FUGITIVE CAUGHT IN CANADA HAD NEW PASSPORT, AUTHORITIES SAY
By Steve Strunsky
The Associated Press
3/11/2004, 8:30 p.m. ET
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) — A Pakistani national who had surrendered his passport as a condition of his release in a grisly double murder case was arrested Wednesday in Canada, carrying what police say appeared to be a new passport issued to him by the Pakistani government.
The Hudson County Prosecutor's Office is seeking extradition of Zaid Tariq, 22, a Pakistani citizen whose last known address was in Sayreville. Tariq refused to waive extradition proceedings, Prosecutor Edward J. DeFazio said Thursday.
http://www.nj.com/newsflash/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1079054953255530.xml Iraqi police, not impostors, may have killed Americans
March 12, 2004
BY LEE KEATH
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. officials are worried that Iraqi police -- not just impostors in Iraqi uniforms -- may have been behind the killings of two coalition staffers and their translator, the top American general in Iraq said Thursday.
The three were the first civilians from the U.S. occupation authority to be killed in Iraq. Officials have not released their names, but relatives identified one of them as 33-year-old Fern Holland, a human rights expert from Oklahoma who worked on women's issues in the Hillah region where she was killed.
''If I die, know that I'm doing precisely what I want to be doing,'' Holland wrote in an e-mail to a friend on Jan. 21.
She met often with Iraqi women around Hillah and communicated their needs to Iraq's Governing Council, even influencing the interim constitution completed this week, said one of her colleagues.
The shooting Tuesday night raised two possibilities: that guerrillas had adopted a new tactic of posing as police to carry out attacks, or that some members of the security forces being trained by U.S. troops are turning to violence.
The Americans and an Iraqi woman working as their translator were driving 35 miles south of Baghdad, when they were stopped at a checkpoint and killed by gunmen.
The attackers then took their car, their bodies still inside, according to the Polish military. Polish troops stopped the car and arrested the five Iraqis inside.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq, said it was not yet known if the attackers were disguised as police or the real thing.
''They were in police uniforms. We haven't established that it was the police,'' Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters.
Also Thursday, the military said a U.S. soldier from the 652nd Engineering Battalion was killed and two others wounded the day before when a bomb went off in the city of Baqouba north of Baghdad, a center of anti-U.S. insurgent activity.
The deaths brings to 554 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the the war in Iraq was launched last March. Most have died since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1. AP
http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-iraq12.htmlU.S. biotech corn may threaten varieties in Mexico
March 12, 2004
OAXACA, Mexico -- Modified genes spread by imported U.S. biotech corn threaten to contaminate native varieties in Mexico, the birthplace of corn, a NAFTA watchdog panel said Thursday.
In 1998, Mexico declared a moratorium on genetically modified corn, making it illegal except at some labs. But in a 2001 study of 188 corn-growing communities, 7.6 percent of plants were genetically modified.
Seventy percent of Mexico's corn is now imported from the United States, and 30 percent to 50 percent is genetically modified. While much of the imported corn is animal feed, some has been planted and its pollen spread.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-corn12.html