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WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2006 – U.S. and Iraqi forces killed and detained suspected terrorists and uncovered various weapons caches yesterday and today, military officials in Baghdad reported. Iraqi soldiers from 8th Iraqi Army Division, supported by Multinational Division Central South soldiers, killed two terrorists and detained four others in a small village in southern Diwaniyah province today. One coalition soldier was wounded. He was taken to a coalition forces medical facility and was reported to be in stable condition. The detainees are suspected of murder, kidnapping and selling drugs, officials said. Task Force Band of Brothers soldiers uncovered weapons caches...

RECREATIONAL hunters using rifles, crossbows and dogs will be allowed to kill feral animals in state forests and on public lands in a controversial trial next month. Licensed huntsmen will be allowed to hunt feral cats, dogs, deer, goats, pigs and foxes after the State Government approved the two-day trial in four public locations from February 4. However, a declaration published in the NSW Government Gazette on Friday reveals the four state forests have already been designated as the first official, full-scale hunting grounds. The proposed order allows hunting for five years in these areas, with hundreds more to follow...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4, 2006 – U.S. soldiers killed and captured terrorism suspects in Iraq Jan. 2, and U.S. and Iraqi forces seized weapons caches, military officials reported today. Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, killed a suspected terrorist and captured another after an attack on a coalition base near Balad. The soldiers immediately captured one suspect, but chased the second for two hours. The chase ended when the soldiers cornered the suspect in a grove of palm trees and killed him with return fire, officials said. In another incident near Hawijah, soldiers detained two bombing suspects...

Gasoline tax slated to rise on New Year's Day Lawmakers scramble to freeze nearly 3-cents hike From staff reports Macon County motorists are bracing for a state gasoline tax hike that will greet them at the pump on New Year's Day. On Sunday, the state tax on gasoline will jump by nearly 3 cents to a total of 29.9 cents per gallon. The increase will boost the tax to its highest level in state history. And North Carolina's gas tax will become the highest per gallon in the Southeast and the sixth highest in the U.S. The automatic tax also...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30, 2005 – Coalition forces today transferred command of northwest Iraq, and U.S. troops killed two terrorists Dec. 28, Multinational Force Iraq officials reported today. Command of northwest Iraq transferred from Task Force Freedom to Task Force Band of Brothers during a ceremony in Mosul. The transfer consolidates operational areas into a single multinational division under the command of Task Force Band of Brothers, military officials said. With its new command responsibilities, Task Force Band of Brothers includes the 1st and 3rd Brigade Combat Teams from the 101st Airborne Division, 1st and 3rd Brigade Combat Teams from the...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2005 – Nine militants were killed and six others captured Dec. 6 during joint Afghan and U.S. combat operations northwest of Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan, officials reported today. One rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, one RPG round, one assault rifle, and several magazines of ammunition were captured during the operation. The Afghan and U.S. patrol came under fire from a nearby ridgeline while conducting offensive operations to locate enemy forces and to prevent their operations, officials said. Close-air support was called to the scene. Afghan and U.S. forces then maneuvered on the ridgeline, forcing the enemy to flee the area. There...

As if hanging out in a dump and eating garbage aren’t bad enough, those vultures flapping around Palm Beach County’s landfill have a new worry these days: A government sharpshooter is out to kill them. Vultures, sea gulls and other birds evoke a Hitchcockian scene as they swoop over the Palm Beach County landfill, near 45th Street in suburban West Palm Beach and in close proximity to the turnpike. Not every bird, mind you. Just enough to persuade the rest of the bulky carrion-muncher’s to flock someplace else. Managers of the landfill near 45th Street in suburban West Palm Beach...

Female Homicide Bombers Kill 27 in Police Academy Blast Tuesday, December 06, 2005 BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two women strapped with explosives blew themselves up at Baghdad's police academy on Tuesday, killing 27 people and wounding 32, the U.S. military said. The women blew themselves up in a classroom filled with students, the statement from Task Force Baghdad said. No U.S. forces were killed or wounded in the attack, it added. U.S. forces rushed to the scene to provide assistance, the statement said. Iraqi police said one bomb exploded in a cafeteria, while the other detonated during roll call. Police Lt....

WENATCHEE — Pigeons were falling dead from the skies over downtown Wenatchee, and the Wenatchee Valley Humane Society got a flurry of calls. Was it the feared avian flu? No. The Chelan-Douglas Health District was preparing to ship some of the dead birds to a state health lab for testing when someone at the Coast Hotel and Wenatchee Center called to say the center had hired a pest-control company — the state-licensed Yakima office of St. Paul, Minn.-based EcoLab — to poison the birds. "This abatement kills a couple of birds and sends a message to the birds to not...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2005 – Troops from the Iraqi army's 3rd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 7th Division, killed a man Nov. 29 after he tried to take a soldier's weapon near Ramadi, Iraq, military officials reported. Soldiers fired on the military-aged man after he refused to open his trunk during a vehicle search and went for a soldier's weapon. Iraqi and coalition forces detained several insurgents and seized weapons caches Nov. 29 during operations throughout Iraq. Iraqi police detained three men fleeing the scene of a rocket attack on a high school near Musayyib. Near Rawah, an ineffective would-be suicide car...

Dr. William F. Harrison has forgotten how many children the woman had. "We try to make sure she doesn't ever feel guilty," he says, "for what she feels she has to do." "It was a lot easier than I thought it would be," she says. "I thought it would be horrible, but it wasn't. The procedure, that is." .... She is not yet sure, she says, how she is doing emotionally. She feels guilty, sad and relieved, all in a jumble. "There's things wrong with abortion," she says. "But I want to have a good life. And provide a good...

JERUSALEM - Israeli forces killed two Palestinian militants Thursday during a West Bank arrest raid, riddling their car with bullets when it tried to run a roadblock outside the town of Jenin, the army said. The shooting, part of a recent increase in Israeli raids in Palestinian towns, threatened to inflame tensions between the two sides, which agreed to a cease-fire nine months ago. The truce has been repeatedly violated by both sides, though the level of violence remains far lower than before the agreement. The army said the incident Thursday began when an Israeli force seeking to arrest two...

NABLUS, West Bank - Israeli troops killed a senior Hamas militant in an overnight arrest raid Monday, Palestinian medical officials and neighbors of the man said. Troops arrived at the home of Amjad Hanawi, 34, Hamas' top military commander in the northern West Bank, shortly after midnight, according to the accounts. The soldiers ordered Hanawi's family out of the house. While most members came out of the house, Hanawi refused and tried to escape. He was shot as he tried to climb a fence. The neighbors claimed that army dogs attacked several family members. Hamas members drove through the streets...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12, 2005 – U.S. and coalition forces today took down a suspected al Qaeda safe house and put an enemy mortar team out of commission during two separate raids in Iraq, according to U.S. military press releases. U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, 3rd Brigade, soldiers captured a terrorist mortar team near Baqubah. The terrorists had set up their equipment when the U.S. soldiers encountered the enemy position, officials said. The terrorists then directed rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire at the Americans, but the enemy detachment was quickly overwhelmed. Six terrorists were captured along with their mortar tube, six mortar...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2005 – Three U.S. soldiers were killed in action and four others were wounded in two separate incidents in Iraq Oct. 26, coalition officials in Baghdad announced today. One soldier from the 1st Corps Support Command died and four soldiers were wounded in an improvised-explosive-device and small-arms-fire attack while conducting a logistics patrol at about 11:15 a.m. Oct. 26, near Ashraf. In a separate attack, two Task Force Baghdad soldiers died when their convoy struck an improvised explosive device in eastern Baghdad. No further details on these incidents were available. The names of the soldiers are being...

Bird flu 'will kill 50,000 people, but not this year' By David Derbyshire (Filed: 17/10/2005) A bird flu pandemic would kill about 50,000 people in Britain but will not necessarily strike this winter, the Government's chief medical officer said yesterday. Sir Liam Donaldson said that it was a question of "when, not if" the disease infecting birds in Asia and the fringes of eastern Europe mutated into a deadly form of human influenza. Sir Liam: deaths could be higher than 50,000 The number of deaths in Britain could reach 750,000 if the human strain were particularly serious, although a lower...

BRITISH police made a series of catastrophic errors that led to armed officers shooting dead an innocent Brazilian when they were hunting the July 21 bombers, leaked witness statements show. Officers who took part in the botched operation say the Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, was being held by a member of a Scotland Yard surveillance team as he sat on a Tube train before he was shot eight times, the witness statements show. Documents and photographs from the Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation reveal that one of the undercover team, who was meant to be identifying the shot man,...

The Iranian government must investigate the deaths of at least 17 people at the hands of security forces in the western province of Kurdistan over the past two weeks, Human Rights Watch said today. Security forces reportedly also wounded hundreds when they opened fire on demonstrators protesting the killing of a young Kurdish man, Shivan Qaderi, on July 9. In addition, the government forces arrested hundreds of people throughout the province, including Roya Toloui, a women's rights activist, and several other leading human rights defenders and journalists. On July 9, security forces shot and killed Shivan Qaderi in Mahabad. Kurdish...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A gunman on a motorcycle shot and killed a judge Tuesday in central Tehran and then sped off, a judiciary spokesman said. Judge Masoud Moqadasi handled a case against an investigative reporter jailed in 2000 for reporting that intelligence officials murdered five Iranian dissidents in 1998, judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad said. The journalist Akbar Ganji remains in jail. Iran's Intelligence Ministry later blamed the murders of the dissidents on ``rogue agents'' in the secret service. As the judge drove away from his office, the gunman sped up to Moqadasi's car on a motorcycle and sprayed it...

LONDON (AFP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair said that Britain was "desperately sorry" for the death of an innocent Brazilian man who was shot dead by police in an anti-terror chase in London last week. "We are all desperately sorry for the death of an innocent person, and I understand the feelings of the young man's family," Blair told a press conference. "But we also have to understand that the police are doing their job in very very difficult circumstances and I think it's important we give them every support," Blair said at Number 10 Downing Street, his office and...