honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted at 1:52 p.m., Tuesday, April 10, 2007

National & world news highlights

Associated Press

DEMOCRATS SUBPOENA GONZALES FOR MORE DOCUMENTS

WASHINGTON — Democrats subpoenaed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday for more documents, escalating their fight with the Bush administration over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

The subpoena, issued a week before Gonzales is to testify under oath before Congress about the dismissals, seeks hundreds of documents either withheld or heavily blacked out by his department. The subpoena sets a Monday deadline for Gonzales to produce the documents.

"We have been patient in allowing the department to work through its concerns regarding the sensitive nature of some of these materials," House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., wrote Gonzales in a letter accompanying the subpoena. "Unfortunately, the department has not indicated any meaningful willingness to find a way to meet our legitimate needs."

He characterized the subpoena as a last resort after weeks of negotiations with Justice over documents and e-mails the committee wants in its pursuit of whether any of the firings were improper.

Responding, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse stopped short of saying the department would fight the subpoena. But he said legal concerns about violating privacy rights of people mentioned in the documents have kept the Justice Department from releasing them.

16 U.S. SOLDIERS INJURED IN BAGHDAD FIGHTING

BAGHDAD — A raging, daylong battle erupted in central Baghdad on Tuesday and four Iraqi soldiers were killed, 16 U.S. soldiers were wounded and a U.S. helicopter was hit by ground fire at the close of the second month of the massive security crackdown on the capital.

Sixty miles to the north, in the mostly Sunni city of Muqdadiyah, a woman with a suicide vest strapped beneath her black Muslim robe blew herself up in the midst of 200 Iraqi police recruits. The attack killed at least 16 men waiting to learn if they had been hired.

The security crackdown, which began Feb. 14 and will see nearly 170,000 American forces in Iraq by the end of May, has curbed some sectarian attacks and assassinations in the capital. But violence continues to flare periodically in Baghdad and has risen markedly in nearby cities and towns.

The fierce fighting in central Baghdad shut down the Sunni-dominated Fadhil and Sheik Omar neighborhoods just after 7 a.m., the U.S. military said. After American and Iraqi troops came under fire during a routine search operation, helicopter gunships swooped in, engaging insurgents with machine gun fire.

Some Arab television stations reported an American helicopter was shot down in the fight, and showed video of a charred piece of mechanical wreckage that was impossible to identify. The U.S. issued a statement late Tuesday saying an attack helicopter suffered damage from small arms fire but returned to base.

2 STUDENTS SHOT INSIDE CHICAGO HIGH SCHOOL

CHICAGO — Two students were shot Tuesday inside a Chicago public high school on the city's South Side, police said.

Two people were taken to hospitalized in "critical/serious" condition, the Chicago Fire Department said. Spokeswoman Eve Rodriguez did not have information on the victims' ages or gender.

Police had initially said the students were in good condition.

The shots were fired at the Chicago Vocational Career Academy at about 2:30 p.m., police spokeswoman Monique Bond said. A student with a handgun shot an unarmed student in the leg, and a bullet apparently ricocheted and struck the shooter in the leg.

She said a gun was recovered at the scene.

RUTGERS TEAM TO MEET WITH RADIO HOST IMUS

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Rutgers women's basketball coach on Tuesday called the comments radio host Don Imus made about her team "racist and sexist remarks that are deplorable, despicable and unconscionable."

"These young ladies before you are valedictorians, future doctors, musical prodigies," coach C. Vivian Stringer told a nationally publicized news conference a day after the uproar over Imus' comments led to a two-week suspension of his show.

Team member Essence Carson said she and the other players were angry and disgusted but would meet with Imus. They stopped short of saying whether they thought he should be fired for calling the team "nappy-headed hos."

"We are students first," Carson said. "We did not do anything to deserve his controversy."

But she said, "We all agreed the meeting with Mr. Imus will help."

BUSH INVITES DEMOCRATS FOR MEETING ON WAR SPENDING

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Tuesday he wants to talk with Democrats about the standoff over war funding, but he made it clear he will not embrace any timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Democrats questioned the point of a meeting if the president won't negotiate.

"We can discuss the way forward on a bill that is a clean bill — a bill that funds our troops without artificial timetables for withdrawal, and without handcuffing our generals on the ground," Bush said in a speech to an American Legion audience in nearby Fairfax, Va.

On one hand, Bush extended an offer to meet with lawmakers Tuesday. On the other, the White House bluntly said it would not be a negotiating session.

The president said if lawmakers don't send him a bill he will sign — one that does not include timetables or money for pet projects in their home districts — it would be Congress, not the White House, that will have to answer to troops.

CLIMATE REPORT OUTLINES DRAMATIC EFFECTS

MEXICO CITY — Rising global temperatures could melt Latin America's glaciers within 15 years, cause food shortages affecting 130 million people across Asia by 2050 and wipe out Africa's wheat crop, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.

The report, written and reviewed by hundreds of scientists, outlined dramatic effects of climate change including rising sea levels, the disappearance of species and intensifying natural disasters. It said 30 percent of the world's coastlines could be lost by 2080.

Scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlined details of the report in news conferences around the world Tuesday, four days after they released a written summary of their findings. The report is the second of three being issued this year; the first dealt with the physical science of climate change and the third will deal with responses to it.

In Mexico City, scientists predicted that global warming could cost the Brazilian rain forest up to 30 percent of its species and turn large swaths into savannah. They said ocean levels are projected to rise 4.3 feet by 2080 and flood low-lying cities including Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Polar ice caps will likely melt, opening a waterway at the North Pole and threatening to make the Panama Canal obsolete, IPCC member Edmundo de Alba said. Warmer waters will spawn bigger and more dangerous hurricanes that will threaten coastlines not traditionally affected by them.