In brief: Bombs kill eight coalition troops
KABUL, Afghanistan – Roadside bombs killed eight members of the international force in Afghanistan – including seven U.S. troops – raising to more than a dozen the number who have died in the previous three days, NATO said today.
The spike in deaths came as President Hamid Karzai again publicly raised doubts about the U.S. strategy in the war, saying success cannot be achieved until more Afghans are in the front lines and insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan are shut down.
NATO gave no details of the Monday blasts except that they occurred in the south, the main theater of the conflict, and that five were killed in a single blast. The nationality of the eighth casualty was not given.
Witnesses said the five died when a bomb struck a Humvee on a main road on the outskirts of Kandahar.
MANILA, Philippines – Hong Kong forensic experts inspected the bullet-peppered bus in which a hijacker was accused of killing eight tourists in Manila last week, as the Philippines worked to calm China’s outrage over the bloodshed.
Anger has been rising in Hong Kong since the Aug. 23 carnage in which a disgruntled former Philippine police officer took the busload of tourists from the Chinese territory hostage in a bid to win back his job. Authorities’ mishandling of the crisis seemed to enrage the hostage taker, who shot at the tourists, killing eight, before being killed by a police sharpshooter.
Student indicted in attack on cabbie
NEW YORK – An arts student accused of slashing a Muslim taxi driver’s neck has been indicted on hate-crime charges, prosecutors said Monday.
Michael Enright, the 21-year-old accused of telling the driver to “consider this a checkpoint” before allegedly stabbing him last week, waived his right to be in court as his indictment was announced Monday.
SAN JOSE MINE, Chile – An enormous drill began preliminary work Monday on carving a half-mile chimney through solid rock to free the 33 men trapped in a Chilean mine, their ordeal now having equaled the longest known survival in an underground disaster.
The 31-ton drill bored 50 feet into the rock, the first step in the weeklong digging of a “pilot hole” to guide the way for the rescue.
Geologists report ‘stocky dragon’
WASHINGTON – Around 70 million years ago a stocky dragon stalked what is now Romania.
A new type of dinosaur similar to the frightening Velociraptor – but with two sharp claws on each foot instead of just one – has been discovered by Romanian and American researchers.
“Balaur bondoc,” which means “stocky dragon,” was discovered in Romania by geologist Matyas Vremir of the Transylvanian Museum Society. The find is reported in today’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
The researchers said the fossils show an animal 6 to 7 feet long with a stockier build than similarly sized Velociraptors.