean from the strife-torn nation to America.
Plucked from a dozen boats in the Windward Pass northwest of Haiti, where Haitian boat people historically have begun the treacherous journey to the United States, the refugees were described by U.S. authorities as the first of many who will seek to escape an expected rebel assault on the capital, Port-au-Prince.
More than 70,000 Haitians were intercepted at sea in the three years of violence after a military coup in September 1991, when Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide first was deposed.
The Coast Guard was conducting both air and sea patrols yesterday in the ongoing hunt for Haitian refugees, law-enforcement authorities said. U.S. policy is to send Haitians found at sea back to Haiti.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the Senate Budget Committee yesterday that he and President Bush were working for a political solution in Haiti, but continued to be concerned about a "spurt in the number of people" attempting to escape by boat.

posted by Frodgie at 6:12 AM

 

Terrorism on Trial

THE HAGUE — A light snow was falling on the International Court of Justice in the Hague, an imposing building in a fenced, park-like setting. TV cameras perched on the front lawn as hundreds of demonstrators, gathered in front of the blackened shell of an Israeli municipal bus and read aloud the names of 935 Israelis, mostly noncombatant citizens — Christians, Druze, and Muslims, as well as Jews — who have been murdered in the last two years in attacks by terrorists in Israel's public places.

Not far away, another rally was forming in another park with knots of demonstrators toting Palestinian flags and signs saying, "Boycott Israel." One middle-aged white man in a surplus military jacket, decorated in Pentel-scrawled peace signs, wore a red-and-white-checkered Arafat scarf around his neck and every few minutes shouted: "Jews are Nazis." Dutch riot police kept the groups apart.

Inside the court itself, 15 judges rustled self-importantly in black robes and white doily-like ascots, listening to oral argument from the Palestinian Authority and the Conference of Islamic States as to why Israel should not be allowed to build a security fence. The Arabs called it "a Berlin Wall" and an "apartheid wall," as if Israel's right to protect itself from crazed attacks that rain death on small children and old ladies on buses or slaughter teenagers on crowded dance floors or separate people from their limbs and their lives in fast-food restaurants is no different from Germans killing their own citizens for trying to escape from Communist oppression or white South Africans separating people by race. To further offend decency, some also are calling the fence "a 'Holocaust' wall."

posted by Frodgie at 6:10 AM

 

N. Korea Proposes to Halt Nuke Program

BEIJING — A Chinese government spokesman said on Thursday that North Korea (search) has proposed "the comprehensive stopping of nuclear activities," adding new momentum to delicate six-way talks on Pyongyang's (search) nuclear programs.

He said the details were still being discussed among the six nations meeting in the Chinese capital.

The apparent progress came a day after South Korea (search) offered the North a conditional compensation package that officials said included energy aid for the power-starved country.

The development appeared to be the most significant breakthrough since the stalemate between Washington and Pyongyang began in October 2002. Russia said, however, that a "gap" remained before the standoff could be solved fully.

"The various parties welcomed the proposition from the North Korean side for the comprehensive stopping of nuclear activities," Chinese spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a briefing.

"As for the details and specific arrangements for stopping the nuclear activities, it is still being discussed among the various parties," he said.

His comments came just after the official Xinhua News Agency cited Alexander Losyukov, head of the Russian delegation and his country's deputy foreign minister, as saying North Korea showed "readiness" to abolish its nuclear weapons program.

posted by Frodgie at 6:27 AM

 

Macedonia leader killed in crash

SKOPJE, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski has been killed in a plane crash in a mountainous region of southeastern Bosnia.

Bosnian rescue teams found wreckage of the aircraft Thursday morning near the village of Pitulja, Vlatko Djordjev, an official with the president's political party, said. There were no survivors.

The plane carrying Trajkovski, 47, was described by Macedonian officials as an ageing executive jet with nine people aboard.

Government sources said air traffic controllers lost radio contact with it during poor weather conditions. The aircraft disappeared from radar at about 9 a.m. (0800 GMT) Thursday over southeastern Bosnia, near the city of Stolac, Andrej Lepavcov, the president's chief of staff, said.

Trajkovski was flying to the Bosnian city Mostar for an international investment conference. The area where the plane disappeared from radar is about 20 miles (32 km) southeast of Mostar.

Early condolences came from Dublin, where Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was meeting with a visiting Macedonian government delegation that was presenting an official application to join the European Union.


posted by Frodgie at 6:26 AM

 

Big Turnout for 'Passion' Opening

NEW YORK — Mel Gibson's (search) controversial new film "The Passion of the Christ" opened across the nation on Ash Wednesday amidst great fanfare, debate and emotion.

Many of the more than 3,000 theaters showing the R-rated movie reported that Wednesday's screenings were sold out. Some theaters even had early-morning showtimes.

Numerous filmgoers emerged from seeing "The Passion of the Christ" (search) with puffy, red eyes from crying. Some were still weeping when they got outside.

"It's a little bit more brutal than you would think," said a sobbing Kim Galbreath, 29, as she left a theater in the Dallas suburb of Plano. "I mean, there were times when you felt like it was too much. But I dare anybody not to believe after watching it."

One woman in East Wichita, Kan., collapsed during the movie and died a short while later at a nearby hospital, the local television station KAKE News reported on its Web site.

Audience members at the Warren Theatre East said the woman, in her 50s, collapsed during the segment of the film depicting Christ's crucifixion, reported KAKE, an ABC affiliate. Nurses watching the movie administered CPR, according to the TV station.

The woman was pronounced dead shortly thereafter at a hospital in Wichita, the KAKE Web site said.

Funded and directed by Gibson, the $30 million film has received decidedly mixed reviews from critics and the public alike. Some have praised Gibson's total commitment to his subject: The Oscar-winning filmmaker says the movie is both an attempt to faithfully render the Gospels and a personal vision. Others see it as excessively bloody, obsessed with cruelty and unfair in its portrayal of Jews.

posted by Frodgie at 6:25 AM

 

Anheuser-Busch's top-secret data network tracks inventory

When Dereck Gurden pulls up at one of his customers' stores -- 7-Eleven, Buy N Save, or one of dozens of liquor marts and restaurants in the 800-square-mile territory he covers in California's Central Valley -- managers usually stop what they're doing and grab a notepad.

Toting his constant companion, a brick-size handheld PC, the 41-year-old father of three starts his routine.

"First I'll scroll through and check the accounts receivable, make sure everything's current," he says. "Then it'll show me an inventory screen with a four-week history. I can get past sales, package placements -- facts and numbers on how much of the sales they did when they had a display in a certain location."

After chatting up his customer, Gurden "walks the store, inputting what I see."

What he sees, that is, about his competitors' product displays, which goes into the handheld too. "It's no extra work to get the competitive info," he says. "You always want to walk the store."


posted by Frodgie at 6:22 AM

 

Unparalleled Passion

Our cultural Jesus, Stephen Prothero argues in his just released book, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, is an "other-directed" personality type, eager to please whatever constituency will have him. Instead of the man of sorrows bearing a cross, we have the smiling, winking "Buddy Christ" who gives America a big thumbs-up in the 1999 film Dogma. The latest entry in the Jesus genre — Mel Gibson's controversial and stunning The Passion of the Christ — hits theaters today, on Ash Wednesday. In its style and themes, Gibson's depiction of the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is a complete revolution of the genre. The Passion casts out the demon of sentimentality that has always haunted Hollywood films about Christ.

"Cheesy epics" with "corny" acting and "bad hair or really bad music" is the way Gibson describes classical Hollywood depictions of the life of Jesus. By contrast, The Passion of the Christ, in Aramaic and Latin with scenes of such intense violence that it has received an R-rating, is unlike anything in the history of American film. Indeed, it is even something of a departure from the Gospel accounts of Christ's passion, which are remarkably restrained and laconic in their depiction of the precise details of his suffering. We are told that he was scourged, mocked with a crown of thorns, forced to carry a cross, and then crucified. Even most traditional icons of Christ crucified or Michelangelo's Pieta, which depicts Mary holding her dead son's body, provoke a sense of awe at their beauty, not the horror that makes us want to look away.

posted by Frodgie at 6:16 AM

 

Mel passionate about pic's positive message

On the eve of the opening of his provocative movie "The Passion of the Christ," a stoic Mel Gibson (news) said he was "staggered" by the amount of controversy surrounding the pic, but was adamant that the final cut closely mirrored his original vision for the project.

"I was astounded at the potency of it," he said matter-of-factly of the movie.

The pic, which is in Aramaic and Latin, opens on an impressive 4,600 screens in 3,000 venues today, on a par with openings for major Hollywood blockbusters. Whatever the high public awareness, Gibson said he would stay out of the controversy over its alleged anti-Semitism and graphic violence --- unless he thought his involvement would ease the tensions.

"I didn't expect the ferocity of controversy. Religious themes do hit a nerve, but I didn't know I'd cut a main artery," he told "Sunday Morning Shootout" hosts Peter Bart and Peter Guber during Tuesday's taping of an upcoming edition of the AMC cable show.

Appearing relaxed and reflective, Gibson professed being "a fiscal imbecile" in not having planned the marketing or done anything unusual to promote the movie, though he did admit it was inevitable that his production company Icon and distribbery Newmarket would take advantage of the momentum.


posted by Frodgie at 6:14 AM

 

Bush urges amendment on marriage

President Bush yesterday urged the prompt passage of a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman, and stop attempts in several states to sanction homosexual "marriages."
"If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America," Mr. Bush said in a statement delivered in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
Mr. Bush stopped short of endorsing the language in a constitutional amendment offered by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave and Sen. Wayne Allard, both Colorado Republicans, which White House spokesman Scott McClellan said this month "reflects the principles that he could support."
The president's likely Democratic rival in November, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, quickly denounced any amendment as "toying with United States Constitution for political purposes" and said that if given the chance, he would vote against it in the Senate.
"All Americans should be concerned when a president who is in political trouble tries to tamper with the Constitution of the United States at the start of his re-election campaign," Mr. Kerry said yesterday.
For now, there is no set schedule for either the House or Senate even to debate an amendment, in part because Republicans can't agree on what the amendment should say.

posted by Frodgie at 6:20 AM

 

Kerry Wins Utah, Idaho and Hawaii

CLEVELAND — Fresh from three more easy victories in the Democratic presidential race, John Kerry (search) looked to a fight with President Bush over jobs lost to foreign countries.

Kerry defeated Sen. John Edwards (search) by large margins in Utah and Idaho, and also won in Hawaii, where Edwards ran third. That gave Kerry 18 wins in 20 contests.

The two leading candidates bypassed the three states to focus on the huge delegate prizes at stake when 10 states vote next week on Super Tuesday.

Two weeks after the president's chief economic adviser described the shipping of American jobs abroad as "just a new way of doing international trade," Kerry was announcing his plan to address that situation.

Although Kerry frequently tells audiences that no president can stop companies from leaving the country, the Massachusetts senator said he will require companies that ship jobs offshore to disclose their plans to the government.

"Companies will no longer be able to surprise their workers with a pink slip instead of a paycheck -- they will be required to give workers three months notice if their jobs are being exported offshore," Kerry said in a speech prepared for delivery Wednesday in Toledo, where he also was picking up an endorsement from former astronaut and retired Sen. John Glenn (search).

Kerry said that during the three years Bush has been in office, 270,000 workers have lost their jobs in Ohio, site of one of the 10 nominating contests on Super Tuesday. He is looking for a decisive victory that day to bring an end to the campaign of his last remaining major rival, Edwards.

Kerry was spending Wednesday in Ohio and Minnesota, and was to launch a new campaign ad in the Buckeye State in which he describes Bush's economic policy as "an astonishing failure" and promises to protect U.S. jobs. The commercial, which also was to run in upstate New York, was meant to soften criticism of Kerry's vote for a free-trade pact as he campaigns in states that have been hit hard by job losses.


posted by Frodgie at 6:20 AM

 

Is the low-carb backlash beginning?

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona (Reuters) -- U.S. foodmakers are scrambling to satisfy consumer clamorings for low-carbohydrate products but also see a move toward more balanced eating that could spell doom for the strictest low-carb diets, like Atkins.

At an industry conference last week in Scottsdale, Arizona, companies including Kellogg Co. and Hershey Foods Corp. touted products such as low-carb cereals and chocolate bars catering to the millions of Americans following diets that eschew carbohydrates like bread, sugar and pasta in favor of high-protein foods and those made with sugar alternatives.

But even as they push these new products, companies which have been hurt by the backlash against carbohydrates expect consumers will soon back off the more extreme low-carb diets due to growing concerns about their intake of artery-clogging fat and cholesterol.

Recent studies have put the number of Americans following low-carb diets at anywhere from 10 million to 24 million.

"Everything in moderation is ultimately where all these things lead to," said Douglas Conant, chief executive of Campbell Soup Co. "These diets become fad-like and take on lives of their own ... and typically they are not sustainable."

The Atkins diet, which tells followers they may eat liberal amounts of bacon, eggs, cream and other high-fat products, is widely considered to be the most extreme low-carb diet.


posted by Frodgie at 6:19 AM

 

Time for the counterrevolution

Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, has given America an object lesson in how the Left imposes its radical social revolution on a confused majority that knows not how to fight it.

Out on Sodom by the Bay, Newsom, in defiance of a law enacted by California voters two-to-one in a referendum, ordered city officials to hand out marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Newsom says that the law violates the state constitution. For his civil disobedience, he has become a hero to militant homosexuals all the way to Provincetown. His defiance has spread to New Mexico and Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley has declared his solidarity.

Where did Newsom get his idea? Perhaps from Massachusetts, where the Supreme Judicial Court has ordered Gov. Romney and the legislature to start handing out marriage licenses to homosexuals by May.

Civil unions do not meet our demand, the court told Bay State elected leaders. You must vote homosexuals absolute and equal rights to marry. Now stop dithering and get on with it.

What is happening here in America is an end run around democracy by an elite that believes its superior morality places it above the law. First, the Left engages in defiance and disobedience of a law it detests, then it goes judge-shopping to find some jurist-ideologue who will agree and overturn the law. And thus does the minority rule America.

Yet, seeing the smug certitude of Newsom, and the befuddlement of the authorities, there is no doubt who is winning the culture war and who will prevail if Middle America does not find leaders of greater fiber. We live in an age, wrote the poet Yeats, when "the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity."


posted by Frodgie at 6:14 AM

 

Public Can Finally See Gibson's 'Passion'

Now, at last, the viewing public gets to decide if Mel Gibson's vision of Jesus' final hours is a blood-soaked failure or artistic and spiritual genius.

"The Passion of the Christ" officially opens in 2,800 theaters Wednesday, Ash Wednesday in the traditional church calendar, after months of intense interfaith debate over its portrayal of Jews and R-rated violence. Already, church groups anxious to get a peek at Gibson's crucifixion epic have been seeing the film in private showings.

And the heartfelt discussion over whether the movie focuses too much on Jews as responsible for Jesus' torture and death continued Tuesday at a meeting in Los Angeles. Jewish and evangelical Christian leaders agreed to disagree about the film, and said their respect for each other would survive regardless of the movie.

Gibson's "personal embellishment of the Gospels" denigrates "the masses of Jews who were not followers of Jesus," said Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.


posted by Frodgie at 6:12 AM

 

Iran 'bought foreign nuke parts'

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- As part of its nuclear program, Iran received parts from other countries, according to a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry.

The official made the comment amid increasing scrutiny on Tehran's secret nuclear program.

Hamid Reza Assefi would not say from what country the parts came, nor would he disclose what type of parts were brought in.

"We purchased some parts from some dealers, but we don't know what was the source or which country they came from," he said Sunday. "It happened that some of the dealers were from some subcontinent countries."

That comment matched those of his boss, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi, who told CNN last month that Tehran dealt with the black market for its nuclear equipment.

"We don't know where they (parts) come from. That is the nature of black market," he told CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour. "Those middlemen when they furnish with some spare parts, they don't know, they don't declare where those spare parts have come from."

Last Friday, a Malaysian police report said a Dubai-based businessman, B.S.A. Tahir, confessed to being one of the middlemen helping Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan transfer Pakistan's nuclear technology to Iran and Libya.

Tahir -- who has residency status in Malaysia -- said Khan sold nuclear parts to Iran for about $3 million in cash, and he served as the middleman in the deal. (Malaysia clears 'dealer')

According to Tahir's account, Iran paid Khan cash transported in two briefcases and left in Khan's apartment in Dubai. The arrangement happened in 1995, Tahir said, shortly after he started his involvement with the Pakistani nuclear expert.

posted by Frodgie at 6:20 AM

 

Pakistan Launches Fresh Al Qaeda, Taliban Hunt

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani forces backed by helicopters and paramilitary troops launched an operation to capture fugitive Al Qaeda (search) and Taliban (search) suspects in remote border areas Tuesday, sweeping through villages in a region where Usama bin Laden (search) is believed to be hiding.

Two intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that at least two homes were leveled and as many as 20 people had been taken into custody, including three foreign women. Authorities were not immediately available to confirm the reports.

The searches near the town of Wana, just a few miles from the border with Afghanistan, began after dawn, as paramilitary and army troops moved into areas where the fugitives are believed to have taken refuge among local tribes.

"An operation has begun near Wana," said Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. "That's all that I can tell you."

Paramilitary forces in recent days have boosted security in the lawless border region in Pakistan's ultraconservative North West Frontier Province. Authorities insist bin Laden is not the military's immediate target.

On Monday, senior government officials said that the head of the CIA visited Pakistan last month to discuss the hunt for bin Laden as well as ways to fight nuclear proliferation.

"Both sides shared views and information," an intelligence official, familiar with the talks between CIA Director George Tenet (search) and Pakistani intelligence officials, told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad declined to comment and the Foreign Ministry refused to confirm that Tenet had visited.


posted by Frodgie at 6:15 AM

 

Marines touch down in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Fifty U.S. Marines streamed into the capital of Haiti yesterday to protect the U.S. Embassy and its staff, while government loyalists set flaming barricades to block the road from rebels threatening to move on Port-au-Prince.
The United States made last-ditch efforts at finding a political solution. As an opposition coalition was on the brink of rejecting a U.S.-backed peace plan because it did not call for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell phoned opposition politicians and asked them to delay their formal response for 24 hours.
Evans Paul, a leading opposition member who was once allied with Mr. Aristide, said the coalition agreed the extra time "will perhaps give Mr. Powell a little more time to consider his position ... and give us the assurances we need" on Mr. Aristide's departure.
Frightened Cabinet ministers were asking friends for places to hide, senior government sources said, a day after the rebels attacked two police stations outside the capital and seized Haiti's second-largest city, Cap-Haitien, with little resistance.
In Cap-Haitien, rebels hunted down militants loyal to Mr. Aristide, accusing them of terrorizing the population in the days before the fall of the northern port city of 500,000.
"I am a brick mason, I didn't do anything wrong," Jean-Bernard Prevalis, 33, pleaded as he was dragged away, his head bleeding.
"We're going to clean the city of all 'chimeres,' " said rebel Dieusauver Magustin, 26. Chimere, which means ghost, is used to describe hard-core Aristide militants.
It was not clear what would happen to those detained. One rebel said they were saving them from lynching. But another, Claudy Philippe, said, "The people show us the [chimere] houses. If they are there, we execute them."

posted by Frodgie at 6:12 AM

 

An index of American decline

Sen. John Edwards did not win Wisconsin, but he closed a huge gap with John Kerry with astonishing speed in the final week.

The issue propelling Edwards was jobs, the lost jobs under George Bush, and Edwards' attribution of blame for the losses on NAFTA and the trade deals for which John Kerry voted in Congress.

Edwards has plugged into an issue that could cost Bush his presidency. Indeed, Kerry's sudden conversion into fiery critic of trade deals for which he himself voted suggests that he senses not only his vulnerability on Super Tuesday, but his opportunity in the fall.

For a precise measure of what this issue is about, one can do no better than to consult Charles McMillion of MGB Services here. Each February, McMillion methodically pulls together from the Bureau of Labor Statistics his grim annual index of the decline and fall of the greatest industrial republic the world had ever seen.

Since Bush's inauguration, 2.8 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have simply vanished. By industry, the job losses are heaviest in computers, where 28 percent of all the manufacturing jobs that existed when Bush took office are gone, semiconductors where we have lost 37 percent, and communications equipment, where jobs losses have reached 39 percent in just three years.

One in three textile and apparel jobs has disappeared, and the losses continue to run at the rate of 100,000 jobs a year. This helps to explain Edwards' rout of Kerry in South Carolina.

With the markets soaring, the Bush recovery is being called a jobless recovery. Not so. We are creating millions of jobs overseas – even as we are destroying manufacturing jobs at a rate of 77,000 per month in the United States.

posted by Frodgie at 6:11 AM

 

Forecast of Rising Oil Demand Challenges Tired Saudi Fields

hen visitors tour the headquarters of Saudi Arabia's oil empire — a sleek glass building rising from the desert in Dhahran near the Persian Gulf — they are reminded of its mission in a film projected on a giant screen. "We supply what the world demands every day," it declares.

For decades, that has largely been true. Ever since its rich reserves were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi Arabia has pumped the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs, becoming the mainstay of the global energy markets.

But the country's oil fields now are in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy the world's thirst for oil in coming years.

Energy forecasts call for Saudi Arabia to almost double its output in the next decade and after. Oil executives and government officials in the United States and Saudi Arabia, however, say capacity will probably stall near current levels, potentially creating a significant gap in the global energy supply.

Outsiders have not had access to detailed production data from Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, for more than 20 years. But interviews in recent months with experts on Saudi oil fields provided a rare look inside the business and suggested looming problems.

An internal Saudi Aramco plan, the experts said, estimates total production capacity in 2011 at 10.15 million barrels a day, about the current capacity. But to meet expected world demand, the United States Department of Energy's research arm says Saudi Arabia will need to produce 13.6 million barrels a day by 2010 and 19.5 million barrels a day by 2020.

"In the past, the world has counted on Saudi Arabia," one senior Saudi oil executive said. "Now I don't see how long it can be maintained."

Saudi Arabia, the leading exporter for three decades, is not running out of oil. Industry officials are finding, however, that it is becoming more difficult or expensive to extract it. Today, the country produces about eight million barrels a day, roughly one-tenth of the world's needs. It is the top foreign supplier to the United States, the world's leading energy consumer.

Fears of a future energy gap could, of course, turn out to be unfounded. Predictions of oil market behavior have often proved wrong.

But if Saudi production falls short, industry experts say the consequences could be significant. Other large producers, like Russia and Iraq, do not have Saudi Aramco's huge reserves or excess oil capacity to export, and promising new fields elsewhere are not expected to deliver enough oil to make up the difference.


posted by Frodgie at 6:09 AM

 

U.S. search for bin Laden intensifies

The Pentagon is moving elements of a supersecret commando unit from Iraq to the Afghanistan theater to step up the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
A Defense Department official said there are two reasons for repositioning parts of Task Force 121: First, most high-value human targets in Iraq, including Saddam Hussein, have been caught or killed. Second, intelligence reports are increasing on the whereabouts of bin Laden, the terror leader behind the September 11 attacks.
"Iraq has become more of a policing problem than a hunt for high-value Iraqis," the defense official said. "Afghanistan is the place where 121 can do more."
Task forces typically change names when they move, so it is likely that the commando unit arriving in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region will take a new name.
Task Force 121 is a mix of Army Delta Force soldiers and Navy SEALs, transported on helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The SEALs and soldiers are based at Joint Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, N.C.

posted by Frodgie at 6:25 AM

 

Kirkuk car bomb kills 6, wounds 35

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A car bomb attack on a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk early Monday killed six people and wounded 35 others, including some Iraqi police officers, a representative of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division said. Police said dozens have been killed or injured.

The blast came on the same day that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made an unannounced visit to Baghdad, where he praised Iraqis who have stepped forward to maintain security in their nation. Security was tight for Rumsfeld's visit.

In the Kirkuk blast, an explosives-laden white Oldsmobile crashed through the front gates of the police compound, detonating inside the courtyard but before reaching the station itself, the 4th ID said. The attack took place about 8:45 a.m. (12:45 a.m. ET) in a Kurdish section of the city.

A U.S. quick reaction force is on the scene, but Iraqi police are taking the lead in the case, American military officials said.

Attacks in the past have targeted large gatherings of Iraqis, resulting in high numbers of dead and injured. Police stations in Iraq have been frequently targeted.

Meanwhile, forensic investigators in the United States say identical technology appears to have been adopted in bombs used in terror attacks on various continents in recent years.

The newly formed federal government team told Congress such bombings, including the May attack in Riyadh and the blast at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad last August, appear to have been taken from the same playbook with apparent design similarities.


posted by Frodgie at 6:24 AM

 

Conjoined twins high-five, dance after surgery

NEW YORK (AP) -- A day after their riskiest operation yet, two Filipino brothers joined at the tops of their heads greeted doctors with high-fives and a little dance Saturday.

Surgeons at Montefiore Medical Center said the 22-month-old brothers' liveliness following Friday's surgery was a sign they are still on course for surgery to fully separate them later this year.

"It's just incredibly moving to see that after this tremendous and delicate operation they're up and breathing on their own," said Dr. David Staffenberg after looking in on Carl and Clarence Aguirre.

The 5 1/2-hour surgery -- the boys' third major operation -- was treacherous and included such challenges as having to separate bone from blood vessels and trying not to damage delicate veins.

Staffenberg, Montefiore's chief of pediatric neurosurgery, said Carl performed a "wiggle dance" and Clarence offered his "usual shtick," which Dr. James Goodrich, the lead neurosurgeon, said included a high-five.

Doctors said it would be 72 hours before the main threat of bleeding and seizures passed.

Still, the doctors seemed relieved to have completed the tricky operation, during which one major shared vein and some smaller ones were divided. Had the major vein been punctured, the boys could have bled to death in minutes, Goodrich said.


posted by Frodgie at 6:24 AM

 

Defining the Domestic Role of the Military

WASHINGTON — Amidst calls to use the military to fight the war on terrorism at home, some experts warn that allowing the military to perform a domestic role would set a dangerous precedent, put civilians at unnecessary risk and threaten Americans' basic civil liberties.

"The military has been so impressive abroad that in many ways, it's not surprising that some people think it could be equally effective at fighting the war at home," said Gene Healy, senior editor at the Cato Institute (search).

But, Healy added, those people could find themselves sadly mistaken.

"A free society is not a militarized society. It is a society where law enforcement is the duty of civilians and any effort to change that ought to meet a very heavy burden of proof," he said.

A number of politicians have been talking about making such a change. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., have been calling for a militarization of America's borders.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has called for reviewing the Posse Comitatus Act (search), which restricts the domestic role of the military. Other administration officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge have made similar suggestions. Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, head of the new Northern Command, which oversees all military forces in America, has also called for a fresh review.

Enacted in 1878, Posse Comitatus originally referred to a sheriff's common law power to call on the male population of a county to enforce the laws. The act bars law enforcement officials from calling on military personnel for that purpose.


posted by Frodgie at 6:21 AM

 

'This is war,' Rumsfeld told Bush

Donald H. Rumsfeld sat in a vault-like room studded with video screens and talked with President Bush as the Pentagon burned.
"This is not a criminal action," the secretary of defense told Bush over a secure line. "This is war."
The word "war" meant more than going after the al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan, the fault line of terrorism. Bush said he wanted retaliation.
The setting was the Pentagon's Executive Support Center, where Rumsfeld held secure video teleconferences with the White House across the Potomac or with ground commanders 10,000 miles away.
The time was 1:02 p.m., less than four hours after terrorists steered American Flight 77 into the Pentagon's southwest wall.
Rumsfeld at first had dashed to the impact site. In his shirt and tie, he helped transport the wounded.
Finally convinced to leave the scene, Rumsfeld entered the closely guarded ESC, where whiffs of burned rubble penetrated the ventilation system. The video monitor in front of him was blank, but there was an audio connection with the president at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
Rumsfeld's instant declaration of war, previously unreported, took America from the Clinton administration's view that terrorism was a criminal matter to the Bush administration's view that terrorism was a global enemy to be destroyed.

posted by Frodgie at 6:17 AM

 

Bush has the foreign-policy record America needs.

Here's an idea for Bush campaign ad:

Scene: Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and their cronies are in their cave, eating popcorn. The cave is dimly illuminated by the light of a television set.

They're watching a clip from the Wisconsin Democratic debate.

Questioner: Senator Kerry, President Bush described himself as a war president. He said he's got war on his mind as he considers these policies and decisions he has to make. If you were elected, would you see yourself as a war president?

Kerry: "I'd see myself first of all as a jobs president, as a health care president, as an education president and also an environmental president.... So I would see myself as a very different kind of global leader than George Bush."

Cut to Osama and Mullah Omar high-fiving each other, throwing the popcorn up in the air. One henchman in the background is grinning while waving a "Kerry for President" banner.
Fade to black.

Raise text: Reelect George W. Bush. The right man at the right time.

Now, I have no idea if it's a good political commercial or not. But it's the sort of commercial I'd like to see. And if John Kerry and George W. Bush have their way, I probably will. The president insists he's "looking forward" to a debate on his handling of foreign policy. And Senator Kerry says constantly, "If the White House wants to make this election about national security, I have three words they understand: 'Bring, it, on!"

Despite Kerry's instinctual condescension — "I have three words they understand" — I'm delighted he's so adamant.

Because for the first time since 1988, foreign-policy is an issue. In 2000, the distinction between Gore and Bush was blurry. George Bush opposed nation-building and advocated a "humble" foreign policy. And Gore was a "hawk" in an administration that conducted a war against a dictator (Slobodan Milosevic) without U.N. support and without any "imminent threat" to provoke him.


posted by Frodgie at 6:15 AM