TheState.com: World

Girl can walk because he couldn’t walk away

Fri, 09 May 2008 21:49 EDT

BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. Luis Falcon, 38, was patrolling the streets of Baqouba, north of Baghdad, when he saw Shahad Abbas. The 11-year-old girl was in a large decrepit wheelchair, and the stumps of her legs where her calves should have been were crusted with dried blood.

Falcon couldn’t just walk on, so he stopped to talk. He came back every day for six months, bringing her toys, gauze for her legs, a new wheelchair.

Shahad became his mission. When she asked for legs, that became his mission, too.

On Friday her dream and his came true, just three weeks before he is scheduled to leave Iraq. Shahad was fitted with prosthetic limbs in a U.S. military-funded clinic in Baghdad that normally provides artificial limbs for wounded members of the Iraqi security forces.

“We created a bond, and I didn’t need a translator to interpret the bond we had,” Falcon said. He thought of Shahad as his daughter and carried a picture of her smiling in the shoulder pocket of his uniform.

Beirut erupts again

Thu, 08 May 2008 22:05 EDT

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Running gun battles raged in parts of Beirut on Thursday after the leader of Hezbollah accused Lebanon’s Western-backed government of declaring war on his Shiite militant group. At least four people were killed and eight wounded in the capital.

Worry intensified that the conflict could degenerate into a wider and deadlier sectarian conflict, a fear made raw by memories of the 15-year civil war that killed 150,000 Lebanese and left wide swaths of Beirut in ruins.

The fight could have implications for the entire Middle East at a time when Sunni-Shiite tensions are high. The tensions are fueled in part by the rivalry between predominantly Shiite Iran, which sponsors Hezbollah, and Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

In a grim reminder of the devastating 1975-90 civil war, factions threw up roadblocks and checkpoints dividing Beirut into sectarian enclaves on the second day of clashes between Sunni Muslims loyal to the government and Shiite supporters of Hezbollah.

A top Sunni leader went on television urging Hezbollah to pull its fighters back and “save Lebanon from hell.” The army did not intervene.

Myanmar suffering as aid trickles in

Tue, 06 May 2008 23:37 EDT

YANGON, Myanmar — International aid began to trickle into Myanmar on Tuesday, but the stricken Irrawaddy delta, the nation’s rice bowl where 22,000 people perished and twice as many are missing, remained cut off from the world.

In the former capital of Yangon, soldiers from the repressive military regime were out on the streets in large numbers for the first time since Cyclone Nargis hit over the weekend, helping to clear away rubble. Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns wielded axes and long knives to remove ancient, fallen trees that were once the city’s pride.

However, coastal areas of the delta worst hit by the high winds and tidal surges were out of reach for aid workers, isolated by flooding and road damage.

The U.N.’s World Food Program said international aid began to flow, with 800 tons of food getting through to the first of nearly 1 million people left homeless by the cyclone.

Concerns mounted over the lack of food, water and shelter in the delta region and adjacent Yangon, where nearly a quarter of Myanmar’s 57 million people live, as well as the spread of disease in a country with one of the world’s worst health systems.

Olympic torch arrives on safer terrain in China

Sat, 03 May 2008 21:23 EDT

SANYA, China — After a much-protested journey, the Olympic torch reached this southern Chinese seaside resort Saturday night, beginning what organizers and Chinese citizens promised would be a trouble-free national tour.

The protests and last-minute route changes that haunted the torch along its international relay route were expected to be over. Locals talked excitedly about welcoming the Olympic flame.

“Even if no police were here, we would protect the torch with our bodies!” said an 18-year-old vendor who gave his family name as Zhao. He was selling Chinese flags near the stage where the torch was to be lit today.

Actor Jackie Chan and basketball star Yi Jianlian were to be among 208 people carrying the torch along palm tree-lined roads overlooking the South China Sea.

Criticism of China’s human rights record has turned the torch relay into one of the most contentious in recent history. Protests dogged stops in Greece, Paris, London and San Francisco.

Alleged incest, rapes anger, sadden Austrians

Sat, 03 May 2008 21:23 EDT

AMSTETTEN, Austria — Nearly a week after news of a 73-year-old Austrian’s alleged incest and rape rattled this Alpine nation, friends of the family still grapple with how Josef Fritzl’s crime could have happened in their midst — and gone unnoticed.

Fritzl’s confession that he kept his daughter locked in a windowless lair for 24 years, fathering seven of her children, while posing as the head of a happy family has bewildered, angered and estranged former friends.

One of them, a 45-year-old woman from Munich, who would give her name only as Andrea S., said she felt duped and betrayed by Fritzl.

“If I would see him now, I would ask ... ‘How can you do such a thing to your children?’” she told AP Television News in an interview Saturday.

That question also was on the minds of classmates of three of the children whom Fritzl fathered with Elisabeth — then allegedly smuggled out of the basement and dropped on the doorstep with notes police say he forced his daughter to write, saying she couldn’t raise them.

Students to raise Darfur awareness

Fri, 02 May 2008 23:48 EDT

Ashley Page plans to fast today, joining other students and adults in an international effort to raise awareness of the crisis in Darfur, Sudan.

The 16-year-old A.C. Flora High School junior is also encouraging others in the school’s Save Darfur Club to drink only water or fruit juice for one day. “We all like to eat,” she said, but she said she’ll be calling club members to help them keep the fast.

The Darfur Action Group of South Carolina is coordinating the event. Participants are asked to donate the money they would have spent on food to the World Food Program to aid in feeding Darfur refugees who have fled the genocide in western Sudan, said Jo Read, coordinator of the state event.

Read has been instrumental in mobilizing high school and college students for this action as well as lobbying for legislation that would ensure South Carolina does not invest in companies that do business with Sudan.

Page said she became active in the Darfur issue last year and founded the Save Darfur Club at Flora after hearing news reports about the escalating genocide in the Sudan nation.

Bin Laden’s son not welcome in U.K.

Fri, 02 May 2008 22:43 EDT

CAIRO, Egypt — One of Osama bin Laden’s sons has been denied British residency because London authorities believe his presence would raise concerns among the public, the man’s wife said Thursday.

Omar Osama bin Laden, a 27-year-old metals trader, had hoped to live in Britain with his British-born wife. They live in Cairo, but she is eager to return to her country, where she has a home.

But his wife, Zaina Alsabah, said Omar’s residency application was rejected. A statement from the couple’s legal firm quoted a British consular officer.

The unnamed official said Omar had shown continued loyalty to his father, “who is ultimately held responsible for the London bombing.” The reference was to suicide attacks on July 7, 2005, that killed 52 people.

“Your presence in the U.K. could, therefore, cause considerable public concern,” the statement said.

Iraqi boy heads home after long ordeal

Thu, 01 May 2008 22:37 EDT

HILTON HEAD ISLAND — From the cockpit of a blue and white Cessna 182, Haider Emad Al-Darausha looked out at his host family to smile and wave before taking off.

The 7-year-old Iraqi boy left the Hilton Head Island airport Thursday, headed for Atlanta, and ultimately his hometown of Karbala. His aunt, Batool Al-Hakeem, was with him.

The Haider who flew away from the island is a different boy from the one who arrived here nearly four months ago through the Gift of Life program. Gift of Life helps children and young adults with debilitating injuries or deformities who can’t get adequate treatment in their home countries.

Haider’s face, hands and legs were severely burned in a mortar attack when he was 2.

After two surgeries, his face is smoother, and the skin on his legs is not stretched as tightly, work that he says should make him a better soccer player. He also has recovered about 75 percent of the function in his damaged right hand.

U.S. troop deaths hit 7-month high in Iraq

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:59 EDT

BAGHDAD — The U.S. military death toll hit a seven-month high of 49 on Wednesday — with more than half the losses in Baghdad as American forces wage growing street battles against Shiite fighters.

Iraqi civilian deaths also remained high following the Iraqi government crackdown on Shiite militia factions — accused by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of using residents as human shields during close combat in the teeming Sadr City slum.

The clashes in Sadr City — a base for the powerful Mahdi Army militia — show little sign of easing as Iraqi and U.S. troops try to exert control over an area containing nearly half of Baghdad’s population.

The growing violence in Baghdad has taken a toll on U.S. forces. At least five soldiers have been killed in the city since Tuesday, bringing the monthly count to at least 49 — 27 in Baghdad — in the deadliest month since September, when 65 U.S. troops died.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, at least 4,061 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count.

Hundreds of Chinese children sold as laborers

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:59 EDT

SHANGHAI, China — China said Wednesday that it was investigating whether hundreds or perhaps thousands of children from poor areas in the southwestern part of the country were sold to work as slave laborers in booming coastal factory cities.

Authorities in Guangdong province, near Hong Kong, said they had “rescued” more than 100 children from factories in Dongguan, a huge manufacturing center known for exporting toys, textiles and electronics.

The children, mostly between the ages of 13 and 15, often were tricked or kidnapped by employment agencies working in an impoverished part of western Sichuan province, and then sent to factory towns in Guangdong. They often were forced to work as much as 300 hours a month for little money, according to government officials and accounts from the state-owned media.

The authorities in southern China said Wednesday that they had arrested several people involved in the case and were trying to determine the identities of the children.

“These youngsters have no ID cards, so it makes it difficult to identify them,” said Zhang Xiang, a spokesman for the Guangdong Labor Bureau.

All-Sadr mulls full-scale war

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:51 EDT

BAGHDAD — Muqtada al-Sadr is considering setting aside his political ambitions and restarting a full-scale fight against U.S.-led forces — a worrisome shift that might reflect Iranian influence on the young cleric and could open the way for a shadow state protected by his powerful Mahdi Army.

A possible breakaway path — described by Shiite lawmakers and politicians — would represent the ultimate backlash against the Iraqi government’s pressure on al-Sadr to renounce and disband his Shiite militia.

By snubbing the give-and-take of politics, al-Sadr would have a freer hand to carve out a kind of parallel state with its own militia and social services along the lines of Hezbollah in Lebanon, a Shiite group founded with Iran’s help in the 1980s.

It also would carry potentially disastrous security implications as the Pentagon trims its troops strength and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki finally shows progress on national reconciliation.

Last week, the main Sunni political bloc announced provisional plans to rejoin the Shiite-led coalition nine months after quitting the government. The Sunnis are pleased with the squeeze on al-Sadr’s movement, as well as an amnesty law that could free many detainees.

Soyuz crew was in danger during off-target landing

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:55 EDT

MOSCOW — The crew of the Soyuz space capsule that landed hundreds of miles off target in Kazakhstan was in serious danger during the descent, a Russian news agency reported Tuesday.

Interfax quoted an unidentified Russian space official as saying the capsule entered Earth’s atmosphere Saturday with the hatch first instead of its heat shield leading the way. As a result, the hatch sustained significant damage.

The official said a valve that equalizes pressure within the TMA-11 capsule with the outside also was damaged.

In addition, the capsule’s antenna burned up, meaning the crew couldn’t communicate properly with Russian Mission Control, the official said.

Interfax said another official at the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan reported that the U.S. military tracked the Soyuz’s landing 260 miles from its planned touchdown and directed Russian searchers to the site.

Roadside bomb kills son of Dutch defense chief

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:50 EDT

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The son of the Dutch defense chief was killed Friday by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, and the Taliban claimed they deliberately made the young lieutenant a high-profile target.

While the Dutch quickly cast doubt on the Taliban claim, the death underscores the danger high-profile soldiers can face and illustrates a grim reality for families, famous and not, who choose the military life.

Lt. Dennis van Uhm, 23, was one of two Dutch soldiers killed in the explosion seven miles northwest of Camp Holland, the Dutch military base in the restive southern province of Uruzgan. Two more soldiers were injured, one critically.

Van Uhm’s father, Gen. Peter van Uhm, was installed only Thursday as the Netherlands’ defense chief.

The prime minister called Van Uhm’s death “an unprecedented tragedy,” and the weekly meeting of the Dutch Cabinet was briefly stopped so ministers could reflect privately.

On U.S. trip, Britain’s Brown seeks close ties

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:17 EDT

LONDON — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is coming to the United States with an optimistic message, pushing for a coordinated effort to shore up the world economy that he says will strengthen ties between Europe and Washington that were frayed by the Iraq war.

Despite a gloomy financial outlook and domestic complaints over his response to the global credit crunch, Brown said he believes Britain and America can enjoy a new decade of growth.

The British leader, who was scheduled to arrive late Tuesday with his wife for his second visit since replacing Tony Blair last June, offered praise for all three prospective U.S. presidential candidates. But he specifically endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton’s economic plans.

After a frosty first meeting with President Bush in July, Brown said he hopes he can help strengthen U.S./Europe ties and aims to lead efforts on tackling spiraling food and fuel prices, reform global institutions and combat climate change.

“I feel I can bring Europe and America closer together for the future,” Brown said in an interview with CBS News.

Veterans take in Iraqi translators

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:46 EDT

ALBANY, N.Y. — Bullets whizzed past as “Sarah” translated for U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Shrapnel from a roadside blast hit her protective vest. In her off hours, she worried about retribution for helping the Americans. A sign reading “traitor” was posted on her family’s door.

“I survived by chance,” she said.

Now, she is in the United States under a visa program for Iraqis who have aided the U.S. military, and she is being helped by a network of Iraq veterans.

Mathew Tully, an Albany-area lawyer who served in Iraq as a National Guard major, volunteered along with his wife to take in Sarah until she gets settled in a new culture and carves out a new life.

He didn’t know Sarah in Iraq, but he feels a sense of duty.

Pope might show softer side in U.S. visit

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:46 EDT

ROME — Americans often tuck their leaders into tidy boxes of conservative or liberal, charismatic or dull, nice or not. When Pope Benedict XVI arrives Tuesday to visit America and its church, the overall experience may be one of watching easy categories melt away.

His reputation over many years is as a man of doctrinal firmness, who condemns homosexuality and abortion, who regards Catholicism as the only true faith — positions at times difficult to digest in a diverse America. This reputation, for admirers and detractors alike, is well-earned.

But it is only one part of the man. Benedict’s manner is mild and humble, his often brilliantly crafted words delivered in a soft voice (and a strong German accent in English, one of his 10 languages). During his five days in the United States he is not expected to scold.

“What he will not do is wag fingers,” said Brennan Pursell, an associate history professor at DeSales University in Allentown, Pa., and author of a new book on the pope, “Benedict of Bavaria” (Circle Press). “He will present what the church offers.”

Vatican officials seem concerned enough about Benedict’s image that they are billing this trip as a proper introduction to Americans, intended in part to shed, as Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the papal nuncio to the United States, said, the idea that he is “this tough, this inhuman person.”

Chinese leader defends crackdown in Tibet

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:46 EDT

BEIJING — President Hu Jintao on Saturday defended China’s crackdown against the recent Tibetan protests as a necessary response to protect national sovereignty and described the demonstrations as violent crimes orchestrated by the Dalai Lama.

“No responsible government will sit idle for such crimes, which gravely encroach human rights, gravely disrupt social order and gravely jeopardize the life and property security of the masses,” Hu said, according to Xinhua, the government’s official news agency.

Hu’s remarks were his first public comments about the Tibetan unrest, which began on March 10.

“Our conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem,” Hu said while meeting with the Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual gathering of business and political leaders on China’s Hainan Island. “It is a problem either to safeguard national unification or to split the motherland.”

China continued its crackdown Saturday, arresting nine Buddhist monks suspected of bombing a government building in Tibet in March, Xinhua reported, according to Reuters.

Secret arms deal shows breakdown in Iraq

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:46 EDT

BAGHDAD — An $833 million Iraqi arms deal secretly negotiated with Serbia has underscored Iraq’s continuing problems equipping its armed forces, a process that has been plagued by corruption and inefficiency.

The deal was struck in September without competitive bidding and it sidestepped anti-corruption safeguards, including the approval of senior uniformed Iraqi army officers and an Iraqi contract approval committee. Instead, it was negotiated by a delegation of 22 high-ranking Iraqi officials, without the knowledge of American commanders or many senior Iraqi leaders.

The deal drew enough criticism that Iraqi officials later limited the purchase to $236 million. And much of that equipment, American commanders said, turned out to be either shoddy or inappropriate for the military’s mission.

The purchase highlights how the Iraqi army’s administrative abilities — already hampered by sectarian rifts and corruption — are woefully underdeveloped, hindering its procurement of weapons and other essentials.

It also shows how an American procurement process set up to help foreign countries navigate the complexity of buying weapons was too slow and unwieldy for wartime needs like Iraq’s, prompting the Iraqis to strike out on their own.

French troops free pirates’ hostages

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:01 EDT

PARIS — Helicopter-borne French troops swooped in on Somali pirates Friday after they freed 30 hostages from a yacht, seizing six of the hijackers and recovering sacks of money — apparently ransom paid by the ship’s owners.

The pirates boarded the 288-foot French luxury yacht Le Ponant a week ago, capturing its crew — 22 of whom were French — off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates seized more than two dozen vessels off the Somali coast last year, mostly in hopes of securing ransoms.

Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin, chief of staff of France’s armed forces, said the pirates released the hostages after negotiations with the ship’s owner. That phase of the operation was calm, with no weapons fired, he said. The hostages were brought smoothly to safely and the pirates went ashore.

Once the pirates were on Somali territory, a French attack helicopter chased a vehicle carrying some of them, firing to destroy its engine, the general said.

There were conflicting reports about what happened next.

Al-Sadr aide assassinated | Killing riles cleric’s allies

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:01 EDT

Outrage might ignite another uprising in southern Iraq

NAJAF, Iraq — Followers of the renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr chanted anti-American slogans and vowed revenge for the assassination Friday of al-Sadr’s top aide in Najaf, where outrage over the killing threatens to spiral into the second deadly uprising in southern Iraq in a month.

Riyadh al Nouri, 41, who ran the main al-Sadr office in Najaf and was known as a relative moderate within the movement, was gunned down as he returned home from prayers Friday afternoon, according to Iraqi authorities and the al-Sadr camp.

No group has claimed responsibility for the slaying, which amounted to a highly provocative strike at al-Sadr’s inner circle. Nouri was al-Sadr’s brother-in-law.

“Long live Sadr! Muqtada is the bridge to heaven!” mourners chanted at Najaf’s sprawling cemetery.