Bigger Osama bin Laden raid unit braced for fight with Pakistanis
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops, senior administration and military officials said Monday.
Record flooding continues
With the warming weather, melting snow has combined with spring rain to raise river levels well beyond flood stage throughout the nation. The hardest-hit areas lie along the Mississippi River from Illinois to Louisiana. In Memphis, the Mississippi has risen to 47.8 feet — just shy of the 48.7 feet record set in 1937.
Syrian official hopes seven-week protests are near an end
DAMASCUS, Syria — The Syrian government has gained the upper hand over a seven-week uprising against the rule of President Bashar Assad, a senior official declared Monday, in the clearest sign yet that the leadership believes its crackdown will crush protests that have begun to falter in the face of hundreds of deaths and mass arrests.
House leader Boehner outlines demands on debt limit fight
WASHINGTON — House Speaker John A. Boehner said Monday that Republicans would insist on trillions of dollars in federal spending cuts in exchange for their support of an increase in the federal debt limit sought by the Obama administration to prevent a government default later this year.
US seeks to financially aid Libyans in rebel areas with seized assets
ROME — The United States announced Thursday that it would try to release some of the more than $30 billion in assets seized from Libya’s leader, Moammar Gadhafi, as international officials said they would create a fund to give money directly to the Libyan rebels.
House Republicans are shelving bid to overhaul Medicare rules
WASHINGTON — House Republicans signaled Thursday that they were backing away from the centerpiece of their budget plan — a proposal to overhaul Medicare — in a decision that underscored both the difficulties and political perils of addressing the nation’s long-term fiscal problems.
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BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber attacked a police training center Thursday in the predominantly Shiite city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing 25 people and wounding at least 75 in the second major bombing in Iraq this week.
Bin Laden raid account, hastily told, proves fluid
WASHINGTON — On Monday, the Obama administration said Osama bin Laden had been killed after a firefight with Navy SEAL commandos, and that he had used his wife as a human shield. On Tuesday, the administration said that bin Laden was not armed at all, and that his wife had not been a shield but had rushed her husband’s assaulter and was shot in the leg.
Data gathered in raid connects bin Laden to terror plot
WASHINGTON — After reviewing computer files and documents seized at the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the chief of al-Qaida played a direct role for years in plotting terror attacks from his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, U.S. officials said Thursday.
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BEIRUT — Syrian security forces raided a restive Damascus suburb on Thursday, going house to house and arresting scores of men in a broad campaign that activists and U.S. officials say represents a new chapter in the crackdown on the country’s uprising against four decades of authoritarian rule.
Historic flooding along the Mississippi
To add to the torrent of tragic and destructive weather that has afflicted the southern half of the country over the past few weeks, the Mississippi River now is flooding. Affecting thousands of people spanning the corridor from Illinois to Louisiana, the river continues to swell due to unceasing rain and upstream snowmelt. In order to protect populated areas, Army engineers already destroyed some levees downstream to release excess water, immersing vast expanses of farmland.
Republicans revise plan to limit consumer protection agency
WASHINGTON — After losing a contentious battle last year over creating an agency to protect consumers against deceptive financial products, Republicans are fighting the battle again, determined to rein in the independence and financing of the agency.
Obama finds praise for risky operation, even from Republicans
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama drew praise from unlikely quarters on Monday for pursuing a risky and clandestine mission to kill Osama bin Laden, a successful operation that interrupted the withering Republican criticism about his foreign policy, world view, and his grasp of the office.
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While federal officials said that analysis of DNA from several relatives helped confirm that it was Osama bin Laden who was killed in the military raid on Sunday, they have not yet disclosed the relationships of the family members whose DNA was used.
Emblem of evil in the US, icon to the cause of terror
Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan on Sunday, was a son of the Saudi elite whose radical, violent campaign to re-create a seventh-century Muslim empire redefined the threat of terrorism for the 21st century.
In Arab world, Osama bin Laden’s confused legacy
BEIRUT — The words were not uncommon in angry Arab capitals a decade ago: Osama bin Laden was hero, sheik, even leader to some. But after his death, a man who once vowed to liberate the Arab world was reduced to a footnote in the revolutions and uprisings remaking a region that he and his followers had struggled to understand.
Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea aimed to prevent a shrine on land
White House officials decided before Sunday night’s firefight in northern Pakistan that if U.S. troops killed Osama bin Laden, they would bury him at sea in order to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine for his followers, a White House official said Monday. They planned to include all rites associated with Muslim burials, the official added.
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ISTANBUL — Turkey closed its embassy in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, on Monday, becoming the latest country to do so amid increasing violence there. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry also said it would maintain its consulate in rebel-controlled Benghazi.
Last week’s tornado outbreak breaks record
As reviewed in last Friday’s weather discussion, the tornado outbreak in the southern part of the country was a historic event. Yesterday, NOAA released a preliminary estimate on the total number of tornadoes associated with that storm. Between 8 a.m. April 25 and 8 a.m. April 28, there were 362 tornadoes. The bulk of those tornadoes (312) occurred between 8 a.m. April 27 to 8 a.m. April 28. This shattered the previous record for largest number of tornadoes in one event, which had been 148 from April 3–4, 1974.
Bin Laden’s sprawling compound stood out in neighborhood
ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan — The sprawling compound where Osama bin Laden sheltered before his death stood out in its middle-class neighborhood on the edges of this scenic city, home to a large Pakistani military base and a military academy.