Prosecutors said student was a threat

ATLANTA — A former Georgia Tech student was a budding terrorist who took choppy videos of potential targets in Washington, D.C., hoped to join the Taliban and desperately tried to prove himself to jihadist groups overseas, prosecutors said Monday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert McBurney argued Syed Haris Ahmed, shown above, was "one step removed from the bomb-throwers.” Monday marked the beginning of Ahmed’s federal trial on charges he conspired to aid a terrorist group. He may face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

Defense attorney Jack Martin countered the allegations were exaggerated against Ahmed, 24.

Martin has argued that investigators have no evidence Ahmed, a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, has committed terrorist act.

Prosecutors say Ahmed made videos with Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, a U.S. citizen who grew up near Atlanta. Sadequee has also pleaded not guilty, and his trial is set for August.



by the associated press

Pakistanis wants students’ safety

ISLAMABAD — Taliban militants ambushed a convoy of vehicles carrying at least 400 students, staff and relatives from a boys’ school Monday, taking possibly hundreds captive in northwestern Pakistan, officials said.

Police were negotiating for the captives’ release following the abductions. The attack was part of a string of militant actions in Pakistan’s tribal belt that the army believes is partly aimed at distracting the military from its offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley. The militants were said to be armed with rockets, grenades and automatic weapons.

Details were still emerging early today about what exactly happened in North Waziristan. Originally as many as 500 people were believed to have been abducted, but about 200 students were later found to be safe.

Police official Meer Sardar said the abduction occurred about 20 miles from Razmak Cadet College. The victims were leaving the school area after they were warned to get out in a telephone call from a man they believed to be a political official, Sardar said, citing accounts from a group of 17 who managed to flee the Taliban.

Media, however, reported that the group was leaving because their school vacation had started.

About 30 buses, cars and other vehicles were carrying the students, staff and others when they were stopped along the road by a large group of gunmen in their own vehicles, according to a school employee who was among those who escaped. The school employee said the vehicle he was riding in happened to be behind a truck on the road and thus it was less visible and able to slip away unnoticed.




by the associated press

Woman’s abduction hoax causes outrage among blacks

PHILADELPHIA — It’s an old lie, claiming that The Black Man Did It.

But it was trotted out again last week when a white mother from suburban Philadelphia said two black men snatched her and her 9-year-old daughter from their SUV and abducted them in the trunk of a black Cadillac.

Blacks across the country were outraged after Bonnie Sweeten was found in a luxury hotel at Disney World. Authorities quickly unraveled the hoax, but not before an Amber Alert, frantic searches and national news coverage that played into images of marauding black men.

Racial boundaries are slowly dissolving in America, with President Barack Obama the most obvious example.

Yet Sweeten’s story, plus the killing of a black New York City police officer by a white officer days later, was a reminder that old ideas remain burned into many minds both black and white.

Sweeten’s story has provoked an outpouring of discussion among blacks, everywhere from doctor’s offices to blogs. Syndicated radio host Warren Ballentine said his listeners are "furious, and they’re disgusted. … On a scale of one to 10, it’s a 15.”

"Their hope was that by Obama becoming president, the rest of America would take a look at black Americans and look at us for who we are and not what a stereotype is,” Ballentine said.

The Black Man Did It lie last made news as recently as October, when a John McCain volunteer claimed a 6-foot-4 black man carved a B into her cheek (For Barack, evidently). Charles Stuart told it in 1989 after he killed his wife in Boston. Susan Smith told it when she drowned her sons in 1994 in South Carolina. Unknown numbers of black men were hanged for it back when lynching was a common practice in the South.

Sweeten is free on $1 million bail, facing misdemeanor charges of identity theft and false reporting.



by the associated press

What was Slaying suspect’s motive

WICHITA, Kan. — A man suspected of fatally shooting abortion doctor George Tiller was in jail Monday while investigators sought to learn more about his background, including his possible connections to anti-abortion groups.

Tiller, 67, was shot Sunday in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, police said. The gunman fired one shot at Tiller and threatened two other people who tried to stop him.

The suspect, identified by one law enforcement agency as Scott Roeder, was arrested about 170 miles away in a Kansas City suburb about three hours after the shooting.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston indicated the state has 48 hours to charge anyone who is in custody and said she planned to take the full two days to decide. She said any charges would be filed in state court.

Also, a law enforcement official said investigators have searched two homes as part of the inquiry into Tiller’s killing. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation, said the homes are in Merriam, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo. The official did not know what turned up during the searches.

Roeder’s former wife, Lindsey Roeder, said he had lived at a house in Merriam but moved out months ago and was currently living in the Westport area of Kansas City. His brother, David Roeder, told The Topeka Capital-Journal newspaper the family is "shocked, horrified and filled with sadness at the death of Dr. Tiller” and the possible involvement of their relative.

He said his sibling suffered from mental illness at times in his life.


No bail allowed
Scott Roeder, 51, was returned to Wichita and was being held without bail on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
The U.S. Marshals Service said that as a result of Tiller’s shooting, Attorney General Eric Holder had ordered it to "increase security for a number of individuals and facilities.” It gave no details.

Tiller’s clinic is under federal protection. He last had protection from marshals in 2001. Tiller and other doctors received such protection at different times in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, a man with the same name as the suspect has a criminal record and a background of anti-abortion postings on sympathetic Web sites.

But police said all early indications showed the shooter acted alone.




by the associated press

Search for Air France jet

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 1 (UPI) -- French and Brazilian military aircraft and ships searched the Atlantic Ocean Monday for wreckage of a missing Air France jetliner with 228 people on board.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said chances of finding survivors from the missing Air France jetliner with 216 passengers and 12 crew aboard were "very low," CNN reported.

"This is a catastrophe the likes of which Air France has never seen before," Sarkozy told reporters at Paris' Charles de Gaulle International Airport, where he had met with relatives of the missing aboard the flight from Rio de Janeiro. "I said the truth to them: the prospects of finding survivors are very low."

Officials said the vastness of the search area and the uncertainty about the time when the Airbus 330-200 went down complicated search-and-rescue efforts, The Guardian said. Brazilian teams concentrated on an area north of Fernando de Noronha, an island about 200 miles off the Brazilian coast, while the French military combed the west Atlantic near the Cape Verde islands hundreds of miles away.

Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, Air France chief executive officer, said search teams also would focus on an area of a few dozen nautical miles roughly midway between Brazil and Africa, the British newspaper said. French officials also asked the U.S. for satellite data to help with the search.

The plane likely was the victim of a "huge catastrophe," Gourgeon said, adding that electrical problems and turbulence also were reported.

The jet had sent out a warning it had lost pressure, the Brazilian Air Force said. It lost contact with air traffic control between Galeao International Airport in Rio de Janeiro and the destination airport in Paris, Air France said.

The plane sent out an automatic signal warning of the electrical problems as it flew "far from the coast" after entering a stormy area with strong turbulence, an Air France spokeswoman said.

Air France said 61 passengers were French and 58 were Brazilians, the BBC reported. Brazilian authorities said 26 Germans were on board, along with nine Chinese, nine Italians, six Swiss, five British, five Lebanese, four Hungarians, three Irish, three Norwegians, three Slovaks, two Americans, two Moroccans and individuals from Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Demark, the Netherlands, Estonia, the Philippines, The Gambia, Iceland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Sweden and Turkey, the BBC said.

The nationalities and other details of the 12 crew members were not available, the BBC said.


from upi.com

Israel turns-down loyalty proposal

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government on Sunday threw out a proposal aimed at minority Arabs to require an oath of loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state or risk losing their citizenship, dealing a blow to the country’s ultranationalist foreign minister, who spearheaded the proposal.

Avigdor Lieberman made the proposal a central plank of his campaign last February. The message helped propel his Yisrael Beitenu Party to a strong third place finish in the parliamentary vote.

Approval of the bill could have been embarrassing at a time when Israel is under U.S. pressure to make conciliatory moves toward the Palestinians and renew peace efforts with the broader Arab and Muslim world.


by the associated press

Last Titanic survivor passes-away in England at 97

LONDON — Millvina Dean, who as a baby was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat in the frigid North Atlantic, died Sunday, having been the last survivor of 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic.

She was 97 years old.

Dean was just over 2 months old when the Titanic hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912.

Dean was one of 706 people — mostly women and children — who survived. Her father was among the 1,517 who died.

Dean’s family were steerage passengers setting out from the English port of Southampton for a new life in the U.S. Her father had sold his pub and hoped to open a tobacconists’ shop in Kansas City, Mo.

Dean had no memories of the sinking and said she preferred it that way.

"I wouldn’t want to remember, really,” she told The Associated Press in an interview in 1997.

She opposed attempts to raise the wreck 13,000 feet from the sea bed.

"I don’t want them to raise it, I think the other survivors would say exactly the same,” she has said.

"That would be horrible,” Dean added.




by the associated press