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RUZGAN, Afghanistan, Feb. 10 — Afghan prisoners captured by American forces in two night raids here last month said today that they were beaten and abused by American soldiers, despite their protests that they supported the leader of the interim government, Hamid Karzai. The men were among 27 Afghans who were released on Thursday after 16 days' detention in the American base in Kandahar, about 150 miles southwest of Oruzgan. The Pentagon has acknowledged that the raids were conducted in error, apparently because of flawed intelligence, and that the prisoners were neither members of Al Qaeda nor Taliban fighters. ...

<p>HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Former Enron Corp. vice chairman J. Clifford Baxter was found dead Friday, the victim of an apparent suicide, police in a Houston suburb said.</p> <p>Baxter made millions on the sale of Enron stock but quit the company in May, reportedly unhappy with Enron's business practices. The 43-year-old former executive was found dead at 2:23 a.m. Friday, said Pat Whitty, a police spokeswoman in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land. "Baxter had an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head," Whitty said. "He was discovered inside a vehicle ... A suicide note was found at the scene. There was no sign of foul play. Inside his wallet was an ID indicating he was an employee of Enron."</p>

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 — Kenneth L. Lay, the chairman and chief executive of the Enron Corporation (news/quote), repeatedly used millions of dollars in Enron stock to repay loans made to him by the company last year as Enron shares declined in value, his lawyer said today. The lawyer, Earl J. Silbert, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Lay had put up shares of his Enron stock as collateral for other investments, which he said he could not identify. As the value of Enron stock plummeted last year, he said, Mr. Lay anticipated that lenders would demand additional collateral. So ...

"Wasn't that the best?" said a laughing Ann Richards this week, when I asked her reaction to President Bush's effort to hide behind her skirt when questioned about Enron. "It was so silly. Why didn't he just say Ken Lay was a strong supporter and gave him a half-million dollars and is a good friend, and he's really sorry Ken's in these terrible circumstances?" Good question. As the world knows now, George W. Bush told two lies when first asked about his ties to the top guy in what may prove the largest corporate flimflam in history. The president ...

JAMMU, India (Reuters) - Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged fresh mortar and heavy machinegun fire on Monday as New Delhi expelled a Pakistani diplomat, raising tensions between the nuclear-armed enemies ever higher. The two hostile neighbors have reinforced positions on either side of their border in Kashmir since a December 13 suicide attack on the Indian parliament which New Delhi blamed on two Pakistan-based militant groups. A senior Pakistani army officer said the situation was ''highly explosive'' and continued border clashes could spark an uncontrollable flareup involving nuclear weapons. India said it had destroyed Pakistani bunkers in exchanges of fire ...

Would you like to lose weight fast? Would you like to make $5,000 a month from your home? How about trying some herbal Viagra, good for men and women? Yes or no, you are more likely to find such unsolicited offers flooding your e-mail in-box these days than ever before, along with a free trial for professional teeth whitening, a low-rate mortgage and pornography of every flavor. Usually they come from unfamiliar addresses like "Debt Collectors" or Naughty Girl @hotmail.com, and often they single you out by name in the subject line, as in "Amy, Worried About Your Health?" Such ...

AFP - Western secret services knew as far back as 1995 that suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden planned to attack civilian sites using commercial passenger planes, German newspaper Die Welt said. Quoting sources close to western intelligence services, Die Welt said authorities did not take seriously the threat of the plan, known as Project Bojinka. The plan was discovered in January 1995 by Philippine police who were investigating a possible attack against Pope John Paul II on a visit to Manila. They found details of the plan in a computer seized in an apartment used by three men ...

Commander Kalan Mir has a long beard dyed orange with henna and a jovial manner, and when he first said it, no one believed him. What colour was the horse, someone asked. How many men were there, another wanted to know. The commander was adamant. "Osama was seen yesterday by our soldiers, along with his guards, riding on horseback," he said. "He was riding back to Melawa after visiting his men on the front lines." The horse was a bay, he said; the bodyguards numbered four. It was just over that ridge over there, in the Melawa valley, where the ...

AMERICAN forces were gathering to attack the Taliban's last stronghold of Kandahar last night. Waves of helicopters were reported to be ferrying troops and ground armour to an airfield close to the Taliban's spiritual centre in the south of Afghanistan. The Pentagon refused to comment on the report, although information has leaked in recent days of plans for 1,600 US Marines based on ships in the Arabian Sea to go into action on the ground. Tribal fighters took control of the airfield shortly before large military transport planes and helicopters began to circle and land, said Mohammad Anwar, spokesman for ...

BRITAIN is planning to deploy up to 6,000 troops in Afghanistan, far more than originally envisaged, defence sources said yesterday. Two British brigades are now likely to be sent in to try to prevent a recurrence of the bloody internecine warfare that followed the fall of the city to the Northern Alliance in 1992. Although officials continued to say publicly yesterday that no decision on whether to deploy troops had been taken, privately the sources said that it was inevitable that a large British force would be sent into Afghanistan. Geoff Hoon, Defence Secretary, said: "It does depend on what ...

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 16 — A flight-simulator computer program, a list of flight schools in the United States and documents describing chemical, biological and nuclear warfare and referring to the Qaeda organization were found here today in two houses littered with paper. Some of the documents — along with 19 highly advanced French- made Milan antitank missiles discovered on Thursday — were in a house that belonged to the ministry of defense of the Taliban government. Other documents were found in a private residence two miles away in the same upscale district of Kabul. The Taliban fled on Monday as ...

An unruly passenger faces a felony charge after an incident on board a US Airways flight from Pittsburgh to Reagan National airport. Flight 969 landed at Dulles instead of Reagan National airport shortly after 5 p.m. A law enforcement source says 33-year-old Raho Ortiz of Northeast Washington got out of his seat and walked toward the front of the plane despite warnings to remain seated. Passengers are not allowed to leave their seats a half hour before landing at Reagan National airport under new security rules imposed after the September 11th terror attacks. Sky marshals were on the plane. The ...

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - The strategic airport outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, powerbase of the fundamentalist Taliban, fell to opposition forces on Tuesday, tribal leaders said. "It's confirmed from tribal leaders," Mohammad Yusaf Pashtun, spokesman for former mujahideen governor of Kandahar, Gul Agha, told Reuters in this southwestern Pakistani city just across the border from Afghanistan. "They don't know who took it," he said. "Kandahar airport has fallen in the hands of the Northern Alliance," Qatar's al-Jazeera television said in an unsourced report and without further details. The report came moments after the satellite television station's correspondent in ...

British and American troops are being prevented from conducting any meaningful operations on the ground against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden because of a lack of knowledge about conditions in Afghanistan, defence sources admitted yesterday. With the government showing increasing signs of impatience at the failure to make a breakthrough after three weeks of air strikes in which more than 3,000 bombs have been dropped on the country, the sources said there was an "an intelligence vacuum". Amid a growing realisation that the lightning attack by US airborne troops into Afghanistan captured on grainy video this month was little ...

TONY BLAIR will plead with the public today not to let the memory of the September 11 attacks fade as the war against terrorism drags on. His speech is part of a concerted effort by the United States and Britain to rally public opinion as the bombing campaign in Afghanistan enters its fifth week. Yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld, the United States Defence Secretary, squarely blamed the Taliban for civilian casualties and warned that the military campaign would be "a marathon, not a sprint". Their comments reflect anxiety in both capitals that public support for the war is beginning to "wobble" as ...

Ground phase gains momentum By Sean Rayment (Filed: 28/10/2001) ROYAL Marine commandos will be used to seize strategically vital areas in Afghanistan to enable special forces to conduct covert search and destroy missions. As the ground phase of the military operation begins to gather momentum, it is understood that teams of commandos will be ordered to carry out Tactical Air Land Operations - or Talo - where troops using Hercules aircraft and possibly helicopters seize and hold targets such as air bases or military camps. British troops have never carried out Talo missions in a conflict before, although they ...

TEMERGARAH, Pakistan (AP) -- In buses and trucks, pickups and vans, more than 5,000 people rolled out of a northeastern Pakistan village Saturday morning, bound for the Afghan frontier and vowing to fight a holy war against the United States. Thousands of Pakistani men, young and old, had massed in Temergarah on Friday night with assault rifles, machine guns, even rocket launchers. A few even carried axes and swords. Their mission, they said: to enter Afghanistan's Kunar province and help the country's ruling Taliban defend against any ground incursions by American troops. ``I am an old man. I consider myself ...