A 75-year-old woman accused of robbing a bank with an unloaded pistol was arrested after a tow truck driver blocked her in after a short chase, police said. Marilyn Divine of Baldwin said after her arrest that she acted "to help people who are starving to death and nobody cares about them." Police said the robber on Monday walked up to the National City Bank inside the Shop n' Save supermarket in West Mifflin, located about five miles outside Pittsburgh. The robber, brandishing a 9mm handgun, demanded money from two tellers, authorities said. A former bank employee chased the woman's car until police took over and arrested her after a short, low-speed chase. Police said they recovered all the stolen money, which totaled about $5,000. ... http://www.cbsnews.com censor News |
Editor - 14:50:00 03-07-06 |
No reason for optimism in Iraq |
Last Friday afternoon my BBC colleagues and I filmed at the Baghdad city mortuary. A few months ago we would have done it as a matter of course. But now the security situation in Baghdad is so bad that we had to plan our trip with some care. The mortuary has been the subject of a good deal of controversy. The Washington Post reported that 1,300 bodies had been taken there since the upsurge in sectarian violence which followed the bombing of the Shia shrine at Samarra on 22 February. A former UN official said that many of these bodies showed signs of torture and summary execution. By contrast the US commander in Iraq, Gen George W Casey Jr, insisted that there had been no great increase in the amount of communal violence and that the number of deaths was probably around 350. At the mortuary itself, the guards showed us a large refrigerator truck, parked alongside the building, which they said had been provided by the Americans because of the overflow of bodies from the mortuary itself... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4778380.stm
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Editor - 11:19:00 03-07-06 |
FAO to boost bird flu role |
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is to play a greater role in fighting bird flu, becoming a "global clearing house" for efforts to stem the spread of the virus, it said on Tuesday. The United States and the European Union have backed the formation of a what a senior U.S. official called an "emergency operations center" at the FAO's Rome headquarters. The initiative was agreed at a meeting at the FAO requested by the U.S. and EU. Funding for the center will come from a pot of almost $2 billion pledged by wealthy nations at an international conference in Beijing in January. The U.S. would provide experts to help run the center and expects other nations to follow suit. The move follows the spread of H5N1 avian flu into at least 15 new nations over the past month, with cases detected in birds in several countries across Europe and also in flocks in Egypt and West Africa. ... http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1696511
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Editor - 11:08:00 03-07-06 |
AT&T merger to claim 10,000 jobs |
Telecoms giant AT&T has said it expects to cut 10,000 jobs following its $67bn (£38.2bn) takeover of rival BellSouth. The US operator said the staff cuts would be made by 2009 in a move to reduce costs at the combined group. The new cuts are in addition to 13,000 job losses over three years already announced by AT&T, following a previous US telecoms merger. AT&T said on Monday that it would buy BellSouth, creating a US sector giant with a market capitalisation of $165bn. The deal also gives AT&T full ownership of Cingular Wireless, America's biggest mobile phone firm, catapulting the combined group ahead of its nearest US rival, Verizon Communications. Analysts broadly welcomed the news of AT&T's bid, although some questioned whether the company was paying too much for BellSouth. AT&T said the job cuts would represent about 40% of the proposed $18bn cost savings it hopes to achieve from the deal. ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4781596.stm
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Editor - 11:06:00 03-07-06 |
Israeli faces U.S. drug charges |
A reputed Israeli mob boss made his first U.S. court appearance Tuesday, a day after he was extradited to face charges alleging he was involved in the distribution of more than 1 million Ecstasy pills in the United States.Zeev Rosenstein, 51, did not enter a plea during a brief hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Seltzer. A second hearing was set for March 28. Benjamin Greenberg, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, said the government will ask at that hearing that Rosenstein not be released on bail on the grounds that he could flee and is a danger to the community. Rosenstein's attorney, Howard Srebnick, said after the hearing that his client would plead not guilty. The government's case is built upon untrustworthy "snitches" who made incriminating statements about Rosenstein in order to gain reductions in their own criminal sentences, Srebnick said. ... http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-07-drugs-ecstasy_x.htm?csp=34
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Editor - 11:03:00 03-07-06 |
Vesuvius risks 'underestimated' |
Researchers are warning that the next eruption of Vesuvius could be much more deadly than the Italian authorities are planning for. A US-Italian collaboration says deadly blasts have previously caused devastation which swept well beyond modern Naples. Italian plans call for the evacuation of 600,000 people from the city. But the researchers say up to three million people could be at risk according to the new assessment. Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79, the eruption that buried the Roman town of Pompeii. Plans for the evacuation of Naples are based on a similar-sized eruption in 1631. But go back about 3,780 years and Vesuvius exploded with even greater force. ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4780916.stm
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Editor - 11:00:00 03-07-06 |
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