By Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When the Yemen-based
branch of al Qaeda placed a bounty on her husband's head, Mary
Feierstein learned of it from a friend who called and said, "You
must be a mess!" U.S. Ambassador Gerald Feierstein was thousands of
miles (km) away at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, without his wife and
family on what is called an "unaccompanied" posting. He is one of
more than a thousand U.S. diplomats on such tours of duty in danger
spots around the world, part of a trend that is changing the
definition of being a diplomat. ...
By Tabassum Zakaria and David Alexander WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Under pressure to fight sexual assault, the U.S. armed forces in
recent years rolled out education programs about proper sexual
conduct through methods like role playing and video games. The
increase in education has nevertheless failed to prevent what the
nation's top general called last week "a crisis" after the Pentagon
reported a 37 percent jump in the estimated number of sexual
assault cases in 2012. ...
By Satarupa Bhattacharjya and Ross Colvin NEW DELHI (Reuters) -
India's Congress party is debating holding a general election in
November, six months ahead of schedule, senior party leaders said,
reflecting an internal discussion over whether to pull the plug on
the shaky ruling coalition or have it serve a full term.
Officially, the Congress party says the government - which has been
battered by a series of corruption scandals and now governs as a
minority after two allies withdrew from the ruling coalition - will
limp on until elections are due in May 2014. ...
By Li Hui and Maxim Duncan QIANTUN, China (Reuters) - Two years
short of 70, Zhang Guosheng spends his days caring for an
81-year-old fellow villager - washing his clothes, bringing meals
to his bed, and keeping him company - a routine he'll keep up until
he himself needs the type of care he is now giving. "Living here is
better than staying at home alone. We help each other and have a
common language," said the spritely Zhang, an enthusiastic dancer.
"We are very happy here. ...
MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — A Hofstra University student being held in
a headlock at gunpoint by an intruder was accidently shot and
killed by a police officer who had responded to the home invasion
at an off-campus home, police said Saturday.
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) — One of two wildfires burning in
the hills and mountains around Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles
was fully contained Saturday and authorities were getting an upper
hand on the second one.
NEW YORK (AP) — A gunman used homophobic slurs before firing
a fatal shot point-blank into a man's face on a Manhattan street
alive with a weekend midnight crowd, a killing New York's police
commissioner called an "anti-gay" hate crime.
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Authorities in hazardous materials suits
searched a downtown Spokane apartment Saturday, investigating the
recent discovery of a pair of letters containing the deadly poison
ricin.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A former Philadelphia police officer once
hailed as a hero and given a seat next to the first lady at a
speech by President Obama has been arrested and charged with rape
and other crimes.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Two men arrested in the fatal beating
of the grandson of U.S. civil rights activist Malcolm X were sent
to prison on Saturday to await trial, a Mexico City court spokesman
said. David Hernandez and Manuel Perez, waiters at the Palace
nightclub near Mexico City's popular Garibaldi Square, face charges
of murder and robbery, the official said. Malcolm Shabazz, who
police have said was 29, died May 9 at the Palace after a dispute
over a $1,200 bill. Hernandez and Perez were arrested on Monday.
...
DAMASCUS, Va. (AP) — An elderly driver plowed into dozens of
hikers marching in a Saturday parade in a small Virginia mountain
town and investigators were looking into whether he suffered a
medical emergency before the accident.
By Alex Dobuzinskis LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - City Councilman
Eric Garcetti leads City Controller Wendy Greuel by 7 percentage
points in a tightening race for mayor of Los Angeles, according to
the latest opinion poll, but the survey's director said Greuel
could still stage an upset in Tuesday's election. The poll released
late on Friday by the University of Southern California's Price
School of Public Policy and the Los Angeles Times showed Garcetti
favored by 48 percent of likely voters, compared with 41 percent
for Greuel. Eleven percent of respondents said they were undecided.
...
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) — A simple test could have alerted
officials that the drinking water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated,
long before authorities determined that as many as a million
Marines and their families were exposed to a witch's brew of
cancer-causing chemicals.
MALMO, Sweden (AP) — Denmark's Emmelie de Forest has won this
year's Eurovision Song Contest with her ethno-inspired flute and
drum tune "Only Teardrops," despite tough competition from
spectacular stage shows by performers from Azerbaijan and
Ukraine.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — It was just about a day after
Argentine strongman Jorge Rafael Videla had seized power in March
of 1976, and the bloodletting was already beginning.
By Katharine Houreld ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a
senior female politician from a reformist party in Pakistan on
Saturday night, the latest violent incident in a bloody election
campaign and one that set off a war of words between two major
opposition parties. Around 150 people were killed in the run-up to
national elections held last week, which handed a landslide victory
to opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and his PML-N party. It marked
the first time an elected government replaced another one in a
nation that has been run by military leaders for more than half its
history. ...
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Inmates at jails in Indianapolis,
Baltimore, St. Louis and Philadelphia face the nation's highest
levels of sexual abuse at the hands of guards, according to a new
federal report based on surveys of inmates at U.S. jails and
prisons.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis lamented that investment
losses by banks trigger more alarm in the economic crisis than the
struggle of people to feed their families, as he led a huge rally
Saturday to invigorate the church's moral conscience, hours after
he held talks at the Vatican about the economic crisis with
Germany's leader.
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — The commuter train derailment and
collision that left dozens injured outside New York City was not
the result of foul play, officials said Saturday, but a fractured
section of rail is being studied to determine if it is connected to
the accident.
By Gary Robertson RICHMOND, Virginia (Reuters) - A car driven
by an elderly man who may have lost consciousness plowed through a
small-town parade of hiking enthusiasts in southwestern Virginia on
Saturday, injuring dozens of people, nine seriously enough to be
sent to hospitals, authorities said. The incident occurred in the
Appalachian town of Damascus at the start of the annual Trail Days
festival, as the main street was filled with hikers making their
way from one end of town to a park at the other, volunteer fire
department chief Ben Sanders told Reuters. ...
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sunbathers flocking to Southern California
beaches are used to feeding the meter or paying a parking
attendant. Not so along the less developed north coast where it's
customary to ditch cars on the shoulder of Highway 1 to surf, swim
or picnic.
Alaska's remote Pavlof Volcano was shooting lava hundreds of
feet into the air, but its ash plume was thinning Saturday and no
longer making it dangerous for airplanes to fly nearby.
By Karen Brooks AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The Powerball jackpot
Saturday night could exceed the $600 million figure being
advertised, possibly rivaling the largest lottery payoff in U.S.
history, a Texas Lottery official said on Saturday. "Oftentimes,
the advertised amount is lower than what the actual jackpot ends up
being," said Kelly Cripe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Lottery.
"It's entirely possible this $600 million jackpot will end up being
a bigger jackpot. ...
NEWARK, N.J (AP) — An airline official says a US Airways
Express flight with 34 people aboard was forced to make a belly
landing at Newark International Airport after experiencing landing
gear trouble. No injuries were reported.
LOWELL, Mass. (AP) — Boston's police department and mayor's
office will conduct twin reviews of the response to last month's
bombing of the Boston Marathon, police commissioner Ed Davis said
Saturday.
LIBREVILLE (Reuters) - African military chiefs agreed on
Saturday to more than double the size of a regional peacekeeping
force deployed in Central African Republic, where authorities have
struggled to contain violence after a rebel takeover. Thousands of
fighters from the Seleka rebel coalition led by Michel Djotodia
marched into the capital Bangui on March 24, forcing President
Francois Bozize to flee to neighboring Cameroon. Djotodia, a former
civil servant, was later named interim president by parliament and
asked to lead the country to elections within 18 months. ...
LIMA (Reuters) - Proposed peace talks for Syria would not curb
"terrorism" in the country and it is unrealistic to think they
would succeed, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an
interview published in an Argentine newspaper on Saturday. Speaking
in Syria with the newspaper Clarin, Assad said he was doubtful that
mediation the United States and Russia have proposed could settle a
deadly conflict that has convulsed the country for two years.
"There is confusion in the world between a political solution and
terrorism. They think a political conference will halt terrorists
in the country. ...
By Susan Guyett INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Indiana has canceled
subsidies for a planned $1.8 billion fertilizer plant in the state
because of concerns that a Pakistani company involved in the
project makes products used in improvised explosives that kill and
injure U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Midwest Fertilizer Corp, which
has sought to build the plant in southern Indiana, is 48 percent
owned by Fatima Group, which produces a calcium ammonium nitrate
fertilizer in Pakistan known to have been used in improvised
explosives in Afghanistan. Indiana Governor Mike Pence, a
Republican, had put a $1. ...
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sunbathers flocking to Southern California
beaches are used to feeding the meter or paying a parking
attendant. Not so along the less developed north coast where it's
customary to ditch cars on the shoulder of Highway 1 to surf, swim
or picnic.
O'BRIEN, Ore. (AP) — Jennifer Phillippi's grandparents started
producing lumber in this corner of Oregon timber country in 1922,
when a man could set up a mill, log the trees within range of a
team of horses and move the mill to a new stand when those trees
ran out.
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) — A pair of persistent wildfires
continued to burn in the hills and mountains around Interstate 5
north of Los Angeles on Saturday, although authorities were slowly
getting the upper hand.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Funeral services have been held for the
New Jersey woman and boy whose bodies were found in their home
after a 37-hour hostage standoff last weekend.
CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian officials say baggage handlers in
Cairo's airport have gone on strike to protest a colleague's death,
leaving passengers on 20 international flights from Europe and Arab
countries waiting several hours for luggage.