Shorts (right)
UConn’s new athletic director faces immediate challenges
Warde J. Manuel, who raised expectations on the playing field and in the classroom in six years as the athletic director at Buffalo, was introduced Monday as Connecticut’s new AD at a time when the Huskies’ Men’s Basketball team is dealing with the fallout from academic issues and the health concerns of its Hall of Fame coach, Jim Calhoun.
“There are some tough issues to deal with, things you have to think about and work through,” Manuel, 43, said in telephone interview. “But it’s a challenge and a great place, and I’m really glad I was selected.”
The Huskies are prohibited from competing in the 2013 NCAA tournament because of below-standard academic results. Colleges must have a two-year average score of 930 or a four-year average of 900 on the Academic Progress Rate, which measures athletes’ academic performance. The Huskies, who scored 826 for the 2009-10 academic year, may not make the cut for those two- and four-year averages and could face more penalties.
—Mark Viera, The New York Times
Britain releases militant preacher
LONDON — Abu Qatada, a militant Islamic preacher held without charge for more than six years as a threat to Britain’s national security, was released from prison Monday night after an immigration judge signed off on strict bail conditions earlier in the day.
The conditions, the tightest permitted under British law, include a 22-hour-a-day curfew for the Jordanian-born preacher, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman. They bar him from traveling beyond his home neighborhood and using cellphones, the Internet and public transportation.
They also prohibit him from attending mosques or accompanying any of his five children from his London home to school, and they allow him to meet visitors only if they have been vetted by the police.
Television channels across Britain showed Othman hiding his face in the back of a van that was leaving the Long Lartin maximum-security prison in Worcestershire around 9:15 p.m. Monday.
The developments were the latest in a long-running case that has inflamed politicians and public opinion in Britain and turned Othman, 51, into a symbol of Britain’s difficulties in dealing with a pervasive network of Islamic militants with cells in many of the country’s largest cities.
Officials have said that the cost to British taxpayers in the case, including legal aid for Othman’s lawsuits and welfare support for his family, have exceeded 500,000 pounds, or about $790,000.
—John F. Burns, The New York Times