Hamas leaders to honor truce
Leaders of the Palestinian movement Hamas struck a defiant tone Friday as they launched a series of high-profile meetings in Russia, demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal before they negotiate with the Jewish state and declaring they no longer have “interest or enthusiasm” in their year-old cease-fire.
Yet Russia was able to win a pledge that Hamas would continue the truce. Hamas officials also said they would recognize earlier Palestinian agreements with Israel, including the internationally brokered “road map” for the phased implementation of a Palestinian state – provided that Israel “moves in the same direction” toward peace and ends its occupation of the West Bank, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
“This is an important statement. I will not make optimistic forecasts – however, this is a step in the right direction,” Lavrov told reporters.
Chapel Hill, N.C.
UNC grad will face charges in rampage
A recent University of North Carolina graduate faces attempted murder charges after he allegedly drove a sport utility vehicle through a popular campus gathering spot Friday, clipping and scattering startled bystanders.
No one was seriously hurt.
Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, was in the custody of campus police. They intended to charge him with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, said police Capt. George Hare.
Taheri-azar called police to surrender and then awaited officers on a street two miles from the campus, authorities said. Local investigators declined to discuss a motive.
West Palm Beach, Fla.
Monaghan claims he ‘just misspoke’
Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas S. Monaghan, who is helping to bankroll the birth of a Florida town and university, backtracked Friday from comments that he’d like the community to be governed by strict Roman Catholic principles.
His ideas about barring pornography and birth control, he said, apply only to the Catholic university.
“There are a lot of misconceptions,” Monaghan said Friday.
Both the town of Ave Maria and its Ave Maria University, the first Catholic university to be built in the United States in four decades, are set to open next year about 25 miles east of Naples in southwest Florida.
Monaghan’s comments Friday contrasted with statements he made last year to a Catholic men’s group in Boston that pornographic magazines won’t be sold in town, pharmacies won’t carry condoms or birth control pills, and cable television will carry no X-rated channels.
“I would say I just misspoke,” Monaghan said Friday. “The town will be open to anybody.”