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HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- Cuban President Raul Castro is taking over leadership of a country whose government believes its citizens are not working hard enough. Raul Castro was chosen Sunday to take over Cuba's presidency from his brother, Fidel Castro. The state-run newspaper recently ran an article headlined "Work: Option or necessity?" The writer pointed out that, judging by the number of people in the streets during the day, many Cubans don't seem to be on the job. They have few motivations to buckle down: Salaries average about $15 per month on the island, and Cubans get monthly food rations even if they don't work. Watch a report on the realities in Cuba » . "There is a strong desire to protect and to gradually increase the incomes and savings of the population, particularly of those least favored," said Raul Castro, 76. The black market is so widespread that Cubans have coined a special term for breaking the law to make ends meet: "resolver" -- literally, "to resolve." See Cuba through I-Reporters' eyes » . The new president, who took the reins of power Sunday from his ailing brother, Fidel, 81, has said the country must become more productive. "The country's priority will be to meet the basic needs of the population, both material and spiritual, based on the sustained strengthening of the national economy and its productive basis without which, I'll say it again, development would be impossible," Raul Castro said in a speech Sunday. Cubans, too, are calling for reforms, though not all of them related to productivity. In a recent video that has made the rounds on the Internet, a student poses tough questions to the president of Cuba's National Assembly, asking why Cubans cannot travel freely to resorts -- a practice derided by critics as "tourist apartheid." Though such a public display of discontent is rare, the video echoed sentiments often voiced in private for years, particularly since the fall of the Soviet empire in 1991 and, with it, the loss of billions of dollars in subsidies. Cuban officials counter that Cubans are not granted access to the nation's most luxurious spots because they do not have the foreign exchange brought by the tourists and needed to run the country's social programs, such as free health care and education. With a new president steering the island nation for the first time in 49 years, some Cubans have allowed their expectations to rise. "I think those expectations are really very large indeed and it'll be the Achilles heel, potentially, of this new government if it doesn't attack them with some vigor," said Hal Klepak, a professor of history and warfare studies at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. Indeed, Castro has promised to move within a few weeks to improve efficiency by cutting some of the red tape that can frustrate the most fervent of revolutionaries. But Wayne S. Smith, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington and chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana from 1979 to 1982, predicted Sunday in an editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Raul Castro will not break strongly from his brother's policies. "Rather, we will see a peaceful transition and the existing system remain largely intact," Smith predicted. Still, changes are inevitable, he said. "Raul Castro has called for a nationwide debate on the country's economic future and for Cubans to propose reforms in group discussions. "He has also called for new proposals to raise productivity, including discussion of more private ownership of land. The Cuban people want change, want reforms that will bring about a better way of life." Smith credited the younger Castro's leadership over the past 1½ years, while serving as acting president, with having already resulted in "a greater openness, and open criticism of certain government programs." But the degree of change remains uncertain, as does the possibility that "even from the shadow Fidel will try to discourage reforms," he said, adding "the prognosis, nonetheless, is hopeful." See a timeline of Castro's rise to power » . The U.S. government's former man in Havana recommended current politicians exert pressure on the island with a light touch. "We could accomplish far more by reducing tensions and beginning a meaningful dialogue," he said. "Raul Castro has several times suggested such a dialogue. Why not take him up on it? We have disagreements, yes, but how do we resolve them without talking?" E-mail to a friend . CNN's Morgan Neill contributed to this story.

Cuban President Raul Castro says the country must become more productive . Castro has promised to improve efficiency by cutting some red tape . Expectations rise as a new president leads Cuba for the first time in 49 years . Rare public displays of discontent show frustrations faced by Cubans .

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(CNN) -- Researchers have discovered the oldest piece of gold jewelry ever found in the Americas, an academic journal reported Tuesday. A gold and turquoise necklace, made 4,000 years ago, was found in a burial site near Lake Titicaca. A team found the gold necklace near Lake Titicaca in Peru, according to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It's 4,000 years old -- 600 years older than any other gold jewelry discovered in the Western Hemisphere. The anthropologist who discovered the gold, Mark Aldenderfer, told CNN on Tuesday night that he sensed the importance of his find after noticing a glint while excavating a site with human remains. "It appeared to be gold. That's when I knew we had something special," he said. "This was a complete shock." He found the necklace about seven years ago, he said, but researchers kept quiet for fear that looters would raid the site. They also wanted to allow time for chemical analysis before announcing their discovery on Tuesday. Video footage from Peru shows a necklace of nine gold tubes separated by 10 stones. The find is important, Aldenderfer said, because it signals the early emergence of a desire for status among people who lived as relative equals without a formal leadership system. The Andean people of that time, Aldenderfer said, had recently settled down after many generations as hunter-gatherers. Formal kings would not emerge for hundreds of years. The person who wore the gold necklace may have sought to distinguish himself with a status symbol, Aldenderfer said. The artifact is in the custody of the National Institute of Peru and may be displayed in a museum, he said. E-mail to a friend .

A team finds the gold necklace near Lake Titicaca in Peru . Find is important because it signals the emergence of societal status systems . The artifact is in the custody of the National Institute of Peru .

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(CNN) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales plans to sign legislation Friday scheduling a May 4 referendum on a new constitution, the Bolivian Information Agency reported. Bolivians celebrate Thursday in La Paz after Congress decides to call for a referendum on a new constitution. The move comes after the Bolivian Congress decided Thursday in a raucous session to let people nationwide vote on the controversial plans. The proposed constitution would strengthen the country's indigenous majority but has faced fierce opposition from nonindigenous Bolivians, including those in four provinces whose governors have declared autonomy. Hundreds jammed streets Thursday outside the congressional building in La Paz to prevent opposition legislators from entering. Video footage broadcast on CNN en Español showed people pushing, shoving and hitting others. Watch as the crowds block the opposition » . Congress made its decision to hold a referendum "with a reduced presence of opposition lawmakers," the Bolivian news agency said. Opposition legislators decried the move as "illegal," the agency said, but supporters of Morales welcomed it. "Now it is the Bolivian people who will decide with their vote whether to approve or reject the new constitution," said Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, according to the Bolivian Information Agency. E-mail to a friend .

Bolivian Congress decides to let people vote on new constitution on May 4 . Proposed constitution would strengthen Bolivia's indigenous majority . Bolivian President Evo Morales is set to sign the legislation . Opposition lawmakers with "reduced presence" in Congress decry move as "illegal"

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(CNN) -- A B-2 stealth bomber crashed early Saturday morning local time in Guam, according to the Air Force. A B-2 stealth bomber taxis at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, in a 2005 photo. Two pilots who were aboard during the crash, at Andersen Air Force Base, ejected from the bomber and were in good condition afterward, according to an Air Force statement. The pilots were from the 509th Bomb Wing. The military didn't release their names. Emergency responders were on the scene of the crash. A board of officers will investigate its cause. The crash is the second in three days of an Air Force craft. Watch smoke rise from crash site . An Air Force fighter pilot was killed Wednesday after two F-15C jets collided during a training exercise over the Gulf of Mexico. The planes were from the 33rd Fighter Wing, a combat-flying unit out of Eglin Air Force Base near Pensacola, Florida. E-mail to a friend .

Air Force says 2 pilots in good condition after ejecting from plane . Emergency responders on scene of crash at Andersen Air Force Base . Crash is the second in three days involving an Air Force craft .

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(AOL Autos) -- Okay, you've decided what model of car you want to buy. And you know, more or less, how much you want to spend -- or how much you can afford. You've kicked tires, talked to salesmen, taken a few shiny new numbers for a test-drive and you're ready to make the deal. If you eat in your car you may want to consider fabric or leather protections. Except, you're not quite done. You still need to decide whether to buy any of those "extras" that your salesperson will always suggest. Some of these extras have real value and are probably worth adding. Others ... maybe not so much. The list of "extras" offered by most dealers, may include paint sealant, fabric protection/leather care, extended warranties, extended 'one price' service contracts, rust/underbody coatings and anti-theft systems, to mention a few. We wanted to know which of these new car extras were worth it and which ones a consumer can do without. To get to the bottom of it, we thought we would consult an expert -- David Bennett, Manager of Automotive Programs for AAA. As it turns out, like most things in life, the answer often just comes down to what's best for you, depending on your own situation, budget or locale. Let's address these add-ons one by one: . Paint sealant . "I think that most paint jobs on cars are pretty good these days, so in most cases you probably don't need that anymore," said Bennett, who offered one caveat. "But that can depend on what part of the country you live in -- what the climate is, whether you get a lot of snow and ice, and what the road crews put down on the road -- whether it is salt, or if it is something that is less harmful to the paint. But generally, as long as you keep your car washed, and wash that salt off of it, and get it waxed regularly, that paint should last without getting the 'add-on' sealer at the dealership. Also, if you get a chip or a ding, get it fixed so the rust doesn't get a chance to set in and spread." Fabric / leather protection . These extras are fairly self-explanatory -- the dealer "treats" the upholstered or leather seating with a "protection" product that make the seats more resistant to stains or scuff marks. "This can be a good purchase, but the first question you should ask before buying it is, 'What kind of lifestyle do I lead?' suggests Bennett. "Do you have a lot of kids and are they prone to spill things? Or is your vehicle mostly going to be occupied by adults?" Do you eat in the car with some regularity? If so, and you're just too darn messy for your own good, a stain protection might be a good way to go. "Also, look at exclusions in the plan," advises Bennett. "If you're a smoker, and the plan excludes burn holes from cigarette ashes, and you're not diligent about making sure your ash is always short, that might not be a good purchase because of that exclusion. Each of these policies or plans is probably offering something different, and you need to read all of the exclusions before making that purchase, because it might not be a good one for you." If you want to save some cash, one option would be to forego the protectant and just make sure you clean your seats regularly with a good upholstery cleaner or leather cleaner. To remove spots from a leather seat, use a good leather cleaner and work it into the spot with a soft cloth. If the spot still remains, let it sit for a few hours. Repeat, as they say, if necessary. It's also a good idea , to use a leather conditioner regularly on leather seats to restore moisture and to maintain its appearance. Rustproofing . This is when the dealership applies various rust-inhibiting chemicals, waxes or sealers to the vehicle's undercarriage. It can also be applied to other rust-prone areas. Rustproofing treatments sometimes include a guarantee over a certain number of years. Keep in mind that some guarantees require annual "checkups" to re-apply the sealers or rust inhibitors to any areas where the rustproofing may have been damaged. "I don't think this is necessary in most cases," opines Bennett. "The way most vehicles are constructed today, they are not nearly as prone to underbody rusting as they used to be in the old days -- even in the north, where they get a lot of snow." LoJack Car Security System / Anti-theft systems: . The folks at LoJack Car Security Systems report that a vehicle is stolen every 25 seconds in the U.S. Using a car alarm is one way to protect your vehicle. But if you want to go the more high-tech "tracking" route, using a security system like LoJack may give you more peace of mind. The LoJack System, includes a small radio frequency transceiver hidden in up to 20 different places in the vehicle. The System uses a code that is tied into the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN). Then, when you report that your car has been stolen, the state police crime computer can match code against the state VIN database. This automatically activates the LoJack System in the vehicle -- emitting an inaudible signal. Then, police cruisers and aviation units that have the LoJack tracking system can identify the vehicle's location, track it and recover it. LoJack claims that over 200,000 vehicles have been recovered worldwide using their system, with over 100,000 of those in the U.S. "Whether or not this is a purchase you should make depends on various factors. If you live in a high-crime area, a system like this could provide you with peace of mind," advises Bennett. "But even if you live in a safe, low-crime district, your car can still be stolen from a busy downtown street or parking garage," he notes. One caveat: Some car owners may not want their car back after it has been stolen, especially if it has been seriously vandalized, or if it has been driven so hard that it causes some mechanical problems. Another thing to consider is that owners of GM vehicles that come with its patented OnStar system, probably won't need a theft tracking program, says Bennett. "Because the system allows OnStar operators to track the location of the vehicle if it is stolen. So if you buy a GM car with the OnStar system, you may want to pass on a LoJack or similar tracking system." Extended warranties . "This really does depend on how long you plan to keep the vehicle, because most of these extended warranty plans don't kick in until the manufacturer's warranty expires," advises Bennett. "And these days, those manufacturers warranties are three or five years, sometimes longer. "So if you plan on selling the car after three or five years, it probably doesn't make sense to buy the extended warranty." Some warranties offer transferable policies, which let you "sell" the warranty along with the vehicle. Others allow you to "return" the warranty for a pro-rated refund. Bennett also explains that not all warranties are created equal. "They usually have three levels of warranties: A basic extended warranty will just cover the powertrain, for example; while a better one will cover the powertrain plus some other components that are listed -- or an 'exclusionary' extended warranty may say it covers everything except those items that are listed. At the top end, the best warranty just covers everything, but that is also the most expensive." Bennett gives an example of one manufacturers warranty. "For a 2007 Buick, the basic manufacturers warranty is five years or 100,000 miles for the powertrain coverage, and the corrosion warranty is six years or 100,000 miles. In fact, that's the same warranty GM offers on their Chevy and Cadillac brands." "That's a pretty good warranty, so if you plan on only keeping your vehicle for five years or less, the extended warranty is probably money you don't need to spend." E-mail to a friend .

GM owners won't need LoJack because cars come with OnStar option . Smokers considering fabric protection should check for policy exclusions . But generally, as long as you keep your car washed you don't need sealant . Some warranties offer transferable policies that let you "sell" it with car .

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CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee (CNN) -- When meeting Jeff Donohoo, it's not immediately apparent he is a 36-year-old man living with autism. In fact, unless you get him talking about the Atlanta Braves -- one of his true passions in life -- he is a very quiet person. Jeff Donohoo, 36, at work in the kitchen at Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Early on, his younger brothers and sister didn't know, either. "Since they grew up with him, they just knew Jeff was Jeff," said Nancy Donohoo, his mother. "They didn't think of him as weird or anything." But when friends started to notice Donohoo was different, Nancy Donohoo was quick to explain to a group of 10-year-olds why. "Jeff has a social problem, not a mental problem," she explained. "He's very smart. He reads encyclopedias ... he just doesn't know how to talk to people." From then on, friends who visited the house always made an effort to interact with Donohoo, through a high-five or a simple "hello." Today, it's unlikely Donohoo will be the first to say hello in a group setting, but interacting with people is easier for him than it once was. See how Donohoo copes every day » . Questioned about his childhood, his most elaborate response is "yeah" or "no." But when the topic is the Braves, it's hard to get him to stop talking about the latest statistics or his favorite player, Mark Teixeira. Asked how long he's been a Braves fan, there was little hesitation: "All my life." He's come a long way since he was a child. Then, just teaching Donohoo to talk was a challenge in itself, Nancy Donohoo said. "There was no eye contact, so I would hold his face in front of me, and say the word I wanted him to say." Donohoo entered the first grade as a special education student. It was the first year special education was offered in his family's hometown of Florence, Alabama. He carried on with special education until the sixth grade, when he was mainstreamed, or put in classes with children without disabilities. Explainer: Understanding autism » . For most of Donohoo's childhood, his mother had suspicions about his condition. "When he was little, I had watched a 'Marcus Welby' show, and they had an autistic child on there. But he was very passive; he sat in the corner and just hit things," Nancy Donohoo said. "Jeff was wild. He was the opposite, so I just assumed he couldn't be autistic. But he had a lot of those mannerisms." It was Donohoo's freshman year of high school when Nancy and Bill Donohoo learned what was wrong with their son. "There was a doctor in Huntsville that dealt a lot with hyperactive children," Nancy Donohoo said. "He said, 'I'm going to give you this sheet of paper; these are all the symptoms of autism.' " The list had 19 symptoms, and Nancy Donohoo was instructed to circle the ones her son had. She circled 17. The diagnosis didn't change how Nancy Donohoo dealt with her first-born son. In fact, the doctor said she already was doing all the right things, working to socialize Donohoo. Today, Donohoo, living with his parents, finds comfort in strict routine. He wakes each day at 5 a.m. to make himself breakfast and prepare for work. At 6, Nancy Donohoo drives her son to Memorial Hospital, where he's entering his 16th year of service with the cafeteria. Ollie Forté is Donohoo's supervisor, and has worked with Donohoo almost since the beginning. "He's very valuable to us at this department. He's dependable, on time, no attendance problems," said Forté. "We love Jeff." After work, at 2:30 p.m., Donohoo rides with his mother to the YMCA, where he works out for about three hours. Then it's back home, where he fixes himself dinner and spends hours online looking up Braves statistics, or reading a number of baseball-related books from his personal library. This cycle repeats on days Donohoo works at the hospital. On his days off, the schedule is equally strict, with little variation. He'll still go to the YMCA, and he'll also make the occasional trip to the bookstore, adding to his collection of baseball-related literature. Sudden changes to daily plans are still a challenge. "If he's made his plans to do something tonight," said Bill Donohoo, "and we come and say, 'We're going to get something to eat. Do you want to go?' that upsets his plans for what he's going to do that night." Physical contact is also difficult. "He doesn't like to be touched," Nancy Donohoo said. "He doesn't freak, but he doesn't like it. He stiffens up. He'll want to give you a hug, but he still has a hard time." The many challenges aside, Donohoo has a fine appreciation for things like cooking. In addition to preparing his own meals, he also enjoys baking. "He loves desserts -- he loves sweets," Nancy Donohoo said with a laugh. "He's a little heavy, but we're working on that." Nancy and Bill Donohoo have endured the challenges, and they acknowledge their son will never be fully independent. But one can tell they couldn't be prouder of him. "It's rewarding today, because he's come so far, but it was a long road," Nancy Donohoo said. E-mail to a friend .

Jeff Donohoo, 36, is an adult living with autism . Donohoo lives in Tennessee with his parents and works at a hospital . His autism was diagnosed during his freshman year of high school . Donohoo's mother: "It's rewarding today, because he's come so far."

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CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) -- Omar bin Laden has a message for his father, Osama: "Find another way." Omar bin Laden says he last saw his father in 2000 when the son decided to leave al Qaeda. The son of the most-wanted man in the world spoke Sunday to CNN in a quiet, middle-class suburb about an hour outside Cairo, Egypt. Omar bin Laden, who works as a contractor, said he is talking publicly because he wants an end to the violence his father has inspired -- violence that has killed innocent civilians in a spate of attacks around the world, including those of September 11, 2001. "I try and say to my father: 'Try to find another way to help or find your goal. This bomb, this weapons, it's not good to use it for anybody,' " he said in English learned in recent months from his British wife. He said that's not just his own message, but one that a friend of his father's and other Muslims have expressed to him. "They too say ... my father should change [his] way," he said. Watch whether Omar bin Laden thinks his father will ever be caught » . He said he hasn't spoken to his father since 2000, when he walked away from an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan with his father's blessings. He said he has no idea where his father is, but is confident he will never be caught because locals support him. Asked if his father might be living along the Afghan-Pakistan border, he said, "Maybe, maybe not." "Either way, the people there are different," he said. "They don't care about the government." Now, he and his wife are preparing to launch a movement far different from the one his father, Osama bin Laden, launched. They are pursuing a movement for peace. At first glance, Omar bin Laden appears to have little in common with the man who has eluded international efforts to find him. The 26-year-old's hair is bound in neat braids, he drives a Jeep and is married to a British national twice his age. But the physical resemblance quickly sinks in, even without the long beard his father favors. It is a resemblance he doesn't avoid. "Being Osama's son, I don't hide it. I don't hide my name," he said. "I am proud by my name, but if you have a name like mine you will find people run away from you, are afraid of you." He said he doesn't consider his father to be a terrorist. When his father was fighting the Soviets, Washington considered him a hero, he said. "Before they call it war; now they call it terrorism," he said. He said his father believes his duty is to protect Muslims from attack. "He believes this is his job -- to help the people," he said. "I don't think my father is a terrorist because history tells you he's not." However, Omar bin Laden -- who was 14 when he began training in al Qaeda camps -- said he differs greatly with his father over the killing of civilians. Was 9/11 a just attack? "I don't think 9/11 was right personally, but it happened," he said. "I don't think ... [the war] in Vietnam was right. I don't think what's going on in Palestine is right. I don't think what's going on in Iraq is right. "If we make what is right and not right, we will make a very big list," he said. He said he left al Qaeda because he did not want to be associated with killing civilians. He said his father did not try to dissuade him from leaving al Qaeda. "I told him I was going, and wanted to try life and see what it was like outside because, from a young age I was with my father, and I only saw and heard my father and his friends. My father told me, 'If this is what your choice -- your decision -- is, what can I tell you? I like you to be with me, but this is your decision.' " So father and son went their separate ways. But there has been no running from the bin Laden name, not after the events of September 11. On that day, Omar bin Laden was in Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 hijackers were from. Asked if, upon learning of the news, he knew his father had been behind it, he replied, "Yeah, maybe." He said he felt sadness for those killed. "I don't think 9/11 was right personally," he said. "I don't agree with 9/11 or with any war where only civilians are dying." Asked why he did not protest more strongly his father's role in the killing of civilians, he said it is up to the religious clerics close to his father to tell Osama bin Laden to change tactics in the name of Islam. And even if that most unlikely scenario were to occur, he said, al Qaeda would not stop. "My father doesn't have the power to stop the movement at this moment." Sitting by his side throughout the hour-and-a-half interview was his wife, Zaina. The two are organizing a multi-month horserace through North Africa in the name of peace, set to kick off this year. But getting sponsors to line up behind the name bin Laden has been difficult. "It would probably have been easier to do a race without having Omar's name, but then the race would just be a race, it wouldn't be a race for peace," his wife said. Omar bin Laden said his relationship with his father was limited. He is the fourth of 11 children born to his father's first wife, and he is one of 19 children Osama bin Laden has fathered. "Most of the time he busy, so busy, all the day he's busy [with] his friends. He was working a lot." Omar bin Laden is now undertaking perhaps an impossible task: trying to rebrand the name they share. But he said he is not looking for approval from his father. "My life, I take care of my life," he said. "My father he take care of his life." E-mail to a friend .

Bin Laden's son, Omar, says his father should change his ways . Omar bin Laden split with his father in 2000; says he hasn't heard from him since . Omar bin Laden says he doesn't believe his dad is a terrorist . "I don't think 9/11 was right personally," the son said .

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BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@," claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said on Thursday. The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words. "The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming. While the "@" symbol is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta," or "love him," to Mandarin speakers. Li told a news conference on the state of the language that the name was an extreme example of people's increasingly adventurous approach to Chinese, as commercialisation and the Internet break down conventions. Another couple tried to give their child a name that rendered into English sounds like "King Osrina." Li did not say if officials accepted the "@" name. But earlier this year the government announced a ban on names using Arabic numerals, foreign languages and symbols that do not belong to Chinese minority languages. Sixty million Chinese faced the problem that their names use ancient characters so obscure that computers cannot recognize them and even fluent speakers were left scratching their heads, said Li, according to a transcript of the briefing on the government Web site (www.gov.cn). One of them was the former Premier Zhu Rongji, whose name had a rare "rong" character that gave newspaper editors headaches. E-mail to a friend . Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Chinese couple try to name baby "@" Father claims character translates as "love him" Officials have not revealed if the name has been allowed .

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(AOL Autos) -- Do you live in one of the nation's worst cities for road rage? If you live in a major metropolitan area on either coast, chances are you do. If you live in the Midwest or northwest, odds are that you don't. Miami ranks as the worst city for most aggressive drivers for the second straight year in a nationwide study of driver habits followed by New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington. But if road rage is a "cultural phenomenon" as one of our experts suggests, how best do we go about combating driver frustration across the nation? Traffic black spots . The nation's roads are peppered with traffic black spots, junctions where car snarls elicit road rage in even the most mild-mannered drivers. Southern California has the San Diego (I-405) Freeway, and the nation's busiest junction, where U.S. 101 meets it to the north of Los Angeles. Miami and the East Coast have I-95, which snakes from the world's busiest cruise port up to Maine. The District of Columbia and the Beltway are infamous for gridlock. I've spent three very nervous hours getting to Chicago's O'Hare Airport from the city center (before missing my flight). Traffic by definition is worst in major metropolitan areas -- if your farming community is gridlocked, you'd better be grousing at your local council meetings -- but it is the increase in traffic that leads many to suggest it's just going to get worse. Traffic levels are rising seemingly as fast as home foreclosures in Los Angeles and Miami. In these areas, it's not only the rise in number of drivers, but the rising age of drivers. AAA points out that seniors are the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. That suggests drivers should adjust their habits accordingly. AAA has launched its Lifelong Safe Mobility campaign to help seniors adjust to more crowded roads and perhaps more aggressive drivers. The facts and remedy . When the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety studied more than 10,000 incidents of road rage and violent aggressive driving committed in the 1990s, it found that at least 218 people were killed and another 12,610 injured when drivers got angry. Many of these aggressors are males aged 18 to 26. The AAA Web site offers a three-step plan to avoid becoming the victim of aggressive driving: . • The first tip is "don't offend," which includes cutting off other drivers, driving slowly in the left lane, tailgating and gesturing to other drivers. • The agency then warns to "not engage," which advises steering clear of trouble, not making eye contact and getting help, by calling 911, in the event of experiencing dangerous, aggressive driving. It then asks at-risk drivers to "adjust their attitude," which involves "forgetting winning" (for the drivers to whom driving is a Darwinian survival of the fittest), or putting themselves in the other drivers' shoes. • Finally, they recommend that, if you think you have a road rage problem, seek professional help. Other people's actions . So the wife and I were looking for sofas. It was a Sunday morning and, with me behind the wheel, we were dawdling around quiet streets trying to find one of those seemingly ubiquitous furniture warehouses. Soon, the wife pointed one out but we were almost past it. I hit the brakes and quickly pulled in, then realized that a Mercedes M-Class had pulled in right behind me. A large, squat tattooed guy jumped out and started shouting, about 10 feet from my car. "I have children in the car, I had to slam on the brakes, [how dare] you brake so quickly," he said, getting real mean. I appreciated I'd probably braked quickly and that it was bad driving on my part. However, as his tirade continued, I very calmly asked why he was setting such a bad example for his young children by following another driver off the road, then shouting and swearing. The man continued his harangue before climbing back into his vehicle and driving away. The next time you're fulminating in your front seat about another's aggressive driving, remember that your driving will almost inevitably elicit the same response in someone else. And don't swear in front of your kids or set a bad example for them. 'Cultural phenomenon' Dr. Leon James is a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii and Web master of DrDriving.org. He is also the co-author of "Road Rage and Aggressive Driving" with this wife, Diane Nahl. James began studying driving psychology about 20 years ago after his wife told him her mother thought he took turns too fast. Over a period of self-study, he said he was amazed by the mistakes he made and the aggressive thoughts he experienced toward other drivers. He recorded them via his "Speakaloud" method. Using his method on students, he discovered that road rage is a "cultural phenomenon." "We call the back seat of the car the 'road rage nursery', where [young children] pick up all the driver's bad habits," James said. "It's a cultural temper tantrum." James said "local norms" can play a part. For example, Florida drivers yell at each other more than in California, where verbal interplay can be interpreted as road rage in a criminal court. But, in the main, it's "drivers trying to deal with their emotions in stressful situations." James said that, in his studies, an awareness gap exists in aggressive drivers: When asked about drivers' habits, respondents suggested that about 85 percent of other drivers drove aggressively, while just 35 percent said they themselves drove aggressively. If you feel your blood boiling frequently behind the wheel, classes like James' are sprouting all over the nation. Addressing road rage . In an ideal world, an increase in drivers would automatically be met by an improvement in infrastructure, and fewer road-rage-inducing distractions. Another Utopian ideal is for everyone else to drive more considerately. One look at our nation's crumbling roads tells us that this fantasyland clearly doesn't exist. Instead of looking outside your car at road conditions or the habits of other drivers, the answer to aggressive driving, most likely, lies within the confines of your own cabin. E-mail to a friend .

Traffic snarls blamed for causing much of road rage . Road rage worse in big cities on East, West coasts . AAA: Don't engage the angry driver, dial 911 for help . Professor: Back seat is "road rage nursery"

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(CNN) -- In a television interview, the mother of a man charged in the murder of an Auburn University freshman repeatedly says she's sorry about the suffering the victim's family is enduring. Courtney Larrell Lockhart was arrested Friday in Phenix City, Alabama, about 35 miles from Auburn. "I never thought Courtney would do this. I never, never thought," Courtney Larrell Lockhart's mother Catherine Williams told CNN affiliate WRBL on Saturday. "But I'm sorry for that family and I'm sorry. I'm just sorry," she said. "I got nothing else to say. I'm just sorry for the loss of that family." Police announced Saturday that they had arrested Lockhart, 23, of Smiths, Alabama, in connection with the shooting death of Lauren Burk, 18, of Marietta, Georgia. Watch the mother cry and apologize » . Lockhart faces charges of capital murder during a kidnapping, capital murder during a robbery and capital murder during an attempted rape, police said. Also, Lockhart is facing robbery charges in the Phenix City, Alabama, area, said William Clanton of the Phenix City Police Department. Clanton did not know how many robberies Lockhart was suspected of committing. Lockhart is being held in the Russell County jail, but is expected to be moved to Lee County soon, where Auburn University is, Clanton said. Burk was found shot Tuesday night on North College Street, a few miles north of campus. She died later at a hospital. Minutes after police responded to a call reporting an injured person and found Burk, they received a report of a car -- which turned out to be Burk's -- on fire in a campus parking lot. Authorities believe gasoline or another accelerant was used to ignite Burk's car, Auburn Assistant Police Chief Tommy Dawson said Friday. Police were investigating whether a gas can found in downtown Auburn was related to the case. Memorial services for Burk were held Saturday and Sunday at a Marietta church and synagogue. A campus-wide memorial service will be held Monday. A memorial service was held Sunday in Athens, Georgia, for another slain university student Eve Carson, the Athens Banner Herald reported. Carson, 22, the student body president for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was found shot to death in a suburban neighborhood not far from campus about 5 a.m. Wednesday. Her car was found Thursday, in another neighborhood to the west, about a block or two from where she lived with roommates. On Saturday, police released two surveillance photographs of a "person of interest" taken by an ATM camera in the Chapel Hill area, Chapel Hill Police Chief Brian Curran said. The person appeared to be using one of Carson's ATM cards and was driving a vehicle that was possibly hers. Curran called the photographs the "biggest break" in the case, which he said still appears to be random. Reminders of the popular student president appeared on the jerseys of the university's men's basketball team Saturday night as they took on Duke University's Blue Devils in Durham, North Carolina. The top-ranked Tar Heels wore jersey patches that read "Eve." Many of Duke's fans donned small light-blue ribbons as a show of support. There was a moment of silence for Carson before tip-off. The ribbons and moment of silence say "a heckuva lot about Duke University," UNC Coach Roy Williams told reporters after the game. The Tar Heels won 76-68. E-mail to a friend .

Courtney Larrell Lockhart's mother says she's sorry for suffering of victim's family . "I never thought Courtney would do this," mother tells television station . Lockhart charged in Tuesday slaying of Auburn University freshman Lauren Burk . Lockhart is being held in the Russell County jail, authorities say .

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MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- A cult member who spent several months holed up in a cave with dozens of other people anticipating the end of the world claimed Wednesday that two women died and were buried inside. An above-ground kitchen used by the doomsday cult in the Penza region during the summer. The former cave-dweller, Vitaly Nedogon, relayed his claims to Russian TV journalists, according to Anton Sharonov, a spokesman for the administration of Penza, a region southeast of Moscow. The official said Nedogon did not report the information to police or authorities. Once the rest of the apocalyptic sect leaves the cave, investigators will move in to try to confirm Nedogon's report, Sharonov said. Nedogon and others left the cave, said to be near the village of Nikolskoye, about 700 kilometers (435 miles) from the Russian capital, about a week ago, after part of its ceiling collapsed. He claimed two women died at different times during the cult's seclusion, which began in November 2007. One woman died of cancer and the other from excessive fasting, he told the media. "However," Sharonov told the Russian news agency Interfax, "the Penza regional administration is of the view that these deaths must be proven legally, which is possible only if all the people leave the cave so that investigative officials can examine it." Sharonov said those who remain in the cave told Penza officials during negotiations that they would come out by the Russian Orthodox Easter, on April 27. He said officials believe 11 people are left in the cave, but only nine will be alive if Nedogon's report is true. According to Interfax, Penza Deputy Governor Oleg Melnichenko, who is leading the local effort to resolve the situation, said he was unaware of any deaths in the cave. The cave ordeal began when Kuznetsov, the group's leader, told his followers to hide themselves to await the end of the world, which he predicted would take place in May. They had threatened to commit mass suicide if authorities tried to intervene. Thirty-five sect members are believed to have entered the cave initially, Interfax said. E-mail to a friend . From CNN's Maxim Tkachenko in Moscow.

Claims that one woman died from cancer, another from fasting in cult's cave . Russian cult leader told followers world would end in May . Sect members threatened to commit suicide if authorities tried to intervene .

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GREENCREEK, Idaho (CNN) -- It was just 2½ years ago when Elaine Sonnen found out that her 16-year-old son, Richard, had been planning a Columbine-style attack at his high school. Richard Sonnen spent 16 months in mental health institutions after plotting to kill his high school classmates. It would be a fitting payback to his high school classmates who Richard said relentlessly bullied him. "I always wanted to get back at them," Richard Sonnen said of his classmates. "I always wanted to strangle them. ... I was always mad. I was always angry and I would come home and cry to mom and dad." Both Richard and Elaine Sonnen spoke to CNN at the 45-acre family farm. Unlike Columbine and recent school shootings at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech, Elaine Sonnen did see the warning signs in her son and was able to stop him. Elaine and her husband, Tom, adopted Richard from a Bulgarian orphanage when he was just 4½ years old. "I mean, we just loved him, and he was just a big sparkle of life," she said. But only a few months after they brought him home, they began to see another side of their son. He was angry and unpredictable. Elaine Sonnen says that at age 6, Richard told her he wanted to kill her. She said he would shake with anger to the point that he'd scream at her, telling her he wanted to destroy her. "People thought he was just the greatest kid in the world. Very polite, well-mannered, caring," Elaine Sonnen remembered. "At home, he could be anywhere from just a really helpful kid to a monster. A terrifying monster." Mother says son had 'two' personalities » . In junior high, he said, "evil" classmates started picking on him. Boys and girls, he said, bullied him until he couldn't take it anymore. "I always wanted to get revenge," he said. By the eighth grade, Richard was put on anti-psychotic medications. He had been diagnosed as bipolar and was suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder and other disorders. In 1999, when the Columbine shootings happened, the Sonnens feared that Richard might do the same thing one day. "We stopped and looked at each other and said, 'This could be Richard; some day this could be him,' " Elaine Sonnen said. Years later, during his junior year in high school, they were right. Fed up with the bullies, Richard says, he felt like an outcast and started looking for a way to get even. Secretly, he began reading books about Columbine in his school library. The shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, became his heroes. "They planned it out so perfectly and so meticulously ... that I just, wow, you know," he said. "They're my gods." Watch a preview of "Campus Rage" » . He even created a hit list of the classmates he planned to kill at Prairie High School in Cottonwood, Idaho. "My plan was to set around bombs around the school. ... I analyzed a lot of where everybody sat and where everybody did their thing," he said. "I had pinpoints of where I wanted to go, where I wanted to do it." Harvard Medical School psychologist William Pollack, who consulted on a 2002 federal government study of school shootings, said it found that most school shooters often had feelings of anger, sadness and isolation as well as homicidal and suicidal thoughts. "We see a young man who obviously is telling us how depressed he was, how angry he was and how much he looked up to people who we know are very disturbed and very dangerous, and how close he came to killing people," said Pollack, who watched CNN's interview with Richard. Elaine Sonnen found out about her son's plan during a conversation with him. She ordered him to write down the names of the eight students he wanted dead and then gave the list to his caseworker the next day. Later, he added a teacher and his mother and sister to the hit list. She took immediate action and had her son committed to an Idaho mental institution. Over the next 16 months, he received treatment at several mental health facilities throughout Idaho. "There, I opened up. I felt better. I moved on with myself," Richard said. "They felt at that point ... they had done everything they could do for him," Elaine Sonnen added. "He was doing great. He could make it on his own. They had no question." In January 2007, after almost a year and a half in mental institutions, Richard Sonnen started a new life at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. He was taking a cocktail of three anti-psychotic drugs to help him function. "[For] the first time in 12 years, I was able to hold my son," said Elaine Sonnen. "So I knew he was on the road to be well." Everything seemed to be looking up, but in April 2007, three days after the Virginia Tech massacre, Richard's mother received a call from police. They told her Richard had made about four threats to carry out shootings at Lewis Clark State College and Lewiston High School. Police told her Richard planned to go home, get some guns and go back to school to pull off a sniper attack from a clock tower on the college's campus, she said. Police took him into protective custody and searched his apartment for clues. But, in the end, he was released because, authorities say, they didn't have enough evidence to charge him with a crime. Richard said the whole incident was a big misunderstanding. He said he was telling people about his high school plot and never threatened his college or local high school. But his mother doesn't believe his version of the story. "No. I believe he made those threats," she said. "I still believe it." Richard, now 19, signed an order banning him from campus for one year. Today, he lives on his own in Washington state. He's still on medication but not seeing a psychiatrist. Since he's over the age of 18, his mom can't force him to go. Is Elaine Sonnen still afraid of her son? "Yeah, at times, I'm very afraid," she said. "Because he still has a lot of anger towards me." She said the signs are still there, and she fears what could happen if he ever stops taking his medicine. "He's not getting the help and the insight from a professional that could see the signs," she said. "Because as a person with a mental illness, you have skewed thinking." Even though Richard calls her the "greatest person in the world," Elaine Sonnen protects the family by keeping an alarm on her son's bedroom door when he comes home to visit. So why are Richard Sonnen and his mother, Elaine, speaking out now? In the wake of the Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech shootings, Richard wants young people experiencing the same symptoms he had to seek out help. His mother wants parents and authorities to listen for warning signs and to act fast and decisively. E-mail to a friend .

At age 6, Elaine Sonnen says, her son, Richard, wanted to kill her . Fed up with bullying, Richard says he plotted to kill eight classmates . Elaine immediately sought mental help for her son after learning of his plan . Richard spent 16 months in mental institutions and now lives on his own .

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(CNN) -- A leading humanitarian group says Sunni and Shiite militias in Iraq are pulling displaced people into their movements because governments and international entities are failing to adequately address their plight. Two Shiite militiamen take up combat positions during recent clashes with Iraq security forces. Refugees International underscored that development in a report issued Tuesday titled "Uprooted and Unstable: Meeting Urgent Humanitarian Needs in Iraq." The report says the United States, the government of Iraq and the international community aren't doing enough to address the daily problems faced by the 2.7 million internally displaced Iraqis, who have fled homes in war-torn regions to other places in Iraq. Those people find themselves unemployed in their new locations and many times unable to access food and health care. "As a result of the vacuum created by the failure of both the Iraqi government and the international community to act in a timely and adequate manner, non-state actors play a major role in providing assistance to vulnerable Iraqis," the report says. Social services are being provided by "militias of all denominations" that want to build their groups, with Muqtada al-Sadr's political movement using a Hezbollah model to set itself up "as the main service provider in the country." Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group labeled a terrorist group by the United States, has built a large base of support with its social service network. "Similarly, other Shiite and Sunni groups are gaining ground and support through the delivery of food, oil, electricity, clothes and money to the civilians living in their fiefdoms. "Not only do these militias now have a quasi-monopoly in the large-scale provision of assistance in Iraq, they are also recruiting an increasing number of civilians to their militias -- including displaced Iraqis," the report said. The report says al-Sadr's militia, the Mehdi Army, has resettled displaced Iraqis "free of charge in homes that belonged to Sunnis." "It provides stipends, food, heating oil, cooking oil and other non-food items to supplement the Public Distribution System rations which are still virtually impossible to transfer after displaced Iraqis have moved to a new neighborhood, though it is easier for Shiites to do so," the report says. Refugees International visited a Sadrist office in Baghdad's Ur district and observed residents providing "clothing, milk, oil, rice, sugar, clothes and fuel for heating and cooking when supplies are available." The Sadrists also adjudicate legal disputes among citizens and give stipends to families of displaced people and slain or jailed Mehdi Army fighters. The report says Sunni militias also play a similar role in helping needy and displaced Sunnis, though there is less organized help. "Sunni militias also handle the distribution of key items such as heating gas. As Sunnis in Baghdad get virtually no electricity or other services from the government, they rely on local militias and warlords to secure their areas and manage what services they can obtain." The displaced have joined "awakening" groups -- the "U.S.-backed militias" dominated by Sunnis. Those groups provide security duties, such as guarding checkpoints, and many of them have been getting paychecks from the United States. The U.N. refugee agency says the displacement crisis caused by the war in Iraq is the most significant in the Middle East since the population changes that occurred during the 1948 creation of Israel. Along with the 2.7 million internally displaced people, there are more than 2 million Iraqi refugees -- mostly in Syria and Jordan. The report slams the government of Iraq as being "unwilling" and "unable" to address such humanitarian issues -- "lacking both the capacity and the political will to use its important resources to address humanitarian needs." "The little assistance provided by the government is perceived by most as being biased in favor of the Shiite population, especially when it comes to the delivery of government services such as electricity or food ration cards from the Public Distribution System," the report says. The report adds that the "international community has largely been in denial" about the dire humanitarian situation in Iraq. "Only recently has the United Nations issued a common humanitarian appeal for Iraq, recognizing the nature of the situation and the need for all agencies to step up and address humanitarian needs." E-mail to a friend .

Humanitarian group says Shiite, Sunni militias recruiting displaced Iraqis . Muqtada al-Sadr's group using Hezbollah as model, report claims . United States, Iraq, global community not doing enough for displaced, report adds .

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(CNN) -- Presidential candidates have been wooing voters in Iowa for months, but who wins Thursday may simply come down to where the caucus-goers live, where they meet and the weather. Iowa is a mixed bag politically, and one of the most evenly divided states in the nation. But the candidates will likely watch two regions more closely than others. The central part of the state -- including industrial Des Moines -- is Iowa's most Democratic area. Western Iowa, on the other hand, is home to the most Republicans -- especially the rural counties in the northwest. The Mississippi River city of Davenport is expected to be one of the most significant battlegrounds, with Linn County -- dominated by the university town of Cedar Rapids -- also attracting lots of attention from both parties. Past Iowa caucuses have been nail-biters for the candidates. Democrat Al Gore won the state by a margin of just 0.3 percent in 2000, while President Bush carried it in 2004 by 0.7 percent. In fact, Bush was the first GOP presidential candidate to carry Iowa in 20 years. Important endorsement . The support of Iowa's largest newspaper, the Des Moines Register, may also play a role in Thursday's caucuses. The paper's presidential endorsements began in 1988 and have become a highly sought-after prize in Iowa presidential politics. George W. Bush was the Register's pick in 2000 and went on to win Iowa, the GOP nomination and the White House. Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole won the state in 1996 and 1988 after receiving the paper's support. Democratic candidates haven't had as much success with the Register's endorsement. John Edwards finished in second place in Iowa in 2004, while Paul Simon was also a close second in 1988. The paper endorsed Sen. John McCain and Sen. Hillary Clinton for their respective parties' nominations. The candidates have to appeal to voters with strong opinions. On the Republican side, 37 percent of participants in the 2000 Iowa GOP caucuses identified themselves as members of the religious right and 73 percent described themselves as conservatives. Meanwhile, 56 percent of the participants in Iowa's 2004 Democratic caucuses described themselves as either very or somewhat liberal. About 37 percent said they were moderates. The weather . Iowans who take part in the caucuses must traditionally brave freezing temperatures and lots of snow. Presidential candidates know bad weather may affect how many people turn out, but 1972 was the only time rough winter conditions played a role in the caucuses, according to Drake University's Hugh Winebrenner -- the nation's leading expert on Iowa caucus history. Caucus-goers that year encountered heavy snowdrifts from a blizzard the previous day. Temperatures dipped below zero across most of the state. The weather forced about one-fourth of Iowa's 99 counties to postpone their Democratic caucuses up to two days after the scheduled date. The forecast for Thursday is much better. Temperatures will be in the 20s during the day and dip just below that as the caucuses begin, according to the Des Moines Register. E-mail to a friend .

The central part of Iowa is the state's most Democratic area . Western Iowa is home to the most Republicans . Support of Iowa's largest newspaper, the Des Moines Register, highly sought . Weather may affect how many people turn out .

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AMSTERDAM, Holland -- Ajax lost ground on Dutch league leaders PSV Eindhoven after being held to a 2-2 draw at Vitesse Arnhem on Sunday. Ajax's Leonardo, front in blue, duels for the ball with Sebastien Sansoni and Abubakari Yakubu of Vitesse. The Amsterdam side led 2-1 with two goals in four minutes just after half-time from Urby Emanuelson and Luis Suarez following Mads Junker's early opener, but Harrie Gommans rescued a draw. Ajax are now five points adrift of PSV, who beat Excelsior 2-1 on Saturday, with Heerenveen, Feyenoord and Groningen just one point further back. Feyenoord were held 1-1 at home by Groningen on Sunday, with Marcus Berg putting the visitors on course for a 13th win of the season until an own goal by Mark-Jan Fledderus on the stroke of half-time gave the Rotterdam side a point. At the other end of the table, Heracles registered their first away win of the season with a 5-0 thumping of fellow strugglers Venlo. Relegation-threatened Sparta Rotterdam and NEC Nijmegen both picked up vital victories. Sparta won 2-1 at sixth-placed Twente Enschede as goals from Yuri Rose and Charles Dissels on 28 and 51 minutes kept the visitors above of second-bottom Nijmegen on goal difference. NEC won 2-0 at home to ninth-placed Utrecht, the club's first victory since early November, as Jhonny van Beukering and Brett Holman netted in the second half. E-mail to a friend .

Second-placed Ajax held 2-2 at home by Vitesse Arnhem in Dutch Eredivisie . The Amsterdam side now trail league leaders PSV Eindhoven by five points . PSV defeated Excelsior 2-0 on Saturday to open up six-point gap at top .

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Queen Elizabeth helped launch Heathrow's $8.6 billion new Terminal 5 on Friday as part of the British airport's rejuvenation plan to maintain its status as one of the world's most important transport hubs. A general view of the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport prior to its official opening on Friday. The British monarch, who also opened Heathrow's first passenger terminal in 1955, was present under strict security a day after a man carrying a backpack was arrested for running onto a runway at the airport. The first flights from the new terminal are scheduled for March 27. Its opening has come after 15 years of planning and construction by its owners BAA -- and protests by local residents and environmental groups. It is part of a strategy which could lead to passenger numbers almost doubling to 122 million a year, with a sixth terminal and a third runway in the pipeline despite some vociferous opposition. Spanish-owned BAA, which also runs Gatwick and Stansted in Britain, also plans to eventually demolish Terminals 1 and 2 and replace them in a project called Heathrow East. Watch Queen Elizabeth meet airport staff. » . Residents were once told by BAA that there would be no fifth terminal, but the company is planning to forge further ahead despite the concerns of environmental groups. "Terminal 5 stands as a monument to the binge-flying culture this Government has done so much to encourage," Greenpeace transport campaigner Anita Goldsmith told the UK Press Association. "It's part of an obsession with expansion which can only mean more flights, more emissions and more climate change." Richard Dyer of Friends of the Earth added: "If the Government is serious about tackling climate change, the opening of Terminal 5 must mark the end of airport expansion in Britain. "Further expansion of Heathrow would be environmentally irresponsible and isn't necessary for the economy of London." However, business groups welcomed the expansion at Heathrow. "Thriving, growing airports are vital to help maintain Britain's economic competitiveness," Neil Pakey, chairman of the Airport Operators' Association, told PA. "Domestic air links to Heathrow are particularly valuable for the regional economies, and this new terminal will undoubtedly provide them with a much-needed boost. The passage of the current Planning Bill must ensure that this is the last airport which has to endure such an absurdly protracted planning process." See British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh's views on the terminal. » . Visit London chief executive James Bidwell said: "T5 will provide visitors to London and the UK with a spectacular first impression and alleviate the pressure experienced at Heathrow, the world's busiest airport. "The terminal's smoother check-in process and state-of-the-art baggage management system will certainly better the tourist experience and should help improve the airport's international reputation." E-mail to a friend .

Queen Elizabeth opens Heathrow Airport's $8.6 billion new Terminal 5 . The new building took more than 15 years to complete following protests . Launch a day after security scare at one of world's busiest international airports . A lone man ran onto a Heathrow runway carrying a backpack on Thursday .

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(CNN) -- Coca Cola was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886. Dr. John Stith Pemberton, a local pharmacist, produced the syrup for Coca-Cola. It was put on sale at the nearby Jacobs' Pharmacy for five cents a glass as a soda fountain drink. An international organization, The Coca-Cola Company's first soda fountain sales to Canada and Mexico were recorded in 1897. Its first international bottler -- in Panama -- was established in 1906. The company entered China in 1927 and its 100th country -- Sierra Leone -- in 1957. Today, The Coca-Cola Company is the world's largest beverage company with the most extensive distribution system in the world, operating in more than 200 countries across the world. The company currently has over 400 different brands under its control, and is one of the most recognizable names in the commercial world. The Coca-Cola Company, including the bottling entities it owns, employs approximately 71,000 people. More than 58,000 of those employees work for the company outside of the U.S. They are the largest private-sector employer across all of Africa. And in South Africa, for every one job created by the Coca-Cola system, 16 jobs are created in the informal retail sector. The company was placed in the top 25 places to work by Essence magazine and was named Wal-Mart's International Supplier of the Year in 2006. E-mail to a friend .

Coca-Cola was invented in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1886, by a U.S. pharmacist . Today it is the largest beverage company in the world . The company has operations in over 200 countries, employs 55,000 people .

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LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A 24-year-old gang member was arrested Thursday in connection with a shooting at a Los Angeles bus stop in which eight people were wounded, city officials said. Bystanders express shock after a shooting at a bus stop in Los Angeles Wednesday. Billy Ray Hines is believed to have fired into a crowd of people at the bus stop. Hines was apprehended Thursday afternoon as he was walking down the street, about a half-mile from the scene of the shooting, Police Chief William Bratton told reporters. Hines will face 10 counts of attempted murder -- one for each of the eight victims, and two more for what authorities believe to be his two intended victims, who were still being sought Thursday, Bratton said. Authorities are also seeking the gun used in the incident, he said. The shootings took place Wednesday afternoon at the intersection of Central and Vernon avenues, in an area where police are concerned about gang violence. Five of the victims were children. An 11-year-old girl was shot in the chest, and another girl, age 11, was shot in the right arm. Three boys were wounded -- ages 10, 12 and 14. One was shot in the leg, one in the buttocks and the third in the ankle, police said. One man was wounded in the leg and another in the ankle, and a woman was shot in the face. "While no one died yesterday, the bullets unleashed shot through the core of the entire community," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in announcing the arrest Thursday. "The decent people of this community responded with force." Watch mayor, authorities discuss arrest of gunman » . Witnesses came forward after the incident to identify the gunman as Hines, Bratton said. The shooting was believed to stem from a dispute between the gunman and the two intended victims, he said. E-mail to a friend .

Billy Ray Hines is believed to have fired into a crowd, police say . Eight people, including five children, were shot, authorities say . Shooting happened Wednesday near a middle school, but not on school grounds . Hines will face 10 counts of attempted murder, police say .

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MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian space officials say the crew of the Soyuz space ship is resting after a rough ride back to Earth. A South Korean bioengineer was one of three people on board the Soyuz capsule. The craft carrying South Korea's first astronaut landed in northern Kazakhstan on Saturday, 260 miles (418 kilometers) off its mark, they said. Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said the condition of the crew -- South Korean bioengineer Yi So-yeon, American astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko -- was satisfactory, though the three had been subjected to severe G-forces during the re-entry. Search helicopters took 25 minutes to find the capsule and determine that the crew was unharmed. Officials said the craft followed a very steep trajectory that subjects the crew to gravitational forces of up to 10 times those on Earth. Interfax reported that the spacecraft's landing was rough. This is not the first time a spacecraft veered from its planned trajectory during landing. In October, the Soyuz capsule landed 70 kilometers from the planned area because of a damaged control cable. The capsule was carrying two Russian cosmonauts and the first Malaysian astronaut. E-mail to a friend .

Soyuz capsule lands hundreds of kilometers off-target . Capsule was carrying South Korea's first astronaut . Landing is second time Soyuz capsule has gone awry .

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LAFAYETTE, Tennessee (CNN) -- James Kruger was watching election results Tuesday night in Lafayette, Tennessee, when a warning appeared on his TV screen: A tornado was headed straight toward his town. Then the lights went out. James Kruger survived after Tuesday night's storm blew his house away above him in Lafayette, Tennessee. He put on sweat pants, grabbed a flashlight, drank a shot of whiskey, "and then I heard this noise," Kruger said Thursday. He headed for a door, "and all of a sudden I heard the glass breaking and it was sucking," he said. "When I tried to shut the door, [it] seemed like the door was lifting up. So I just dove and I lay flat on the floor." Lying there, everything in the house flew over him, scraping and banging his back, Kruger said. Then the chaos stopped. "I was laying in the dirt. There was no floor. No nothing." Watch Kruger tell his story » . The house was gone, but Kruger says he believes there's reason why he survived. "I think God was holding my leg, beating my ass, teaching me that I hadn't been doing everything he wanted me to do," he said. Pam Whitaker was volunteering at a hospital in Lafayette that night as dozens came in with injuries from the tornadoes and storms that raked across the South. Whitaker was cleaning one man's feet to check for cuts when the patient told her the address of a house that had been destroyed. "I just went white. I said, 'That's my house!'" Whitaker recalled Thursday. "And he said, 'Hon, you don't even have a toothpick or splinter left.' " Watch Whitaker describe her frightening night » . Kruger, Whitaker and others across the region tried Thursday to put their lives back together in a swath of the South where tornadoes killed at least 56 people. It was the deadliest tornado outbreak in the United States in more than 20 years. The storms ripped apart houses and trapped residents of university dorms and a retirement home in debris. The trail of death stretched across four states, with four fatalities in Alabama, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and 32 in Tennessee. Macon County, Tennessee, which includes Lafayette, was one of the worst-hit areas, with 14 deaths and overwhelming damage. Whitaker lost her home and everything in it, including the money from cashing her disability check. She had 15 cents left, she said Thursday, and was staying at a National Guard shelter. "We don't have a home to go to," Whitaker said. "I don't know where we're going to end up." In some cases, there was almost no warning before the severe weather hit. James Baskin of Jackson, Tennessee, said he was driving when a twister "just picked us up and threw us." Everyone in the car was injured, including his daughter's friend, who suffered a broken collarbone. "We'll get through it. Nobody's dead. That's the biggest thing," Baskin said. Watch tornado survivors' stories » . President Bush said Wednesday he had called the governors of the affected states to offer help and to tell them that "the American people hold those who suffered up in prayer." The Federal Emergency Management Agency was deploying teams to the area, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday. "We're going to keep watching this," he said. See a map of where the storms hit » . In Sumner County, Tennessee, two victims were found outside a house the storm had blown away, said Jay Austin, the county's primary death investigator. Elsewhere in the area, a mother was found dead in a creek bed about 50 yards from where her house stood. Her baby was discovered alive 250 yards away. The child was taken to a local hospital, Austin said. Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen said the storm's power had left him stunned. "I don't think that I have seen, since I've been governor, a tornado where the combination of the intensity of it and the length of the track was as large as this one," said Bredesen, who flew over the disaster area Wednesday. "That track had to be 25 miles long. [The twister] didn't skip like a lot of them do. ... It's just 25 miles of a tornado sitting on the ground." Also in Jackson, a tornado trapped Union University students and retirees in collapsed buildings, said Julie Oaks, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. "It looks like a war zone," said university President David Dockery. "Cars and trucks [were] thrown from one side of the campus to the other." E-mail to a friend . CNN's Saeed Ahmed, Mark Bixler, David Mattingly and Ed Payne contributed to this report.

NEW: Tennessee man describes diving to the floor as his house blows away . The tornado death toll in the South stands at 56 . Tornado outbreak was deadliest in the U.S. in more than 20 years . Deaths include 32 in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky, four in Alabama .

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NEW YORK (CNN) -- The daughter of a man who died after falling four stories at Shea Stadium said her father was not sliding down the escalator when the accident happened, as police reported. A statement from the New York Police Department on Tuesday said witnesses saw 36-year-old Antonio Nararainsami of Brooklyn sitting on the banister of the escalator when he lost his balance and fell. Nararainsami's daughter, Emily, told CNN affiliate WABC on Tuesday that her father was walking down the escalator, not sliding on its banister, as fans left the stadium after the New York Mets-Washington Nationals game. She said she and another relative saw what happened. "He wasn't moving or nothing; he was just walking down. I guess he tried to say something to us or something, and I guess he just lost his balance and flipped over," she said. Nararainsami died at Booth Memorial Hospital about 25 minutes after the 10 p.m. incident. Police are investigating the death as an accident. E-mail to a friend .

Police said man lost his balance on an escalator as fans left the stadium . He died about 25 minutes later at Booth Memorial Hospital . Police are investigating the death as an accident .

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Heather Mills presented "less than candid" testimony about her life with former Beatle Paul McCartney during her divorce case and made more money during their marriage than before, according to a ruling released Tuesday. McCartney's lawyer Fiona Shackleton, left, pictured after it is alleged Mills threw water over her. Mills represented herself during the proceedings and was a "less than impressive witness" on her own behalf, Judge Hugh Bennett wrote in awarding her £24.3 million ($48.6 million) -- far less than the £125 million she had sought from McCartney in the dissolution of their four-year marriage. "Having given in her favor every allowance for the enormous strain she must have been under and in conducting her own case, I am driven to the conclusion that much of her evidence, both written and oral, was not just inconsistent and inaccurate but also less than candid," Bennett wrote. Mills emerged from the court Monday angry about the judge's treatment of her. She said the judge and attorneys acted like they were part of a "club." Blog: Did Mills pour water on McCartney's lawyer? A summary of Bennett's decision was released Monday, but Mills had sought to keep the full ruling under wraps. Britain's Court of Appeals ruled against her Tuesday, and her lawyer, David Rosen, said she accepted the decision. See a list of expensive celebrity divorces » . "She as a mother has strived to protect her child and felt there were certain issues and matters in the judgment which affected that," Rosen said. Mills opposed the full ruling's publication because it contained private details about her and her 4-year-old daughter with McCartney, Beatrice. Watch Mills react to Monday's decision » . Bennett had good things to say about Mills in his judgment, commending her strength in the face of disability. Mills lost her left leg below the knee in a 1993 traffic accident. But he discounted many of the arguments the former model made about her personal wealth before and after her 2002 marriage to McCartney. He ruled that Mills earned far less before marriage than she claimed, and far more while married -- and at several points in his decision, he wrote that Mills' ideas about their marriage were "make-belief." "I find that, far from the husband dictating to and restricting the wife's career and charitable activities, he did the exact opposite," Bennett wrote. McCartney, meanwhile, presented balanced evidence and was a consistent witness, he wrote. "He expressed himself moderately though at times with justifiable irritation, if not anger," the judge wrote in a glimpse of the emotions aired behind closed doors. Read the full ruling (.pdf file -- Adobe Acrobat required) Bennett found Mills failed to produce financial records to back up statements about money she claimed to have in the bank before marriage, which she said amounted to more than £2 million. In one instance, the judge pointed out McCartney's company loaned Mills money to buy a home in Hove, England -- money that she would not have needed had she had such an amount in the bank. And Bennett found that Mills' income actually improved during the marriage. In one year, she earned £1 million ($2 million) from a single modeling contract, he wrote. And he quoted Mills' 2002 book, "A Single Step," in which she wrote that her charity work and public speaking roles had expanded "to such an extent that it has left little time for anything else." "She is a kindly person and is devoted to her charitable causes," the judge wrote. "She has conducted her own case before me with a steely, yet courteous, determination." The couple met in 1999, a year after the death of McCartney's wife of 30 years, Linda. The judge said McCartney continued to grieve for his late wife well into his marriage with Mills -- and he suggested Mills misrepresented her case because she had been star-struck. "The wife for her part must have felt rather swept off her feet by a man as famous as the husband," he wrote. "I think this may well have warped her perception leading her to indulge in make-belief. The objective facts simply do not support her case." Bennett discounted Mills' claims that she was anything more than a loving and devoted wife in helping McCartney. "The wife's evidence that in some way she was the husband's 'psychologist,' even allowing for hyperbole, is typical of her make-belief," the judge wrote. Mills and McCartney failed to agree on a divorce settlement in six days of hearings in February, leaving the judge to decide the terms. Bennett's 58-page decision concluded that £24.3 million was enough for Mills to live comfortably and take care of their daughter's needs. McCartney had proposed a £15.8 million settlement. The judgment included £35,000 a year for Beatrice, £600,000 for Mills and £2.5 million for her to purchase property in London. E-mail to a friend .

Judge: Heather Mills "a less than impressive witness" Paul McCartney's ex-wife received nearly $50M payout in divorce ruling . Ruling follows collapse of ex-Beatle's four-year marriage to former model .

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A man at the center of a mysterious case of exposure to the deadly biological agent ricin has been arrested, FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Wednesday. Ricin was found in a room in this Las Vegas, Nevada, extended-stay hotel in February, police say. Roger Bergendorff was taken into custody Wednesday morning in Las Vegas, Nevada, Kolko said. Bergendorff, 57, was hospitalized with what was diagnosed as ricin exposure after the agent was discovered in his hotel room off the Las Vegas Strip. Tests conducted by the FBI determined that the substance contained 2.9 percent active ricin. Its preparation was characterized as "crude," according to the U.S. attorney's office in Las Vegas. According to a press release from the Department of Justice office, a search of Bergendorff's hotel room turned up "an 'Anarchist's Cookbook,' a collection of instructions on poisons and other dangerous recipes, including instructions on the preparation of ricin," two semiautomatic pistols, a rifle and a pistol with a silencer. "FBI searches of Salt Lake City [Utah] storage units rented by Von Bergendorff resulted in the discovery of castor beans, various chemicals used in the production of ricin, a respirator, filters, painter's mask, laboratory glassware, syringes and a notebook on ricin production," the Justice Department release said. Bergendorff is charged with possession of a biological toxin, possession of unregistered firearms and possession of firearms not identified by serial number, according to the U.S. attorney's office. If convicted of all charges, he would face a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a fine of $750,000. Bergendorff is scheduled for an initial court appearance at 3 p.m. Wednesday. It is illegal under federal law to possess a biological agent and toxin unless it is used for bona fide research or other peaceful purpose, U.S. Attorney Gregory Bower said in a written statement. Bergendorff's cousin, Thomas Tholen of Riverton, Utah, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Salt Lake City this month, accused of failing to report production and possession of ricin. Ricin is a poison that can be made from the waste of castor bean processing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can come in the form of a mist or pellet and can be dissolved in water or weak acid, the agency said. Bergendorff was hospitalized February 14 in Las Vegas after he complained of difficulty breathing. He slipped into a coma and awoke March 14. Bergendorff, 57, is an artist who neighbors said had lived in his cousin's basement before moving to Las Vegas. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Kevin Bohn, Karan Olson and Carol Cratty contributed to this report.

Roger Bergendorff is charged with possession of toxin, firearms . He was hospitalized for ricin exposure after it was found in hotel room . His cousin is charged with failing to report production and possession .

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(CNN) -- A Lonely Planet author says he plagiarized or made up portions of the popular travel guidebooks and dealt drugs to supplement poor pay, an Australian newspaper reported Sunday. Lonely Planet publishes more than 500 titles and employs 300 authors, according to its Web site. Thomas Kohnstamm, who has written a book on his misadventures, also said he didn't travel to Colombia to write the guidebook on the country because "they didn't pay me enough," The Daily Telegraph reported. "I wrote the book in San Francisco [California]," he is quoted as saying in the Telegraph. "I got the information from a chick I was dating -- an intern in the Colombian Consulate." The 32-year-old Seattle, Washington, native also claims he accepted free travel, which is a violation of the company's policy. Kohnstamm has worked on more than a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including its titles on Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean, Venezuela, Chile and South America. An e-mail from Lonely Planet said Kohnstamm's book were being reviewed, the newspaper reported. "If we find that the content has been compromised, we'll take urgent steps to fix it. Once we've got things right for travelers as quickly as we can, we'll look at what we do and how we do it to ensure as best we can that this type of thing never happens again," the e-mail said, according to the newspaper. The book's publisher, Piers Pickard, told the paper that an "urgent" review of Kohnstamm's books did not reveal any inaccuracies. The Lonely Planet series publishes 500 titles, updated every two to four years, and employs 300 authors, according to the company's Web site. It sells more than 6 million guides a year, the newspaper reported. Kohnstamm's book, "Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics and Professional Hedonism," is set for release next week. On his MySpace page, Kohnstamm says the book "is about the decision to abandon Manhattan to try to make it as a travel writer and the good, the bad and the really surreal that I experienced on the road." E-mail to a friend .

Author tells paper he got data for Colombia guidebook "from a chick I was dating" Author's works include guides on Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, paper reports . Lonely Planet tells paper it wants to ensure "this type of thing never happens again" "Urgent" review of author's books reveals no inaccuracies, publisher tells paper .

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SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- The chairman of the Samsung Group plans to resign, according to a report published Tuesday by Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. Chairman of the Samsung Group Lee Kun-hee has been indicted for tax evasion and breach of trust. The decision of Lee Kun-hee to step down comes a few days after his indictment amid an investigation into corruption allegations. Lee was indicted for tax evasion and breach of trust. Samsung is South Korea's largest conglomerate. It has annual sales of nearly $160 billion and accounts for 18 percent of South Korea's economic output. The company's exports -- valued at about $70 billion -- account for a fifth of all South Korean exports. Lee was indicted for breach of trust in connection with a plan to transfer control of the company to his son, a prosecutor said. He was also indicted for tax evasion. Investigators started looking into Samsung in January, after a former company lawyer said the company created slush funds worth $200 million. Last week, however, a prosecutor said an investigation found no evidence supporting an allegation that the company bribed government officials and prosecutors. Samsung has apologized for "causing concerns" and said it would outline plans for reform this week. E-mail to a friend .

Samsung Group chairman, Lee Kun-hee, plans to resign, Yonhap reports . Lee's decision comes a few days after his indictment amid corruption investigation . Lee was indicted for tax evasion and breach of trust . Prosecutors say indictment relates to a plan to transfer control of the firm to his son .

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JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- An Indonesian court has sentenced the alleged military commander of an al Qaeda-linked terror network to 15 years in prison. Abu Dujana is suspected of plotting attacks on the Australian Embassy and J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta. Abu Dujana is the alleged leader of the military wing of Jemaah Islamiyah, a group that is thought to be linked to al Qaeda. It aims to create a Muslim "superstate" across much of Southeast Asia. Dujana, a slight, wiry man, is accused of direct involvement in the Bali nightclub bombings of 2002 that killed more than 200, mostly Western, tourists. He is also suspected of plotting subsequent attacks on the Australian Embassy and J.W. Marriott hotel, both in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. Furthermore, authorities say Dujana is behind the violence in Poso, on Indonesia's eastern Sulawesi island. Fighting between Muslims and Christians periodically breaks out in the region and sometimes turns deadly. Police have accused Jemaah Islamiyah of sending armed militants to Poso. The court found Dujana guilty Monday of illegally possessing firearms and explosives, and of harboring suspected terrorists. His lawyers said they may appeal the sentence. After his arrest last June following a four-year hunt, Dujana admitted to CNN that he was Jemaah Islamiyah's military chief. But he said that happened only after the attacks on Western targets. He described Jemaah Islamiyah to CNN as "an underground organization," saying "it will continue to exist and continue to move on with its plans" to create an Islamic state under Sharia law despite his capture. "When a part of it is cut off ...there will be a replacement, it's only natural," he said. Dujana denied being involved in the Marriott Hotel attack. He told CNN that he helped fugitive suspect Noordin Top plan the attack, meeting him both before and after the devastating blast that killed 12 people and injured 150. "It's true, I did have a meeting with Noordin before the Marriott bombing but that doesn't mean I was involved in the attack," he said. "In that meeting, we're just aligning our views with each other -- there was absolutely no discussion about planning any bombing." In his CNN interview, Dujana was quick with messages of hate, calling all Westerners legitimate targets because of the actions of leaders like U.S. President George W. Bush and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who he says are not giving Muslims the chance to be in power. Dujana studied in Pakistan and fought in Afghanistan from 1988 to 1991. He told CNN that he met al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan during the fight against Soviet occupation. At the time, bin Laden was a field commander and he was an ordinary soldier, he said. Dujana said bin Laden was well respected then and helped him and others realize that it was permissible to kill people to defend Islam. "I didn't read it in the Quran," he said. " It's based on the teachings of our teachers, clerics, especially what Osama bin Laden first said." "Because of America's arrogance, many in the Muslim world know, believe, it's permissible to kill American soldiers. It's halal; it's permitted," he said. The court declared Jemaah Islamiyah a terrorist organization Monday and ordered it to pay 10 million rupiah ($1,088). Around the same time Dujana was captured last June, authorities also apprehended Jemaah Islamiyah's leader, known simply as Zarkasih. A verdict on his case is expected soon. Last week, two other top Jemaah Islamiyah leaders -- Dr. Agus Purwanto and Abdur Rohim -- were brought to Indonesia following their arrest in Malaysia. Both are being investigated for their possible role in fomenting violence in Poso. Terrorism expert Sidney Jones says Abdur Rohim is believed to have replaced Zarkasih as Jemaah Islamiyah leader. "It is another major blow to Jemaah Islamiyah, but difficult to tell what the impact will be," Jones told CNN via e-mail last week. "It could embolden a more militant faction. [It] could also lead to some serious reassessment within the organization about its future." E-mail to a friend . CNN's Kathy Quiano contributed to this report.

Indonesian court sentences Abu Dujana to 15 years in prison . Dujana is the alleged leader of the military wing of Jemaah Islamiyah . Dujana is accused of direct involvement in the Bali nightclub bombings of 2002 . After his arrest last June, Dujana admitted he was Jemaah Islamiyah's military chief .

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(CNN) -- It's been 30,000 years since Neanderthals walked the earth, but now we can hear what they sounded like, according to a Florida anthropologist. Neanderthal man apparently sounded like a frog croaking or a human burping when talking. Robert McCarthy of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton reconstructed Neanderthal vocal tracts to simulate their voice with a computer synthesizer. The result is a single syllable that sounds strange and unremarkable: part croaking frog, part burping human. But McCarthy says that's because Neanderthals lacked the "quantal vowels" modern humans use. "They would have spoken a bit differently," McCarthy said at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Ohio this month. "They wouldn't have been able to produce these quantal vowels that form the basis of spoken language." New Scientist magazine discussed McCarthy's findings and linked to his vocal simulation on its Web site. Listen to Neanderthal man speak . McCarthy used 50,000-year-old fossils from France to make his reconstruction, New Scientist said. He plans to simulate an entire Neanderthal sentence, the magazine reported. To reconstruct the vocal tracts, McCarthy teamed with linguist Phil Lieberman, who worked in the 1970s to deduce the dimensions of a Neanderthal larynx based on its skull. E-mail to a friend .

Anthropologist reconstructs Neanderthal vocal tracts to simulate their voice . Result sounds like a part croaking frog or a human burping . Plan is to eventually simulate an entire Neanderthal sentence .

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ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A Georgia military contractor tricked law enforcement agencies into buying faulty stun grenades, ultimately leaving three FBI agents injured, federal prosecutors announced Monday. "Flash-bang" grenades were relabeled and sold to police after the Navy deemed them faulty, an indictment says. Pyrotechnic Specialties Inc. is accused of relabeling and selling "flash-bang" grenades that the U.S. military rejected after its personnel were injured. The company also mixed defective grenades with others that had been fixed "to camouflage the defective devices from receiving personnel" at the FBI, the indictment says. Last week's indictment alleges that company officials bribed a federal official and paid for a visit to a strip club. The officials are accused of conspiracy, money laundering, mail fraud and defrauding the government. Watch how the grenades work » . The company, known as PSI, did not immediately respond to calls for comment. The indictment names three company officials -- CEO David J. Karlson, sales representative F. Brad Swann and production manager Daniel Ramone -- as taking part in the conspiracy. The indictment does not say whether they still hold those titles. PSI had a multimillion-dollar contract with the Defense Department to provide stun or "flash-bang" grenades, referred to as "MK141 diversionary charges" in the indictment. From 1996 to 2007, the Navy awarded three contracts to PSI for the MK141, according to the indictment. The devices are designed to produce a bright flash and loud bang, disorienting their targets. They're considered nonlethal weapons, though they can be dangerous. The indictment alleges, "On or about March 2003, a flaw in the original Navy design of the MK141 diversionary charge became apparent." A plastic piece would sometimes crack, which "could result in a hazardous situation to those in close proximity." "Improper detonation could, and did, cause serious injuries to personnel using the device," according to the indictment. The indictment says that the Department of Defense issued a "stop work order" on the devices, and PSI "developed a procedure to correct the defect" that cost about $3.72 per unit. PSI officials later engaged in a scheme to sell the defective devices by claiming that they had met the department's standards, the indictment alleges. The defendants sold and attempted to sell the devices "to the Department of Defense and to federal law enforcement agencies, as well as to state and local law enforcement agencies," the indictment says. At one point, some of them prematurely detonated, "causing serious injuries" to three FBI agents who were on a SWAT team investigating a kidnapping, the indictment says, adding that the interior of their government vehicle was damaged. "To further implement the scheme and artifice to defraud, the defendants provided gratuities and additional compensation to a Department of Defense employee," the indictment adds. The devices were sold to more than a dozen FBI offices between 2003 and 2004, as well as to the San Rafael Police Department in San Rafael, California, and the Orange County Sheriff/Coroner's Department in Santa Ana, California, the indictment says. The Department of Defense said it could not comment because the case is under investigation. "Our understanding is that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is supporting the FBI in this investigation," Lt. Geraldine Carey of Marine Corps Systems Command said in a written statement. Carey added that it is "against DOD policy to discuss matters under investigation prior to the requested official or government agency receiving a formal report." According to the company's Web site, PSI supports "the U.S. and many foreign military services with custom compositions, pellets and devices." Automotive airbag products are atop the list of commercial products it manufactures, according to the Web site. The company employs 160 people at its manufacturing facility near Byron, Georgia, the Web site says. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Scott Zamost and Abbie Boudreau contributed to this report.

Indictment accuses Georgia company of relabeling stun grenades . Devices sold to at least 12 FBI offices; Defense Department declines comment . 3 company officials charged with money laundering, defrauding the government . Indictment: FBI agents injured when stun grenades detonated prematurely .

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NEW YORK (CNN) -- The U.S. government paid more than $1.7 million in defense contracts over the last decade to companies owned by leaders of Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect, with tens of thousands allegedly winding its way back to Jeffs and his church. The Pentagon had contracts with three companies with ties to Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect. In fact, some of the deals were made after Jeffs was named to the FBI's "Most-Wanted List" and remained in place while he was on the run. CNN has learned that between 1998 and 2007, the United States Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency purchased more than $1.7 million worth of airplane parts from three companies owned by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which practices polygamy. Those companies are Utah Tool and Die, Western Precision and NewEra Manufacturing. Today, the companies all operate under the name NewEra Manufacturing, a company based in Las Vegas, Nevada, that says it supplies precision components "for the aerospace, military, medical, recreational and other commercial entities." "It was my understanding that Western Precision was paying roughly $50,000 a week into the coffers of the church," former sect member Richard Holm said. "It would have been close to $200,000 a month." Holm said he helped build Western Precision. A court affidavit signed by a man whose father was the president of Western Precision makes similar allegations. "During 2003, the amount being sent to the storehouse and the FLDS was around $100,000 per month," John Nielsen said in the October 26, 2005, affidavit. "I have personal knowledge that checks sent to the FLDS Church/Warren Jeffs by [Western Precision] are payable to the FLDS Church and/or Warren Jeffs." Private investigator Sam Brower, who monitors the sect, said money earned through business dealings with the U.S. government was used to build Jeffs' compounds across the country, including the one recently raided in Eldorado, Texas. More than 400 children, including teenage girls, were removed from that ranch amid claims of child abuse and forced marriage and motherhood. Watch a mom plead: 'We need our children' » . Brower says dozens of companies tied to FLDS are working on contracts with federal or local governments. The Pentagon would confirm only it had contracts with three. A man who answered the phone at NewEra Manufacturing said it had no comment. The companies have not been charged with wrongdoing. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell emphasized that point. "The Department of Defense awards contracts on the basis of who can most effectively meet our requirements for supplies or services at the most reasonable cost to the taxpayer," he said. "We do not consider religious affiliation or marital status when selecting vendors, but illegal activity is certainly cause for termination of a contract and perhaps even debarment, which could prevent a contractor from doing business with department ever again." He added, "However, DoD is not aware of any criminal allegations against anyone managing the companies in question." Bob Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who now works with a contractor for the Pentagon, said the department does background checks before signing contracts. "The DoD is obviously abiding by the law, and if we want them to look deeper and discriminate on religious or other activities we need to tell them." But he added, "If there was a direct line between Jeffs and this company, and his name was associated with a contract, then that should have come to attention of those that were bidding contract." It's unclear whether Jeffs' name was on any contract, but other senior members of his church were managing the companies. What might taxpayers think of it all? "They're just going to shake their head and say here's another example of our tax money going down the drain to support this polygamist in Texas who abuses children and women," Maginnis said. "They'll be appalled and rightly so." Jeffs is serving time in Utah after his 2007 conviction for being an accomplice to rape, charges related to a marriage he performed in 2001. He also faces trial in Arizona on eight charges of sexual conduct with a minor, incest and conspiracy. See a timeline of Jeffs' life » . The Mormon Church, which gave up plural marriage more than a century ago, has no ties to Jeffs' group. E-mail to a friend .

Pentagon bought airplane parts from companies tied to Warren Jeffs . Contracts continued even after Jeffs was on FBI "Most-Wanted List" Pentagon defends contracts, stands by them as appropriate . Retired Army colonel says nothing illegal happened, but people will be "appalled"

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday addressed issues ranging from the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church to the easy availability of pornography to the "alarming decrease" in Catholic marriages in the United States. The pope arrives to address U.S. bishops in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. He spoke at a prayer service with U.S. bishops at Washington's Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Roman Catholic church in North America. Benedict said the sexual abuse of children by priests has caused a "deep shame" and called it "gravely immoral behavior." "Many of you have spoken to me of the enormous pain that your communities have suffered when clerics have betrayed ... their obligations," he told the bishops. Responding to the situation has not been easy and was sometimes very badly handled, the pope admitted. Watch the pope address the issue » . "It is vitally important that the vulnerable are always shielded from souls who would cause harm," he said. The pope then turned his attention to a different concern involving kids. "What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?" he asked. Benedict urged the media and entertainment industry to take part in a "moral renewal." Earlier Wednesday, President Bush, first lady Laura Bush and more than 13,500 spectators welcomed Benedict in an elaborate ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. In remarks greeting the pope to the White House, Bush called the United States "a nation of prayer." Bush was interrupted by applause as he said, "In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred and that each of us is willed." Benedict responded by praising the role of religion in the United States. "From the dawn of the republic, America's quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the creator," he said. Watch Benedict talk about his hopes for the trip » . Earlier, a U.S. Marine Corps band performed the national anthem of the Holy See as well as "The Star-Spangled Banner." A fife and drum corps in Colonial costumes also played tunes, including "Yankee Doodle," and soprano Kathleen Battle sang "The Lord's Prayer." The day, with perfect spring weather, was also the pontiff's 81st birthday. After the ceremony concluded, the crowd, led by Battle, serenaded Benedict with "Happy Birthday" as he smiled from a White House balcony. Watch a priest who has known Benedict for years tell what he's like » . Guests on the South Lawn included Catholic clergy, ecumenical representatives, Catholic schoolchildren, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Sisters of the Poor and Knights of Columbus. Event planners faced an enormous demand for tickets for what White House press secretary Dana Perino called "one of the largest arrival ceremonies ever held at the White House." Following the ceremony, Bush and the pope had a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office. The pope left the White House at about noon in his distinctive "popemobile." His massive motorcade moved slowly down the wide avenues of the U.S. capital to the Vatican Embassy, where the pope is staying. Crowds of enthusiastic spectators waved U.S. and Vatican flags and screamed as the pontiff rode past. A smiling Benedict arrived Tuesday at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to cheers from a crowd of invited guests. The pontiff was greeted by Bush, the first lady and their daughter Jenna, each of whom shook his hand. It was believed to be the first time an American president has greeted a world dignitary on arrival at Andrews. It marks Benedict's first visit to the United States as pope. Watch how the pope's visit could affect the presidential campaign » . Security will be tight during the six-day visit, with 27 state, local and federal agencies protecting the pope as he meets with religious leaders, celebrates Mass at two baseball stadiums and makes his way around in the popemobile. Benedict faces no specific threats, according to the FBI, but a March audio message from Osama bin Laden mentioned the pontiff. The centerpiece of the trip's Washington leg will be Thursday's Mass at Nationals Park, a new baseball stadium where 46,000 people will gather to see the pope. Everyone must go through metal detectors on entering, and nearby roads and bridges will be closed. Temporary flight restrictions will be in place over the stadium, and a 1½-mile section of the adjacent Anacostia River will be closed during the Mass. Benedict will travel to New York on Friday and address the U.N. General Assembly, linking the visit to the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He'll celebrate Mass on Sunday morning at Yankee Stadium. Where will the pope be? » . One of the stated goals of the pope's visit is to energize the U.S. Catholic community with its estimated 70 million members. Three years after succeeding Pope John Paul II, Benedict is likely to also address the church's relationship with other faiths, the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the upcoming U.S. presidential election, said John Allen, a CNN Vatican analyst. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Elaine Quijano contributed to this report.

NEW: Pope tells bishops abuse of children was "gravely immoral behavior" Pope, president discuss Middle East, Latin America, says White House . Six-day, two-city visit to U.S. marks Pope Benedict XVI's first as pope . Pope will celebrate Mass at stadium Thursday, travel to New York on Friday .

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TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- The U.S. military in Japan has charged a Marine with rape and other violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in the alleged sexual assault of 14-year old girl in Okinawa. A civic group member protests against Hadnott near the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo on February 13. Staff Sgt. Tyrone Luther Hadnott, 38, has been charged with the rape of a child under 16, abusive sexual contact with a child, making a false official statement, adultery and kidnapping, the Marines said Friday. No dates for the court-martial have been set. In February, Japanese authorities released Hadnott after the girl dropped the allegations against him, but the Marine Corps conducted its own investigation to see if Hadnott violated codes of military justice. It held him at a Marine facility. The rape accusation against Hadnott stirred memories of a brutal rape more than a decade ago and triggered outrage across Japan. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda deplored as "unforgivable" the allegations against Hadnott. The incident also led to tight restrictions, for a time, for American troops and their families at the U.S. base on Okinawa. The U.S. military in Japan also formed a sexual assault prevention task force after the incident. More than 40,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan, most of them on Okinawa. The troops were placed there under a security alliance after Japan was defeated in World War II and was renounced its right to a military. The U.S. military presence has at times bred resentment among some Japanese, who have long complained about crime, noise and accidents. Anti-American sentiments boiled over in 1995 after three American servicemen kidnapped and gang-raped a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl. Two years ago, a U.S. civilian military employee was jailed for nine years for raping two women. E-mail to a friend .

No date set for the court-martial . U.S. military charges Marine after girl dropped charges in February . Most of U.S. troops in Japan are stationed in Okinawa .

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PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- After a weekend of playing defense about his "bitter" comments, Sen. Barack Obama went on offense Monday against his Democratic rival and the presumptive Republican nominee. Sen. Barack Obama participates Sunday in the Compassion Forum at Pennsylvania's Messiah College. Obama mocked Sen. Hillary Clinton for throwing back a shot of whiskey in front of TV crews over the weekend and said she must think she's "doing me a favor" by attacking him and toughening him up for a fall race against Republican Sen. John McCain. "I'm sure that Sen. Clinton feels like she's doing me a favor because she's been deploying most of the arguments the Republican Party will be using against me in November and so it's toughening me up. I'm getting run through the paces here," Obama told The Associated Press' annual meeting. Clinton has been hitting Obama hard after he referred to some small-town Pennsylvanians as "bitter" people who "cling to guns and religion" at a fund-raiser last week. Obama later said the remarks were badly phrased but accurate. Watch Obama try to clarify his comments » . On Sunday, Clinton called the comments "elitist, out of touch and frankly, patronizing," and added, "You know, the Democratic Party, to be very blunt about it, has been viewed as a party that didn't understand and respect the values and the way of life of so many of our fellow Americans." Obama opened his remarks to the AP making light of what is being called "bitter-gate." "I know I kept a lot of you guys busy this weekend with the comments I made last week. Some of you might even be a little bitter about that," he said to soft laughter. But his offensive began Sunday night when he mocked Clinton for acting like "Annie Oakley ... packin' a six-shooter" in her attempts to connect with gun owners. He was referring to Clinton's efforts over the weekend to appeal to Second Amendment supporters by hinting that she has some experience of her own pulling triggers. "I disagree with Sen. Obama's assertion that people in our country cling to guns and have certain attitudes about trade and immigration simply out of frustration," she began. "You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl," she said. Asked Sunday when she last fired a gun or attended church services, Clinton said the query was "not a relevant question in this debate." Watch Clinton face questions on gun use » . Obama blasted Clinton Sunday shortly before the two appeared at Faith in Public Life's Compassion Forum at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. "Shame on her," he told a Steelton crowd. "I expected this out of John McCain," Obama said in a decibel higher than his everyday stump tone. "But I've got to say, I'm a little disappointed when I start hearing the exact same talking points coming out of my Democratic colleague, Hillary Clinton. She knows better. Shame on her." Watch Obama target Clinton » . On Monday, he attacked her for what happened at an Indiana campaign stop over the weekend. Saying too many candidates are giving voters only rhetoric, the senator from Illinois added, "They'll promise you anything. They'll even give you a long list of proposals. They'll even come around with TV crews in tow and throw back a shot and a beer." With the national media present, Clinton drank a beer and chatted with voters. After ordering her beer, the bartender asked, "You want a shot with that Hillary?" After some deliberation, Clinton settled on a shot of Crown Royal, a Canadian whiskey. Responding to Obama's remarks, Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said, "With all due respect, this is the same politician who spent six days posing for clichéd camera shots that included bowling gutterballs, walking around a sports bar, feeding a baby cow and buying a ham at the Philly market (albeit one that cost $99.99 a pound). Sen. Obama's speeches won't hide his condescending views of Americans living in small towns." Clinton heard a few boos Monday as she continued to criticize Obama. "I understand my opponent came this morning and spent a lot of his time attacking me," she said at the same forum where Obama launched his assault. The crowd responded with audible grumbles, and a few in the hall shouted, "No!" Clinton continued, "I know that many of you, like me, were disappointed by the recent remarks he made." Watch as CNN's Candy Crowley offers a recap of the 'bitter' dispute » . This time, a louder, sustained chorus of "No!" emanated from the audience. "I am well aware that at a fundraiser in San Francisco he said some things that many people in Pennsylvania and beyond Pennsylvania have found offensive," she said. Again, she was met with jeers, which the Clinton campaign said came from Obama supporters. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Peter Hamby and Chris Welch contributed to this report.

NEW: Barack Obama makes fun of Hillary Clinton for drinking a shot in front of media . NEW: Clinton's verbal attacks on Obama met with boos from audience . Clinton has accused Obama of being out of touch, elitist for remarks at fundraiser . At fundraiser, Obama said some Pennsylvanians bitter and clinging to guns, religion .

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BERLIN. Germany -- Germany striker Kevin Kuranyi fired Schalke up to joint second in the Bundesliga, while Bayern Munich have a golden chance to put one hand on the league title if they beat Stuttgart on Sunday. Kuranyi's early goal was enough to give Schalke a vital victory over Champions League rivals Hamburg. Kuranyi's 15th league goal of the season -- after just two minutes -- gave Schalke the three points with a 1-0 win in Hamburg to go level on 54 points with Werder Bremen, who shared a thrilling 3-3 draw at Karlsruhe. After Schalke sacked coach Mirko Slomka a fortnight ago, caretaker coach Mike Bueskens was delighted with the victory over their rivals. "I am very, very pleased with the win," he said. "We beat a direct competitor for a Champions League place and the early goal worked very well for us. Hamburg played well, but they didn't take their chances." Schalke and Bremen, who remain second on goal difference, are now nine points behind Bayern with four games left. A Bayern win will send them 12-points clear with a vastly superior goal difference and only a mathematical miracle would prevent them being crowned German champions for the 21st time. But Bayern are without internationals Miroslav Klose and Philipp Lahm against Stuttgart, while Oliver Kahn is a huge injury doubt for the clash against Stuttgart who welcome back Mario Gomez back from injury. The draw in Karlsruhe was a blow to Bremen, who were shocked by an early goal when home striker Sebastian Freis drilled home his 15th minute shot. Werder hit back when midfielder Diego equalised eight minutes later and former Schalke midfielder Mesut Oezil scored his first goal of the season to put Bremen 2-1 ahead on 29 minutes. But Freis added his second on 59 minutes before Kapllani put Karlsruhe ahead only for Bremen striker Boubacar Sanogo to level the scores in the 86th minute. "It was a very entertaining game and the fans got their money's worth," said Bremen coach Thomas Schaaf. "But we can't be happy with the result, because it was possible for us to keep the pressure on." Further down the table, striker Mike Hanke gave Hanover an early goal at home to Hertha Berlin before Czech striker Jiri Stajner enjoyed the simplest of tap-ins to make it 2-0 after 26 minutes. But Berlin clawed a goal back with a second-half penalty to make it 2-1 before Lukasz Piszczek equalised in the 66th minute to make it 2-2. At the bottom of the table, Slovakian striker Marek Mintal netted a first-half goal for Nuremberg and Russian striker Ivan Saenko made it 2-0 against Arminia Bielefeld after 39 minutes with a superb strike. But Bielefeld hit back as Artur Wichniarek and Markus Bollmann scored second-half goals to make it 2-2. Energie Cottbus pulled themselves further from the relegation battle with a 2-1 win over Hansa Rostock, while Duisburg have gone bottom of the table with a 1-1 draw against Bochum. On Friday night, mid-table sides Eintracht Frankfurt and Borussia Dortmund drew 1-1 while on Sunday Bayer Leverkusen can break into the top five if they beat Wolfsburg at home. E-mail to a friend .

Kevin Kuranyi's early goal gives Schalke a 1-0 home victory against Hamburg . Schalke now level in second position with Bremen, who draw 3-3 at Karlsruhe . Bayern Munich will all but clinch the title with a win over Stuttgart in Sunday .

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(This Old House) -- Unless you're a perfect caretaker of your lawn (and, really, who is?), prepare for another round in the turf wars this summer. You'll have to deal with a full frontal assault from the dandelions, of course. And an attack from the crabgrass. But you'll face more stealthy opponents, too: root-chomping grubs and microscopic mildew that turn the grass from green to gray or brown. "If a lawn is neglected, or cared for in a hit-or-miss way, it gets weak," says This Old House landscape contractor Roger Cook. "And that's when weeds, insects, or fungal diseases become a major problem." Little wonder that last year almost 50 million homeowners bought products to fight these invaders. But as in most battles, the best defense is a strong offense: doing everything right to cultivate healthy turf. That means giving it up to an inch and a half of water per week; aerating and dethatching annually so water and nutrients can get down to the roots; mowing with a sharp blade to the right height (ask your local garden center what's best where you live); and fertilizing in spring and fall. So promise yourself -- and your turf -- you'll do that this year. In the meantime, here's how to conquer the most common turf problems you're likely to confront this summer. Fungal disease . Symptoms: Circular patches of yellow-to-brown grass; or blades with tiny red threads. Culprits: Powdery mildew, brown patch, dollar spot, and fusarium patch; or red thread. These fungal diseases can take hold of stressed turf. Solutions: Though lawns will generally recover from small areas of infection, if a fungus is progressively marching across your yard, look for a fungicide with the active ingredient thiophanate-methyl and follow the directions. For an organic fix, search out a corn-gluten mix that will cure brown patch and weaken most other fungi. Then nurse your lawn back to health by practicing good lawn-care habits: Avoid excessive shade (prune back trees and large shrubs, if necessary) and too many applications of fertilizer, herbicides, or pesticides. Carefully monitor your turf's moisture intake and never water in the evening. Weeds . Symptoms: Fast-growing and unruly greenery that quickly overtakes surrounding grass. This Old House: What type of grass is right for your yard . Culprits: Crabgrass or broadleaf weeds such as dandelion, purslane, henbit, and chickweed that commonly pop up where soil is compacted and grass hasn't completely taken root. To check for compacted soil, stick a screwdriver into the ground; it should slide in easily. Solutions: The first step is to eradicate any foreign invaders. The best approach is to pull them out by hand using a weeder or a hoe. This will also loosen the soil in affected areas. Or use a liquid herbicide in a hand sprayer to spot-treat an infestation. If weeds are too plentiful to be pulled, check your garden center for a "weed-and-feed" blend of granular fertilizer and herbicide that will kill weeds without harming turf types commonly grown in your area, or look for an organic fertilizer with corn gluten. Be sure to follow the directions on the box exactly, as some formulas must be applied during a dry spell or need a 24-hour breather with no foot traffic. From here on out, mow up to twice a week during the beginning of summer when grass grows swiftly, and raise the mower blade an inch during hot or dry periods. Water well as the summer heats up, and your turf should naturally overtake the weeds. In the fall, open up compacted soil poke holes with a pitchfork over a small yard, or rent a power aerator for large yards and overseed the lawn. You may want to follow up with a pre-emergent herbicide next spring. Insects . Symptoms: Brown turf that becomes loose enough to lift like a mat. Culprits: White grubs, a catch-all name for root-chomping beetle larvae, including june bugs, Japanese beetles, and masked chafers. To be sure that's what you've got, cut a square foot of infected turf and roll it back, looking for pale, half-inch- to inch-long C-shaped bugs. If you find more than six, treat the turf. This Old House: Meet the good bugs . Solutions: Grubs are the biggest threat to lawns, and pesticides formulated with imidacloprid are proven effective. For an organic fix, spread powdered milky spore or lay down beneficial nematodes-microscopic worms that will feed on the grubs if they're present. With nematodes, timing the application with their life cycle is critical, so be sure to follow the directions on the box exactly. Both milky spore and nematodes can be ordered from some garden centers or online (gardensalive.com). Symptoms: Irregular-shaped patches of brownish-yellow grass. Culprits: Chinch bugs, gray-black, quarter-inch-long insects that suck moisture from grass and are most likely to attack St. Augustine and zoysia grasses in the South and Kentucky bluegrass in the North. To spot them, bury an empty coffee can, with both ends removed, at the edge of the affected area and fill it with water. The bugs will seek out the moisture, then float to the top. If you see more than 10 after 20 minutes, you should address the problem. Solutions: Chinch bugs live on the surface, among thatch, so dethatching will reduce their numbers. To eradicate them completely, look for an appropriate insecticide with a pyrethroid ingredient. Longer-term, overseed with chinch-bug-resistant grasses. Symptoms: Patches of thin lawn with blades chewed off at the base. Culprits: Sod webworms and tropical sod webworms, hairless cream-to-gray spotted caterpillars that grow into small, buff-colored moths at maturity. The tropical species that thrive in warm southern climates cause the most harm. To check for webworms, mix two tablespoons of mild detergent with two gallons of water; pour it over the infested turf. Any larvae will float to the top. Solutions: You can try flooding your lawn to drown them. Or choose an appropriate insecticide; in an organic product, look for the ingredients azadirachtin or spinosad. With extreme cases of tropical webworm infestation you may need to replace the turf with a resistant grass mix. TIP: If dogs regularly make a pit stop of your lawn, keep a hose or water bucket nearby. Dog urine is high in nitrogen, which can "burn" turf, creating a good-sized yellow patch. The best fix is immediate action: Flush the area ASAP with water to dilute it. Once badly burned, grass won't come back on its own-you'll have to rake out the dead stuff and reseed. This Old House: What to do when your yard is bowser's bathroom E-mail to a friend . Get 2 Free Trial Issues . COPYRIGHT © 2008 THIS OLD HOUSE VENTURES, INC.

A good corn-gluten mix cures brown patches and weakens most fungi . Brown patches are often indicative of bug problems . Dog urine is high is nitrogen, so flush affected areas with water .

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A pair of tornadoes struck suburban Washington on Sunday, mangling trees and stripping siding off several homes, the National Weather Service confirmed. No injuries were immediately reported. The first tornado hit St. Charles, Maryland -- about 30 miles south of Washington -- just after 2 p.m. It uprooted several trees, many of which fell onto cars and homes. The strongest wind from that touchdown was 80 mph -- enough force to blow out windows. A second tornado followed about 30 minutes later outside Hyattsville, Maryland -- about 10 miles northeast of the capital. The high-speed winds, peaking at 100 mph, hit the George E. Peters Adventist School especially hard, tearing off a portion of the roof and flinging it and mounds of debris into the parking lot. A nearby construction trailer was also knocked over. E-mail to a friend .

First tornado hit St. Charles, Maryland, about 30 miles south of Washington . Second tornado struck 30 minutes later outside Hyattsville, Maryland . No injuries were immediately reported .

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IP-455 Press Release 8 February 2008 The findings of a Scotland Yard inquiry into how Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto died after being attacked during a political rally in Rawalpindi were presented to the Government of Pakistan today. The bomb explodes near Bhutto's vehicle following a political rally in Rawalpindi. The conclusions of the inquiry were outlined in a detailed report handed over to interim Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz by Detective Superintendent John MacBrayne, accompanied by a senior official from the British High Commission, during a meeting in Islamabad. The text of the executive summary of the report is as follows: . On the 27th December 2007, Mohtarma Benazir BHUTTO, the leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), died as a result of being attacked in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Following discussions between the Prime Minister and President Musharraf, it was agreed that officers from the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) should support the investigation into Ms Bhutto's death. The primary focus of the Scotland Yard team was to assist the Pakistani authorities in establishing the cause and circumstances of Ms Bhutto's death. The wider investigation to establish culpability has remained entirely a matter for the Pakistani authorities. The SO15 team was led by a Detective Superintendent Senior Investigating Officer, and comprised two forensic experts, an expert in analysing and assessing video media and an experienced investigating officer. The team arrived in Pakistan on 4th January 2008 and spent two and a half weeks conducting extensive enquiries. During the course of their work, the team were joined by other specialists from the United Kingdom. The UK team were given extensive support and co-operation by the Pakistani authorities, Ms Bhutto's family, and senior officials from Ms Bhutto's party. The task of establishing exactly what happened was complicated by the lack of an extended and detailed search of the crime scene, the absence of an autopsy, and the absence of recognised body recovery and victim identification processes. Nevertheless, the evidence that is available is sufficient for reliable conclusions to be drawn. Within the overall objective, a particular focus has been placed on establishing the actual cause of death, and whether there were one or more attackers in the immediate vicinity of Ms Bhutto. The cause of death . Considerable reliance has been placed upon the X-rays taken at Rawalpindi General Hospital following Ms Bhutto's death. Given their importance, the x-rays have been independently verified as being of Ms Bhutto by comparison with her dental x-rays. Additionally, a valuable insight was gained from the accounts given by the medical staff involved in her treatment, and from those members of Ms Bhutto's family who washed her body before burial. Ms Bhutto's only apparent injury was a major trauma to the right side of the head. The UK experts all exclude this injury being an entry or exit wound as a result of gunshot. The only X-ray records, taken after her death, were of Ms Bhutto's head. However, the possibility of a bullet wound to her mid or lower trunk can reasonably be excluded. This is based upon the protection afforded by the armoured vehicle in which she was travelling at the time of the attack, and the accounts of her family and hospital staff who examined her. The limited X-ray material, the absence of a full post mortem examination and CT scan, have meant that the UK Home Office pathologist, Dr Nathaniel Cary, who has been consulted in this case, is unable categorically to exclude the possibility of there being a gunshot wound to the upper trunk or neck. However when his findings are put alongside the accounts of those who had close contact with Ms Bhutto's body, the available evidence suggests that there was no gunshot injury. Importantly, Dr Cary excludes the possibility of a bullet to the neck or upper trunk as being a relevant factor in the actual cause of death, when set against the nature and extent of her head injury. In his report Dr Cary states: . • "the only tenable cause for the rapidly fatal head injury in this case is that it occurred as the result of impact due to the effects of the bomb-blast." • "in my opinion Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto died as a result of a severe head injury sustained as a consequence of the bomb-blast and due to head impact somewhere in the escape hatch of the vehicle." Given the severity of the injury to Ms Bhutto's head, the prospect that she inadvertently hit her head whilst ducking down into the vehicle can be excluded as a reasonable possibility. High explosives of the type typically used in this sort of device, detonate at a velocity between 6000 and 9000 metres per second. This means that when considering the explosive quantities and distances involved, such an explosion would generate significantly more force than would be necessary to provoke the consequences as occurred in this case. It is also important to comment upon the construction of the vehicle. It was fitted with B6 grade armour and designed to withstand gunfire and bomb-blast. It is an unfortunate and misleading aspect of this case that the roof escape hatch has frequently been referred to as a sunroof. It is not. It is designed and intended to be used solely as a means of escape. It has a solid lip with a depth of 9cm. Ms Bhutto's injury is entirely consistent with her head impacting upon the lip of the escape hatch. Detailed analysis of the media footage provides supporting evidence. Ms Bhutto's head did not completely disappear from view until 0.6 seconds before the blast. She can be seen moving forward and to the right as she ducked down into the vehicle. Whilst her exact head position at the time of the detonation can never be ascertained, the overwhelming conclusion must be that she did not succeed in getting her head entirely below the lip of the escape hatch when the explosion occurred. How many people were involved in the immediate attack? There has been speculation that two individuals were directly involved in the attack. The suggestion has been that one suspect fired shots, and a second detonated the bomb. All the available evidence points toward the person who fired shots and the person who detonated the explosives being one and the same person. • Body parts from only one individual remain unidentified. Expert opinion provides strong evidence that they originate from the suicide bomber. • Analysis of the media footage places the gunman at the rear of the vehicle and looking down immediately before the explosion. The footage does not show the presence of any other potential bomber. • This footage when considered alongside the findings of the forensic explosive expert, that the bombing suspect was within 1 to 2 metres of the vehicle towards it rear and with no person or other obstruction between him and the vehicle, strongly suggests that the bomber and gunman were at the same position. It is virtually inconceivable that anyone who was where the gunman can clearly be seen on the media footage, could have survived the blast and escaped. The inevitable conclusion is that there was one attacker in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle in which Ms Bhutto was travelling. In essence, all the evidence indicates that one suspect has fired the shots before detonating an improvised explosive device. At the time of the attack this person was standing close to the rear of Ms Bhutto's vehicle. The blast caused a violent collision between her head and the escape hatch area of the vehicle, causing a severe and fatal head injury. John MacBrayne QPM Detective Superintendent Counter Terrorism Command 1st February 2008 E-mail to a friend .

Scotland Yard releases report into assassination of Benazir Bhutto . Only apparent injury was a major trauma to the right side of the head . UK experts all exclude the injury being a wound as a result of gunshot . Injury consistent with her head impacting upon the lip of vehicle escape hatch .

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(CNN) -- Storms that killed two people in northern Georgia spread Saturday night into South Carolina, where possible tornadoes downed trees, blew roofs off homes and broke power lines, weather forecasters said. There was heavy damage in Prosperity, South Carolina, where residents reported seeing a tornado touch down, said Newberry County sheriff's Capt. Todd Johnson. Prosperity is 40 miles northwest of Columbia. A woman was severely injured when a tree fell on her trailer, trapping her inside, Johnson said. About 56,000 customers remained without power Sunday morning after storms swept through Savannah knocking out power while the coastal Georgia city was in the midst of its St. Patrick's Day celebrations, said Carol Boatwright of Georgia Power. Damage was reported Saturday night in the counties of Newberry, McCormick, Edgefield, Lexington, Aiken and Kershaw. "We have numerous reports of tornadoes touching down. There is a lot of damage, and we are unable to respond to all of the calls," a dispatcher for the Aiken County Sheriff's Department said. Meanwhile, the storm danger passed in the Atlanta, Georgia, area. A Friday night tornado packing winds of up to 135 miles per hour cut a path 6 miles long and 200 yards wide through downtown in less than 30 minutes. Watch a flyover of a damaged area in Georgia » . There was heavy damage to many structures, including the CNN world headquarters. On Saturday, windows were still popping out from a high-rise nearby. Heavy rain and hail passed through in the afternoon. Watch video of storm damage in Georgia » . Two people died in northern Georgia on Saturday as waves of dangerous thunderstorms pounded the area, and storms continued into Saturday night. A possible tornado destroyed mobile homes in Jefferson County, and another possible tornado was reported in Clarke County, where Athens is located, the weather service reported. A woman died and her husband was seriously injured when a tornado leveled their home in the Live Oak community, just north of Aragon, Polk County officials said. Aragon is about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta. Watch damage in Polk County » . Aragon police were assessing damage when they found the house about 12:30 p.m., Polk County Police Chief Kenneth Dodd said. The part-brick, part-frame home was reduced to rubble. The injured man was taken to a Rome, Georgia, hospital, Dodd said. Five dead dogs were found in a nearby field, and other injured animals were taken to an animal control agency, he said. A family across the street from the couple's home lost part of their roof. Another person was seriously injured elsewhere, said Thomas Wilson, Polk County's 911 director. The second fatality was in Floyd County, about 7 miles southeast of Lindale in the Wax community, where a possible tornado struck about 4:30 p.m., said Scotty Hancock, the county emergency management director. Watch damage in Floyd County » . The National Weather Service estimated that 20 homes were destroyed in the area. Damage was also reported in Taylorsville and Cartersville, about 40 miles northwest of Atlanta, and suspected tornado touchdowns were reported in Gainesville in Hall County, near Homer in Banks County and near Maysville in Jackson County. A tornado was also reported in northern Forsyth County, sheriff's Capt. Michael Honiker said. At least one structure fire was reported, he said. Hail nearly 3 inches in diameter was reported in Dawsonville, the National Weather Service said. There were 41,000 people without power statewide Saturday evening, according to Georgia Power. Saturday's severe weather followed an EF-2 tornado, with top winds of up to 135 mph that ripped through downtown Atlanta on Friday night. There were no fatalities, and only one serious injury was reported. Rain, wind and hail caused additional power outages Saturday in the Atlanta area and triggered delays of more than an hour for flights leaving Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, according to an airport spokesman. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Audrey Irvine contributed to this report.

Sheriff: Possible tornado caused heavy damage in Prosperity, South Carolina . "We are unable to respond to all of the calls," dispatcher says . Deaths reported in Polk and Floyd Counties in Georgia on Saturday . Saturday's storms followed EF-2 tornado that tore through Atlanta on Friday .

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An Iraqi report on last month's shootings involving security contractor Blackwater USA called the incident "pre-meditated murder" and is calling for $8 million in compensation for each of the 17 Iraqis who died, a senior Iraqi government official said Monday. Lawyer Hassan Jabbar lies in a hospital after being injured in a shooting involving Blackwater contractors. The results of the Iraqi investigation into the shootings is complete and will be presented to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government for review, the official said. The report calls for the payments to go to the families of each of those killed in the shootings, he said. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Sunday that the Iraqi commission investigating the shootings has accused the company's guards of firing indiscriminately and without provocation on citizens and violating the rights of Iraqis. Blackwater said its contractors "acted lawfully and appropriately in response to a hostile attack," and "the civilians reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were, in fact, armed enemies, and Blackwater personnel returned defensive fire." The September 16 shooting also left 27 other people wounded, al-Dabbagh said. Seven vehicles were also destroyed in the incident, which occurred around Nusoor Square in western Baghdad. Al-Dabbagh said the commission, formed September 22, determined there was no evidence the Blackwater convoy was under direct or indirect fire. "Not even a stone was thrown at them," al-Dabbagh said. He added the contractors violated the rules of conduct and regulations for private security firms operating in Iraq. "They must be held accountable according to the law," he said. However, security contractors have immunity from Iraqi law under a provision put into place in the early days of the U.S.-led occupation. Watch how supervision has been tightened on contractors » . Blackwater security contractors were guarding a State Department convoy. The company is one of a number of private security contractors in Iraq. Last month's shooting has sparked fury in both countries and led to a series of new steps reviewing the role of U.S. contractors in Iraq. The Iraqi-American joint committee met for the first time Sunday to begin reviewing security operations. It plans to issue a report offering recommendations to the Iraqi and U.S. governments. Border crossings reopen . Five border crossings between Iran and Iraq's Kurdish region have been reopened, an Iraqi Kurdish regional government spokesman said. Iran closed its border with the Iraqi region nearly two weeks ago to protest the U.S. military's incarceration of an Iranian arrested September 20 in Sulaimaniya. The U.S. military maintains that Mahmoud Farhadi was posing as a businessman with a trade delegation and was in charge of Zafar Command, one of three units of the Ramazan Corps of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani blasted the United States for the arrest, saying Farhadi is an Iranian civil servant who was on an official trade mission in the region. The U.S. military has long accused Quds Force agents of training and equipping Iraqi insurgents, an allegation Iran vehemently denies. Other developments . CNN's Jomana Karadsheh contributed to this report.

"Not even a stone was thrown at them," Iraqi official says of Blackwater guards . Iraq says 17 Iraqis killed by Blackwater guards in Baghdad square . Blackwater, Iraqi officials have starkly different accounts of what happened . Iraqi panel is calling for $8 million per victim in the September 16 shooting .

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PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Former President Bill Clinton denied Tuesday he had accused Sen. Barack Obama's campaign of "playing the race card" during an interview Monday. Bill Clinton is facing tough questions Tuesday over an interview with a Delaware radio station. A recording of the former president making the comment is posted on the WHYY Web site. It says he made the comment in a telephone interview with the Philadelphia public radio station Monday night. Clinton was asked whether his remarks comparing Obama's strong showing in South Carolina to that of Jesse Jackson in 1988 had been a mistake given their impact on his wife Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign. "No, I think that they played the race card on me," said Clinton, "and we now know from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along." Listen to the full interview . "We were talking about South Carolina political history and this was used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign to try to breed resentment elsewhere. And you know, do I regret saying it? No. Do I regret that it was used that way? I certainly do. But you really got to go some to try to portray me as a racist." After the phone interview, a stray comment of his on the issue was also recorded before he hung up: "I don't think I should take any s*** from anybody on that, do you?" Watch Bill Clinton respond to controversy » . But outside a Pittsburgh campaign event Tuesday, a reporter asked Clinton what he had meant "when you said the Obama campaign was playing the race card on you?" Clinton responded: "When did I say that and to whom did I say that?" Watch more of the Clintons on the trail in Pennsylvania » . "You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your games today," Clinton added. "I said what I said -- you can go back and look at the interview, and if you will be real honest you will also report what the question was and what the answer was. But I'm not helping you." Clinton did not respond when asked what he meant when he charged that the Obama campaign had a memo in which they said they had planned to play the race card. Meanwhile, at a Pittsburgh press availability on Tuesday, Obama was asked about Clinton's charge that his campaign had drawn up plans to use "the race card." "Hold on a second,'' he said. "So former President Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he is suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it?" Watch Obama's full comments » . "You better ask him what he meant by that. I have no idea what he meant. These were words that came out of his mouth. Not words that came out of mine.'' Clinton commented just before the South Carolina primary that "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here." E-mail to a friend . CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand, CNN political producers Alexander Marquardt, Ed Hornick and Chris Welch contributed to this report.

Bill Clinton in interview Monday: Obama camp "played the race card on me" On Tuesday he denied he had accused Obama's campaign of it . Clinton: "When did I say that and to whom did I say that?" A recording of former president's comment is posted on WHYY Web site .

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KAMPALA, Uganda (CNN) -- A fight between Ugandan and Libyan presidential guards sparked chaos during a ceremony attended by the heads of state from 11 African nations on Wednesday. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni attend the opening of the mosque. Several of the guards to the visiting heads of state from Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Mali, Somalia, Sudan and Djibouti sustained serious injuries in the fight, which included punches, kicks and the drawing of guns. No leaders were hurt in the melee, though several were knocked over. Several journalists also were caught up in the fracas and suffered injuries or lost their grips on cameras and recorders. The incident occurred at the opening of a massive Gadhafi National Mosque in Kampala, a structure begun by the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 1972 and completed with financing from Libya, according to African media reports. Minutes after Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and his host, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, jointly unveiled a plaque to mark the event, the Libyan guards pushed away the guards of other delegations at the mosque's entrance. The Ugandan guards -- who had traded hostilities with the predominantly-Arab Libyan guards at every joint event since Gadhafi's arrival in the country Sunday -- reacted with fury and fought back. Museveni briefly lost his balance when a hefty Libyan guard pushed him to a wall. Another Libyan guard pushed Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who also lost his balance but was caught by his own guards. The vice president of Tanzania was knocked over by fighting guards as he was taking his shoes off to enter the mosque. Guards to the rest of the visiting presidents and prime ministers kept their respective leaders out of the fray, with some drawing their guns as the dignitaries looked on in disbelief. Some leaders -- notably those from Somalia, Burundi and Djibouti -- were visibly uneasy as guns were drawn on all sides. By the time the fight was over more than six minutes later, about a dozen presidential guards were left bleeding from compound fractures and the Libyan and Ugandan protocol officials traded bitter accusations of disrespect and racism. "What are your people up to? Do you want to kill our leader?" a Libyan protocol official said to his Ugandan counterpart. The Ugandan official, who declined to be named, shouted back, "Why do think you're superior? What makes you think Uganda has any ill intention against Gadhafi?" The Ugandan official said Museveni's guards were simply doing their job as security for the host country and had a right to respond when the Libyan guards pushed them back. It has taken 36 years to complete the giant mosque on a hill in the heart of Kampala. It used to be a colonial fort named after British Capt. Frederick Lugard. The mosque can accommodate as many as 17,000 people at one time, according to the engineers, who call it the largest mosque in sub-Saharan Africa. Many Muslims interviewed said the mosque's opening evoked sweet memories of Amin, the deceased dictator. "It is a great day and thanks be to Allah for the completion," said Salim Abdul Noor, 39. "This should remind us that while Amin is demonized as Africa's worst dictator, there are many things he did for this country that successive governments largely depend on, and much of the completed installations and structures like this beautiful mosque was Amin's dream, may Allah rest him in peace." The Swedish vice president of the European Islamic Conference, Adly Abu Hajar, 57, said the mosque heals rifts in a religion introduced to Uganda in 1844 by Arab slave traders. "I find this complex has brought unity among Muslims in Uganda. There have been so many factions, but this attraction has brought them together, identifying themselves with a common home." The fight prompted a crisis meeting by Ugandan security authorities, after which invited diplomats from mainly the European missions in Uganda expressed dismay. "It's disgrace. It shows there is something wrong yet unknown between the two parties," said the head of one European mission in Kampala, who declined to be named. The police chief, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura, and the head of the army, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, declined to comment on the fight. But Capt. Edison Kwesiga, the spokesman of the Ugandan Presidential Guard Brigade, confirmed their hostile relationship with the Libyans. "It is our responsibility to ensure the safety of any visiting head of state. We have to do our job using any means. But our Libyan brothers always want us to fail. True, it's not the first time they come and act as you see," Kwesiga said. E-mail to a friend .

Ugandan officer reports tensions with Libyan leader's guards during visit . Leaders gathered for opening of massive mosque in Kampala, Uganda . About a dozen presidential guards seen bleeding from compound fractures .

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KARBALA, Iraq (CNN) -- A female suicide bomber apparently targeting Shiite worshippers killed at least 40 people and wounded at least 65 in Karbala on Monday, according to an Interior Ministry official. Iraqi security forces gather around the site of a car bomb explosion in Baghdad on Monday. The incident occurred one-half mile from the Imam Hussein shrine of Karbala. Karbala is a Shiite holy city, and the Imam Hussein shrine is one of Shiite Islam's holiest locations. The shrine marks the burial spot of Hussein bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, who was killed in battle nearby in 680. No more information was immediately available about the blast southwest of the capital city, Baghdad. Earlier Monday, in Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol, killing one officer and wounding another, the Interior Ministry told CNN. A short time later, another roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, wounding four bystanders, a ministry official said. The first attack took place about 8:30 a.m. in the upscale Mansour neighborhood, where law enforcement officials have come under frequent attacks in recent weeks. Also Monday, two American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, officials said. The incident occurred about 12:20 p.m. as the soldiers were "conducting a route-clearance combat operation north of Baghdad," according to a news release. The names of the soldiers were not immediately released. Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in the Iraqi capital Monday on an unannounced visit. Cheney told reporters that the five years in Iraq since the war's start has been "well worth the effort." He said he met with top Iraqi officials. He appeared at a news conference with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to the country. Cheney began a trip to the Middle East on Sunday with an official itinerary that listed stops in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and the West Bank, according to the White House. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

NEW: 2 U.S. soldiers killed by roadside bomb in Baghdad on Monday, U.S. says . NEW: Other roadside bombs in Baghdad kill one police officer, injure four people . Death toll rises to 40 in explosion in Karbala, official says; 65 injured . Explosion was near holy shrine for Shiite Muslims, burial spot of Hussein bin Ali .

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(CNN) -- For two weeks in 1976, Nadia Comaneci was probably the most recognizable person on the planet. Comaneci scored seven perfect 10s in Montreal in 1976. Just 14-years-old and standing less than five feet tall, the elfin Romanian was the undisputed star of that year's Games in Montreal after becoming the first gymnast in history to score a perfect 10. Comaneci finished up with three gold medals and -- just to prove that her initial effort had been no fluke -- seven perfect scores. Her initial performance on the uneven parallel bars was greeted with uproar as the three-digit scoreboard, struggling to cope with what had been considered an unachievable feat, flashed up 1.00. Comaneci finished with four perfect 10s and the gold medal on the bars, but it was on the balance beam, one of gymnastics' most dangerous disciplines, that Comaneci truly dazzled. Seemingly fearless, Comaneci pirouetted and back-flipped her way to two more perfect 10s and her second gold. Her final perfect score came in the floor routine as she also collected first place in the overall competition. Comaneci's transformation into an international celebrity -- she appeared on the front covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated in the same week -- had been as unexpected as it was sudden. Yet Comaneci had been working towards the Olympics ever since she had been picked out as a gymnast of rare talents as a six-year-old growing up in the industrial town of Onesti. The reality of life as an Olympic champion at home in Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania however, was not easy. Constant surveillance Comaneci was honored as a Hero of Socialist Labor on her return home, yet the regime -- terrified that Comaneci would defect after enjoying her taste of western celebrity -- kept its greatest star under constant surveillance. Four years later, a very different Comaneci returned to Olympic competition in Moscow. As an 18-year-old, she was four inches taller, 20 pounds heavier and suffering from sciatica -- a teenage starlet already starting to fade. Still, Comaneci was able to retain her gold medal on the balance beam, and collected another one in the floor exercises. But she was also involved in one of the bitterest incidents of the Games when she was controversially beaten in the all-round competition by the Soviet gymnast Yelena Davydova. It took the judges 28 minutes to decide the result and, ultimately, it was a lower score from the Soviet judge -- perhaps reflecting the worsening relations between the Soviet Union and its formerly loyal satellite -- that denied Comaneci her second straight gold in the event. Comaneci retired in 1984, traveling to Los Angeles that year as a team coach, yet she found it difficult to adjust to a life out of the spotlight. In 1989, a few weeks before the collapse of the Ceausescu regime, she defected to the United States, finally settling in Norman, Oklahoma to run a gymnastics school after marrying U.S. gymnastics star Bart Conner in 1996. In 2000 Comaneci was named as one of the athletes of the century by the Laureus World Sports Academy. E-mail to a friend .

Olympic gymnast record: 5 gold medals, 3 silver medals, 1 bronze medal . The first gymnast in history to score a perfect 10 . Comaneci was honored as a Hero of Socialist Labor . Gymnast born on November 12, 1961 in Onesti, Romania .

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(This Old House) -- Unless you're a perfect caretaker of your lawn (and, really, who is?), prepare for another round in the turf wars this summer. You'll have to deal with a full frontal assault from the dandelions, of course. And an attack from the crabgrass. But you'll face more stealthy opponents, too: root-chomping grubs and microscopic mildew that turn the grass from green to gray or brown. "If a lawn is neglected, or cared for in a hit-or-miss way, it gets weak," says This Old House landscape contractor Roger Cook. "And that's when weeds, insects, or fungal diseases become a major problem." Little wonder that last year almost 50 million homeowners bought products to fight these invaders. But as in most battles, the best defense is a strong offense: doing everything right to cultivate healthy turf. That means giving it up to an inch and a half of water per week; aerating and dethatching annually so water and nutrients can get down to the roots; mowing with a sharp blade to the right height (ask your local garden center what's best where you live); and fertilizing in spring and fall. So promise yourself -- and your turf -- you'll do that this year. In the meantime, here's how to conquer the most common turf problems you're likely to confront this summer. Fungal disease . Symptoms: Circular patches of yellow-to-brown grass; or blades with tiny red threads. Culprits: Powdery mildew, brown patch, dollar spot, and fusarium patch; or red thread. These fungal diseases can take hold of stressed turf. Solutions: Though lawns will generally recover from small areas of infection, if a fungus is progressively marching across your yard, look for a fungicide with the active ingredient thiophanate-methyl and follow the directions. For an organic fix, search out a corn-gluten mix that will cure brown patch and weaken most other fungi. Then nurse your lawn back to health by practicing good lawn-care habits: Avoid excessive shade (prune back trees and large shrubs, if necessary) and too many applications of fertilizer, herbicides, or pesticides. Carefully monitor your turf's moisture intake and never water in the evening. Weeds . Symptoms: Fast-growing and unruly greenery that quickly overtakes surrounding grass. This Old House: What type of grass is right for your yard . Culprits: Crabgrass or broadleaf weeds such as dandelion, purslane, henbit, and chickweed that commonly pop up where soil is compacted and grass hasn't completely taken root. To check for compacted soil, stick a screwdriver into the ground; it should slide in easily. Solutions: The first step is to eradicate any foreign invaders. The best approach is to pull them out by hand using a weeder or a hoe. This will also loosen the soil in affected areas. Or use a liquid herbicide in a hand sprayer to spot-treat an infestation. If weeds are too plentiful to be pulled, check your garden center for a "weed-and-feed" blend of granular fertilizer and herbicide that will kill weeds without harming turf types commonly grown in your area, or look for an organic fertilizer with corn gluten. Be sure to follow the directions on the box exactly, as some formulas must be applied during a dry spell or need a 24-hour breather with no foot traffic. From here on out, mow up to twice a week during the beginning of summer when grass grows swiftly, and raise the mower blade an inch during hot or dry periods. Water well as the summer heats up, and your turf should naturally overtake the weeds. In the fall, open up compacted soil poke holes with a pitchfork over a small yard, or rent a power aerator for large yards and overseed the lawn. You may want to follow up with a pre-emergent herbicide next spring. Insects . Symptoms: Brown turf that becomes loose enough to lift like a mat. Culprits: White grubs, a catch-all name for root-chomping beetle larvae, including june bugs, Japanese beetles, and masked chafers. To be sure that's what you've got, cut a square foot of infected turf and roll it back, looking for pale, half-inch- to inch-long C-shaped bugs. If you find more than six, treat the turf. This Old House: Meet the good bugs . Solutions: Grubs are the biggest threat to lawns, and pesticides formulated with imidacloprid are proven effective. For an organic fix, spread powdered milky spore or lay down beneficial nematodes-microscopic worms that will feed on the grubs if they're present. With nematodes, timing the application with their life cycle is critical, so be sure to follow the directions on the box exactly. Both milky spore and nematodes can be ordered from some garden centers or online (gardensalive.com). Symptoms: Irregular-shaped patches of brownish-yellow grass. Culprits: Chinch bugs, gray-black, quarter-inch-long insects that suck moisture from grass and are most likely to attack St. Augustine and zoysia grasses in the South and Kentucky bluegrass in the North. To spot them, bury an empty coffee can, with both ends removed, at the edge of the affected area and fill it with water. The bugs will seek out the moisture, then float to the top. If you see more than 10 after 20 minutes, you should address the problem. Solutions: Chinch bugs live on the surface, among thatch, so dethatching will reduce their numbers. To eradicate them completely, look for an appropriate insecticide with a pyrethroid ingredient. Longer-term, overseed with chinch-bug-resistant grasses. Symptoms: Patches of thin lawn with blades chewed off at the base. Culprits: Sod webworms and tropical sod webworms, hairless cream-to-gray spotted caterpillars that grow into small, buff-colored moths at maturity. The tropical species that thrive in warm southern climates cause the most harm. To check for webworms, mix two tablespoons of mild detergent with two gallons of water; pour it over the infested turf. Any larvae will float to the top. Solutions: You can try flooding your lawn to drown them. Or choose an appropriate insecticide; in an organic product, look for the ingredients azadirachtin or spinosad. With extreme cases of tropical webworm infestation you may need to replace the turf with a resistant grass mix. TIP: If dogs regularly make a pit stop of your lawn, keep a hose or water bucket nearby. Dog urine is high in nitrogen, which can "burn" turf, creating a good-sized yellow patch. The best fix is immediate action: Flush the area ASAP with water to dilute it. Once badly burned, grass won't come back on its own-you'll have to rake out the dead stuff and reseed. This Old House: What to do when your yard is bowser's bathroom E-mail to a friend . Get 2 Free Trial Issues . COPYRIGHT © 2008 THIS OLD HOUSE VENTURES, INC.

A good corn-gluten mix cures brown patches and weakens most fungi . Brown patches are often indicative of bug problems . Dog urine is high is nitrogen, so flush affected areas with water .

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(CNN) -- The most compelling action during Michigan's primary Tuesday will be on the Republican side. The Democratic Party has stripped the state of its delegates for moving up its primary date so early, and top-tier Democratic candidates have taken their names off the ballot, except for Sen. Hillary Clinton. The struggling auto industry has been a drag on Michigan's economy. In many ways, the Republican battle for Michigan will be similar to last week's New Hampshire contest. The primary is open, and any registered voter -- including independents and Democrats -- can participate. Sen. John McCain won New Hampshire with the help of independent voters, and he is campaigning hard to re-create that success in Michigan. In 2000, McCain defeated then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the Michigan primary. In that vote, more than half -- 52 percent -- were either independents or Democrats. Among Republican voters, McCain lost to Bush 29 percent to 66 percent. In that contest, almost three out of every 10 voters identified themselves as members of the religious right. Overall, Michigan is a swing state, producing narrow margins of victory for presidential candidates and statewide officeholders. However, voting trends favor the Democrats. Michigan's governor, Jennifer Granholm, is a Democrat, as are the state's two U.S. senators -- Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow. The Democratic presidential nominee has carried Michigan in the last four elections. Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 standard bearer, won Michigan 51 percent to 48 percent over President Bush. The state's economy is powered by the automotive industry, which has experienced its fair share of struggles. Michigan's unemployment rate, 7.4 percent, is higher than the national average of 5 percent. Region by region . Wayne County, in the southeastern corner of the state, contains the economically depressed Detroit, Michigan's largest city. Detroit is predominantly black and solidly Democratic. North of Wayne County are the more-affluent suburban counties of Oakland and Macomb, which have grown in population in the last two decades. These two counties have been the state's central political battleground in recent elections. West of Wayne is the "university belt," home to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Michigan State University in East Lansing. The area also includes the industrial cities of Saginaw and Flint, where unions remain strong, as well as Jackson and Bay City. The state's capital, Lansing, and the sparsely populated upper peninsula are also part of this region. The southwest part of the state is dominated by Grand Rapids, Michigan's second-largest city. Grand Rapids is traditionally Dutch-American and has many Christian conservatives and generally votes Republican. The area also contains smaller industrial cities and farming communities. The economy of the sparsely populated north and northwest is based on agriculture, tourism and timber. It traditionally votes Republican. Endorsements . The Detroit Free Press has endorsed McCain. "While the Free Press differs with McCain on a number of issues, the Arizona senator is a smarter, more tested and pragmatic leader who has shown since 2000 that he knows how to build bipartisan alliances around issues," the newspaper said in an editorial. The Detroit News also endorsed McCain, citing his fiscal conservatism and command of military and foreign affairs, over Michigan native Mitt Romney. "Other GOP contenders, most notably former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, are capable figures with impressive resumes and a solid grasp of the issues. But McCain's longtime presidential ambitions are at last aligned with the needs of the nation," the newspaper said. E-mail to a friend .

Independents, Democrats can vote in Michigan's open Republican primary . No Democratic delegates at stake, and most top-tier candidates aren't on ballot . Economic woes top concern for Michigan primary voters .

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four U.S. soldiers died in a roadside bombing in Iraq on Sunday, military officials reported, bringing the American toll in the 5-year-old war to the grim milestone of 4,000 deaths. Troops emerge from a bunker after receiving the "all clear" Sunday following a truck bombing in Mosul. The four were killed when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device while patrolling a neighborhood in southern Baghdad, the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq reported Sunday night. A fifth soldier was wounded in the attack, which took place about 10 p.m. (3 p.m. ET). The U.S. milestone comes just days after Americans marked the fifth anniversary of the start of the war. "No casualty is more or less significant than another; each soldier, Marine, airman and sailor is equally precious and their loss equally tragic," Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, the U.S. military's chief spokesman in Iraq, said. "Every single loss of a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine is keenly felt by military commanders, families and friends both in theatre and at home," Smith said. Of the 4,000 U.S. military personnel killed in the war, 3,263 have been killed in attacks and fighting and 737 in non-hostile incidents, such as traffic accidents and suicides. Eight of the 4,000 killed were civilians working for the Pentagon. Many of those killed over the years, like the four soldiers slain on Sunday in Baghdad, have been targeted by improvised explosive devices -- the roadside bombs that have been described as the weapon of choice for insurgents and a weapon that has come to symbolize Iraq's tenacious insurgency. The existence of the Pentagon's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization has been developed to counter the threat of IEDs in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. The group calls IEDs the "weapon of choice for adaptive and resilient networks of insurgents and terrorists." Watch how IEDs have become deadly staple in Iraq war » . Meanwhile, estimates of the Iraqi death toll range from about 80,000 to the hundreds of thousands, with another 2 million forced to leave the country and 2.5 million people displaced within Iraq, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. President Bush ordered U.S. troops into Iraq on March 19, 2003, after months of warnings that then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was concealing stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and efforts to build a nuclear bomb. U.N. weapons inspectors found no sign of banned weapons before the invasion, and the CIA later concluded that Iraq had dismantled its weapons programs in the 1990s. Hussein's government fell in early April 2003, and Iraq's new government executed him in December 2006. The news of the 4,000 mark came on the same day that Iraq's national security adviser urged Americans to be patient with the progress of the war, contending that it is "well worth fighting" because it has implications about "global terror." "This is global terrorism hitting everywhere, and they have chosen Iraq to be a battlefield. And we have to take them on," Mowaffak al-Rubaie said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." "If we don't prevail, if we don't succeed in this war, then we are doomed forever," he said. "I understand and sympathize with the mothers, with the widows, with the children who have lost their beloved ones in this country. "But honestly, it is well worth fighting and well worth investing the money and the treasure and the sweat and the tears in Iraq." Nearly 160,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, and the war has cost U.S. taxpayers about $600 billion, according to the House Budget Committee. The conflict is now widely unpopular among Americans: A CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll out Wednesday found only 32 percent of Americans support the conflict. And 61 percent said they want the next president to remove most U.S. troops within a few months of taking office. In the weekly Democratic radio address Saturday, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey said President Bush "took us to war on the wings of a lie." Menendez said that the war has depleted the resources and morale of the U.S. military; diverted national attention away from the war in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda is regrouping; and hurt the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The Iraq war has not made Americans safer, Menendez said, but has instead hurt the U.S. economy. The senator called for a "responsible new direction" regarding Iraq. CNN learned last week, from several U.S. military officials familiar with the recommendations but not authorized to speak on the record, that senior U.S. military officials are preparing to recommend to Bush a four- to six-week "pause" in additional troop withdrawals from Iraq after the last of the "surge" brigades leaves in July. "If the conditions on the ground dictate that we have to have a pause, then we will have to have a pause," al-Rubaie said. The return of all five brigades added to the Iraq contingent last year could reduce troop levels by up to 30,000, but still leave approximately 130,000 or more troops in Iraq. Al-Rubaie emphasized Sunday that any drawdown of U.S. troops "has to be based on the conditions on the ground." "It depends on the development and the growth and the equipment and the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces, and the preparedness of the Iraqi security forces," he said. "This should not be a purely political decision. It should be also a technical, military and intelligence decision." But there has been too much "foot-dragging on key governance questions in Iraq," Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said on CNN on Sunday. "It seems to me you put off those troop withdrawals, you send exactly the wrong message to the Iraqis." On Wednesday, Bush will visit the Pentagon to be briefed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chaired by Adm. Michael Mullen. The American troop level in Iraq "depends on the negotiations that we are engaged in now between the government of Iraq and the United States government," al-Rubaie said. When conditions warrant the withdrawal of American troops, the Iraqis will say "'Thank you very much, indeed,' " al-Rubaie said. "A big, big thank you for the United States of America for liberating Iraq, for helping us in sustaining the security gains in Iraq ... and we will give them a very, very good farewell party then." Responding to recent remarks from U.S. presidential candidates that Iraqis are not taking responsibility for their own future, al-Rubaie said Iraqis are making political and security gains. "Literally by the day and by the week, we are gradually assuming more responsibility," he said, noting that Iraqis have taken responsibility for security in many provinces. Other developments: . • U.S. troops raided a suspected suicide bomber cell in Diyala province on Sunday, killing a dozen militants, half of whom had shaved their bodies -- which the U.S. military says indicates they were in the final stage of preparation for a suicide attack. Diyala province stretches north and east of Baghdad and has been a major front for U.S. troops fighting militants. • Several mortars landed in Baghdad's International Zone on Sunday, according to the Interior Ministry. A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said there were no major casualties. Watch smoke rise from the Green Zone » . • A suicide car bomb exploded at a fuel station Sunday in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in northwest Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding 12 others, the Interior Ministry said. • A suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives outside the main gate of an Iraqi military base in Mosul, killing at least 10 Iraqi soldiers and wounding 35 people, including 20 soldiers, Mosul police said. The U.S. military put the death toll higher, at 12. • A mortar round landed in a Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, killing seven people and injuring nine others, a ministry official said. Six more mortar rounds landed in other Baghdad neighborhoods Sunday night, killing three people, the Interior Ministry said. • In southeastern Baghdad, gunmen riding in at least two cars opened fire on a crowded outdoor market, killing at least three people and wounding 17 others, the Interior Ministry said. • A suicide bomber detonated a small truck rigged with explosives outside a local Awakening Council leader's house just east of Samarra on Saturday, killing at least five people and wounding 13 others, a Samarra police official said. Awakening Councils are largely Sunni security groups that have been recruited by the U.S. military. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

NEW: As Iraq war enters sixth year, American death toll rises to 4,000 . NEW: Four U.S. soldiers killed when their vehicle was hit by an IED . At least 30 Iraqis died Sunday; 80,000 to 150,000 or more killed since war's start . Iraq security adviser said Sunday that Iraq war is "well worth fighting"

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ADELAIDE, Australia -- World record-breaking wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist has announced he will retire from cricket at the end of the Australian summer. Adam Gilchrist takes a spectacular catch off Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the third Test against India. The 36-year-old chose Australia Day to make his decision public, coming at the end of the third day of the fourth and final Test against India in Adelaide. Gilchrist said he would retire from Tests at the end of the current match, and then hang up his gloves in one-day internationals after the upcoming tri-series with Sri Lanka and India. "It is with great pride and happiness that I make the decision to retire from Tests and one-day internationals," he said in a statement on Saturday. "I've come to the decision after much thought and discussion with those most important to me. "My family and I have been fortunate to have had an amazing journey full of rich experiences throughout my career and are sincerely grateful to all who have helped make this stage of our lives so fulfilling. "I am now ready and excited to move into the next phase of my life which will, of paramount importance, include much more time with my family." Gilchrist broke the world record for the most wicketkeeping dismissals in Tests with 414 on Friday, overtaking South Africa's Mark Boucher in his 96th outing in the five-day game. Boucher, by comparison, played in 109 Tests. Gilchrist took over the gloves from Ian Healy -- third on the list with 395 dismissals from 119 Tests -- in November 1999, and went on to establish himself both as a wicketkeeper and as a batsman of brutal hitting capabilities. He has scored 5,556 runs to date, at an average of 47.89, with a highest score of 204 not out and having made 17 centuries. He has been similarly prolific in 277 one-dayers, scoring 9,297 runs at an average of 36 and reaching three figures 15 times. Gilchrist's revelation came as Australia put themselves in a strong position to win the series against the touring Indians, reaching 322-3 at stumps. Captain Ricky Ponting, whose team lead 2-1, was unbeaten on 79 after adding an unbroken 81 for the fourth wicket with Michael Clarke (37). Resuming the day on 62-0 in reply to India's imposing first innings of 526, Matthew Hayden and Phil Jaques took their opening stand to 159. Jaques was the first to fall, bowled by India captain Anil Kumble for a patient 60 off 159 deliveries. Hayden, on his return after missing the defeat in Perth due to a hamstring injury, reached his 30th Test century before being bowled by 19-year-old seamer Ishant Sharma for 103 off 200 balls. Ponting, who came in at first drop, added another 55 with Mike Hussey before the left-hander was also castled by fast bowler Irfan Pathan for 22 to leave the home side teetering a little at 241-3. But Ponting, who has struggled for form so far in the series, ground out his 40th half-century in Tests and Clarke provided able support to take Australia through to the close of play with no further loss of wickets. E-mail to a friend .

NEW: Adam Gilchrist to retire from cricket at end of this Australian summer . The wicketkeeper set new world record of 414 Test dismissals on Friday . He has played 96 Tests for Australia and 277 one-day internationals . Australia reached 322-3 on third day of final Test against India, Gilchrist's last .

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ANAHEIM, California (CNN) -- As he fixes a broken sliding glass door at an apartment in Anaheim, California, Eduardo Gutierrez worries about his parents in Mexico. Eduardo Gutierrez can't send money back to his parents in Mexico due to rising costs and less work. He can no longer afford to send the $200 to $300 a month he had been sending back home to support his ailing father. "I kind of feel bad that I can't help my parents," said Gutierrez, a legal immigrant who has worked in the United States for 20 years. "I try. But I can't these days, and it's a tough situation." Gutierrez said he earns $18.50 an hour as a glazier, installer and fixer of glass in all shapes and sizes. But with the U.S. economy sagging, his hours have shrunk, even as his gas and grocery bills have skyrocketed along with other expenses. He's struggling just to support his wife and three children. Watch bad times in the U.S. felt in Mexico » . Bank of Mexico, Mexico's equivalent to the Federal Reserve, says stories like these are becoming more common. Deceleration in the U.S. construction industry resulted in $100 million less in "remittances" -- money from workers in the U.S. to their relatives in Mexico -- in January this year, the most recent available stats. The overall figure went from $1.7 billion in January 2007 to $1.6 billion this January, according to Bank of Mexico. The slowdown in such money has been a consistent theme over the last year. The World Bank says remittances received by people in Mexico nearly ground to a halt in 2007, growing at a rate of 1.4 percent, compared with more than 20 percent annual growth from 2002 to 2006. "The slowdown in Mexico is partly due to the weak job market in the United States, especially in the construction sector," the World Bank says on its Web site. A poll, released Wednesday, of 5,000 Latin American adults living in the United States found that only 50 percent of respondents were still sending money on a regular basis to loved ones, down from 73 percent in a similar poll conducted in 2006. The poll was conducted in February by the Inter-American Development Bank's Multilateral Investment Fund. See the rise of immigrants from Latin America » . What does that mean to families in Mexico counting on the payments to survive? CNN caught up with Gutierrez's father in Tejaro, Mexico, a hardscrabble farming town of about 5,000 people. A gray-bearded man in a wide-brimmed hat, 77-year-old Camilo Izquierdo was feeding white goats that poked their heads through a makeshift fence. He and his wife have 13 children, seven of whom have moved to the United States for work, including Eduardo Gutierrez. The dad used the money from his oldest son to supplement his farming income and to help pay for diabetes medication. "He says things are getting too expensive over there," the father said. "He says things are worse there in California than over here." His livestock has always been his lifeline. Izquierdo used to have 140 goats, but he began selling off his livestock to make ends meet. A drought made feed more expensive, and now he's down to just 40 goats, with little money left for his medicine. "I am sick and have been sick for quite some time. The medicine keeps getting more expensive. I just don't know what to do anymore." Back in California, Eduardo Gutierrez says that in addition to shrinking hours and rising food costs, gas prices are burning up his paycheck as he drives his truck to jobs spread out over hundreds of miles in Southern California. He estimates that just driving to and from the jobs is costing him $400 to $500 a month in gas. Gas calculator: How much do you need to work to pay for your gas? » . "I've been here over 20 years, and I saw the recession back in the '90s," Gutierrez said. "But this is worse, as far as I can tell. This is really bad." Gutierrez says his financial situation could be more desperate, like those from his hometown who are now unemployed in California. When he visits his home in Mexico, he doesn't reveal everything about just how dire the situation is. "Every time I go down there, a lot of people ask, 'How is my son doing?' " Gutierrez said. "I don't want to say they're out of a job or anything like that." He added, "I say they're doing all right. But that is just a lie. They are doing bad right now. A lot of people are doing bad." He said he knows lots of legal U.S. residents who have moved back home to Tejaro or the state of Michoacan. He also said the tighter border controls have convinced other Mexicans without legal U.S. paperwork not to try to not sneak across the border to make money for their families. "I mean, who wants to risk his life just to make a living?" Gutierrez asked. He said he hopes the U.S. economy picks back up and people begin renovating their homes again soon. On this day, as he finished fixing the sliding glass door, he got on his knees like a kid playing marbles and used a hand brush to sweep every last metal shaving and screw into a dust pan. "I don't know what's going to happen," he said of the U.S. economy. "Hopefully, things turn around a little better." E-mail to a friend .

Remittances to Mexico fell $100 million in January, according to Bank of Mexico . "I kind of feel bad that I can't help my parents," immigrant in U.S. says . Payments to loved ones back home have slowed during U.S. economic woes . Father in Mexico: "He says things are worse there in California than over here"

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ROME, Italy -- Captain Javier Zanetti saved Inter Milan's unbeaten Serie A record as he rifled home a stunning late volley to earn a 1-1 draw against second-placed Roma at the San Siro on Wednesday. Zanetti celebrates his late strike as Inter retained their unbeaten Serie A record with a 1-1 draw against Roma. Roma captain Francesco Totti had given the visitors a deserved first-half leadbut Zanetti's strike two minutes from time maintained Inter's nine-point lead at the top. Roma needed to win to breathe new life into the title race but they were dealt a cruel blow as French defender Philippe Mexes was sent-off late on for two bookings in quick succession. Inter capitalised and they have now lost only once in their last 65 league matches. The home side had the first clear-cut chance of the match and were within centimeters of taking the lead when Hernan Crespo met a cross from Patrick Vieira with an acrobatic volley, but saw his effort cannon back off the post. The defending champions were made to pay for that miss on 38 minutes as the visitors orchestrated a sublime goal. Neat footwork from Macedonia international Mirko Vucinic released Max Tonetto down the left and his pin-point cross was flicked home at the near post by Totti from six meters out as he stole in front of defender Cristian Chivu. Inter center-back Nicolas Burdisso should have restored parity in first-half stoppage time but his header from Luis Figo's corner flew over the bar. Figo himself had a great chance on 54 minutes but after having time to set himself up for an attempted volley, he skewed his effort so badly that it did not even go out of play. After Mexes' dismissal 10 from time, Inter laid siege to Roma's goal. Goalkeeper Doni had to be alert to tip over Crespo's header three minutes from time but he could do nothing about Zanetti's volley a minute later. Meanwhile, AC Milan slipped to fifth place as they were held to a 1-1 draw at Catania. Brazilian teenager Pato gave them the lead early in the second half with a skimming long-range shot but substitute Gionathan Spinesi's header earnt the Sicilians a point. Fiorentina are up to fourth after they defeated Livorno 1-0 at home thanks to a goal from Senegal forward Ndiaye Papa Waigo. E-mail to a friend .

Javier Zanetti scores a late goal to earn Inter Milan a 1-1 draw against Roma . The result keeps Inter nine points clear and retains their unbeaten league run . AC Milan slipped to fifth position as they were held to a 1-1 draw at Catania .

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GLASGOW, Scotland -- Jean-Claude Darcheville and Nacho Novo both scored twice to fire leaders Rangers to a 4-0 win at Hearts, their 10th consecutive Scottish Premier League victory. Jean-Claude Darcheville scored two first-half goals as Rangers cruised to a 4-0 victory at Hearts. Hearts found themselves ripped apart by a rampant Rangers side, who sent out a clear message to rivals Celtic by maintaining their four-point advantage at the summit. Darcheville claimed the opener after 25 minutes, cutting inside from the left and squeezing his shot inside the far post from a tight angle. The same player added a second two minutes before the break, scoring from close range after a Barry Ferguson corner was not cleared. Darcheville was withdrawn for Novo at the interval, but if Hearts thought the departure of the Frenchman meant some much-needed respite, they were sadly mistaken. Novo was on the pitch for seven minutes when he helped himself to a goal of his own. Charlie Adam set up the shot with a low ball across goal and all that was required from the striker was to bundle home from close range. The same two players combined again to supply Rangers with their fourth goal with 69 minutes gone. Adam was again the provider and this time Novo produced a cheeky back-heel finish from five meters. Meanwhile, goals by Scott McDonald and Georgios Samaras gave Celtic a hard-fought 2-1 win at home to Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Australian international McDonald's 25th goal of the season right on the interval gave the champions the lead and his Greek team-mate bulleted an Aiden McGeady cross past goalkeeper Michael Fraser on the hour mark. But the final minutes were needlessly fraught for Celtic after Caley striker Marius Niculae took advantage of Scott Brown's misplaced pass to pull a goal back in the 70th minute. E-mail to a friend .

Rangers remain four points clear in Scotland after a superb 4-0 win at Hearts . Jean-Claude Darcheville and Nacho Novo both net twice for the league leaders . Celtic remain second in the table following 2-1 victory against Inverness Caley .

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(CNN) -- One of the telephone numbers used to report claims of abuse at a polygamist sect's Texas ranch was previously associated with a Colorado woman whom authorities have named a "person of interest," a court document says. Rozita Swinton, 33, has been arrested in a case that is not directly related to the Texas raid. The telephone calls in late March prompted authorities to raid the Yearning For Zion (YFZ) Ranch in Eldorado, Texas, where 437 children were removed. The ranch is owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon offshoot that practices polygamy. Rozita Swinton, 33, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, was arrested this month on a charge of making a false report to police. The charge relates to an incident in February, but the Texas Rangers have said she is a person of interest in connection with the ranch calls. In the February incident, Swinton is accused of calling authorities using the names "Dana Anderson" and "April," reporting abuse by male relatives, according to an affidavit in support of an arrest warrant. Authorities have not clearly said that they think Swinton made the March phone calls that prompted the raid. But the affidavit says she is "known to make false reports of sexual abuse to the police and other agencies." Watch how a hoax may be behind the ranch mystery » . Calls were made to a Texas family shelter March 29 and 30 from a female identifying herself as Sarah Barlow, the affidavit says. The caller said she was 16, had a baby about 8 months old and was pregnant again. She said that her 49-year-old husband was physically and sexually abusive toward her and that they were living at the YFZ Ranch. The phone calls were made from a prepaid cell phone with no available records, according to the affidavit. However, it has been used in other cases linked to Swinton, the document says. Although Texas officials said they have not found the woman who made the calls, they said they have found evidence that girls as young at 13 are forced into marriages with older men at the ranch. The FLDS has denied that any abuse takes place at the ranch. The woman identifying herself as Sarah Barlow also called a battered women's shelter in Snohomish County, Washington, using another phone number, the affidavit says. That phone number was traced to Swinton's address, the affidavit says. On April 10, the woman called the Washington shelter again and was put on the line with a Texas deputy. She said she felt that she would be punished for the trouble she had caused, was worried that her baby might be taken away and was angry with a woman she had contacted March 29 for prompting the raid by law enforcement. During that conversation, the affidavit says, the woman used terminology common to the FLDS, referring to her "sister wives," for instance. The phone number used in the Washington call was traced to the Colorado Springs apartment where Swinton lives, the affidavit says. The number was also used to call a Utah organization for women escaping polygamy and an abuse counseling center in Fort Myers, Florida, phone records showed. Swinton pleaded guilty to a charge of false reporting in June 2007 and was under a 12-month deferred sentence, the affidavit says. At a custody hearing last week, a Texas judge ruled that the state will temporarily retain custody of the 437 children removed in the raid. Meanwhile, on Tuesday evening, laboratory workers at San Angelo Coliseum completed taking DNA samples from mothers and children, said Janice Rolfe, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general's office. She did not say how many samples were taken. About 100 of the seized children from whom swab DNA samples had already been taken were bused Tuesday from the San Angelo Coliseum to group foster homes, the Texas Department of Health and Family Services said. On Wednesday, workers in Eldorado continued to take voluntary DNA samples from adults who live on the YFZ Ranch, Rolfe said. Rolfe said that at least 54 samples from adults have been taken there. The DNA samples will be sent to Laboratory Corporation of America, based in Burlington, North Carolina. It could take longer than a month to get results. Judge Barbara Walther, who last week ordered the DNA testing of the children and ordered that they remain in state custody, signed an order this week authorizing the children's move to foster care, officials said. At a meeting Wednesday afternoon, Walther and the state's Child Protective Services Division agreed that 18 mothers with breast-feeding babies that are 1 year old or younger will be allowed to stay with their children in the homes where the children are placed. Also, 23 mothers with 28 children ages 1 to 2 years will be allowed to stay in the same towns as their children. The remaining children, 2 to 18 years old, will be split up into available homes. The original order signed by Walther called for every effort to keep siblings together, especially in the case of small children. Rod Parker, a spokesman for the FLDS families, blasted the action in a news conference from his Salt Lake City, Utah, office. "The CPS department of Texas is afraid of due process," he said. "They would lose in a fair fight in this case, and that is why you're seeing them move so quickly, and that is why you're seeing them move unilaterally." He said the court ignored motions asking that the children be placed with their relatives. The FLDS launched a Web site this week to promote its side of the issue. The site, captivefldschildren.com, contains photos and videos taken inside the ranch during the raid. The site says donations are needed to help cover the "massive litigation costs associated with these lawsuits." A link on the Web site allows online donations. E-mail to a friend . CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen and journalist Cheryl Getty contributed to this report.

Rozita Swinton, 33, was arrested this month on charge unrelated to ranch . But Texas Rangers have said she is a "person of interest" in sect case . Court record: Swinton is connected with phone number that brought attention to sect . Caller identified herself as a 16-year-old girl who claimed abuse by sect member .

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BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN) -- Colombian police have killed a drug trafficker who the government says is one of the most sought-after fugitive outside the country's rebel leaders. Victor Manuel Mejia Munera was a drug lord with ties to paramilitary groups, the Colombian government says. Victor Manuel Mejia Munera and two bodyguards were killed Tuesday when police tracked them down on a farm in the northwestern province of Antioquia, according to a statement on the Colombian presidency Web site. Three people also were arrested, according to the statement. Mejia Munera was wearing an American-style, desert-camouflage uniform when he was killed, said Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos. Mejia Munera also had short- and long-range weapons with ammunition, the presidential statement said. "This is a great strike of the Public Force against the criminal structures of the country," Santos said, warning that drug traffickers who do not turn themselves over to the government will "end up in the jail or in a tomb." In terms of the country's most-wanted list, Mejia Munera was one of Colombia's most sought-after criminals and ranked just below the leaders of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the statement said. The leftist guerilla group, which goes by its Spanish acronym FARC, holds about 750 hostages in the jungles of Colombia and has justified hostage-taking as a legitimate military tactic in a long-running civil war involving government forces, drug traffickers and right-wing paramilitaries. Mejia Munera is not alleged to have ties to FARC, but he had been involved with a right-wing paramilitary group known as United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, according to the U.S. State Department. Mejia Munera and his brother, Miguel Angel Mejia Munera, known as "Los Mellizos," or "the Twins," have been accused of running major drug rings in Colombia. The brothers also have faced narcotics-trafficking charges in the United States. Santos initially told reporters that police had killed Miguel Angel Mejia Munera. The Colombian presidency later said the slain drug lord was actually Victor Manuel Mejia Munera. Fingerprints confirmed that the dead man was Victor Mejia Munera, Colombian-based Caracol Radio reported. The brothers sometimes exchanged identities, the radio station said, and identity documents belonging to Miguel Mejia Munera were found near Victor Mejia Munera. In 2004, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia indicted the twins on narcotics-trafficking charges. The U.S. Justice Department at one point offered a $5 million reward for "true and effective information" on the whereabouts of a dozen suspects it wanted extradited to the United States. One of the 12 men wanted was Miguel Mejia Munera. The State Department said Wednesday there was no reward for Victor Mejia Munera. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control reported that the brothers have been involved in narcotics trafficking since the early 1990s, when they were guarding ships carrying cocaine from western Colombia to Mexico. "Over time," OFAC said in a news release last year, the brothers "rose through the ranks to lead their own narcotics trafficking organization." "Recent reports indicate that Los Mellizos may be funding their own illegal armed groups to facilitate their narcotics trafficking activities," the release said. The Colombian prosecutor general's office had indicted Victor Mejia Munera for his role in a 2004 paramilitary massacre of 11 farmers in Tame in the eastern Colombian province of Arauca, according to the State Department. E-mail to a friend .

NEW: Weapons, ammunition found with dead drug lord, Colombian government says . NEW: Defense minister warns drug dealers will "end up in the jail or in a tomb" Victor Manuel Mejia Munera linked to paramilitaries, also wanted in the U.S. The slain man was originally thought to be brother Miguel Angel Mejia .

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(CNN) -- Some Democrats say they fear their party's method of picking a nominee might turn undemocratic as neither presidential candidate is likely to gather the delegates needed for the nomination. The Democrats' superdelegate system is supposed to avoid turmoil at the party's conventions. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are running neck and neck toward the party's August convention in Denver, Colorado. Most projections show neither getting the necessary 2,025 delegates in the remaining nominating contests before then. Party rules call for the votes of superdelegates -- 800 or so party officers, elected officials and activists -- to tip the balance. The party instituted the system to avoid the turmoil that a deadlocked race would create at a convention. But even some superdelegates are questioning the system, as the party heads toward the conclusion of a race in which they might determine the outcome. "It's not the most democratic way of doing things," said Maine superdelegate Sam Spencer. Watch the scenario for a "civil war" in the Democratic Party » . At least two organizations have launched petition drives to reflect how the vote went in primaries and caucuses. MoveOn.org, which has endorsed Obama, is trying to get 200,000 signatures this week and plans to run an ad with its petition in USA Today. And Democracy for America, headed by Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's brother Jim, said it will deliver signed petitions to all the superdelegates. While pledged delegates are allocated with the understanding they'll vote the way their state went in its primary or caucus, superdelegates are free to vote however they want. And even if they pledge their support to a candidate, they're free to change at any time. Clinton already has 234 superdelegates and Obama has 157. But Obama has a sizable lead in pledged delegates, 1,096 to 977, and is on a roll, having won all eight nominating contests since Super Tuesday. See which states pledged delegates come from » . If the superdelegates were to tip the balance against the popular vote, the turmoil would last long beyond the convention, longtime Democratic Party strategist Tad Devine said. "If a perception develops that somehow this decision has been made not by voters participating in primaries or caucuses, but by politicians in some mythical backroom, I think that the public could react strongly against that," Devine said. "The problem is [if] people perceive that voters have not made the decision -- instead, insiders have made the decision -- then all of these new people who are being attracted to the process, particularly the young people who are voting for the first time, will feel disenfranchised or in some way alienated," he said. Superdelegates were established in 1982 to bring more moderate Democrats back to conventions, where their attendance had been dropping since the 1950s, and to relect the party's mainstream more accurately. "[Superdelegates] are the keepers of the faith," said former San Francisco, California, Mayor Willie Brown. "You have superdelegates because this is the Democratic Party. You don't want the bleed-over from the Green Party, the independents and others in deciding who your nominee will be." Devine was part of the first campaign to benefit from the roles of superdelegates -- that of former Vice President Walter Mondale in 1984. Mondale's 1984 campaign went into the party convention with too few delegates to secure the nomination against the campaigns of former Sen. Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson. Mondale had received more votes, but Hart had won more states. Mondale was able to line up the superdelegates going into the convention and avoid a fight on the convention floor. Each campaign actively is trying to encourage the unpledged delegates to pledge to their side. Jason Rae, a 21-year-old Wisconsin superdelegate, said he's gotten calls from former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from Hillary Clinton's camp, and Obama's wife, Michelle, visited with him during a campaign stop Tuesday in Wisconsin. Rae said he hasn't yet decided how he'll vote in Wisconsin's primary on Tuesday. Crystal Strait, a party activist from California, said she's received calls from Clinton herself and daughter Chelsea but she remains uncommitted. Massachusetts superdelegate John Walsh said he'll stay loyal to Obama despite the fact that the senator lost the primary in Walsh's state. So will fellow Massachusetts superdelegates Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry. Among Clinton's committed superdelegates are Harold Ickes Jr., her husband's former deputy chief of staff; Terry McAuliffe, who led her husband's 1996 re-election campaign and is chairman of her campaign; and her husband. Whether those superdelegates stay committed to their candidates, even if it means tipping the outcome of the race against the pledged delegate lead or the popular vote, could split the party. "It's in a total contradiction of the way the Democrats have set up their primary process, with all this proportional representation," said CNN political analyst Amy Holmes. "The whole point of it was that no one could walk away with the elites. And if this is decided by superdelegates, I think the Democratic Party morally is going to be looking at each other and say, 'What did we just do?' " Devine said it could hurt the party in the general election. "I think it will hurt us particularly because so many of the policies that we're saying we will pursue in government as Democrats are based on fairness, whether it's the tax policies that we advocate or the social programs we want to advance, there's a fairness component in all of that," he said. "People need to believe, I think, that our process is fair as well, if they want to believe that our policies will be fair." E-mail to a friend . CNN's Campbell Brown, John Helton and Ed Hornick contributed to this report.

Democrats' system includes about 800 superdelegates -- party officials, leaders . Unlike elected delegates, superdelegates can vote for any candidate they choose . Some says they fear superdelegates could tip balance against the popular vote . If such a thing happens, some say voters will feel alienated, disenfranchised .

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BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- It all started with the flush of an automatic toilet. The terrifying sound marked the beginning of a two-year nightmare for Sarah Teres as she desperately tried to potty train her daughter Molly. Molly graduated from Potty School four days before her brother, Archer, was born. "It was awful" Teres said. "We tried everything including bribery and threats." Teres, the mother of three from Andover, Massachusetts, hoped her middle child would be toilet trained by the time she was 2½. Two years later, the girl was still in diapers, refusing to use the bathroom. "I was going crazy," Teres admitted. "She wouldn't poop. She would hold it for days." At wits end, Teres enrolled Molly in the Toilet Training School at Children's Hospital Boston. "By the time the children come in with their families, it has become a power struggle," explained Dr. Alison Schonwald, a pediatrician who supervises the "poop school," as it's affectionately called by staffers. "The kids kind of dig in their heels and put a line in the sand." Health Minute: Watch more on the perils of potty training » . The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that most children show signs they're ready to potty train between 18 and 24 months. Doctors suggest a child may be ready to start trying if he's staying dry for at least two hours at a time during the day, walking to and from the bathroom, asking for a diaper change and asking to use the potty. For some kids, the toilet training process can take more than a year, or longer. The six-week program at Children's Hospital is one of a handful around the country. Kimberly Dunn, a pediatric nurse practitioner, has worked with some of the 450 young graduates over the years. She said most of the kids admit they are afraid to use a toilet. "Oftentimes, the parents come in and they want to know why they're afraid," Dunn said. "You could ask the kids until they're blue in the face and you hardly ever find out why." Dunn meets with a half-dozen children once a week. She uses books, music and art to help the students overcome their fear of using the toilet. She helps them set small, realistic goals. For instance, she said, week one involved just sitting on the toilet for five minutes. She encourages positive reinforcement and simple rewards such as extra playtime with Mom or Dad. While Dunn works on the kids, psychologist Elaine Leclair, an instructor at the Harvard School of Medicine, offers frank advice to the parents in a separate room. "I just say, 'Step back.' They hate to hear me say this, but I say whatever you're doing now is not working. You really need to try something different," Leclair said. She said many parents come to the sessions angry and anxious. "They come in feeling extremely discouraged, very isolated thinking they are the only ones in the world who have this problem." Teres acknowledged that's how she felt. "Imagine my surprise to find out there were thousands of kids who had this problem." After years of hiding her daughter's toilet training troubles from family and friends, the group parenting sessions allowed Teres to open up about her frustrations. "It was like going to Betty Ford," joked Teres, who felt she had exhausted all her other options. A majority of the children who attend the Children's Hospital class are dealing with constipation issues often caused by delayed toilet training. Teres learned that her daughter had a medical condition called encopresis. Experts call it a symptom of chronic constipation and say it occurs when a child resists having a bowel movement. Youngsters like Molly are sometimes given laxatives or other medications to help encourage them to go. Schonwald, the author of "The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Potty Training," doesn't want parents to be discouraged during the process. "No one goes to college in diapers, right? Everyone will get through this time, as awful as it might feel if you're struggling." She suggested achieving success during potty training has to do with the approach. "There are three things you cannot make a child do: eat, sleep or poop. We find that by decreasing the pressure and expectations that children feel more confident." Schonwald reminds parents that toilet training "is not a chore, so keeping it positive from the very beginning is the most important thing." If a child isn't using the toilet by the age of 4, she recommends talking with a pediatrician. Schonwald also said setbacks during potty training are normal. "All developmental skills come in spurts with periods of regression." After a setback, Schonwald advises parents to give their child positive messages that they can succeed by saying, "So you had some accidents today. We'll try again tomorrow." Four months after graduating from "poop school," Teres is relieved to report that Molly is fully toilet trained. "You would never know this was an issue," said Teres. "She even used an automatic flush toilet the other day. I waited to see her reaction and she was OK." E-mail to a friend . Judy Fortin is a correspondent with CNN Medical News. Linda Ciampa of Accent Health contributed to this report.

Most children show they're ready to potty train between 18 and 24 months . Mom resorted to hospital's potty school when daughter was in diapers at 4½ . Six-week program uses creative methods to get kids comfortable with a toilet . Toilet training process can take more than a year, or longer for some kids .

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(CNN) -- Who would win in a fight: a police-killing, rampage-driven thug or a superhero encased in a technologically superior suit of armor? "Grand Theft Auto IV," released Tuesday, could give "Iron Man" a run for its money this weekend. The answer could come this weekend when video game enthusiasts find out whether "Grand Theft Auto IV," expected to set sales records in the gaming world this week, will steal glory and revenue from a different entertainment empire: the movies. As the hype for "GTA IV" continues to grow and reviews scream perfection, some speculate that the game will put a dent in Marvel Studios' opening weekend box office for "Iron Man." "GTA IV" is the ninth incarnation of a video game in which the user acts as a criminal roaming a city. The series has faced criticism for being too violent, because users are allowed to beat, stab, shoot and kill citizens and police officers. "Iron Man" is a movie based on the Marvel comic book superhero who creates an impressive suit of armor to save his life and help save the world. "GTA IV" was released Tuesday at midnight and is expected to gross about $400 million in the first week. See what makes this violent game so popular » . Edward Woo, a research analyst specializing in media and interactive entertainment at Wedbush Morgan Securities, said the game's release date and widespread reach could negatively affect opening box office numbers for "Iron Man." "People on Friday or Saturday might find themselves at home playing this game instead of at the Cineplex," Woo said. " 'Iron Man' will still have a pretty good release, but intuitively, I think it's got be impacted when both share a similar audience and genre." Because of the time element the game requires of its faithful -- between 30 and 40 hours to finish depending on skill level -- the question is whether gamers will put down their controllers for a couple of hours and go for a change of scenery. Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore said he isn't worried. "It's crazy to think that young males can't carve out two hours for 'Iron Man,' " he told EW.com. "It's going to be a great week to be a young guy." Watch why violence in the game concerns some people » . This weekend won't be the first time analysts have speculated about video games damaging box office numbers. Last year, with $170 million in launch day sales and $300 million in its first week, "Halo 3" was blamed by some for the poor box office performance of "The Heartbreak Kid," starring Ben Stiller. Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of "GTA IV" publisher Rockstar Games, predicted that with 6 million preorders worldwide, the game will bring in more than $400 million. "GTA IV" has a chance of surpassing the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" as the highest-grossing entertainment title in its first week of sales, and that's across all genres. Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello told the Financial Times this month that movie executives told him, " 'Iron Man' the movie is going to get killed by 'Grand Theft Auto,' the game. "I don't think I've ever heard of that before," he said. The video game market is growing at a rate of 20 to 30 percent this year, but the movie industry isn't seeing as much of an increase, Woo said. Overall, video game sales as a whole have eclipsed box office sales, he said, but the movie industry catches up when it comes to DVDs. Ebullient reviews touted the game as "The Godfather" of video games because of its cult-like following. Andrew Reiner, who reviewed "GTA IV" for Game Informer, a well-known destination for all things gaming, scored it as a 10.0/10.0 under the title of "Perfection." "I now know how film critics felt after screening 'The Godfather,' " his review began. "GTA IV" is a "landscape-changing event that doesn't come around very often," Reiner said. It seems the feelings have translated to the regular consumer too. Gamers from Norway to Britain to America echoed similar sentiments on gaming message boards. D.J. Brotherson from Winnipeg, Canada, said he enjoyed the game so much, he wanted to skip work and keep playing all night, saying it was unlike any game he had ever played. "The story line is very well-written," he said, adding that the game "plays like an interactive Martin Scorsese movie." "Today, I was as excited as I was when I was 5 years old and I just got my first Nintendo Entertainment System on Christmas Day." E-mail to a friend .

"GTA IV" released Tuesday, expected to gross $400 million in first week . "Iron Man" opens this weekend, expected to take in $50 to $60 million . Analysts say game release could hurt weekend ticket sales . Game reviewer calls "GTA IV" game "Perfection"

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(CNN) -- A former police officer convicted of murdering his girlfriend and their unborn child tearfully apologized to her family Monday in front of the jury that will decide whether he lives or dies. Bobby Cutts Jr. weeps openly as his mother describes his childhood during a sentencing hearing. "It was a nightmare that will continue to haunt me for the rest of my days," said Bobby Cutts, Jr., 30, reading from a prepared statement at the penalty phase of his murder trial. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm asking you to spare my life." Cutts was convicted on February 15 of the murder of girlfriend Jessie Marie Davis and the aggravated murder of the unborn girl Davis had planned to name Chloe. Chloe's slaying, which jurors found occurred during the commission of another crime, makes Cutts eligible for the death penalty . "To imagine that I was responsible for the death of Jessie, the mother of my children and my unborn daughter, is beyond any words that I can express," Cutts said. "Words cannot bring them back, nor can they erase the pain I've caused, but I want to apologize." Watch Cutts' tearful apology » . He thanked Davis' family for taking care of the other child he had with Davis. Blake was 2½ at the time of his mother's murder in June 2007. "I pray that you find peace and you someday find room for forgiveness," he said. Earlier, Cutts' mother, Renee, Jones, had told jurors, "I don't know what I would do without him." She described Cutts as a former honor student who loved his job as a police officer. "He was my firstborn, my only son," Jones testified tearfully. "He means so much to me," she continued. "He used to call me three, four times a day." Watch Cutts react as his mother pleads for his life . Cutts' punishment is being decided by the same jury of six men and six women who found him guilty. All the jurors are white; Cutts is African-American. Cutts' sister, father and one of his school teachers also testified. Judge Charles E. Brown ordered jurors to return early Tuesday for attorneys' closing arguments. When the arguments conclude, jurors will begin their deliberations. If jurors do not agree on the death penalty, Cutts could receive a possible sentence of life in prison without parole or become eligible for parole in 20, 25 or 30 years. Jones, was the first witness called to the stand by the defense. She said her son was a good youngster who was active in sports, Scouts and his church. "I never had any trouble out of him," she said as Cutts teared up at the defense table. She said Cutts' relationship with his father deteriorated after the parents split. A former teacher described Cutts as a social child given the nickname "Gobble" by his classmates. He was helpful in class, often volunteering to pick stray crayons up from the floor. His father testified that he gave Cutts the nickname "Gobble" because as an infant he resembled " a little Butterball turkey." He said Cutts was a "gifted child" in school. He blamed himself for the break up of his marriage, saying his drinking and gambling contributed to it. Cutts' own personal life was rocky, according to testimony. Davis was nine months pregnant when she disappeared in June 2007. Her body was found in a northeastern Ohio park after a 10-day search that brought national media attention . He is Blake's father, as well as the father of the unborn girl, Chloe. According to testimony, Cutts, 30, rolled Davis' body in a comforter and dumped it in a park, leaving toddler son Blake in the house alone at the crime scene in a soiled diaper. "Mommy's in the rug," Blake told police, according to testimony. During the guilt phase of the trial, Cutts sobbed on the witness stand as he admitted killing Davis and Chloe. But Cutts insisted that their deaths were an accident. "I didn't mean to hurt her," Cutts testified, clasping a handful of tissues. "This isn't real," he said he kept telling himself. Prosecutors discounted Cutts' story, claiming he buckled under the financial pressure of child support, killed the mother of his child and then created a cover story to try to get away with it. On the stand, Cutts said he went to pick up his son, Blake, and became agitated when Davis, 26, wasn't moving fast enough to get the boy ready. He said he tried to leave her house, but she grabbed him to keep him from leaving, and he accidentally elbowed her in the throat. Cutts told the jury he performed CPR on Davis and then tried to revive her with bleach. When he realized Davis was dead, Cutts said he panicked and put her in the back of his truck, so Blake wouldn't have to see his mother. E-mail to a friend .

NEW: Ex-cop apologizes, asks jury to spare him . Bobby Cutts Jr. faces the death penalty for murders of girlfriend, unborn child . Cutts also could receive life sentence, with or without parole . Same jury that found Cutts guilty is hearing penalty phase of trial .

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(CNN) -- Rescue teams on Friday found the wreckage of a plane that crashed Thursday night in the mountains of Venezuela, but none of the 46 people aboard survived, a searcher said. "The impact was direct. The aircraft is practically pulverized," firefighter Jhonny Paz told Globovision, a privately owned Venezuelan television station. "There are no survivors." There was no word on the cause of the crash. Witnesses saw the Santa Barbara Airlines plane go down, according to Antonio Rivero, Venezuela's national director of civil protection. Harsh weather and rough terrain in the Andes Mountains likely will make the job of emergency workers difficult, Rivero said on a state-run television station. The plane went missing while flying from Merida to the international airport near Caracas, an official said. The pilot did not check in with controllers 20 minutes into the flight, as scheduled, suggesting the plane encountered problems shortly after takeoff. Nelson Marquez, chief of civil defense for Merida, said the plane was carrying 43 passengers and three crew members. Media reports said the Santa Barbara Airlines plane was supposed to land about 7 p.m. local time Thursday. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Guillermo Arduino and Adrian Criscaut contributed to this report.

NEW: Searcher says plane "practically pulverized" in Venezuela mountains . Plane with 46 people on board crashes in the Andes Mountains . Aircraft was flying from Merida to airport near Caracas . There were no survivors, official says .

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(CNN) -- A man dressed as a priest caught at Amsterdam's airport with three kilos of cocaine under his vestments claimed to police that his packages contained "holy sand", Dutch police said. Security officials conducting a normal security check at Schiphol airport last year. Police stopped the man at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport as he was transiting on a flight from South America, Robert Van Aapel, a spokesman for the Dutch Royal Military Police told CNN by phone Saturday. "He refused to be searched saying that he was a religious person and it was not allowed," Van Aapel said. "However, this is normal procedure so our officers insisted. They asked him again and after the second time they carried out the search and discovered the man had packs strapped to his legs below his priest's clothes. He told us they contained holy sand," he said. He said the man, who is aged around 40 and a Bolivian national, was arrested Thursday after arriving in to the airport on a flight from Lima, Peru. He was attempting to transit on a flight to Milan when he was apprehended with the cocaine, worth around €105,000 ($155,000). The Bolivian appeared in court Friday on charges of drug smuggling, Van Aapel said. Dutch police are trying to establish if the man is a real priest after he claimed to be a senior member of the clergy in the Bolivian capital La Paz, he added. E-mail to a friend .

Police: Man stopped at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport dressed as a priest . Initially refused to be searched, saying that he was a religious person . Found to have $155,000 worth of cocaine strapped to his legs under his vestments . Officers trying to establish whether the man, on flight from Peru, is a priest .

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(CNN) -- Two anti-whaling activists who were seized by a Japanese whaling vessel two days ago have been handed over to Australian government officials on a ship in the Antarctic, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Thursday. Australian citizen Benjamin Potts and British citizen Giles Lane, both members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, jumped on board the Yushin Maru No. 2 Tuesday to deliver a letter saying the vessel was violating international law and Australian law by killing whales. The anti-whaling group accused the crew of the Japanese vessel of kidnapping the men based on a video that showed Potts and Lane tied to the ship's railing. In the video, Japanese fishermen pace back and forth in front of them. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith Wednesday did not answer questions about whether the men would be charged for their actions, stressing instead that the immediate priority was to retrieve them. "I'm not going to give a running commentary on who's done what to whom and the various allegations and counter allegation," he said. Smith said the Japanese government -- which formally approached Australia to assist in the transfer -- did not lay out any conditions for the transfer, in which the men were brought on board the Australian ship, the Oceanic Viking. Watch the anti-whaling activists board the Japanese vessel » . Capt. Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, had said earlier that the men were seized by the Japanese crew and assaulted. Watch Watson describe the incident » . Sea Shepherd claims Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research, which is backing the operations, had said it would release the two activists if Sea Shepherd agrees to stop interfering in its whaling operations. The group says it will not agree to that demand. The Japanese Fisheries Agency said Thursday it would readily hand over the two men. But the agency charged that the Sea Shepherd members were the terrorists. At a news conference earlier, the agency released pictures of broken bottles they claim group members threw at the ship. They also released a photo of the two activists relaxing and drinking tea aboard the Yushin Maru. "For some time, for 10, 15 minutes, I understand, they were tied to a GPS mast," Tomohiko Taniguchi of Japan's Foreign Ministry told CNN. "The Japanese crew members feared that two crew members from Sea Shepherd might do something violent." He said Potts and Lane boarded the vessel without permission. Watson said the two boarded only after attempts to contact the ship by radio were unsuccessful. Japan has been hunting whales in the Antarctic and apparently plans to kill as many as 1,000 this winter. The killings are allowed under international law because their main purpose is scientific. "We regard them as poachers," Watson said. E-mail to a friend . CNN Correspondent Kyung Lah contributed to this report.

Two anti-whaling activists handed over to Australian government officials . Japan contacting Australia to help secure release of activists, reports say . Sea Shepherd Conservation Society says ship's crew kidnapped 2 of its members . The activists boarded the Japanese whaling vessel to deliver a letter .

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has been chosen to become chief of U.S. Central Command, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday. Gen. David Petraeus has been the commander in Iraq for more than a year. Petraeus would replace Adm. William Fallon, who said last month that he was resigning. Fallon said widespread, but false, reports that he was at odds with the Bush administration over Iran had made his job impossible. In addition, Gates said, Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the Multinational Corps-Iraq -- the No. 2 position in Iraq -- is being nominated to fill Petraeus' post. Odierno has been home from Iraq for only a couple of months but has agreed to return, Gates said. The plan is for Petraeus to leave Iraq in late summer or early fall, Gates said, to ensure a smooth transition and plenty of time for Odierno to prepare. "We expect to move the paperwork on these nominations to the White House and to the Senate very quickly," Gates said. "Because of the complexity of this series of moves, I respectfully ask the Senate to move on them expeditiously, hopefully by Memorial Day, so the families and we can plan appropriately." Odierno was in line for a Pentagon desk job as Army Vice Chief just over a year after helping Petraeus implement the "surge" in U.S. troops in Iraq. The Pentagon says Petraeus will stay in Iraq long enough to make the first recommendation on further troop cuts after the surge is over. Watch the challenges ahead of Petraeus » . Gates said the generals' promotions reflected an endorsement of the current course in Iraq. "The course certainly that Gen. Petraeus has set has been a successful course. So, frankly, I think staying that course is not a bad idea. I would say it's a good idea," Gates said. Watch Gates nominate Petraeus » . Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in East Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, has its headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Gates said Odierno is well known to troops in Iraq, to military leadership and to Iraqis, and "I believe, in most parts of the world, especially in the Middle East, personal relationships make a difference." "I believe that this arrangement will probably preserve the likelihood of continued momentum and progress," Gates said. The defense secretary said he expects to easily win Senate approval for the nominations once they are made by President Bush. He said he had spoken with Sens. Carl Levin, D-Michigan; John McCain, R-Arizona; and John Warner, R-Virginia, and "I don't really anticipate any problems." In a press release Wednesday, McCain praised the move. "Both of these great generals have served our country with skill and distinction, and I am pleased that they will continue to do so in positions of high responsibility," McCain wrote. Gates acknowledged that Fallon's "decision to step down was unexpected." "I had intended that Adm. Fallon probably stay on for a third year. His second year would have ended in February," he said. "So I'm faced with a critical combatant command where a commander is needed -- and a commander who knows what's going on in the region." Asked whether he was using Petraeus "almost as a finger in the dike" because of the shortage of Army generals with expertise in counterinsurgency warfare, Gates admitted that there are few Army officers with experience in and knowledge of Iraq. Odierno served as commander of the 4th Infantry Division, the unit that captured former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Petraeus was picked in January 2007 to replace Gen. George Casey as the chief commander in Iraq and won Senate confirmation that month. He previously served as head of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and as a commander in Iraq, and he was one of the main writers of an Army manual on counterinsurgency efforts. He was seen as the logical choice to replace Fallon. In his new post, he will oversee U.S. forces in all the Middle East, not only Iraq and Afghanistan. "I recommended him to the president because I am absolutely confident he is the best man for the job," Gates said. In testimony to Congress this month, Petraeus said Iranian agents have played a "destructive role" in Iraq by backing Shiite militants, called "special groups" by the United States. The U.S. believes that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force is behind the support for militants. "Unchecked, the special groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq," Petraeus testified. Last month, in an interview with CNN's Kyra Phillips in Baghdad, Petraeus acknowledged some "friction" between himself and Fallon in the past year, but "actually, over the last six months or so, our relationship was really very, very good." "There was friction in the beginning. He has a different job than I have," Petraeus said. "There can be understandable differences of your take, if you will, on a situation. As they say in politics and government 101, where you stand on an issue sometimes depends on where you sit in the organization, and we sit in different chairs." E-mail to a friend . CNN's Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report.

Gates says changes "will probably preserve ... momentum and progress" Petraeus would oversee all forces in Middle East, including Iraq and Afghanistan . Petraeus would take over for Adm. William Fallon, who resigned . Central Command position is subject to Senate confirmation .

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(CNN) -- Ever find yourself struggling to craft the perfect sentence for a loved one who's, um, serving a sentence? Now, you have a friend in the greeting card business. Terrye Cheathem has created a line of greeting cards geared toward prison inmates. A Los Angeles, California, lawyer has come up with a series of cards geared toward prison inmates, a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population. Some express simple good wishes: "We are all praying for you while you do your time." Others celebrate holidays: "You had the choice to be 'naughty or nice.' And you chose ... Now you have to do your time. But, Christmas won't be the same without you here." Others dole out tough love: "When you called last time, I was not very sympathetic. I guess that I have heard your promises to change too many times. Please - stop promising to change. Just do it." Creator Terrye Cheathem said the cards let family members say "Look, things need to be different when you get out." She came up with the idea a few years ago while looking -- without success -- for a birthday card to send her brother-in-law, who was serving an 11-month sentence. "There are so many people who have mixed feelings about communicating with their loved ones in prison," Cheathem said Thursday. "They are unhappy, oftentimes profoundly embarrassed. People don't know what to say." So she created Three Squares Greetings to capture the sentiments for a captive audience -- one that seems to be getting larger each year. More than 2.3 million people were in jails or prisons in the United States at the beginning of 2008, according to a study released last month by the Pew Center on the States. The center is a private organization that advocates for alternative programs to alleviate prison populations. For the first time in the nation's history, the center says, more than one in 100 Americans are behind bars, a higher proportion than any other country. Cheathem is selling her cards online and through stores. She also wants jails and prisons to carry cards designed for inmates to send their relatives. "They're 'Thank You' cards," she said. " 'Thank you for visiting,' 'Thank you for bringing the kids,' 'Thank you for coming to court.' " Like many, bookstore owner James Fugate was at first reluctant to carry the line in his Los Angeles shop, Esowon Books. "I have some issues of being nice to criminals," Fugate said. "And in my 20 years in business, I've seen some relatives who don't seem to realize the gravity of what (their family members) have done." Fugate said he changed his mind when he realized that most of the cards carried messages asking inmates to turn their lives around. Cheathem understands the hesitation of shoppers and sellers. "I can't think of any other product that anyone wants to receive and certainly no one wants to be in the position to buy one," she said. "But there is a need for this." Cheathem points to Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick of Detroit, Michigan. He was charged this week with perjury, obstruction of justice and misconduct of office. He was released on a $75,000 bond. "I have a card that says, 'I'm sorry to hear about your arrest,' " she said. "Right now , there are probably 50 people or more who would send it to him." E-mail to a friend .

New series of greeting cards is geared toward prison inmates . Study shows the U.S. prison and jail population is rapidly growing . Card creator is selling her cards online and through stores .

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(CNN) -- Some people might call 17-year-old Joshua Hanson one the luckiest people on the planet. Others might call him crazy. I-Reporter Joshua Hanson offered a look at the Mark IV helmet from his "Legendary Limited Edition Halo 3." Hanson waited more than eight hours outside a Woodbury, Minnesota, video game store on Monday evening to be the first in his town to buy one of the most anticipated video games in history -- "Halo 3." Watch Hanson buying the game amid cheers » . The final chapter in Microsoft's acclaimed video game series hit shelves at the stroke of midnight Monday in similar stores across the nation. The Xbox 360 game is expected to shatter entertainment sales records within its first 24 hours of release. Hanson is not alone in his loyalty to the game, and his belief in "Halo's" power to entertain and inspire. We asked other CNN.com readers for their take on "Halo 3." Some offered comparisons to "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter," while others discussed compelling new graphics and features. Below is a selection of their responses, some of which have been edited for length and clarity. Curt Otto of Springfield, Virginia I waited in line for two-and-half hours to get this game at midnight. I purchased the Legendary Edition of this game at a hefty $130! Totally worth it! Although I haven't slept since yesterday and I'm currently at work and very tired, I would do it all over again for "Halo." This is the GREATEST game ever crafted by the hand of man. If you own a 360, buy this game. If you don't own a 360, buy one and go buy this game! The single player is incredible and the online multiplayer is MIND BLOWING! Totally worth $130!!! Tony Nash of Buffalo, New York I've been playing "Halo" since the very first game came out in 2001. After getting the brand new Box with a copy of "Halo" and throwing myself into the game, I quickly realized this wasn't a standard gaming experience. It was something much, much more. The game had a great attitude and unique art style. Along with great audio and environments that brought the worlds to life. It also had the most addictive, natural, and fun game play I've ever experienced. It also contained a well written, downright intriguing story. Getting together with friends to play the multiplayer portion of the game only cemented this title's epic status. Then came November 2004, when, of course, a friend and I were in the lines for the Midnight release of "Halo 2." It is no joke; "Halo" is more than just a game. Now, I plan on "finishing the fight" as soon as I leave work. I had "Halo 3" pre-ordered for about a month before it came out. Hey, after all, it's good to keep the kid inside you alive and well! Cody Chmelik of Clearwater, Florida "Halo 3" is the most anticipated event since the trial of O.J., but the only difference is that "Halo" isn't disappointing. "Halo 3" was the best game I have ever played. The levels are choreographed perfectly, the players look real and the game play is phenomenal. I recommend this game to players of all ages. Wayne S. of Colorado Springs, Colorado "Halo" is not just a game, it's a lifestyle, a booming culture of millions of Xbox fans who eat, sleep and live "Halo." "Halo" has jumped started the major league gaming industry and will continue to do so with "Halo 3." I will be getting my copy of "Halo 3" at midnight and plan on playing it for days straight. I have played the beta and let me tell you: This is the best video game of the year by far and will be played by the masses for years to come just like "Halo 2." Brian Baker of Beatrice, Nebraska I am 30 years old, and for my 30th birthday my wife pre-ordered "Halo 3" for me as a birthday present. The 6 month wait for the present/game didn't bother me one bit. The story that is "Halo" is something that people can easily identify with. The late '70s to late '90s had Luke Skywalker and the alpha-male heroes of "Star Wars." The Generation X, Y and Z now have an alpha-male hero of their own in the Master Chief that they can relate to, or use to associate different attitudes and help instill values of patriotism. In this case, patriotism is not for just a country, but an entire planet and species. I am a very patriotic person, a veteran and a father and see the values that may hide below the surface in this Trilogy, which is why I'm a "Halo" fan. Jarrod Leda of Tarentum, Pennsylvania Despite the hype, I am very excited for this [new game]. Some question why "Halo" got so big, as there are other good shooters very similar to it. I think, like "Star Wars" before it, it just got things right. And now, it's become iconic: the characters, the universe, it's something everyone who loves games can talk about and share. The game allows things that most other games would not; the physics and mechanics of the engine are great. And it plays flawlessly on X-box live. I can't wait. Vivek Patel of Albany, New York "Halo" can be compared to "Harry Potter" in that when you start reading or playing you have to finish. The third installment gamers will wait in line for hours; even bleed to finally finish the fight that was started years ago. To me "Halo 3" isn't even advertised that much, and they will achieve their records by sheer popularity. Alessandro Miglio of Walnut Creek, California The "Halo" franchise is like a budding "Star Trek" phenomenon. There are a lot of hardcore fans, like myself, who are not just really into the games, but read all the books and comics that expand the universe. We even write tons of theories and fan fictions with all the potential created by the "Haloverse." I consider myself a "Trekkie" of "Halo," loud and proud. E-mail to a friend .

"Halo 3" achieved a milestone million pre-orders 2 months before its release . The game, an Xbox 360 exclusive, went on sale Tuesday at midnight . CNN.com asked readers to share their early reviews of "Halo 3" I-Report: Share your own pictures, video and reviews of "Halo 3"

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Six U.S. troops were killed in Iraq on Monday, making 2007 the deadliest for the American military in the Iraq war. The grim record came despite lower death rates in recent months, which were not enough to offset death tolls that topped 100 during three months in the spring. Four soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in northern Iraq's Tameem province; another died in combat in Anbar province. A sailor was killed in Salaheddin province "as a result of injuries sustained from an explosion while conducting operations," the military said. According to a CNN count of Pentagon figures, 853 U.S. service members have died so far in 2007. The next highest death toll was in 2004, when 849 were killed. The total number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq stands at 3,856, including seven civilian contractors of the Defense Department. The high number of deaths this year corresponds with the U.S. troop buildup called the "surge" and a crackdown on insurgents in and near Baghdad. Monthly death tolls were highest in the first part of the year: 83 deaths in January, 81 in February and 81 in March. Numbers peaked in the next three months, with 104 deaths in April, 126 in May and 101 in June. The numbers have dropped from that level since -- with 78 in July, 84 in August, 65 in September, 38 in October and 12 so far in November. Civilian deaths have also dropped in recent months, U.S. and Iraqi authorities say. The Iraq war began in March of 2003 and in that year there were 486 U.S. military deaths. In 2004, major offensives were responsible for many fatalities, including the massive operation in Falluja in November and fighting between U.S. troops and Shiite militants in Najaf. The number of deaths in 2005 was 846 and in 2006 it was 822. The U.S. military also announced on Tuesday that it intends to release nine detained Iranians in Iraq "in the coming days," a move that dovetails with the American hope that Iranian authorities are honoring a recent pledge to stop Iranian help to insurgents in Iraq. "These individuals have been assessed to have no continuing value" and don't pose a "further threat" to Iraqi security, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith. Two of them are from the "Irbil 5" detained in January. Irbil is the largest city in the Kurdish area of Iraq. The U.S. military had accused the five Iranians arrested in Irbil of having links to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard-Quds Force, a military unit accused of aiding insurgent activity -- including the distribution of roadside bombs. Smith said Tuesday that materials for roadside bombs "do not appear to have arrived into Iraq after the Iranians have made their pledge to stop arming, funding and training extremists." "We hope in the coming weeks and months to confirm that Iran has indeed honored its pledge through further verification that the flow of ammunitions and other lethal aid has indeed stopped," said Smith, who noted that Iran, Iraq and the United States plan to hold another round of security talks. Last month, Gen. David Petraeus, the top-ranking U.S. military official in Iraq, told CNN the Iranian ambassador had given assurances to his Iraqi counterpart that such training and supplying of insurgents would end. Meanwhile, a Kurdistan Regional Government official on Tuesday confirmed to CNN that two Iranian consulates had been established in the region, offices created in the wake of the arrests in Irbil. At the time of the arrests, Iran insisted the arrested officials were "diplomats" working in a diplomatic mission, while Iraq's Foreign Ministry and the U.S. military said it was a "liaison" office which did not have diplomatic status. One of the new consulates is in a building in Irbil that had been closed down during the January raid, the Kurdistan official said. Also Tuesday, the U.S. military reported that U.S. and Iraqi troops found 22 corpses buried in Iraq's Lake Tharthar region. The Iraqi Army and local security forces "are investigating the mass grave to determine the identities of the deceased and the causes of death for notification of their families," the military said. Lake Tharthar is in both Anbar and Salaheddin provinces and northwest of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi troops have been conducting an operation in the same region since Sunday to target al Qaeda in Iraq. So far, they have found and destroyed two car bomb facilities and a number of weapons caches and detained 30 men. The military also said that coalition troops on Tuesday killed eight people described as terrorists and detained 10 suspects in operations targeting al Qaeda and foreign militant networks in central and northern Iraq. The military also said an operation involving Iraqi forces in the Tikrit area on October 30 led to the detention of 39 "suspected insurgents" and the discovery of a torture cell, a mobile hospital, car bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and a Katyusha rocket. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Jennifer Deaton contributed to this report.

NEW: Sailor's death brings Monday's U.S. death toll in Iraq to six . U.S. military says nine detained Iranians to be released in "coming days" U.S. and Iraqi troops find 22 bodies in mass grave .

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(CNN) -- Police have arrested a man in the killing of Auburn University freshman Lauren Burk, who died this week, according to the Auburn, Alabama, assistant police chief. Courtney Larrell Lockhart, 23, of Smiths, Alabama, is charged with capital murder during a kidnapping, capital murder during a robbery, and capital murder during an attempted rape, Tommy Dawson said Saturday. The Phenix City Police Department took Lockhart into custody on Friday, police said. Phenix City is about 35 miles southeast of Auburn. Burk, 18, from Marietta, Georgia, was found shot on North College Street, a few miles north of campus, on Tuesday night. She died later at a hospital. Minutes after police responded to the call reporting an injured person and found Burk, they found a car -- which turned out to be Burk's -- on fire in a campus parking lot. Dawson told reporters Friday that authorities think gasoline or another accelerant was used to ignite Burk's car, and police were investigating whether a gas can found in downtown Auburn was connected. Police want to investigate every possible lead, Dawson said. Authorities were still on patrol in the east Alabama campus, he said. The university's Web site said a campus-wide memorial service will be held Monday. The site carried a message from Burk's father, James, which said: "The Burk family was so proud to have Lauren as an Auburn University student. We want to extend our deepest gratitude and appreciation for Auburn University, the city of Auburn and the Auburn Police Department. We feel very close to your community. We appreciate what everyone is doing for us and Lauren." Also on Friday, police released pictures of a 2001 Honda Civic similar to Burk's car. Authorities asked anyone who thinks they might have seen the car on Tuesday to contact them. Police are continuing to interview people, Dawson said. A student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill -- Eve Carson, 22, of Athens, Georgia -- was also shot to death this week, on early Wednesday. Authorities in Chapel Hill said Friday they had been in contact with Auburn police but did not believe the two cases were connected. Watch CNN's Nancy Grace discuss the two killings of college women from Georgia » . Burk's family, in a statement read Friday to reporters by family friend Kathy Singleton, expressed their gratitude for the thoughts and prayers offered, but asked for privacy "so that they may grieve for their loss as well as celebrate Lauren's life." Those wishing to honor Burk could do so by donating to her favorite charities, Singleton said -- The Invisible Child and the American Kidney Foundation. Donations can be made at any Wachovia Bank to the Lauren Burk Memorial Fund. E-mail to a friend .

Courtney Larrell Lockhart, 23, charged with three counts of capital murder . Auburn University student Lauren Burk found shot Tuesday, died at hospital . Burk's car found minutes later engulfed in flames in campus parking lot .

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(InStyle.com) -- How many closets does it take to make a "Desperate Housewife" happy? Just one, if it's anything like Parker's. We got a guided tour--and learned a lot more about the fashion-savvy star than her taste in shoes. "I love my new name. In Texas people are formal, so now it's 'Mrs. Parker.' I feel old! But I love it." Best dress . A "gorgeous 1950s-style cocktail dress by Gustavo Cadile is my absolute favorite. It's fun, but classic too," says Parker. Treasured keepsake . A clutch that belonged to her aunt: "She was the glue of our family. It's so beautiful and so impractical -- nothing fits in it." Watch what else is in her closet » . First Christmas gift from Tony Parker . A necklace designed by Monique Lhuillier. "It's his Spurs number. I love it." Loves, but doesn't know what to do with . A "quirky lip-shaped purse by Judith Leiber. I can't figure out how to wear it!" Fashion faux pas . "One time, my mom and aunt Didi were helping me clean out my closet. Aunt Didi had taken off her jacket. I grabbed it and was like, 'What is this? Who would give me this ugly thing?' And she was like, 'That's mine!' " Go-to outfit . "A thermal top, a scarf, and I'm not just saying this because she's my friend, but I love my Victoria Beckham DVB jeans. She sent me three pairs--they're perfect." First splurge . "I'd always wanted Uggs, but I always had the impostors--the Muggs, the Thuggs, the everything but. I still wear [them]." Owns in multiples . "Christian Louboutin espadrille wedges. They're so high! I have them in every color. I've sprained my ankle walking on the cobblestones in Paris wearing them. They're a beautiful pain." Cool freebie . "Richard Tyler mules. I did a photo shoot and they said I could keep them. I simply could not believe someone would give me a $300 pair of shoes. I was fascinated!" Most expensive item . "My hot-pink crocodile Hermès Birkin bag. Robert Verdi, my stylist, told me, 'Wear it with everything--even to bed. This is going to be handed down in your will.' " E-mail to a friend . Get a FREE TRIAL issue of InStyle - CLICK HERE! Copyright © 2007 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

"Desperate Housewives" actress Eva Longoria Parker gives peek into closet . Says she has Christian Louboutin espadrille wedges in every color. Her most-expensive item is a hot-pink crocodile Hermès Birkin bag .

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LONGYEARBYEN, Norway (CNN) -- A vast underground vault storing millions of seeds from around the world took delivery of its first shipment Tuesday. The inside of one of the vaults at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, on a remote island near the Arctic Ocean. Dubbed the "Doomsday Vault," the seed bank on a remote island near the Arctic Ocean is considered the ultimate safety net for the world's seed collections, protecting them from a wide range of threats including war, natural disasters, lack of funding or simply poor agricultural management. Norwegian musicians performed Tuesday as part of an elaborate opening ceremony marking the opening of the vault, located 130 meters (427 feet) inside a frozen mountain. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental and political activist who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, placed the first seeds inside the vault, followed by other dignitaries. The inaugural shipment represent 268,000 distinct samples of seeds, with each sample containing a hundred-plus seeds and originating from a different farm or field around the world. In all, the shipment of seeds secured in the vault Tuesday weighed approximately 10 tons, filling 676 boxes. The shipment amounts to a 100 million seeds in total, ranging from major African and Asian food staples like maize, rice, and wheat to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato, according to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is paying to collect and maintain the seeds. Watch as "Doomsday" seed vault opens » Eventually the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as it is officially known, will hold as many as 4.5 million distinct samples of seeds -- or some 2 billion seeds in total -- encompassing almost every variety of most important food crops in the world, the Global Crop Diversity Trust said. The Norwegian government paid to build the vault in a mountainside near Longyearbyen, in the remote Svalbard islands between Norway and the North Pole. Building began last year. The United Nations founded the trust in 2004 to support the long-term conservation of crop diversity, and countries and foundations provide the funding. "The seed vault is the perfect place for keeping seeds safe for centuries," said Cary Fowler, executive director of the trust. "At these temperatures, seeds for important crops like wheat, barley and peas can last for up to 10,000 years." The vault's location deep inside a mountain in the frozen north ensures the seeds can be stored safely no matter what happens outside. "We believe the design of the facility will ensure that the seeds will stay well-preserved even if such forces as global warming raise temperatures outside the facility," said Magnus Bredeli Tveiten, project manager for the Norwegian government. The vault sits at the end of a 120-meter (131-yard) tunnel blasted inside the mountain. Workers used a refrigeration system to bring the vault to -18 degrees Celsius (just below 0 degrees Fahrenheit), and a smaller refrigeration system plus the area's natural permafrost and the mountain's thick rock will keep the vault at at least -4 C (25 F). The vault at Svalbard is similar to an existing seed bank in Sussex, England, about an hour outside London. The British vault, called the Millennium Seed Bank, is part of an scientific project that works with wild plants, as opposed to the seeds of crops. Paul Smith, the leader of the Millennium Seed Bank project, said preserving the seeds of wild plants is just as important as preserving the seeds of vital crops. "We must give ourselves every option in the future to use the whole array of plant diversity that is available to us," Smith told CNN. The idea for the Arctic seed bank dates to the 1980s but only became a possibility after the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources came into force in 2004, the Norwegian government said. The treaty provided an international framework for conserving and accessing crop diversity. Svalbard is designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections around the world. The Norwegian government says it has paid 50 million Norwegian Kroner ($9.4 million) to build the seed vault. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Becky Anderson contributed to this report.

Ultimate safety net for the world's seed collections has opened in Norway . The vault received inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds . Norwegian govt. built vault in glacial mountain between Norway and North Pole .

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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- White students at a South African university tricked black residence hall workers into eating stew containing urine, prompting a march Wednesday in which five people were arrested, university officials said. Students protest against a racist video on the campus of Free State University in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The white students made a video of the incident, which they staged in reaction to the university's efforts to integrate its residences, according to a statement from the University of the Free State. The protesters on Wednesday included black and white students who later marched to the residence where the video was made and demanded that it be shut down, witnesses said. The video surfaced on Tuesday but was made in September, the university said. In the video, white male students at Reitz Residence are seen encouraging at least three black female housekeepers to participate in what the students call the "Reitz Fear Factor," an apparent reference to the television show in which contestants eat live worms or compete in other feats. Watch excerpts of video that sparked outrage » . In one scene from the video, a student mixes what looks like a beef stew in a plastic bowl and adds garlic and other items. Then he tells the camera he will add the "special ingredient." The student then urinates into the mixture, which he later stirs up and puts in a microwave. Other students can be heard laughing on the tape. The next scene shows a different student urging at least three housekeepers to drink cups full of the stew, saying, "This is our dorm's 'Fear Factor.' We want to see who has the best 'Fear Factor.'" On the video, the student does not tell the women that there is urine in the mixture. The women, on their knees, spit the stew into buckets after tasting it. Some appeared to vomit, but the women also laughed during the incident as the student urged them on. Next, the women struggle to run in what appears to be a race. The video is put in slow-motion as the theme from "Chariots of Fire" plays. Finally, one of the students awards a large bottle of whiskey to one of the women, telling her she has won the "Fear Factor." At the end of the video, a message appears on the screen in Afrikaans saying, "That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration." University officials and human rights groups in South Africa denounced the video. "The executive management of the [university] condemns this video in the strongest possible terms as a gross violation of the human dignity of the workers involved," said UFS Rector Frederick Fourie in a statement posted on the university's Web site. "We have immediately started with a most urgent investigation into this matter," he added. Later Wednesday, Fourie met with the employees seen in the video and apologized to them, a statement from the university said. Counseling is being provided for the workers, it added. The students involved in the video have been identified and will be suspended, Fourie said, and charges against the men will be filed with the South African Police Service. Two of the students in the video are still enrolled at the university but had been barred from the campus in Bloemfontein, according to the university. Two others completed their studies last year. The students seen in the video have not made any public comment since the video surfaced. "I am deeply saddened that students apparently see nothing wrong in producing such an offensive and degrading video. I have publicly said several times that the UFS is not a place for racism," the rector's statement said. "The fact that it is openly linked to the integration process in UFS residences is also most disturbing," Fourie said. A spokeswoman in Free State province for the Democratic Alliance -- an opposition party which says it puts equal rights for all South Africans at the center of its policies -- called the video "shocking and inhumane." "It looked like they were willing [participants] but they didn't know what purpose the video served. ... It was quite humiliating at the end to see the quite senior ladies on their knees eating the meat," said spokeswoman Liana Van Wyk, the South African Press Association reported. Helen Zille, the Democratic Alliance's leader, Wednesday asked the South African Human Rights Commission to conduct an investigation into racial tensions at the university. "The abhorrent footage of students abusing university workers is a fundamental infringement on the victims' constitutional right to have their dignity respected and protected," Zille said in a statement posted on the group's Web site. "This incident is symptomatic of racial tensions that have been simmering at the campus for some time over the issue of hostel [residence] integration," she said. Fourie acknowledged in his statement that "the university is going through a difficult time with its efforts to racially integrate its residences and to create a new residence culture based on diversity, respect, human dignity and human rights." He added, "These kinds of actions make it all the more important that we succeed with establishing such a new institutional culture on the campus. I appeal to all staff and students to remain calm and to act in the best interests of the university." The university, a research center, is one of South Africa's oldest; founded in 1904. It has more than 25,000 students, according to its Web site, and uses a parallel-medium instruction in English and Afrikaans for its full range of undergraduate and graduate programs. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Kim Norgaard contributed to this report.

Video made of incident surfaces, brings campus protest . Video made to protest residence hall integration, university says . White males urinated into stew, served it to black workers . Video makers told workers they were playing "Fear Factor"

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(CNN) -- A tornado swept through parts of Tupelo, Mississippi, on Thursday, damaging trees, power lines and overturning a 18-wheel truck, a law enforcement official said. iReporter Graham Hancock saw damage Thursday at the Tupelo Furniture Market in Tupelo, Mississippi. "Just a little earlier this morning, we began to get reports of damage starting from the west side of Tupelo," said Chief Deputy John Hall of the Lee County Sheriff's Department. Hall said the storm moved north across the city to the Mall at Barnes Crossing. Nearby on U.S. 45, an 18-wheel truck was overturned, he said. There were no reports of injuries, and Hall said authorities were assessing damages. Watch as a Tupelo resident describes the storm » . Jeff Snyder, general manager for the Mall at Barnes Crossing, said the shopping center sustained "minor property damage." Terry Anderson, executive director of Tupelo Regional Airport, said the facility had minor damage, including some broken windows. He said the airport was closed for about 10 minutes while the taxiway and runway were cleared. No flights were delayed, he said, and the airport is "up and running." Mark Waddle, who works at the airport, said he saw the storm form. "It was real small at first," said Waddle, an employee at the airport's Budget Car Rental counter. "All the clouds were twirling around." Waddle said he watched as the tornado touched down near the airport. "It looked like it hit some kind of transformer because the whole sky lit up blue," he said. "Then it kind of blew through the Tupelo airport. ... It was blowing so hard the trees were touching the ground." Waddle said he was not aware of any significant damage to the airport apart from overturned trash cans and debris in tree branches. "All of the people and all the vehicles and everything are fine up here at the airport," he said. Bobbye Jones, who works at the Mississippi Department of Transportation in Tupelo, said the roof blew off the lab at the agency. She said fallen tree branches also had damaged vehicles outside her office. "Everything just got real dark," Jones said. . A tornado watch, which denotes favorable conditions for tornadoes, is in effect until late Thursday afternoon for parts of northwestern Alabama.

NEW: Tornado watch in effect for parts of northwestern Alabama . Law enforcement official reports tornado damage in Tupelo, Mississippi . Storm damages trees, power lines, overturns 18-wheeler on U.S. 45 . No injuries reported in Mississippi town .

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(CNN) -- One thing Saudi people should not have to worry about is money. Oil money is paying for Saudi Arabia's growth but it is also the main cause of rising prices . The kingdom is awash in cash which keeps pouring into the world's largest oil producer as prices rise. Last year alone, Saudi is estimated to have raked in about $200 billion from oil. It is this influx of money which is paying for Saudi Arabia's economic growth -- but it is also the main cause of rising prices across the country. "There is no free lunch. If you want to grow at that base, you have to swallow a price every once in a while in the form of high inflation," said Abdulrahman Al Harithi, CEO of investment bank, MENA Financial Group. Saudi people are certainly paying the price. Inflation is currently running at 9.6 percent -- a 30-year high. At the beginning of the year, rental costs went up nearly 17 percent. In March, the cost of fuel and water increased almost 16 percent and other everyday staples also saw double digit gains. The kingdom's business community is also concerned about the adverse effects of inflation. A recent survey of Saudi Arabia's business confidence by financial services company, SABB, found that while confidence remains robust, over half of respondents were concerned that inflation would lead to rising business costs. Prices in the kingdom will continue their upward trend, according to the analysts at SABB. What's more, there is not much the Saudi government can do to combat it. The riyal, like many other Gulf currencies, is pegged to the U.S. dollar and while the Gulf is booming, the U.S. is heading towards recession. As the economic fortunes of the two countries continue to diverge it is hard to see what can be done to combat inflation. The main problem is that whenever the U.S. Federal Reserve cuts interest rates, like it did this week, the kingdom must follow suit. In a booming economy like Saudi's, low interest rates push prices through the roof. The government is studying whether remedies like a minimum wage could ease the pain but some in the kingdom, like Al Harithi, say there is no quick solution. "Honestly, I don't' think there is an answer for such a question. I don't think there is a magical formula that could fix this issue," he told CNN. E-mail to a friend .

Last year, Saudi Arabia brought in around $200 billion from oil . The huge profits are fueling growth but inflation is at a 30 year high . Food and water costs have rocketed by 16 percent . The Saudi government is looking at remedies like a minimum wage .

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(CNN) -- A man, incensed that a 6-year-old girl chose to walk through a path reserved for upper caste villagers, pushed her into burning embers, police in north India said Wednesday. She was seriously burned. Dalits, or "untouchables," are victims of discrimination in India despite laws aimed at eliminating prejudice. The girl is a Dalit, or an "untouchable," according to India's traditional caste system. India's constitution outlaws caste-based discrimination, and barriers have broken down in large cities. Prejudice, however, persists in some rural areas of the country. The girl was walking with her mother down a path in the city of Mathura when she was accosted by a man in his late teens, said police superintendent R.K. Chaturvedi. "He scolded them both and pushed her," Chaturvedi said. The girl fell about 3 to 4 feet into pile of burning embers by the side of the road. The girl remained in critical condition Wednesday. The man confessed to the crime and was charged with attempted murder, Chaturvedi said. The assault took place in India's Uttar Pradesh state, about 150 km (93 miles) south of Delhi. The state is governed by Mayawati, a woman who goes by one name and is India's most powerful Dalit politician. Her Bahujan Samaj Party seeks to get more political representation for Dalits, who are considered so low in the social order that they don't even rank among the four classes that make up the caste system. Hindus believe there are five main groups of people, four of which sprang from the body of the first man. The Brahmin class comes from the mouth. They are the priests and holy men, the most elevated of the castes. Next is the Ksatriyas, the kings, warriors and soldiers created from the arms. The Vaisyas come from the thighs. They are the merchants and traders of society. And the Sudras, or laborers, come from the feet. The last group is the Dalits, or the "untouchables." They're considered too impure to have come from the primordial being. Untouchables are often forced to work in menial jobs. They drink from separate wells. They use different entry ways, coming and going from buildings. They number about 250 million in India, about 25 percent of the population, according to the Colorado, U.S.-based Dalit Freedom Network. "Dalits are seen to pollute higher caste people if they come in touch with them, hence the 'untouchables,'" the group says on its Web site. "If a higher caste Hindu is touched by, or even had a Dalit's shadow fall across them, they consider themselves to be polluted and have to go through a rigorous series of rituals to be cleansed." Recent weeks has seen a rise in violence against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh, CNN's sister network, CNN-IBN, reported Wednesday. E-mail to a friend .

Girl pushed into pile of burning embers by man in his late teens . Man charged with attempted murder . Assault took place in India's Uttar Pradesh state .

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday that the most important thing he could achieve as president would be to deal with Iraq and the threat of al Qaeda in Afghanistan while improving "our influence around the world." Sen. Barack Obama, in his first interview since the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, speaks with Wolf Blitzer. In his first interview since the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Obama said he thinks the United States' influence around the world has been diminishing. "The world wants to see the United States lead. They've been disappointed and disillusioned over the last seven, eight years," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview on "The Situation Room." "I think there is still a sense everywhere I go that if the United States regains its sense of who it is and our values and our ideals, that we will continue to set the tone for a more peaceful and prosperous world." Watch the full interview with Obama » . Obama said he thinks the way the war in Iraq has been handled has kept the United States from focusing on key issues like energy policy, global warming and the economy. Americans want to succeed, he said, "but we're going to have to make some investments and ensure that the dynamism and the innovation of the American people is released." "It's very hard for us to do that when we're spending close to $200 billion a year in other countries, rebuilding those countries instead of focusing on making ourselves strong," he said. Obama downplayed headlines and stories, such as the cover of Time magazine, that have declared him the Democratic presidential nominee. "I don't want to be jinxed. We've still got some work to do," he said. Watch an analysis of some of Obama's comments » . Obama predicted that he and Sen. Hillary Clinton would probably split the remaining contests and said Clinton would win the upcoming primary in West Virginia by a "big margin." Obama won North Carolina by a 14-point margin Tuesday. Clinton squeaked out a win in Indiana by 2 points. In the days after those contests, some top Democrats have called on Clinton to step aside. Obama deflected a question about a potential joint ticket with the New York senator, saying it's too early to start thinking about running mates. "Sen. Clinton has shown herself to be an extraordinary candidate. She's tireless, she's smart, she's capable, and so obviously she'd be on anybody's short list to be a potential vice presidential candidate," he said. "But it would be presumptuous of me at this point ... to somehow suggest that she should be my running mate." Watch viewer responses to question: Should Obama offer Clinton the No. 2 spot? » . Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and a co-chairman of Clinton's campaign, commented Thursday on the possibility of a joint ticket. "I think what she's interested in being the nominee of the party. ... We're fighting hard for it. This woman has been working tirelessly through this campaign. ... Hillary has earned the right to do whatever she wants to do." Obama said he's ready for what would be the next phase if he becomes the nominee: a matchup against Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP candidate. Obama said he was offended when McCain said last month, "It's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president." "I think it's disappointing because John McCain always says, 'Well, I'm not going to run that kind of politics,' and then to engage in that kind of smear I think is unfortunate, particularly since my policy on Hamas has been no different than his," Obama said. "And so for him to toss out comments like that, I think, is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination." When asked to respond to McCain supporters -- such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- who have said Obama is not ready to be commander in chief, the senator from Illinois said he thinks what people are looking for is "good judgment." "I think I've consistently displayed the kind of judgment that the American people are looking for in the next president," he said. Watch Obama say why he's qualified to be president » . Romney responded later on "The Situation Room," saying "The truth of the matter is just as I said, that he doesn't have a record of accomplishments in the private sector or in the governmental sector ... hasn't pushed a major piece of legislation. "He seems like a charming guy who's very well-spoken. But in terms of actually having led, actually having accomplished something, actually having a kind of leadership that America needs at a critical time with our economy ... he's untested. ... Frankly, Sen. McCain is someone who is tested and very proven," he added.

Obama says he thinks U.S. influence has been diminishing . Candidate downplays notion that he is already the Democratic nominee . Obama says it's too early to discuss potential running mates . Clinton camp says she's "fighting hard" to be nominee, not running mate .

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(CNN) -- Battling blustery weather, a Lufthansa Airlines flight scraped its wing on the ground during a landing attempt in Hamburg, Germany, over the weekend. Internet footage of the Lufthansa A320 as it attempts a landing Saturday at Hamburg, Germany. The plane recovered and landed safely the second time around, the spokesman said. Dramatic amateur video of the incident that appeared on the Internet showed the Airbus A320 teetering as it tried to land during the brutal winter storm on Saturday. As it nears the tarmac, one wing visible scrapes the ground. Watch the plane try to land as a passenger describes experience » . "As we were about to touch down, a gust of wind pressed the left wing towards the ground," a Lufthansa pilot identified only as Oliver A. said in a statement. "We pulled up immediately. A maneuver we practice in training very often." The airline said the pilot has been flying for Lufthansa for 17 years. Watch as plane avoids crash » Airline spokesman Wolfgang Weber said the left winglet, a fin at the end of the wing scraped the ground after a gust of wind tipped the plane. Damage to the plane was minimal and not structural. He said the plane is already back in service. • Were you on board? Send us an iReport E-mail to a friend .

Amateur video of the moment the Lufthansa flight scraped its wing . Strong winds blamed for the near miss at Hamburg airport . The plane recovered and landed safely the second time around .

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(CNN) -- An explosion destroyed a home in suburban Pittsburgh on Wednesday, killing an elderly man and severely injuring his grandchild, authorities said. A house exploded Wednesday, killng one person and injuring a second, in the Pennsylvania borough of Plum. The explosion was reported about 1:30 p.m. on Mardi Gras Drive in Plum Borough, about 15 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Several neighboring homes were damaged, fire officials said. Richard Leith, 64, was babysitting his grandchild in the home, according to John J. Smith, an investigator with the Allegheny County medical examiner's office. Both were transported to local hospitals, though Leith died later in the afternoon. The condition of the child, who was treated at Children's Hospital, was unknown, Smith said. Leith's autopsy would be conducted on Thursday, he added. It is unclear what caused the explosion. Dave Heiser, a neighbor, told CNN that he was home when he heard the explosion. "I thought my house blew up. My windows were blown out. I went outside and debris was falling from the sky," he said. Watch the neighbor describe hearing the blast » . He said he ran three houses down and saw a woman running with a little girl and screaming. "The little girl was apparently in the house when the explosion happened and was blown outside," Heiser said. "That house was leveled to the ground. There is nothing left." Several families who were displaced by the explosion were directed to Red Cross officials to make arrangements for shelter Wednesday night, authorities said. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Ninette Sosa contributed to this report.

Officials: 1:30 p.m. explosion kills grandfather, severely injures grandchild . It's unclear what caused the blast, authorities say . Investigator: 64-year-old Richard Leith died at hospital . Neighbor says he saw a woman running down street with a little girl after blast .

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(CNN) -- A Dutch tourist says she recently spotted missing 4-year-old Madeleine McCann at a French restaurant near Montpellier, McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said Wednesday. A handout photo, released September 16, 2007, of missing child Madeleine McCann. The tourist said she recognized Madeleine from the many media reports about the child's May 3 disappearance and may have even seen the well-publicized defect in the little girl's eye, Mitchell said. "She and a friend saw a child that they immediately took to be Madeleine," said Mitchell. "They actually called out her name. "A man who was with the child scooped the child up and took her out of the cafe before the girls could take a photograph with their mobile phones," he said. Mitchell said there is a surveillance tape of the girl in the L'Arche restaurant and Madeleine's parents are hoping to be able to use it to determine if it is their missing daughter. Mitchell explains how the sighting came about » . But The Associated Press, quoting an unnamed police official, is reporting that investigators have determined it was not the missing child. Police watched the closed-circuit video footage, and despite the child looking like Madeleine, it was not her, said the official, who did not want his name published because he is not authorized to speak to media about the case. Madeleine disappeared May 3, days before her fourth birthday. Her parents, who were vacationing with her in Portugal, have said she disappeared from their room at a resort while they dined in a nearby restaurant. Despite a global search and the attention of celebrities like Virgin Chairman Richard Branson, author J.K. Rowling and soccer star David Beckham, there have been no major breaks in the case. Portuguese investigators in September named the McCanns official suspects in their daughter's disappearance. The McCanns deny involvement, saying they believe Madeleine may have been abducted by pedophiles and taken to North Africa. A few months ago, there was a reported sighting of Madeleine in Belgium, but nothing came of that report. Last year, excitement grew when a video surfaced of a Moroccan woman carrying a child on her back who looked very similar to Madeleine. Authorities determined that it was the woman's child. E-mail to a friend .

Madeleine McCann possibly seen at roadside restaurant near Montpellier . AP: Police say girl on surveillance tape is not Madeleine . Man takes girl from restaurant after Madeleine's name called, spokesman says . McCann has been missing since May 3; her parents named official suspects .

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(CNN) -- Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega said Thursday that the nation is breaking relations with Colombia "in solidarity with the Ecuadoran people." Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega said the nation is breaking diplomatic relations with Colombia. The move comes after the Organization of American States passed a resolution Wednesday in hopes of easing tensions stemming from an attack by Colombian military on a rebel camp in neighboring Ecuador on Saturday. Since that attack, Ecuador has broken off relations with Colombia, and Venezuela says it has moved troops to its border with Colombia. Ortega made his televised remarks in Managua, where he was flanked by Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa. Colombian forces killed at least 17 members of the leftist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia on Saturday. FARC is estimated to be holding at least 700 hostages in the jungles of Colombia and has been accused by the United States of being a terrorist organization. "This rupture of relations isn't with the people of Colombia," Ortega said. "We are breaking with the terrorist policies that the government of [Colombian President] Alvaro Uribe is practicing." In its resolution, the OAS called the attack "a violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ecuador and of principles of international law." It ordered a commission, headed by OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza and composed of four ambassadors designated by him, to visit both countries to investigate the matter, "and to propose formulas for bringing the two nations closer together." Colombian officials have apologized for taking their attack against the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia into Ecuador but said it was necessary to counter a threat to their national security. Colombian officials also said they discovered evidence after the attack that Ecuadoran and Venezuelan government officials were collaborating with the group -- namely that Chavez allegedly gave $300 million to the rebels and that a senior Ecuadoran official met with them. "[They] are making things up and there's no limit to what they'll make up," Chavez said at a news conference on Wednesday. Correa has said his country would only be satisfied when the OAS issues a "clear condemnation" against Colombia for the raid. OAS foreign ministers are to meet March 17 in Washington "to examine the facts and make the pertinent recommendations," the resolution concluded. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that he saw little chance of war erupting between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Learn more about the countries » . Gates added that the United States would not need to assist its Colombian allies should armed conflict break out. "My personal view is that there is relatively little likelihood of a military conflict between them, and my further impression is that the Colombians can take care of themselves," he said at the Pentagon. E-mail to a friend .

NEW: President Daniel Ortega said move "in solidarity" with Ecuador . On Saturday, Colombia's military attacked a rebel camp in Ecuador . U.S. official: Small chance Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador will fight .

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(CNN) -- Five young men died Saturday when the car they were in drove off the end of a private airstrip near Ocala, Florida, became airborne for 200 feet and slammed into an oak tree, authorities said. The 2008 BMW was split in two in the violent wreck. All of the victims died at the scene. "This had to be the worst vehicle crash that I have ever seen during my career," said Randy Robinson, a spokesman for the Emergency Medical Services Alliance with 27 years on the job. The 2008 BMW was split in two in the wreck, which happened at 3:45 a.m., said Lt. Mike Burroughs, a spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol Troop B. He told CNN the victims -- 18 to 20 years old and all from the area -- were declared dead at the scene. Burroughs said it was not clear how the car got onto the private Greystone community airstrip -- the same one actor John Travolta uses for his aircraft -- but the car was driving north on Runway 36, which is 1.5 miles long. "It is evident that the driver of the vehicle saw he was approaching the end of the runway," Burroughs said. "He attempted a braking maneuver and the vehicle slid sideways off the end of the runway." The car flew through the air for 200 feet, he said, and struck an oak tree 15 feet off the ground, splitting the vehicle in two. Three of the occupants were ejected -- one landing 40 feet away, Burroughs said. The engine block of the BMW was completely dislodged and wreckage from the car was found over a 200-square-foot area, the FHP spokesman said. It was not known if the victims were wearing seat belts and the agency was awaiting the results of toxicology tests from the medical examiner's office to find out if alcohol or drugs played a role, Burroughs said. The airstrip's private taxiways back up to homes in the Jumbolair and Greystone gated communities. E-mail to a friend .

The car was driving on a runway at 3:45 a.m. when the driver hit the brakes . The 2008 BMW flew through the air for 200 feet and struck an oak tree . All of the victims were declared dead at the scene . The car was split in two by the force of the crash .

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GREENSBURG, Kansas (CNN) -- There are still piles of bricks and rubble on countless streets in Greensburg, Kansas, a year after a tornado demolished more than 90 percent of the town. On May 4, 2007, a ferocious twister blasted Greensburg, Kansas, killing 11 people in the town of 1,400. Yet what is happening in the city's rebuilding process may not only re-invent Greensburg but provide a model for "green" building everywhere. Just a week after the deadly tornado hit May 4, 2007, a similar idea sparked in the mayor, a representative from the governor's office and a nonprofit expert from a nearby town. The concept: If the whole town had to be rebuilt anyway, why not be bold and build it as a global example of conservation, energy efficiency and creativity? Daniel Wallach, the nonprofit specialist, soon got the green light to help residents and businesses start over in a project known as Greensburg GreenTown. "Kansas is known for being very conservative," Wallach said. Watch how the town went green » . "My first order of business was to listen. What I heard were a lot of concerns about politicization and being associated with 'tree huggers.' I helped frame it with the people here in such a way they saw, this is their movement," he said. Fifth-generation Greensburg resident Anita Hohl joined the staff of Greensburg GreenTown as a Web specialist. "I was pretty green to begin with. I used to get teased about being a tree hugger. Now it's 'the thing!' This has really brought us so much closer together. What you can accomplish when just a few people are working toward the same goal is amazing," she said. Her farming grandparents instilled the virtue of being energy-efficient. "My grandma always put her clothes on the line, did her own gardening and re-used everything," Hohl said. Hohl and her husband, a daughter, a son, four cats, a dog and two birds are among the Greensburg residents in "FEMAville," a cluster of mobile homes set up as temporary housing. The family hopes to break ground soon for their new house and move in by Thanksgiving. Although they have made the best of the cramped quarters, she says, there are some challenges. "It sort of feels like living in a cheap motel! But it's a lot better than it could be. It's nice to have a place to be," she said. From the start, the GreenTown staff knew that getting the business community on board with the green plan was vital. And in rural America, there is no business that's more of a bedrock than the John Deere dealership. In Greensburg, that dealership has been in the Estes family for four generations. Their facility was wiped out by the twister. "The building was a total loss. And we saved only 13 pieces of machinery out of 220 on the lot," Kelly Estes said. "The FEMA guy said he had never seen anything like it. Steel twisted into brick, and then the miles per hour needed to pick up combines that weigh 25,000 pounds and move them half a mile in the air," he said. Kelly and his brother Mike decided to rebuild in town to the highest green-building standard. The U.S. Green Building Council establishes a rating system for efficient buildings called LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The Greensburg facility is aiming for LEED platinum, the most demanding standard. There is one wind turbine on their new property, a 100-foot structure designed to generate 5 kilowatts of electricity. It is providing power for the construction site. Although "green" may be viewed as trendy and new by some, Mike Estes knows that it is not for show. "We're looking at saving money here; truthfully, we are. We're running a business. If we can't make this make sense, why would we do it?" he asked. And he says the non-political approach of the city in encouraging energy efficiency has helped. "I don't think it's red or blue to be green; I think green is green, and green makes sense. And green saves you green!" he said with a laugh. Being a model for the world in energy efficiency is a major goal of Greensburg GreenTown. But there is another even more urgent aim: keeping this rural town from disappearing. The lack of jobs in many small towns means that after teenagers graduate from high school, they have to leave to find other opportunities. "The average age of people living in rural communities is in their 50s," Wallach said. "There are very few folks in the communities under that age, because there are just no jobs. Families have been split up for decades." So in addition to the long-term goal of Greensburg's pre-tornado businesses from leaving, people hope to attract new green trade as well. The city wants to open a biodiesel facility as one of its first green newcomers. Another long-term goal is to have 100 percent renewable energy. It is probable that the greatest contribution would come from large wind turbines. "The timing of all this is, in some ways, almost spooky," Wallach said. "It's like the world was ready for this to happen, for a town to be completely re-imagined. The tragedy was terrible. But the folks here know that it also provided an incredible opportunity." E-mail to a friend .

Greensburg rebuilds "green" after tornado demolished 90 percent of the town . Long-term goal is to have 100 percent renewable energy . The city hopes to open a biodiesel facility as one of its first green newcomers . Nonprofit expert says terrible tragedy "also provided an incredible opportunity"

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(CNN) -- They're big, strong, and fierce -- and they wear little blue booties. The police dogs in Duesseldorf, Germany are now patrolling the pavement in protective shoes that their police-officer handlers strap onto their paws. The reason? Too many glass shards left by beer drinkers in the city center, said Andre Hartwich, a spokesman for police in Duesseldorf. "We wondered how can we protect our dogs' feet against glass," said Hartwich. "We looked on the Internet and found these shoes." Beer drinkers along the Rhine River and in the city's Altstadt, or Old Town, often discard beer bottles on pebbled walkways. Broken glass poses a problem for the police force's 20 German Shepherds and Belgian Shepherds, Hartwich said. In addition, hooligans and vandals leave behind glass shards around New Year's Eve and during the city's famous Carnival celebrations. So what's a dog to do? Their handlers shelled out 60 euros -- $89 -- for shoes that are also worn by dogs who walk on ice in Alaska. Dogs need a month of training to get used to wearing the shoes, Hartwich said. "We have to condition the dogs to the shoes," he said. E-mail to a friend .

Police dogs in Duesseldorf, Germany are now wearing protective shoes . Glass shards left by beer drinkers in the city center are the reason . Duesseldorf police force has 20 German and Belgian Shepherds . Dogs shoes cost €60 ($89) and are also worn by dogs who walk on ice in Alaska .

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(CNN) -- A group of native Hawaiians occupied the grounds of the old Hawaiian monarchy's royal residence Wednesday, vowing to stay and do the business of the kingdom's government. A member of the protest group Hawaiian Kingdom Government unlocks the palace gate. "It is through a greater realm than ours" that the group took this action, said Mahealani Kahau, elected leader of the group, called Hawaiian Kingdom Government. "Today and every day, we will be here to assume our role." Group members left the palace grounds Wednesday afternoon, but vowed to return Thursday morning, The Honolulu Advertiser reported. "We'll be here at 6 o'clock in the morning," Kahau told the newspaper. The group is one of several in Hawaii that reject statehood and seek to return to the constitutional monarchy that effectively ended in 1893 when a group of politicians, businessmen and sugar planters -- aided by the U.S. minister to Hawaii -- overthrew the kingdom's government. The monarchist groups say that the kingdom was overthrown and annexed into the United States illegally. Hawaii's office of the attorney general did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on Wednesday's action. The staff of Iolani Palace, built in 1882 and now operated as a museum, shut down the building to visitors. The 60 or so protesters occupied the grounds, chaining the gates and stationing guards there to explain to visitors the purpose of the action. The group later reopened the gates, but remained on the grounds and the building was kept closed. "It saddens my heart to have to turn away visitors," said palace staff member Cindy Ascencio, who added that although she, too, is a native Hawaiian, she does not understand the actions of the group. Ascencio also said that the group appeared peaceful and she was not concerned about security. Jose Carrion, a visitor to Hawaii from Puerto Rico, told Honolulu's KHON-TV that he was "disappointed" he wouldn't be able to visit the ornate palace and "learn about the culture of the Hawaiians." "We wanted to come here precisely because we thought we'd learn something about the history of Hawaii and the last queen and the monarchy," said Carrion, who said he had reservations for the visit. "But we're leaving tomorrow so we won't get to see the palace." But Carrion also said he "kind of understood" the actions of the group. Puerto Rico and Hawaii, along with Guam and the Philippines, were annexed into the United States in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. Guam and Puerto Rico remain territories of the United States. The Philippines gained independence after World War II, and Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959. Although the monarchy was not overthrown until 1893, its fate effectively was sealed six years earlier when the same group that forced the overthrow imposed a new constitution on King David Kalakaua, who was forced to sign it under threat of arms. The document dramatically reduced the authority of the monarchy and instituted voter requirements that limited voting to wealthy businessmen and Hawaiian landowners, barring 75 percent of the native Hawaiian population and all Asians. When Queen Lili'uokalani ascended the throne after the death of her brother in 1891, she began work on a new constitution that would have effectively reversed the 1887 document. With the help of John L. Stevens, the U.S. minister to Hawaii, the elite group that had changed the constitution in 1887 opposed the queen's actions. Two years later, under threat of U.S. troops, she yielded her authority, saying, "Until such time as the Government of the United States shall ... undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands." The queen was later imprisoned in Iolani Palace for eight months for her participation in an attempted 1895 revolt, until she relinquished her claim to the throne in return for her release. She died in 1917 at 79. In 1993, the U.S. Congress approved, and President Clinton signed, an apology to the people of the Hawaiian Islands. The document "acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and further acknowledges that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaii or through a plebiscite or referendum." Although it was used as a seat of government for decades after the deposition of Lili'uokalani, the palace fell into disrepair. When the last of the government office moved out and into new facilities adjacent to the palace in 1969, restoration work began. It opened to the public in 1978. E-mail to a friend .

Group does not recognize Hawaii as a U.S. state . Palace used by rulers of Hawaiian kingdom; now a tourist attraction . Peaceful protesters eventually unlock gates, leave grounds . Protesters vow to return Thursday morning .

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- The United Nations' anti-drugs chief has denounced celebrities such as pop star Amy Winehouse and supermodel Kate Moss, saying that their alleged drug use was helping devastate West Africa. Amy Winehouse's battles with her addiction are well-documented. "Coke-snorting fashionistas are not only damaging their noses and brains -- they are contributing to state failure on the other side of the world," wrote Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime. The comments, published in an opinion piece in the British newspaper The Observer, was the second time in two weeks that the United Nations has criticized celebrity drug use. A report last week by the International Narcotics Control Board said that drug laws should not be disproportionately applied. And letting celebrities get away with drug use creates a perception among youth that those offenders are treated leniently. Read about the earlier warning from the United Nations drug control agency . Costa, in his piece, said the cocaine used in Europe passes through impoverished countries in west Africa where governments haven't been able to mount an effective fight against the drug traders. "In the 19th century, Europe's hunger for slaves devastated west Africa," he said. "Two hundred years later, its growing appetite for cocaine could do the same." The drug trade, Costa said, has corrupted the governments of some countries, and created addicts in a continent where treatment facilities are rare. "Amy Winehouse might adopt a defiant pose and slur her way through 'Rehab' (her Grammy Award-winning hit) but does she realize the message she sends to others who are vulnerable to addiction and who cannot afford expensive treatment?" he said. Winehouse's battles with her addiction are well-documented. The singer -- whose song "Rehab" describes her reluctance to enter a rehabilitation center -- checked herself into one on January 24 after the leak of a home video that showed her smoking something in a glass pipe. What was in the pipe was unknown. Scotland Yard has said it is looking into the video. Winehouse scooped up five statues at the Grammy Awards last month, including the best record and song of the year for "Rehab." Winehouse's spokesman, Chris Goodman, called Costa a "ludicrous man." "Amy has never given a quote about drugs or flaunted it in any way," Goodman told the newspaper. "She's had some problems and is trying to get better. The U.N. should get its own house in order." Costa also took model Kate Moss to task, contrasting her alleged actions to those of singers Bob Geldof and Bono who have campaigned against poverty in Africa. Bob Geldof is best known for organizing a series of benefit concerts, including Live Aid. Bono, the frontman for U2, has taken on a campaign to get Western nations to write off the debt they are owed by some African countries. "For every rebel with a cause, there are 10 others without a clue," Costa wrote. "While some well-meaning pop idols and film stars might rage against suffering in Africa, their work is being undermined by the drug habits of careless peer such as Kate Moss." Three years ago, London's Daily Mirror newspaper printed photos it said showed the Moss using cocaine. She later issued a statement where she apologized to "all the people I have let down" and said she took "full responsibility" for her actions. E-mail to a friend .

U.N. anti-drugs chief denounces celebrities Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss . Maria Costa says their alleged drug use is helping devastate West Africa . The U.N. has spoken out on the issue twice in two weeks . Winehouse's spokesman says the U.N. should "get its own house in order"

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KAMPALA, Uganda (CNN) -- A fight between Ugandan and Libyan presidential guards sparked chaos during a ceremony attended by the heads of state from 11 African nations on Wednesday. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni attend the opening of the mosque. Several of the guards to the visiting heads of state from Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Mali, Somalia, Sudan and Djibouti sustained serious injuries in the fight, which included punches, kicks and the drawing of guns. No leaders were hurt in the melee, though several were knocked over. Several journalists also were caught up in the fracas and suffered injuries or lost their grips on cameras and recorders. The incident occurred at the opening of a massive Gadhafi National Mosque in Kampala, a structure begun by the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 1972 and completed with financing from Libya, according to African media reports. Minutes after Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and his host, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, jointly unveiled a plaque to mark the event, the Libyan guards pushed away the guards of other delegations at the mosque's entrance. The Ugandan guards -- who had traded hostilities with the predominantly-Arab Libyan guards at every joint event since Gadhafi's arrival in the country Sunday -- reacted with fury and fought back. Museveni briefly lost his balance when a hefty Libyan guard pushed him to a wall. Another Libyan guard pushed Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who also lost his balance but was caught by his own guards. The vice president of Tanzania was knocked over by fighting guards as he was taking his shoes off to enter the mosque. Guards to the rest of the visiting presidents and prime ministers kept their respective leaders out of the fray, with some drawing their guns as the dignitaries looked on in disbelief. Some leaders -- notably those from Somalia, Burundi and Djibouti -- were visibly uneasy as guns were drawn on all sides. By the time the fight was over more than six minutes later, about a dozen presidential guards were left bleeding from compound fractures and the Libyan and Ugandan protocol officials traded bitter accusations of disrespect and racism. "What are your people up to? Do you want to kill our leader?" a Libyan protocol official said to his Ugandan counterpart. The Ugandan official, who declined to be named, shouted back, "Why do think you're superior? What makes you think Uganda has any ill intention against Gadhafi?" The Ugandan official said Museveni's guards were simply doing their job as security for the host country and had a right to respond when the Libyan guards pushed them back. It has taken 36 years to complete the giant mosque on a hill in the heart of Kampala. It used to be a colonial fort named after British Capt. Frederick Lugard. The mosque can accommodate as many as 17,000 people at one time, according to the engineers, who call it the largest mosque in sub-Saharan Africa. Many Muslims interviewed said the mosque's opening evoked sweet memories of Amin, the deceased dictator. "It is a great day and thanks be to Allah for the completion," said Salim Abdul Noor, 39. "This should remind us that while Amin is demonized as Africa's worst dictator, there are many things he did for this country that successive governments largely depend on, and much of the completed installations and structures like this beautiful mosque was Amin's dream, may Allah rest him in peace." The Swedish vice president of the European Islamic Conference, Adly Abu Hajar, 57, said the mosque heals rifts in a religion introduced to Uganda in 1844 by Arab slave traders. "I find this complex has brought unity among Muslims in Uganda. There have been so many factions, but this attraction has brought them together, identifying themselves with a common home." The fight prompted a crisis meeting by Ugandan security authorities, after which invited diplomats from mainly the European missions in Uganda expressed dismay. "It's disgrace. It shows there is something wrong yet unknown between the two parties," said the head of one European mission in Kampala, who declined to be named. The police chief, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura, and the head of the army, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, declined to comment on the fight. But Capt. Edison Kwesiga, the spokesman of the Ugandan Presidential Guard Brigade, confirmed their hostile relationship with the Libyans. "It is our responsibility to ensure the safety of any visiting head of state. We have to do our job using any means. But our Libyan brothers always want us to fail. True, it's not the first time they come and act as you see," Kwesiga said. E-mail to a friend .

Ugandan officer reports tensions with Libyan leader's guards during visit . Leaders gathered for opening of massive mosque in Kampala, Uganda . About a dozen presidential guards seen bleeding from compound fractures .

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BARCELONA, Spain -- Barcelona's Argentina striker Lionel Messi will be out of action for six weeks after tearing a muscle in his left leg during Tuesday night's 1-0 Champions League victory over Celtic. Messi is helped off the pitch after injuring his left thigh during Tuesday's 1-0 victory over Celtic. The Catalan club confirmed on Wednesday that Messi will miss both legs of Barcelona's Champions League quarterfinal encounter. It will also be a race against time for the 2007 World Player of the Year runner-up to be fit for the semifinals if Barcelona get past an opponent who will be named after the draw on March 14. Messi picked up the injury after 34 minutes during Barcelona's victory over the Scottish side, which booked their spot in the last eight by easing through 4-2 on aggregate. It is third time in the last three years that Messi has had the same injury, the last occasion being on December 15 against Valencia, which ruled him out of the 'El Clasico' derby the following week against Real Madrid. In addition to his chronic problems with his left thigh, Messi has had four other significant injuries in the last two years which have caused him to miss a month or more. Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard has been forced to defend the club's medical services in the wake of Messi's latest injury. "To doubt that they are doing their best is an insult. The medical staff and the club in general are working to prevent these sort of problems. They are working hard but there is always a player that can be injured," said Dutchman Rijkaard. Messi's injury reopens the door for Thierry Henry to claim his place in the starting lineup. The Frenchman has rarely impressed since his big-money move from Arsenal to the Spanish giants last summer. Rijkaard also has other options to replace Messi on the right flank in the shape of Portuguese international Deco or teenage Mexican winger Giovanni Dos Santos. E-mail to a friend .

Barcelona striker Lionel Messi is ruled out for six weeks with a thigh injury . The Argentine sustained the injury in Tuesday night's 1-0 victory over Celtic . It is third time in the last three years that Messi has suffered the same injury .

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JACKSONVILLE, North Carolina (CNN) -- The remains of an adult and a fetus were found Saturday in a shallow grave in the backyard of the primary suspect in the death of a pregnant Marine, Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown announced. Investigators search for the body of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach on Saturday. An arrest warrant has been issued for Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean in the death of Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach. He is charged with first-degree murder, although authorities have not positively identified the body as hers. "This is consistent with what we were looking for: A pregnant lady who is the victim Maria Lauterbach and her unborn child," Brown said. The body was charred, and the fetus was in the victim's abdomen, Brown said, describing the scene in gruesome detail. The fetus was developed enough that the "little hand was about the size of my thumb. The little fingers were rolled up," he said. "One of the things that will probably stick with me for a long time, and forever, is that little hand, the way those fingers were turned, that had been burned off the arm. That is bizarre. That is tragic. And it's disgusting." Watch Brown describe the scene » . The remains were taken to the Onslow County medical examiner's office. They will next be sent to the chief medical examiner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for DNA testing and comparison with dental records. Lauterbach, 20, disappeared, when she was eight months pregnant, from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in mid-December, not long before she was to testify at a military hearing about her rape accusation against Laurean. Laurean is believed to have left the base at 4 a.m. Friday, and a nationwide manhunt is under way. Watch authorities search for a grave » . Lauterbach's relatives believe her pregnancy was the result of the alleged rape, said Lauterbach's uncle, Peter Steiner, a Kentucky psychiatrist. Investigators told CNN that Laurean vanished four hours before his wife, Christina, approached Brown with a note from her husband claiming that Lauterbach had committed suicide and he buried the body. "We believe our suspect has fled the state of North Carolina; removed himself as far from here as he can get," Brown said Saturday. Watch Brown describe the cavity where the body was found » . Brown said Friday that blood spatter evidence was found inside Laurean's home, even on a ceiling. There was evidence of "an attempted clean-up," including an attempt to paint over the blood spatter, he said. "Evidence now is saying what he's claiming happened did not happen like he said it happened," Brown said of Laurean. Lauterbach's mother, Mary Lauterbach, reported the young woman as missing from Camp Lejeune on December 19. Mary Lauterbach said she had not talked with her for five days. Watch police face unanswered questions » . Laurean, 21, of Nevada, is believed to be driving a black Dodge pickup with North Carolina license plate TRR1522. Laurean repeatedly refused to meet with investigators, finally telling them that his attorney wouldn't let him. The sheriff described him as "dangerous," especially if cornered. Military officials said Laurean was not taken into custody after Lauterbach reported the alleged rape because there was information the two carried on "some sort of friendly relationship" after she filed the complaint against him. "The information ... leads us to believe that she still had some kind of contact" with him, said Paul Ciccarelli, agent in charge of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service at Camp Lejeune, this week. Because of that, Laurean wasn't considered a flight risk, he said. Steiner disputed that, and said his niece had no relationship with Laurean. Ciccarelli also said the rape investigation is still active. See a timeline of the case » . On Friday, authorities questioned Lauterbach's roommate, Sgt. Daniel Durham, but said he had no apparent ties to her disappearance or death. Authorities have not released any details from that interview. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Ed Lavandera contributed to this report. Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

NEW: The discovery is "consistent with what we were looking for," sheriff says . NEW: Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean is charged with first-degree murder . Sheriff says blood found in house, even on ceiling . Missing pregnant Marine had accused suspect -- a fellow Marine -- of rape .

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BELGRADE, Serbia (CNN) -- The U.S. Embassy in Belgrade is evacuating all nonessential personnel following Thursday's attack on the building by a crowd of protesters, a spokesman for the embassy told CNN Friday. Serbian riot police stand in front of the damaged U.S. Embassy in Belgrade on Friday. The U.S. ambassador, Cameron Munter, is staying, officials said. The embassy was closed Friday, and a handful of riot police holding shields stood outside the building, its outer walls blackened from fires set the night before and some of its windows smashed. It will remain closed until Monday or Tuesday so officials can assess the damage, said Bill Wanlund, the embassy's spokesman. He said embassy staff were still in a heightened state of alert but there were no specific threats against any staff members. The United States has warned the Serbian government that it has a responsibility to protect its assets. A top U.S. diplomat was asked during an interview on CNN if the Serbian government "gets" the warning. "They'd better get it, because they have a fundamental responsibility to protect our diplomats and our embassy and to protect American citizens," said Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns. "What happened yesterday in Belgrade was absolutely reprehensible." Watch Burns' angry comments on Belgrade attack » . Thursday's violence erupted after demonstrations by thousands of Serbs against Kosovo's declaration of independence. The anger directed against the United States and other countries for recognizing the breakaway province as a nation sparked attacks on Western embassies and shops by hundreds of people. Burns said there was an "insufficient" number of security people guarding the U.S. Embassy at a demonstration everyone knew would take place. He said security "melted away" as "the mob attacked our embassy." "This kind of thing should not happen in a civilized country. It doesn't happen in the United States of America. It doesn't happen in most world capitals. So the Serb government needs to reflect seriously about the responsibility it has under the Vienna Convention," he said. Burns, the third highest ranking diplomat in the State Department, said he told the Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, and his government that the U.S. "would hold them personally responsible for the safety of our people." "They assured me that they would have adequate security on the ground today and for every day to come. We will hold them to that commitment," Burns said. Demonstrators only managed to break into one U.S. embassy building, which Wanlund said was rarely used by staff. He said the protesters didn't manage to get any documents or embassy materials. Only Marines and security guards were present at the embassy when the angry mob of about 100 approached the walls. In addition to the U.S. Embassy, the protesters attacked other Western interests including the embassies of Britain and Germany, as well as a McDonald's restaurant and a Nike shop. "One might understand the emotion, but not the violence, and that's what the Serb government needs to remember," Burns said. Burns, who is stepping down in March, has long been involved in trying to resolve tensions in the former Yugoslavia. The situation was complicated by Sunday's unilateral declaration of independence by Serbia's predominantly Albanian region of Kosovo. Kosovo is revered historically by Orthodox Christian Serbs but also is claimed as separate and distinct by its ethnic Muslim Albanians. The wisdom of recognizing Kosovo independence has been questioned by many observers, who say the United States won't recognize other unilateral declarations of independence. Some opponents of Kosovo's independence say recognition is a bad precedent if it's unilateral and not done in a bilateral, diplomatic setting. They say it will give others the incentive to stage their own breakaway nations. Burns said every situation has its unique set of circumstances, as does Kosovo, which was the victim of ethnic cleansing policies by the Slobodan Milosevic regime in 1999. NATO troops fought Serbia in an air war then and pushed Serbian forces out of the region. Since then Kosovo has been run by the United Nations and with security supplied by NATO forces. E-mail to a friend .

U.S.: An event like embassy attack "should not happen in a civilized country" U.S. warns Serbia of responsibility to protect U.S. diplomats, building . Embassy evacuating nonessential personnel; ambassador will stay in Belgrade . No embassy documents taken during Thursday attack and fire, spokesman says .

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(CNN) -- China's giant pandas are believed to be safe after Monday's earthquake, but concern is growing over how they will get their next meals. The giant pandas' primary food source is bamboo. Authorities confirmed Tuesday that captive animals in two of China's major panda reserves were alive, according to Xinhua, China's official news agency. The Wolong Giant Panda Reserve Center in southwest Sichuan province is home to about 86 giant pandas, who were reported safe Tuesday. Staff and critters at neighboring Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Center were also reported safe, according to a spokesperson for the Atlanta Zoo, which has two pandas on loan from the wildlife reserve. Concern arose in the international wildlife community over damage to the animals' habitat, as authorities continued assessing the scope of damage in the Sichuan province. The mountainous, densely wooded region is the natural habitat for most of the 1,200 giant pandas living in the wild, making it an obvious location for research bases like Wolong and Chengdu. Giant pandas roam the forest in "open cages" that are meant to provide them with a safe, natural environment that will prepare them for release. With the safety of the pandas confirmed, the animals' caregivers are left to determine how resources like food and medical supplies will reach the bases, which contain breeding facilities and triage centers. Bamboo, the pandas' primary source of food, is a major agricultural product in the region, but whether it can be supplied to the pandas despite infrastructure damage is open to question. "Wolong is hard to access under normal conditions, so the heavy road damage makes it even harder," said Kerry Zobor, spokesperson for the World Wildlife Fund. Zobor said WWF had confirmed the safety of staff based in Beijing, but had not received word on the conditions in Wolong. She said the WWF was also concerned about members who had been touring the country when the earthquake struck. So far, the group has not been located. Scientists in the United States are hopeful that Chinese researchers will adapt to the situation facing them. David Wildt with the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park in Washington says that scientists in Wolong have overcome threats to the giant panda population before. In the late 1990s, the captive giant panda population was in decline, with more animals dying than were born, Wildt said. Thanks to a collaborative effort with American scientists, the Wolong staff was able to reverse the trend. "Our Chinese colleagues are very perceptive when it comes to addressing problems," said Wildt, who has visited Wolong many times as part of the Smithsonian's affiliation with the research base. "Because of their efforts, the population is on the rise today." Wildt said that Chinese scientists have also addressed the issue of alternative food sources before. "Artificial diets in the form of protein biscuits have been created for giant pandas. They're not a complete substitute, but they meet the needs of a basic high-fiber diet," said Wildt, who has worked with two pandas that the Smithsonian has on loan from Wolong. "Right now, we're mostly concerned about the staff. If the staff is fine, then the animals will be fine," Wildt said.

Report: Chinese authorities confirm that captive giant pandas are safe . Concerns grow over road accessibility to the reserves . Scientist: Alternative foods exist in the event of depleted bamboo stocks .

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(CNN) -- Sen. Hillary Clinton received the most votes in two pivotal Democratic primary contests Tuesday, scoring wins in Texas and Ohio that were considered critical to keeping alive her White House hopes. Sen. Hillary Clinton is the winner in Ohio and Texas primaries, but trails in the Texas caucuses. With 99 percent of precincts reporting in Ohio, Clinton had 54 percent of the vote compared to 44 percent for Sen. Barack Obama. The race was closer in Texas where, with 99 percent of precincts in, Clinton had 51 percent to Obama's 48 percent. A complicated formula in Texas that weighs delegates more heavily in highly populated areas and includes a caucus that was still being tallied Wednesday afternoon meant the delegate count there remained unclear. Obama was leading Clinton in the caucus vote 56 percent to 44 percent with 38 percent of the state counted, party officials said. The party will split 67 delegates between the candidates in proportion to the final caucus results. Watch an I-Report video from a Democratic caucus » . A final tally was not expected until Thursday afternoon, officials said. Regardless, the two wins were crucial for Clinton, who would have found it difficult to continue the race if Obama won big Tuesday. "For everyone across America who has been counted out but refused to be knocked out, for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up and for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one is for you," Clinton said to a cheering crowd in Columbus, Ohio. Watch Clinton thank backers » . After a month of losses to Obama, Clinton had been expected to do well in Ohio -- where the blue-collar workers who have consistently supported her throughout the campaign make up a large chunk of the Democratic base. But with polls showing the Ohio contest neck-and-neck in the days leading up to the primary, Clinton got a boost from female voters and those who only recently made up their minds. According to CNN exit polling, 59 percent of the voters in the state's Democratic primary were women. Those female voters favored Clinton over Obama, 58 percent to 40 percent. In the past week, Clinton sharpened her attacks on Obama -- questioning whether he has enough experience to lead the nation and attempting to cast doubt on his opposition to international trade agreements that many in Ohio feel have led to job losses. Poll results suggest it may have worked. Among those polled, 64 percent of those who decided their vote in the last three days chose Clinton. Clinton was believed to need strong performances in Tuesday's contests in Ohio and Texas to halt Obama's momentum in the race and stay alive in the hunt for the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination. As early returns were counted Tuesday, Obama ran a string of consecutive victories to 12 with a lopsided win in Vermont. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, he led Clinton 59 percent to 39 percent. But Clinton snapped that streak in Rhode Island. With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton had taken 58 percent of the vote to Obama's 40 percent. Speaking in San Antonio, Texas, Obama told supporters he expected to hold a similar delegate lead over Clinton after Tuesday's races to the one he held before. "We know this -- no matter what happens tonight, we have nearly the same delegate lead we had this morning and we are on the way to winning this nomination," he said to cheers and chants of his trademark phrase, "Yes we can." Watch an excerpt of Obama's speech to supporters » . With Texas' delegates still to be awarded, Clinton had picked up 22 delegates after results in Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont were tallied. Obama entered the day holding a lead of just over 100 delegates, with 1,369 pledged delegates and superdelegates to Clinton's 1,267, according to CNN estimates. In Ohio, harsh weather and balloting problems stretched the polling well into the evening. With polls slated to close at 7:30 p.m., state elections officials decided to extend voting until 9 p.m. in northern Ohio's Sandusky County. The area was hit by freezing rain for much of the day, and ballot shortages were reported in the Cleveland and Columbus areas -- also causing the polls to be open until 9 p.m. Texas, with its 193 Democratic delegates, and Ohio, with 141, were the biggest prizes in Tuesday's contests. There were 15 Democratic delegates at stake in Vermont and 21 in Rhode Island. 'Texas two-step' Texas' results may not be as easy to measure as counting votes. In what pundits have been calling the "Texas two-step," the state's Democratic Party held a primary election, in which 126 delegates were awarded, and a post-election caucus in which another 67 are at stake. It's possible for the loser of the primary to win more delegates with a strong showing in the caucuses. Texas' method of awarding delegates in the primary -- with more delegates coming from large population centers like Houston, Dallas and Austin -- further complicates the matter. As polling places closed Tuesday, Texans reportedly lined up in bigger-than-expected numbers for the caucuses -- in some places lining up in parking lots and overflowing buildings where caucuses were held. Party officials Wednesday said 1.1 million voters participated in the caucuses. A CNN I-Reporter in Houston said there were hundreds of people at his polling place -- he said he waited more than an hour just to sign in. At an Austin caucus, about 800 people showed up -- far outstripping expectations and causing organizers to stand on tables and yell to organize caucus-goers, one voter said. Clinton supporters had said a strong performance would keep her campaign alive. Weeks ago, former President Clinton predicted his wife would need wins in Texas and Ohio to stay in the race. "If Hillary Clinton gets out a small win in Ohio and Texas, it will be like Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow," said political adviser and Clinton supporter Paul Begala, referring to the six more weeks of winter the groundhog is said to predict. The Obama campaign, however, said the arithmetic of the delegate count will make it difficult for Clinton to overcome Obama's lead. "They've had a really bad run and they have to rationalize continuing," said Obama spokesman David Axelrod. "We've won more popular votes and more delegates, and they have to give some rationale for staying in this race." E-mail to a friend .

NEW: Obama leads Clinton 56 percent to 44 percent in tally of Texas caucuses . Clinton wins Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island primaries . Obama wins Vermont, leads race in total delegate count .

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. border officers found a wire between two fences along the U.S.-Mexican border that, when stretched taut, could have seriously harmed or even decapitated Border Patrol agents, Congress was told Wednesday. The wire was about 4 feet high when pulled tight, or about neck level for an agent on an ATV, officials say. "It was configured in a way so that, if it was pulled, it would take off the head of a Border Patrol agent riding in an open car," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said at a House budget hearing. The wire was discovered Saturday when authorities monitoring a surveillance camera saw two people on the north side of the border east of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, in the San Diego sector. Border Patrol agents sent to the area found a thick metal wire tied to a secondary fence. The wire stretched across the border road and led into Mexico through a hole in the primary fence, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. When pulled tight, the wire would be about 4 feet high -- about neck level for an agent riding on an all-terrain vehicle, CBP said. Officials said they suspected that drug or illegal immigrant smugglers were involved. No arrests were made on either side of the border. The wire was removed, and no injuries or damage took place, CBP said. E-mail to a friend .

The thick metal wire stretched across the border road and led into Mexico . Agents discovered it Saturday after a surveillance camera spotted suspicious activity . Officials say they suspect that drug or illegal immigrant smugglers are involved . No arrests have been made on either side of the border .

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(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama claimed a significant victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, telling supporters "we are hungry for change." Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, celebrate his South Carolina win. The Illinois senator earned more than twice the vote that rival Sen. Hillary Clinton did, 55 percent to 27 percent, unofficial returns showed. Former Sen. John Edwards was third with 18 percent. "Tonight, the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion were told a different story by the good people of South Carolina," Obama said to supporters Saturday. Watch a recap of Obama's big win » . A win in South Carolina was considered crucial for Obama, who won Iowa but finished second to Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada. See what the results mean » . "I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina," he said. "The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders," Obama said. "It's not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white. "It's about the past versus the future." Watch Obama speech . With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Obama had 55 percent of the vote. Clinton was second with 27 percent, followed by Edwards, with 18 percent. Obama's victory capped a heated contest in South Carolina, the first Democratic primary in the South and the first with a largely African-American electorate. Obama, who is hoping to become the the nation's first African-American president, did well with black voters, who made up about half of Saturday's electorate, according to exit polls. Black voters supported the Illinois senator by a margin of more than 4-to-1 over his nearest rival, exit polls indicate. Among white voters, Obama took about a quarter of the vote, with Clinton and Edwards roughly splitting the remainder, according to exit polls. Clinton congratulated Obama and said she was excited to move forward to the Super Tuesday contests on February 5. "Millions and millions of Americans are going to have the chance to have their voices heard and their votes counted," she told supporters at Tennessee State University. Watch Clinton speak to supporters » . Edwards also looked ahead to the next contests. "Now the three of us move on to February 5, where millions of Americans will cast their vote and help shape the future of this party and help shape the future of America," he said. Watch Edwards rally supporters » . "Our campaign from the very beginning has been about one central thing, and that is to give voice to the millions of Americans who have absolutely no voice in this democracy." Clinton beat Obama only among elderly voters, according to exit polls. Among voters 65 and older, Clinton beat Obama 40 to 32 percent. But Obama handily defeated Clinton in every other bracket, and overall garnered 58 percent of the vote among 18 to 64-year-olds while 23 percent of those voters picked Clinton. And half of those polled said both candidates shared blame for the rancor between the two camps. Of those who said one of the contenders was more to blame than the other, 21 percent blamed Clinton, and 6 percent said Obama. "It's fairly obvious it's not going to be over February 5," Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said. Edwards was born in South Carolina and won the state's primary four years ago, when he was making his first bid for the White House. See voters head to the polls in South Carolina » . Edwards had touted his native status, and as the Clinton and Obama camps have squabbled, Edwards continued to talk about the issues and suggests he's the only adult in the field. Watch Edwards reach out to voters » . "I'm keeping moving no matter what, but I feel good about how things are moving right now here today," Edwards told reporters Saturday morning. "I feel there's a lot of energy behind my campaign." On January 15, Edwards pledged, "I'm in this for the long haul. We're continuing to accumulate delegates. There's actually a very narrow margin between Sen. Obama, Sen. Clinton and myself on delegates." The state Democratic party estimated that more than 530,000 Democrats turned out for Saturday's primary, as compared with 445,000 voters who showed up to vote last weekend in the state's Republican primary. The Democratic numbers topped the GOP turnout for the first time since 1992, when 445,000 Republicans turned out to renominate President George H.W. Bush. Obama attracted more than 290,000 votes -- nearly matching the total turnout of the 2004 Democratic primary. "This is an enormous turnout," CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin said. "Democrats are wildly motivated in this election." As South Carolina's Democratic primary voters went to the polls Saturday, almost half of them had made up their minds more than a month ago, according to exit polls. In the 2004 primary, nearly a quarter decided either the day of the primary or in the three days prior who they would support, but this year, only 10 percent of this year's voters waited until Saturday to choose. Another 10 percent decided only in the last three days, and 32 percent decided in the last month. Forty-seven percent made up their minds at least a month ago, more than double the percentage of 2004. The early exit polls were taken from a sampling of 1,269 voters statewide. Following a rough campaign between Clinton and Obama, the two camps toned down the rhetoric in the past two days, returning to the issues and concentrating their firepower on the Republicans rather than on each other. "I think they [the Republicans] should be gracious and just say, "We have messed this thing up so much we are just going to quit and ... we shouldn't be re-elected,' but I don't think that is what they are going to do," Clinton said. South Carolina is the last big test for the Democrats before Super Tuesday, February 5, when nearly two dozen states will hold either primaries or caucuses -- including such delegate-rich states as California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. Florida holds its primary on Tuesday but no Democratic delegates are being awarded there because the national party is penalizing the state for moving its primary up earlier in the year. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Paul Steinhauser, Bill Schneider, Peter Hamby, Alexander Mooney, Suzanne Malveaux and Jessica Yellin contributed to this report.

NEW: Blowout win for Obama in South Carolina . Clinton finishes ahead of Edwards, CNN projects . 47 percent decided on vote at least a month ago, exit polls indicate . Edwards: "I feel good about how things are moving right now"

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LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Jamiel Shaw was just three doors from his house on March 2. His father told the 17-year-old high school football star to be home before dark. That is exactly what he was trying to do when, just before dusk, gunshots rang out. Gang members pulled up in a car and asked Shaw if he was in a gang. Shaw didn't have time to tell them "no." He was mowed down before he could answer, police say. His dad heard the shots from inside his house and immediately called his son's cell phone to warn him to stay away. But within seconds, the father realized what had happened. "I just ran down there," Jamiel Shaw Sr. told CNN. Watch dad describe hearing "pow, pow" » . His son was wearing the same shirt his dad had pressed for him that morning. "He was laying on the ground and his face was so peaceful. I knew he was dead." "For three hours, I was just completely blacked out walking." More than 7,500 miles away, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw was serving her second tour in Iraq. Her commanding officer called her into his office and told her to sit down next to the chaplain. He then informed her that her son had been killed on the streets of Los Angeles. "I freaked out," she said. "I wanted to run out of the room. I was screaming and kicking. I was shouting, 'No.'" Anita Shaw is now back in Los Angeles to bury her son. Police announced Tuesday that an arrest had been made in the shooting. Pedro Espinoza, a 19-year-old member of the Hispanic 18th Street Gang, was charged in the killing and could face the death penalty if convicted, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said. Espinoza is scheduled to be arraigned March 25. Espinoza was released from jail -- where he was held on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon -- one day before the incident. Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton Tuesday called on the community to help police locate a second suspect who was with Espinoza at the time of the shooting. Hundreds of family members and friends gathered Tuesday at West Los Angeles Cathedral to remember Shaw, a standout running back and sprinter at Los Angeles High School who had good grades and stayed out of trouble despite his rough neighborhood. Among the schools recruiting him was Stanford University. Watch as family, friends remember Shaw » . Blue-and-white flowers -- his school colors -- adorned his casket, and photos of Shaw over the years were displayed at the service. Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven" played as mourners entered the church. "He was a Christian and I thank God for that because I know he's in a better place," his mom said, trembling as she sobbed. "He'd just try all the time to do the right thing. He was so good." Shaw is one of several innocent victims in a horrifying three-week spate of gang-related shootings around Los Angeles. A man was gunned down as he held a 2-year-old baby in his arms. A 13-year-old boy was shot to death last week as he went to pick lemons from a tree. In another incident, a 6-year-old boy was critically wounded when he was shot in the head while riding in the car with his family; two gang members have been arrested in connection with that shooting, according to police. "I think what is particularly unnerving for all of us is just the random nature of these shootings," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said last week. Bratton and Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner met with community members from the South Side of Los Angeles over the weekend to try to calm tensions between black and Hispanic communities. Among those in attendance were Shaw's parents and his younger brother. Bratton acknowledged some neighborhoods are rife with underlying racial tensions that have "taken too many young lives." He said he is in the process of hiring 1,000 new police officers to help combat inner city gang violence. Watch Bratton describe an "always underlying tension" » . "There's no denying that some of the crime in this city is a direct result of hatred, animosity, racial animosity, ethnic differences," Bratton said. "We must all work to the best of our ability to try to prevent that." "None of it is right," said Garner. "We can't get so incensed that we lose focus that it's going on on both sides." He added, "Wrong is wrong." The killing of Shaw has rallied his neighborhood. Dozens of people gathered outside his home for a vigil last week and placed candles, flowers and blue-and-white balloons at a makeshift memorial. One sign read, "We love you! Jamiel Shaw." On the online social networking site Facebook, more than 100 people have joined a page called "Good people live in our hearts forever RIP Jamiel Shaw." "Loved you lots babyboi! Still do! I know many, many, many people who are missing you right NOW!!!" wrote Christina Stewart on the Facebook wall. Another person, Harley Lally, wrote, "Football will never be the same without you. I miss you every Sunday, and every time I step on that field." Shaw, a junior, carried the ball 74 times for 1,052 yards this season, with an average of 14.2 yards per carry, according to MaxPreps Web site. The longest of his 10 touchdowns went for 75 yards. He passed the ball one time all year in the last game of the season -- the last game of his career. It was a 60-yard touchdown strike. Watch mom's Thanksgiving message to son from Iraq » . But he will be missed for more than his football. The beloved player with the big smile meant so much more. The father and son years ago had made a pact: Keep focused, stay away from drugs and gangs, and get into college on an athletic scholarship. In return, the dad promised to do everything for his son, nicknamed "Jas," to make that happen. Breaking down in tears, the father said, "I guaranteed 'Jas.' That's why it hurts so much -- because I told him, 'I promise you, if you sacrifice these years, I'll sacrifice with you.'" Watch Jamiel Shaw Sr. ask mourners to make a difference » . The dad said more must be done to combat gang violence. "It's a gang problem and they have nothing in their heart for people." Shaw's mother, the Army sergeant, compares the gang members who killed her son to those she's fighting against in Iraq. "To me, they're terrorists." E-mail to a friend . CNN's Kara Finnstrom, Paul Vercammen and Wayne Drash contributed to this report.

NEW: Arrest made in killing of Jamiel Shaw, athlete killed outside his L.A. home . Police: Gang members had asked him if we was in a gang . Shaw didn't have time to tell them "no," according to police . His mother was on duty in Iraq when she got the news .

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Handsome, articulate and lightning fast -- McLaren's Lewis Hamilton can now add two more words to his list of qualities: very rich. Lewis Hamilton will be able to afford a lot more champagne in the future. The Briton is set to become one of the most marketable sport stars in the world -- perhaps second only to Tiger Woods -- and earn more than a billion dollars if he can maintain the buzz created by his first season in Formula One, experts say. On Sunday he started his second season in perfect fashion, easily winning the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. The 23-year-old signed a five-year contract with McLaren worth an estimated $140m in January. It leaves him lagging along way behind Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, who is paid an estimated $50m a year for driving, but it is through endorsements that he stands to reap a greater windfall. Stephen Cheliotis, chief executive of the Centre for Brand Analysis and UK Superbrands and CoolBrands Councils' chairman, said Hamilton was the most marketable driver because he was a breath of fresh air. He had helped drive up race attendance and television fewer figures dramatically in his first season. "He is young, mixing with the right people everyday -- rappers, film stars -- and a lot more articulate than Kimi Raikkonen," Cheliotis said. "He is also the first black driver and it does have a bearing, much like Tiger Woods in golf. He is also the most marketable because he is going to be the best, much like Michael Schumacher." Pippa Collett, Sponsorship Consulting's managing director, said Hamilton was certainly the most marketable driver in the short term. His performance meant he was the dominant member of a group of "young turks" -- Nelson Piquet Jr, Nico Rosberg, Heikki Kovalainen -- who had great potential. Collett said in terms of the media Hamilton's performance, friendliness, English speaking background and professionalism were key assets. If he could maintain these he would earn more than Schumacher -- the sport's first billionaire driver. Indeed, Schumacher set an example which Hamilton would be wise to follow. He was the first driver to win personal sponsors after Ferrari allowed him to sign a $10m annual deal with a German bank to place its logo on his cap. The German also actively pursued the development of his own retail range, which included caps -- he sold hundreds of thousands at $30 a pop -- and even a branded vacuum cleaner. Collett said Schumacher's manager, Willi Weber, was very good. "Schumacher was a nice guy but not very charming. However, he was very professional and you knew he would turn up," Collett said. Cheliotis agreed Hamilton would earn considerably more than Schumacher, and that there would be a big gap between his earnings and that of the other drivers. However, there were pitfalls. Lewis had already made the mistake of saying he was moving to Switzerland to avoid the limelight when it was all about avoiding tax, Cheliotis said. "He said that and then turned up at every awards night for a month." Cheliotis said appearing arrogant, being caught out by the tabloid press, endorsing a brand and then using another and over selling himself could also damage his value. "The big danger with someone like Hamilton is that he is so in demand and that he has so many sponsors it leads to brand confusion. There is a danger of being one of 50 sponsors and not getting any value." Collett said Hamilton needed to develop his "life-time brand". While Raikkonen may not be a media darling he had developed an "Iceman" image, which was just as important in the long term. English footballer David Beckham, whose performance had dropped off, had successfully developed a life-time brand that would out last his playing career. Collett said Hamilton's one weakness may be his father, Anthony. "His dad is his manager. Your brand positioning is as an individual... having your dad around too much could affect your brand." Collett said Hamilton would have to be wary of bad press, but a little bit of young turk behaviour could enhance his image as long as he continued to excel. "I think that is part of the glamour... some of that and continued brilliant performances will make his life very easy." E-mail to a friend .

Experts say Lewis Hamilton is set to earn more than Michael Schumacher . David Beckham's "life-time brand" provides valuable lessons . A little bit of scandal is good for the bank balance . Raikkonen's "Iceman" persona allows sponsors to find perfect match .

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(CNN) -- China's giant pandas are believed to be safe after Monday's earthquake, but concern is growing over how they will get their next meals. Questions remain about whether infrastructure damage will harm the giant pandas' supply of bamboo. Authorities confirmed Tuesday that captive animals in two of China's major panda reserves were alive, according to Xinhua, China's official news agency. The Wolong Giant Panda Reserve Center in southwest Sichuan province is home to about 86 giant pandas, who were reported safe Tuesday. Staff and critters at neighboring Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Center were also reported safe, according to a spokesperson for the Atlanta Zoo, which has two pandas on loan from the wildlife reserve. Concern arose in the international wildlife community over damage to the animals' habitat, as authorities continued assessing the scope of damage in the Sichuan province. The mountainous, densely wooded region is the natural habitat for most of the 1,200 giant pandas living in the wild, making it an obvious location for research bases like Wolong and Chengdu. Giant pandas roam the forest in "open cages" that are meant to provide them with a safe, natural environment that will prepare them for release. With the safety of the pandas confirmed, the animals' caregivers are left to determine how resources like food and medical supplies will reach the bases, which contain breeding facilities and triage centers. Bamboo, the pandas' primary source of food, is a major agricultural product in the region, but whether it can be supplied to the pandas despite infrastructure damage is open to question. "Wolong is hard to access under normal conditions, so the heavy road damage makes it even harder," said Kerry Zobor, spokeswoman for the World Wildlife Fund. Zobor said the WWF had confirmed the safety of staff members based in Beijing but had not received word on the conditions in Wolong. She said the WWF was also concerned about members who had been touring the country when the earthquake struck. The group has not been located. Scientists in the United States are hopeful that Chinese researchers will adapt to the situation facing them. David Wildt with the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park in Washington says scientists in Wolong have overcome threats to the giant panda population before. In the late 1990s, the captive giant panda population was in decline, with more animals dying than were born, Wildt said. Thanks to a collaborative effort with American scientists, the Wolong staff was able to reverse the trend. "Our Chinese colleagues are very perceptive when it comes to addressing problems," said Wildt, who has visited Wolong many times as part of the Smithsonian's affiliation with the research base. "Because of their efforts, the population is on the rise today." Wildt said that Chinese scientists have also addressed the issue of alternative food sources. "Artificial diets in the form of protein biscuits have been created for giant pandas. They're not a complete substitute, but they meet the needs of a basic high-fiber diet," said Wildt, who has worked with two pandas that the Smithsonian has on loan from Wolong. "Right now, we're mostly concerned about the staff. If the staff is fine, then the animals will be fine," Wildt said.

Report: Chinese authorities confirm that captive giant pandas are safe . Concerns grow over road accessibility to the reserves . Scientist: Alternative foods exist in the event of depleted bamboo stocks .

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(CNN) -- Red Cross President and CEO Mark W. Everson has stepped down after revelations he was "engaged in a personal relationship with a subordinate employee," the organization announced Tuesday. Mark W. Everson says he is leaving his post, effective immediately, for "personal and family reasons." The Red Cross Board of Governors asked for and received Everson's resignation after it "concluded that the situation reflected poor judgment on Mr. Everson's part and diminished his ability to lead the organization in the future," the Red Cross said in a statement on its Web site. Everson, 53, said in a written statement that he was leaving the $500,000-per-year job "for personal and family reasons, and deeply regret it is impossible for me to continue in a job so recently undertaken." Everson -- who is married and has two children -- joined the Red Cross as president and CEO last May. The organization became aware of Everson's relationship with a female Red Cross employee 10 days ago, Chief Public Affairs Officer Suzy C. DeFrancis told CNN in a telephone interview. "I think the board acted very quickly," she said, adding that the woman remains in her job. About Everson, DeFrancis said, "We're grateful for his service." The board of governors on Tuesday appointed Mary S. Elcano, general counsel and five-year Red Cross employee, as interim president and CEO. Everson had worked in the Bush administration from August 2001 -- including serving as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service -- until he was hired by the Red Cross. "This is flabbergasting, that's all I can say. It's completely contrary to his public persona that he evidenced while he was at the IRS," said Suzanne Ross McDowell, a Washington-based attorney who served on an advisory committee to the IRS division that deals with tax-exempt organizations. "From the standpoint of exempt organizations on the non-profit sector, it's just another news story that we would rather not see," she said. "It's got nothing to do with the Red Cross," said Ira Milstein, a New York lawyer specializing in corporate governance who has worked with the organization and was impressed with Everson. "He was a team player and a good leader. To have him fall off a cliff like this is just sad." A search committee has been formed to begin the process of finding Everson's permanent replacement, the organization said. The job has been a challenging one. Marsha J. Evans resigned as president in 2005, after the Red Cross response to Hurricane Katrina came under fire. Four years earlier, Bernadine Healy quit the post after the organization was criticized for mishandling donations intended for victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks and collecting vast quantities of blood that was not needed and ultimately thrown out. Healy told reporters she "had no choice" about her resignation. Meanwhile, DeFrancis acknowledged Tuesday that, 14 years after a court ordered the agency to improve its collection of blood, it has yet to meet federal safety and quality-control requirements. E-mail to a friend .

Red Cross says it became aware of the relationship 10 days ago . Relationship allegedly involves a subordinate female Red Cross employee . Board "concluded that the situation reflected poor judgment on Mr. Everson's part" Everson: I "deeply regret it is impossible for me to continue"

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(CNN) -- Canada's House of Commons voted Thursday to extend the country's military mission in Afghanistan until 2011, with the stipulation that NATO send reinforcements to the volatile Kandahar province. Canadian soldiers walk along a track at the Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan last month. Most of Canada's 2,500 troops in Afghanistan are in Kandahar as part of the NATO-led mission to stabilize the war-torn country. Their presence has sparked controversy in Canada, with the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democratic Party calling for an immediate troop withdrawal. Supporters of the mission argued that Canadians have made progress in providing schools, health care and clean water for thousands of Afghans. They said the improving conditions would be impossible without troops ensuring a secure environment for aid workers and local residents. "The military needs to be there," said Harold Albrecht, a conservative member of Parliament. "The military provides the civil order we would expect from police here." The Canadian mission in Afghanistan was to end next February. It has claimed the lives of 80 soldiers and a diplomat, according to The Associated Press. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has endorsed a panel's recommendation to keep troops in place only if another NATO nation dispatches additional troops to Kandahar. Canada wants a minimum of 1,000 reinforcements, The Globe and Mail reported. Thursday's motion, passed with a 198-77 vote, brought Harper's Conservative party and the opposition Liberals together on the issue. Other parties, however, noted that the cost of maintaining a troop presence in Afghanistan has not been disclosed to Parliament or the public. "We must provide clarity to the Canadian people," said Nathan Cullen of the New Democratic Party. "We believe it to be wrong for our country." E-mail to a friend .

Troops to stay until 2011, with the stipulation that NATO contribute more forces . Most of Canada's 2,500 troops in Afghanistan are in Kandahar province . The Canadian mission in Afghanistan was to end next February . Critics say the cost has not been disclosed to Parliament or the public .

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(CNN) -- They're big, strong, and fierce -- and they wear little blue booties. The police dogs in Duesseldorf, Germany are now patrolling the pavement in protective shoes that their police-officer handlers strap onto their paws. The reason? Too many glass shards left by beer drinkers in the city center, said Andre Hartwich, a spokesman for police in Duesseldorf. "We wondered how can we protect our dogs' feet against glass," said Hartwich. "We looked on the Internet and found these shoes." Beer drinkers along the Rhine River and in the city's Altstadt, or Old Town, often discard beer bottles on pebbled walkways. Broken glass poses a problem for the police force's 20 German Shepherds and Belgian Shepherds, Hartwich said. In addition, hooligans and vandals leave behind glass shards around New Year's Eve and during the city's famous Carnival celebrations. So what's a dog to do? Their handlers shelled out 60 euros -- $89 -- for shoes that are also worn by dogs who walk on ice in Alaska. Dogs need a month of training to get used to wearing the shoes, Hartwich said. "We have to condition the dogs to the shoes," he said. E-mail to a friend .

Police dogs in Duesseldorf, Germany are now wearing protective shoes . Glass shards left by beer drinkers in the city center are the reason . Duesseldorf police force has 20 German and Belgian Shepherds . Dogs shoes cost €60 ($89) and are also worn by dogs who walk on ice in Alaska .

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BARCELONA, Spain -- Barcelona are ready for twice world player of the year Ronaldinho to move on, said club president Joan Laporta. Ronaldinho is expected to leave Barcelona this summer after struggling for form last season. Laporta told the Catalan TV3 station that the Brazilian midfielder, who struggled with injuries and poor form last season, needed new challenges in his career. "When the wheel turns, it's normal that the key figures leave," Laporta said. "I would like Ronaldinho to be given a great send-off so that he is remembered for all he has given us and that if he didn't do any more it was because the circumstances wouldn't allow it. "Last year, we thought that it might be the year to sell him, but given his enthusiasm and the appreciation that a club like Barcelona needs to have, we decided to let him stay on. Things haven't turned out the way he wanted them to." Laporta recognized that it might not be easy to sell Ronaldinho, who suffered a series of injury and fitness problems this season and made the starting line-up in only 13 of 38 league matches. Ronaldinho last played for Barcelona in the 2-1 loss at home to Villarreal on March 9, has suffered muscle pain in his right leg been out of action ever since. AC Milan showed an interest in signing him and his brother Robert De Assis said personal terms had been agreed. But the clubs failed to reach agreement over a transfer fee. After a second successive season without a trophy Barcelona announced on May 7 that Rijkaard would leave at the end of the season and be replaced by former player Josep Guardiola. "We decided that if Frank did not continue then we would choose Guardiola because Pep possessed the necessary humility," said Laporta. "We didn't think about coaches like Mourinho or (Rafa) Benitez, who are both great coaches, but aren't right for Barcelona. So we told Rijkaard that when he left Guardiola would take his place." Barca's arch-rivals Real Madrid, who lifted another Spanish title this season, have signed their first newcomer for the next campaign by paying a reported 10 million euros ($15.5 million) for Argentine defender Ezequiel Garay from Racing Santander. Marca newspaper said the 21-year-old Argentine had signed a six-year contract. Meanwhile, reports that Real could be making a move for Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo were dismissed by coach Bernd Schuster. "I prefer to spend my time talking about things that have some bearing to reality," he told a press conference. Marca had reported that Real were still interested in buying Ronaldo who has put off all talk of his future until after the Champions League final.

Barcelona are ready to let Brazilian international Ronaldinho leave the club . Club president Joan Laporta says that Ronaldinho needs new challenges . Barcelona have already replaced coach Frank Rijkaard with Pep Guardiola .

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two bombings in separate Iraq provinces on Monday killed eight U.S. troops, the U.S. military said. A boy with a machine gun weeps Monday at the site of a suicide bombing in Kanan that killed a sheik. A roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and an interpreter in Diyala province, which has been a major front in the war during the "surge" of U.S. troops fighting insurgents near the capital. Earlier in the day, at least five U.S. soldiers on foot patrol were killed and three others wounded in a suicide bombing in Baghdad. In addition, suicide bombers killed five Iraqis in two bombings in Diyala province Monday morning, including a sheik who helped battle Sunni extremists and his 5-year-old niece. Watch new suicide tactics in Iraq » . Four U.S. soldiers died at the scene Monday's Baghdad blast and one more died later of wounds, the military said. They were with Multi-National Division-Baghdad. An Iraqi interpreter also was wounded in the explosion, the officials said. Initial reports indicate the bomber was wearing an explosive vest. "Five soldiers paid the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of the Iraqi and American people. I ask you remember these fallen heroes and their families as well as their wounded brethren in your thoughts and prayers," said Col. Allen Batschelet, chief of staff for Multi-National Division-Baghdad. "We remain resolute in our resolve to protect the people of Iraq and kill or capture those who would bring them harm." The explosion marks the deadliest attack against the U.S. military since five soldiers were killed January 28 in a roadside bombing in Mosul. Troops killed a Saudi insurgent whose network was responsible for that attack. Earlier, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said one person was killed and eight people were wounded in a suicide bomb attack targeting a U.S. military convoy in western Baghdad. It is not clear if the U.S. and Iraqi reports are about the same incident. Monday's attacks would bring the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq this month to 10. A total of 3,983 military personnel have died in the nearly 5-year-old war. The attack came after a bomber near Baquba targeted the leader of a security group assisting U.S. troops. The teen suicide bomber killed a sheik and a 5-year-old, a day after she went to the sheik's Kanan home claiming to need help finding her husband, police and family members said. The female suicide bomber, 18, blew herself up at the sheik's home Monday morning, police said. The tribal leader was the head of a local citizens group that has been working with U.S. forces to rout out insurgents. The largely Sunni security groups are known as Awakening Councils. Kanan is east of Baquba, situated in the volatile Diyala province, which has been a major front for the "surge" of U.S.-led troops targeting militants near Baghdad. According to one of the sheik's cousins, the teen bomber went to the sheik's house Sunday to ask him for help finding her husband -- thought to be kidnapped or detained. The 18-year-old was told to return Monday, the cousin said. She returned Monday and staged the attack, killing the sheik, his 5-year-old niece and one of his security guards, police said. The attack reflects both the growing use of females as suicide bombers in Iraq and the targeting of Awakening Councils, which are also known as Concerned Citizens Groups or Sons of Iraq. The grass-roots groups, which are sometimes led by former insurgents, have drawn more than 90,000 volunteers to their ranks, military spokesman Rear Adm. Gregory said Sunday. Since November, there have been at least five attacks carried out by female suicide bombers, including a twin bombing at Baghdad pet markets last month that killed almost 100 people. Insurgent groups, particularly al Qaeda in Iraq, are increasingly using women as suicide bombers because they are less likely to be searched, the U.S. military has said. About an hour after the attack at the sheik's home, another suicide bomber approached Iraqi security forces in Muqdadiya and blew himself up as the forces began shooting at him. The blast killed two civilians and wounded 20 others, including two police officers, authorities said. Muqdadiya also is in Diyala province. In other developments: . • A suicide car bomb exploded Monday outside an upscale hotel in Sulaimaniya, killing two people and wounding at least 32 others, police said. The blast occurred at the Sulaimani Palace hotel, located in the center of the city. It is in northern Iraq's Kurdish region and is a common stop for visiting government officials, businessmen and contractors. • Two bombings in Baghdad on Monday killed an Iraqi and wounded nine others, an Interior Ministry official said. A parked car bomb exploded near an outdoor market in Shaab, a Shiite neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding seven others. A roadside bomb exploded on a highway near a U.S. military patrol in eastern Baghdad, wounding two bystanders. • Coalition troops north of Baghdad killed five insurgents and detained 19 people in raids, the U.S. military said Monday. The Sunday raids were part of coalition forces' "untiring efforts to remove al Qaeda from Iraq," said Lt. Col. Maura Gillen, a Multi-National Forces-Iraq spokeswoman. • Several U.S. troops may have been sickened by dirty water intended for hygiene use and supplied to bases around Iraq between 2004 and 2006, according to a Pentagon report released Monday. However, the Department of Defense inspector general's report points out that because the water was not monitored, it is impossible to tell for sure if it was dirty and if it contributed to the troops getting sick. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Jamie McIntyre, Mohammed Tawfeeq and Jonathan Wald contributed to this report.

NEW: Roadside bomb kills 3 U.S. soldiers and an interpreter in Diyala province . Earlier, at least 5 U.S. soldiers on foot patrol die in Baghdad suicide bombing . Baghdad blast marks deadliest attack on U.S. troops since January 28 . Female suicide bomber kills sheik, 5-year-old niece and guard at Iraqi home .

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The federal government has released to CNN more than 100 photographs of a Halloween party that temporarily threatened to derail the nomination of a top Department of Homeland Security official. ICE chief Julie Myers poses with a costume contest winner at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement party. The images included several digital photos that the official had ordered erased because they were deemed to be inappropriate and offensive. At the party, Julie Myers, then-acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security, gave an award for "most original costume" to an employee wearing prison stripes, a wig with dreadlocks and face-darkening makeup. Immediately after posing for a photo with the winner, Myers later told Congress, she recognized that she made an error in judgment and ordered the photos deleted from the camera. Myers said she did not know the employee was wearing skin makeup, but ordered the photos destroyed because she did not think that "recognizing an escaped prisoner in any way was beneficial to the agency's goal of treating everyone in our custody with dignity and respect." This week, in response to the Freedom of Information Act request filed by CNN on November 6, ICE released 113 official photographs of the party, including all of the deleted photos, which technicians were able to electronically restore. An ICE spokeswoman denied the photos were suppressed until after Myers' job was secure, saying ICE responded in an "efficient time frame" to the FOIA request. News of the photos' existence infuriated some members of Congress, who said they should have been made aware of them earlier. "It is too bad that these photos surfaced too late to have dealt with her nomination, perhaps, in a different way," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, who last November put a "hold" on Myers' confirmation because of the hubbub. Watch what congressmen think about party photos » . Myers was confirmed on December 20. As an assistant secretary of Homeland Security, she leads ICE, the agency charged with enforcing immigration law in the nation's interior. The agency has more than 15,000 employees, including 6,000 investigators. McCaskill said she believed the photos would have affected the confirmation. "This is such brutally bad judgment that, to me, it indicates that the leadership of this division is flawed," she said. Rep. Bennie Thompson, whose committee oversees ICE, said Wednesday he is upset both by the photos and by ICE's failure to give the photos to Congress in November. "I was satisfied [with Myers' explanations and apology] until I found out that these pictures existed," Thompson said. An ICE spokeswoman denied that there was any intentional effort to mislead Congress. "We had asked that they be destroyed, and as far as we knew, that was the case," spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said. Myers was "frank and honest about every aspect of that situation from the very beginning," she said. An estimated 50 to 75 employees attended the October 31 costume party at ICE headquarters in the District of Columbia. A poster advertising the contest said costumes should be tasteful and "office appropriate." Myers declined to talk to CNN Wednesday, but in written comments to Congress last November, she offered the following account of the incident: . She and two other ICE officials served as judges of the costume contest, and she had "very limited interaction" with the employee in the prisoner costume, who "was present at the [judging] table for less than half a minute before he moved on. "I was not aware at the time of the contest that the employee disguised his skin color," she wrote. Nonetheless, after posing for a photo with the employee, she realized it was inappropriate. "Although I did not know that this individual had disguised his race, I determined that I had made an error in judgment in recognizing an escaped prisoner at this party," she wrote, and she instructed her chief of staff to direct the official photographer to delete the photos. In an internal e-mail that was sent at 3:05 p.m., shortly after the party was to end, the ICE public affairs director, Wendy Burrell, said, "Please make sure that the photos of the most creative (single male entry) are destroyed. They may not be used in any publication, Web site, compilation disk, you name it. Not just not used. Please erase all." Myers said she was "shocked and horrified" to learn the next day that the employee had used skin-darkening makeup. The employee was counseled, and Myers sent out a note to all agency employees expressing regret over the event, agency spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said in November. "It is now clear that, however unintended, a few of the costumes were inappropriate and offensive," Myers wrote. She reminded employees of their responsibility to complete diversity training and said managers should distribute and discuss ICE's diversity policy statement during staff meetings. The employee who donned the inmate costume was placed on two weeks of administrative leave, counseled by a supervisor and returned to full duty. E-mail to a friend .

Partygoer used make-up to darken skin, went as escaped prisoner . Acting Immigration chief judged costume contest . Congress told photos destroyed before Julie Myers' confirmation hearings . CNN got photos through Freedom of Information Act request .

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(CNN) -- Hazardous materials teams are still cleaning up a toxic chemical spill from a train derailment in Lafayette, Louisiana, on Saturday that forced 3,000 people from their homes. Lafayette Police Sgt. Billy Soileau carries Ke'Iveion Solomon 2, as he helps evacuate children Saturday. "Hazmat says that clean up is moving quickly and on track," Lafayette police said Sunday in a statement. Two train cars leaked highly corrosive hydrochloric acid after the six-car train jumped the tracks Saturday about 2:30 a.m. CT (3:30 a.m. ET), according to police. The chemical spill caused a toxic cloud to form above the site. Lafayette authorities evacuated about 3,500 homes and businesses -- including a nursing home -- within a mile of the derailment location. Watch traffic detoured from cloud » . The Red Cross opened a shelter at Carencro High School for residents to stay Saturday night, while another 40 to 50 families were put up at hotel rooms, police said. Residents will be allowed to return home once the spill is contained and no longer dangerous, said Joe Faust, a spokesman for BNSF Railway, which operates the train cars. Hydrochloric acid is a clear, colorless solution of hydrogen chloride in water often used in metal cleaning and electroplating. Exposure to it can irritate the skin, said Lt. Craig Stansbury of the Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Office. People exposed to the substance are urged to seek medical attention. Residents outside the evacuation area were advised to close windows and doors and turn off air conditioning to avoid any contamination. Lafayette is about three hours west of New Orleans.

Train cars leaked corrosive hydrochloric acid after a Saturday derailment . Chemical spill caused a toxic cloud to form above Lafayette site . Exposure to the chemical can irritate skin . Lafayette authorities evacuated about 3,500 homes and businesses .

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If you're like us, you eat out more than ever -- and, as nice as it is to not have to cook, those meals out can actually feel like work. How do you navigate the minefields of huge portions, hidden fats, and sky-high sodium levels? Olive Garden's Venetian Apricot Chicken has 448 calories and 11 grams of fat. You shouldn't have to resign yourself to paying for restaurant meals with a future cardiac risk. You just need to know where to go to find healthy, fresh food. To that end, we went out into the world of sit-down restaurants, looking to separate the (whole) wheat from the chaff. Backed by an advisory panel of experts in healthy dining, we sifted through 43 chains with more than 75 locations across the country and, frankly, were astonished by how many restaurants made no nutritional information available. Health.com: Meet Health's experts . But judge we did those brave (and progressive) enough to share their numbers. What you hold in your hands are the 10 that stood at the top of the heap. Uno's Chicago Grill . If you haven't been to your local Uno's recently, you're in for a great surprise. Sure, its famous deep-dish (read high-fat) pizzas still hold court, but nutrition has become the word of the day with a completely transfat-free menu and plenty of grilled entrees (including antibiotic-free chicken). Adding to the healthy variety: whole-grain pasta and brown rice, organic coffee and tea, and flatbread pizzas that have half the calories of deep-dish ones. Plus, you can add a salad to your pizza for half-price because, according to the menu, "We want you to get some greens in your diet." Now that's a blue-ribbon commitment to health. Another reason Uno's is at the top of our list: You know what you're eating. In the lobbies of most of the restaurant's locations, there are Nutrition Information Centers that detail ingredients, fat and sodium contents, and calories and fiber of every item, in addition to gluten-free options. Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes a look at Health magazine's restaurant choices » . • Danger zone: Deep-dish pizzas can pile on the fat. • We love: The Penne Bolognese -- just 16 grams of fat (well within the daily recommended max of 65 grams of fat for a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet). Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes . Can a buffet-style restaurant -- that symbol of American overindulgence --possibly be one of the healthiest restaurants in the country? It can in this case, because this salad-soup-and-bakery eatery (Southern California locations are named Souplantation, everywhere else they're called Sweet Tomatoes) uses produce so fresh that it's guaranteed to have been "in the ground" 24 hours before it's in a refrigerated truck on its way to the restaurant. At the salad bar you'll find seasonal vegetables like squash and bell peppers, freshly tossed and prepared salads, and a great range of nonfat dressings. San Marino Spinach With Pumpkin Seeds and Cranberries, anyone? This is paradise for vegetarians, vegans, and anyone who's looking for a low-sodium, low-fat, high-nutrient meal outside the home. • Danger zone: Plate overload -- after all, it's all-you-can-eat. • We love: The Tomato Spinach Whole Wheat pasta, a delicious combo of whole grains and veggies. Mimi's Cafe . This cozy café-style restaurant transforms normally less-than-healthy foods into better -- and still tasty -- options: a half-pound cheeseburger wrapped in lettuce (that's right, no bun); the cutely named Naked French Market Onion Soup, served without cheese. Another thing to love is the way that Mimi's clearly steers you toward its healthy options. Its "Lifestyle Menu" points you to low-carb picks like the fish of the day served with fresh steamed veggies. Also, Mimi's keeps portions small, so you can get away with occasionally having one of their more indulgent entrees like the Sweet & Sour Coconut Shrimp (608 calories). Health.com: Healthiest fast-food restaurants . • Danger zone: The "Comfort Classics" page of the menu, with throwbacks like rich (super-high-fat) Chicken Cordon Bleu. • We love: Chicken & Fruit -- grilled chicken and a garden salad, plus wedges of fresh orange, honeydew, watermelon, and cantaloupe. P.F. Chang's China Bistro . Take the best aspects of Asian cuisine -- a combination of fresh vegetables and protein -- surround them with healthy influences such as whole-grain brown rice, wild-caught, sustainable Alaskan salmon, and all-natural chicken, and you have a recipe for delicious, healthy dining. Wok-based cooking (which requires less oil) using soybean oil keeps fat contents low, and less sodium in the sauces rounds out P.F. Chang's healthy take on Chinese food. Special credit goes to their nutritional information being based on the whole entrée, not a single serving like at most places. Health.com: Eat out, without gaining a pound . • Danger zone: Traditional, fat-dense items such as Lo Mein Beef. • We love: Carb-free vegetarian lettuce wraps -- wok-seared tofu, red onions, and water chestnuts with mint and lime, set in lettuce cups. Bob Evans Restaurants . You wouldn't think a restaurant that prides itself on sausage could muscle its way into the top five healthiest restaurants in the country. But Bob Evans scores high on its dinner menu, which has plenty of low-carb, low-fat entrees and alternatives for children and adults (chicken tenders that are grilled instead of fried, potato-crusted flounder, and salmon stir-fry). Look for sides like steamed broccoli florets and fresh fruit, and enjoy old-fashioned family meals in a modern, nutrition-forward way. • Danger zone: Breakfast, where bacon and sausage are kings. • We love: Healthy options on the kid's menu, like slow-roasted turkey with mashed potatoes and glazed baby carrots, and fruit and yogurt dippers for dessert. Ruby Tuesday . If we'd done this survey in 2004, Ruby Tuesday might have won the blue ribbon for printing all its nutritional content right on the menu. It was revolutionary, and, frankly, it didn't last. But the healthy ethos survived in the chain's ingredients: organic greens, hormone-free chicken, transfat-free frying oil, and better-for-you beverages including Jones organic teas and made-to-order drinks like all natural lemonades (think real fruit and juice). It's easy to find the good stuff -- it's highlighted -- and the offerings range from a chicken wrap in a whole-wheat tortilla to broiled tilapia. Health.com: The best independent restaurants . • Danger zone: Comfort-food entrees like Gourmet Chicken Potpie, which piles more than half your daily calories on the plate. • We love: That they've even healthied-up the burgers, offering veggie-and turkey-versions. Romano's Macaroni Grill . This Italian eatery puts its entire menu's nutritional content online, so you know before you go what to steer clear of -- mainly, the massive baked pastas. But what pushed Macaroni Grill onto our best list is its "Sensible Fare" menu, with entrees like Simple Salmon, a grilled fillet sided by grilled asparagus and broccoli. Grazie for whole-wheat penne available as a substitute in any dish. And bravo for including a grilled skinless chicken breast with steamed broccoli and pasta on the kid's menu. • Danger zone: Heavy entrees like spaghetti and meatballs with meat sauce. • We love: The delicious Italian sorbetto and biscotti: just 330 calories and 4 grams of fat. Chevy's Fresh Mex . Chevy's makes a big deal out of the "fresh" in its name, and with good reason -- no cans in the restaurant, fresh salsa blended every hour, fresh avocados smashed every day for guacamole, and watch-them-made tortillas. All oils are trans fat-free, and the Mexican-style fare has lots of healthy options including Grilled Fish Tacos. Health.com: America's not-so-healthiest restaurants . • Danger zone: Sodium counts. To get below 1,000 milligrams, you'll need to get those Chicken Fajitas with no tortillas, tomalito, rice, sour cream, or guacamole. • We love: Fresh fish of the day, grilled and served on a skillet with homemade salsa. Olive Garden . Like Macaroni Grill, this Italian eatery has great-for-you options, as long as you keep your wits about you (again, avoid the baked pastas!). Use the olive-branch icon on the menu to find low-fat "Garden Fare" items such as Venetian Apricot Chicken. Even the fries aren't a disaster, because they're done in trans fat-free oil. You can grab some whole-grain goodness, too, by choosing the whole-wheat linguine at dinner as a substitute for any pasta. • Danger zone: The non-olive-branch entrees. Olive Garden provides no nutritional information on anything else on the menu. • We love: The low-fat Capellini Pomodoro (644 calories and 14 grams fat). Denny's . Yes, the home of the Lumberjack Slam and Moons Over My Hammy offers lots of skinny options to counter its fatty mainstays. "Fit-Fare" dishes such as the grilled-chicken-breast salad, and tilapia with rice and veggies, each have less than 15 grams of fat. Denny's also posts full nutritional information on its Web site. Its use of trans fats to cook its French fries kept it from landing higher on our list, but the rest of the fried food is trans fat-free. • Danger zone: Breakfast specials, especially the Meat Lover's Scramble, which is as bad for you as it sounds. • We love: The online nutritional chart has Weight Watchers Food Exchange Values. E-mail to a friend . Enter to win a monthly Room Makeover Giveaway from MyHomeIdeas.com . Copyright Health Magazine 2007 . Additional reporting by Brittani Tingle.

Health magazine names Top 10 chain restaurants for fresh, healthy food . Writers looked at 43 chains with more than 75 locations across the country . Experts' favorite: Uno's Chicago Grill, with trans fat-free menu, many grilled entrees .

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The office of Muqtada al-Sadr accused Iraqi and U.S. forces of attacking Sadr City on Friday, just hours after the Shiite cleric called for calm in the wake of the assassination of one of his top aides in the southern city of Najaf. Iraqi Sadrists march Friday in the Najaf funeral procession of Sayyed Riyadh al-Nuri, top aide to Muqtada al-Sadr. Witnesses and media in the heavily Shiite Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, home to the cleric's power base in the capital, reported heavy fighting between U.S.-backed Iraqi troops and al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia. The witnesses said U.S. aircraft had been bombarding the area for hours, and media reported rockets slamming into houses and many casualties. Witnesses and al-Sadr's office said mosques were making loudspeaker announcements about Mehdi Army attacks on U.S. military armored vehicles. U.S. troops working in support of Iraqi soldiers killed two snipers, two other men firing rocket-propelled grenades and "multiple others from a nearby building where soldiers were taking RPG and machine gun fire," the U.S. military said in a statement. At the same time -- about 9 p.m. -- at least six roadside bombs damaged vehicles in a U.S. Army convoy that was transporting barriers for a group of Iraqi Army soldiers establishing a checkpoint, the military said. Afterward, the military said, the Iraqi and U.S. soldiers were attacked by small-arms, machine-gun and RPG fire from buildings overlooking the road. The soldiers fired back at their attackers, killing at least four of them. More explosions from the buildings indicated possible arms and munitions stored there, the military said. But the small-arms attack continued until the U.S. forces fired two rounds from an M1A2 Abrams tank, killing two more attackers. Not long afterward, the U.S. Air Force, operating an unmanned aerial vehicle, fired a Hellfire missile at three men spotted setting roadside bombs, killing all three. Maj. John Gossart, executive officer of the American unit involved, said that no U.S. or Iraqi troops were seriously hurt. Earlier, al-Sadr issued remarks about the killing of Sayyed Riyadh al-Nuri, who was shot outside his house in Najaf's Adala neighborhood after returning from Friday prayers. "The hands of the occupiers and their collaborators have treacherously reached our beloved martyr Sayyed Riyadh al-Nuri," al-Sadr wrote in a statement on the Web. Al-Nuri is one of 17 people killed over 24 hours in airstrikes, fighting and attacks in areas wracked in recent weeks by fighting among Shiites. The assassination prompted an immediate vehicle ban in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, anger among mourners and an intensification of fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki issued a statement deploring the killing and ordering an investigation. Al-Sadr issued remarks about the killing in a statement on a Web site. Spokesman Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi emphasized that the cleric is not accusing anyone in particular of the killing but believes that the killers "are the ones who are following the occupiers' steps and don't want stability for the country." But al-Obeidi called the killing an "act of provocation" after the "siege of Sadr City." He was referring to the battles since Sunday involving members of al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia and Iraqi security forces dominated by a rival Shiite political movement, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. That fighting started with an offensive in Basra and spread to other Shiite regions, including Sadr City and the Babil provincial capital of Hilla. The al-Nuri assassination prompted officials to expand the daily curfew in Hilla. Police said a ban on all outside movement that usually begins at 11 p.m. and ends at 8 a.m. will instead start at 8:30 p.m. Violence continued Friday in several places in Iraq. Suicide bombings killed at least four people -- three of them police -- and wounded 15, officials said. The first bombing was in Ramadi, the provincial capital of the predominantly Sunni Anbar province west of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said. At least three national police officers were killed and five wounded, the official said. The second attack took place at a checkpoint about 20 km (12 miles) north of Baiji, according to police, who said the bomber and one other person were killed and 10 were wounded. The casualties were members of a local Awakening Council who were manning the checkpoint, police said. The suicide bomber was driving a pickup carrying sheep. Awakening Councils, or Sons of Iraq, are made up of Sunnis who have turned on al Qaeda in Iraq. Also, at least three people were killed and five wounded in a mortar attack on Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, an Interior Ministry official said. The Palestine Hotel -- across the Tigris River from the International Zone, the heavily guarded seat of U.S. power in Baghdad -- is in the path of many of the rockets and mortars aimed at the zone. The U.S. military has blamed Iranian-backed Shiite militants for recent mortar and rocket attacks in Baghdad and International Zone, also known as the Green Zone. Unmanned aerial vehicles targeted and killed six suspected insurgents in Basra on Friday and six "heavily armed criminals" in northeastern Baghdad on Thursday night, the U.S. military said. Watch the Baghdad drone attack » . The U.S. and Iraqi militaries have consistently said they have not been targeting specific groups in their recent battles in Shiite areas. Iraqi and U.S. government officials say they differentiate between Mehdi Army members obeying al-Sadr's seven-month cease-fire pledge and "gangs," "criminals" or "outlaws" who aren't obeying al-Sadr's orders. The intra-Shiite fighting in Iraq that has killed hundreds of people in the past two weeks has involved two main movements: members of the Mehdi Army militia loyal to al-Sadr, and Iraqi security forces dominated by the chief political rival of the Sadrists, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Many of those security forces had been integrated into police and army units from the council's Badr Brigade militia. E-mail to a friend . CNN's Yousif Bassil and Jomana Karadsheh contributed to this report.

NEW: U.S. troops kill two snipers, two other men firing rocket-propelled grenades . Army says U.S., Iraqi patrol came under fire setting up checkpoint . Muqtada al-Sadr blames U.S., calls for calm after top aide killed in Najaf . Mortar attack kills three at Palestine Hotel across from International Zone .

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Taliban in Afghanistan -- whose government was toppled by U.S.-led forces after the September 11 attacks in 2001 -- has strengthened its military and technical capabilities even while suffering heavy combat losses, says a State Department report released Wednesday. Afghan policemen stand Wednesday outside the ruins of a house destroyed during clashes with Taliban insurgents. "The Taliban-led insurgency remained a capable, determined, and resilient threat to stability and to the expansion of government authority, particularly in the Pashtun south and east," according to the "Country Reports on Terrorism 2007." The Taliban's information operations have become "increasingly aggressive and sophisticated," and their ability to obtain al Qaeda support and recruit soldiers from the Taliban base of rural Pashtuns is "undiminished," the report says. But new civilian-military counterinsurgency approaches in the east, particularly Nangarhar, have begun to yield successes, the report says. The Taliban is funding its terror activities with money from supporters in neighboring Pakistan and from narcotics trafficking and kidnappings. Kidnappings of foreigners have increased, the report says. The group also has increased its use of improvised explosive devices, and suicide bombings have become more frequent and more deadly, it says. Quoting U.N.-compiled figures, the State Department said terrorists launched about 140 suicide-bomb attacks in 2007. The number of terror attacks in Afghanistan increased from 969 in 2006 to 1,127 last year, and the number of people killed, injured or kidnapped as the result of terrorism rose from 3,557 in 2006 to 4,673 in 2007, the report says. In the face of attacks by the Taliban and related groups on coalition forces and others, Afghanistan has struggled to build a stable, democratic government. However, it has taken steps to build strong relationships with neighboring Pakistan and address problems such as poverty that help fuel terrorism, the report says. The Program for Strengthening Peace and Reconciliation has persuaded more than 5,000 Taliban members and other insurgents to stop their lives of violence, it says. The shifting situation in Afghanistan prompted the top U.S. military officer to say in early April that he is "deeply concerned" about the situation there, and that maintaining troops in Iraq is harming overall U.S. military capabilities. "The Taliban is growing bolder, suicide attacks are on the rise, and so is the trade in illegal narcotics," said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the United States needs more troops to hold areas of southern Afghanistan -- the region of highest concern -- and to train local army and police personnel. The two men testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The United States recently sent an additional 3,500 troops to Afghanistan, but commanders in the region would like 10,000 to 12,000 more, Gates said. He said he doubted NATO would make up the difference. Although 25 NATO allies and 13 other countries have contributed forces, the bulk of the recent fighting in Afghanistan has been done by U.S., Canadian, British and Dutch troops. Canadian troops are based in the southern province of Kandahar, once a Taliban stronghold. E-mail to a friend .

State Department report: Taliban military, technical capabilities stronger . Taliban called a determined threat to Afghan stability . Funding comes from Pakistan supporters, narcotics trafficking, abductions . Number of terror attacks increased from 969 in 2006 to 1,127 last year .

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