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LIFE AFTER TERROR By JOSEPH F. CONNOR YOU sometimes hear how the first World Trade Center attack was a warning that the city ig nored. But it wasn't the first: Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the New York terrorist attack that killed my father, Frank T. Connor — the Jan. 24, 1975, bombing of Fraunces Tavern. The killers struck on a warm, clear and pleasant winter's day. My dad, a 33-year-old officer of Morgan Guaranty Trust, was having lunch with clients. The bomb killed him and three others in unspeakably gruesome ways. One of his colleagues was decapitated; silverware...

A group of teenagers armed with baseball bats and machetes attacked Australian teachers and students on Monday, injuring 18 people and forcing a high school in Sydney to be locked down, police said. Five youths barged into the morning assembly at Merrylands High School in south-west Sydney, witnesses said, grabbing students before starting to smash windows at the school. The school then locked its students in classrooms as the youths, who were not students, went through two school buildings, smashing more windows and equipment, police said. "They caused a considerable amount of damage," a police spokesman told reporters. "There have...

A man with a machete attacked two others this weekend at an apartment complex on Chihuahua Street. Gumaro Vasquez Davila and Gerardo Mendiola picked up an unidentified man and went to Vasquez Davila’s apartment in the 2900 block of Chihuahua, according to the Laredo Police. Vasquez Davila told investigators he went outside to his car, heard screaming and saw the man running toward him out of the apartment, according to Juan Rivera, a spokesman for the Laredo Police Department. He fought the man off, receiving a small cut to the abdomen. Mendiola sustained a serious cut to the face and...

WATERBURY -- A city man pleaded guilty Monday to attacking his former wife with a machete. Prabhudial Narine, 51, decided to plead guilty with the hope that words from his former wife and daughter at Narine's upcoming sentencing hearing will encourage a judge to show him some leniency, according to defense attorney Leonard Crone. Jury selection in his case had finished in Waterbury Superior Court, but Crone said his client worried he would receive a stiffer sentence if convicted at trial. There is no plea agreement in the case. Narine faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years and...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Puerto Rican police tightened security at federal buildings and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton canceled a visit to the island amid fears the killing of a Puerto Rican nationalist in an FBI shootout could lead to a resurgence of pro-independence violence. Police chief Pedro Toledo acknowledged the potential for unrest, saying the death of Filiberto Ojeda Rios had generated "rancor and rage." Ojeda Rios, 72, was shot to death Friday by FBI agents who came to arrest him at his farmhouse in southwestern Puerto Rico for the 1983 armed robbery of a Wells Fargo depot in...

An FBI sweep launched in Puerto Rico to prevent a "domestic terrorist attack" is eliciting widespread outrage on the island - and as far away as New York City - with critics accusing the agency of trying to use terrorism as a guise to turn public opinion against Puerto Rico's independence movement. The Friday morning raid on the U.S. commonwealth, which targeted five private homes and one business, was launched to prevent attacks from the Boricua Popular Army, the FBI said. The special agent in charge of the San Juan Division of the FBI, Luis Fraticelli, said the searches were...

MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) --The fugitive founder of a violent Puerto Rican independence group was killed in a gunfight with federal agents at a mountain farmhouse in western Puerto Rico, the FBI said Sunday. Filiberto Ojeda Rios, 72, opened fire on agents who were trying to arrest him at a house in the Hormigueros area of Puerto Rico on Friday, the FBI said. Ojeda Rios was killed, and an FBI agent was shot in the stomach and severely wounded, the agency said. Ojeda Rios was the founder and leader of Puerto Rico's radical Boricua Popular Army, which sought independence for the...