THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012
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NEWS OF THE WORLD
Associated Press
AFRICA
Bombings of buildings and schools remain prevalent
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Smoke hovered over uniformed students frolicking in a playground Tuesday, hours after assailants set their school ablaze and destroyed another local school, showing how common-place violence has become in Nigeria's northeast.
Assailants attacked Gamboru Primary School just after dawn and then, a little more than three miles away, razed a newly renovated, secular coeducational school to the ground in the northeastern city of Maidugur, said military spokesman Lt. Col. Hassan Mohammed.
He said there were no deaths and
that the police were still investigating.
The attack comes two days after a man using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa and speaking for a radical known as Boko Haram told journalists that the sect was responsible for burning down another primary school in Maiduguri, its spiritual home, as a warning to security agencies not to raid Islamic schools.
Meanwhile, gunmen late Monday night attacked a police station and a bank in a northeastern town close to the city of Bauchi where Boko Haram launched a massive prison break in September 2010 that freed about
This latest attack occurred in Jama'are, about 125 miles from Bauchi, killing a policeman and wounding another, said Aliyu Suleiman, a town official.
700 inmates.
Habiu Adamu, a Jama'a are resident, said he heard multiple blasts coming from different directions at about 10 p.m. Monday, followed by gunshots that lasted for at least an hour.
A search team safely detonated 12 explosive devices found in the town after the attack, Suleiman said.
Authorities declined to say if they suspect anyone.
NORTH AMERICA
Former U.S. resident found guilty of helping Al-Qaida
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — A former Maryland resident pleaded guilty Wednesday to helping al-Qaida plot attacks from his native Pakistan, reaching a plea deal with the U.S. government that limits his sentence but that his lawyers say could put him and his family in leopard.
A lawyer entered the plea on behalf of Maiid Khan at the U.S. base in Cuba.
The plea deal, the first reached by one of the military's "high-value" detainees at Guantanamo, says Khan, 32, could serve less than 19 years in
prison as long as he provides "full and truthful cooperation," to U.S. authorities building cases against other prisoners, according to Army Col. James Pohl, the military judge.
His attorneys wanted details of the plea deal kept confidential. Wells Dixon, one of his civilian lawyers, said Khan feared for the safety of family members in the United States and abroad. "There is a specific, historical basis for the concern," he told the judge.
Pohl rejected the request, saying the fact that he had agreed to cooperate
was already in the public domain.
Khan faced up to life in prison if convicted at trial on charges of conspiracy, murder, attempted murder spying and providing material support for terrorism. Under his plea agreement, the Convening Authority, the Pentagon legal official who oversees the Guantanamo tribunals, has agreed not to approve a sentence that exceeds 19 years as long as he fully cooperates with authorities. If prosecutors determine he has not fully cooperated, the sentence is capped at 25 years.
AUSTRALIA
Bones of extinct giant penguin found in New Zealand
WELLINGTON. New Zealand It was a slender bird, with long wings and a spear-like bill to catch swift ocean prey. And scientists say the first glimpse of the extinct giant penguin species was worth the 26 million-year wait.
Experts from New Zealand and the United States reconstructed a fossil skeleton of one of the giant sea birds to reveal a body shape unique from known penguin species with features that have describing it as one elegant bird.
The bird they dubbed Kairuki — Maori for "diver who returns with food" — stood about 4 feet 2 inches (1.3 meters) tall and lived in the Oligocene period, about 26 million years ago. The research on Kairuki was published this week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The first Kairiku bones were discovered 35 years ago in New Zealand by Ewan Fordyce, a professor of geology at New Zealands University of Otago. He recently teamed with Dan Ksepka, a research assistant professor at North Carolina State University, to reconstruct a skeleton from multiple sets of fossils, using a King penguin as a model.
Fordyce said the bird's elongated bill may have been useful in catching swift prey.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
This undated graphic illustration released by University of Otago on Wednesday, Feb. 29, shows a giant penguin called a Kairuku. It's taken 26 million years, but scientists said getting the first glimpse at what a long-extinct giant penguin looked like was worth the wait. Experts from New Zealand and the United States have reconstructed the fossil skeleton of one of the giant sea birds for the first time, revealing long wings, a slender build and a spearlike bill.
EUROPE
NATO and Afghan officials closer to finishing the investigation on burning of the Quran at U.S. military base
KABUL, Afghanistan — A joint investigation by NATO and Afghan officials into the burning of copies of the Quran that triggered riots and more than 30 deaths is nearly complete, and preliminary findings could be released within days, officials said
Wednesday.
A legal official with the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force said the joint investigation will provide a broad conclusion into the circumstances that led to last week's disposal of a number of Qurans and
other Islamic texts in a burn pit at a U.S. military base north of the capital. The official said it also might include some recommendations on how to avoid such actions in the future.
Western officials said that the report could be released by the end of
the week.
The ISAF official said it might also include recommendations for disciplinary action, but those are expected to be included — if necessary — in a more detailed report that will be ready sometime next month. That report was
ordered the day after the incident by Marine Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Allen can accept the recommendations or make his own, the official said.
The investigation is being conducted jointly with Afghan officials.
If any action is taken against American troops involved, it would come under the U.S. military justice system, the ISAF official said.
The unrest started on Feb.21.
Tornadoes and storms result in damage and nine dead.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Winds also ripped through the country music mecca of Branson. Mo., damaging some of the city's famous theaters just days before the start of the busy tourist season.
HARRISBURG, Ill. — Twisters roared through the nation's heartland in the early morning darkness Wednesday, flattening entire blocks of homes in small-town Illinois and Kansas, killing at least nine people.
In this town of 9,000 people in southern Illinois, residents sorted through piles of debris and remembered their dead while the winds still howled around them.
Not long after the storm, Darrell Osman raced to his mother's home, arriving just in time to speak to her before she was taken to a hospital with a head injury, a severe cut to her neck and a broken arm and leg.
"She was conscious. I wouldn't say she was coherent. There were
more mumbles than anything" he said. "She knew we were there."
Mary Osman died a short time later.
An apparent twister that rolled through Branson seemed to hop-scetch up the city's main roadway. At least 37 people were reported hurt, mostly with cuts and bruises.
"We were blessed with several things — the time of year and certainly the time of day, when people were not in their vehicles or outdoors," said Mayor Raeanne Presley, noting that during Branson's peak season, up to 60,000 visitors would have been in the city on any given day and staying in many of the hotels that were damaged.
"It if was a week later, it'd be a different story," said Bill Tirone, assistant general manager for the 530-room downtown Hilton hotel, where windows were shattered and some rooms had furniture sucked away by high winds. Hotel workers were able to get all guests to safety.
To the north in Stone and Dallas counties, at least 60 homes were damaged or destroyed and at least 17 more people injured, one critically.
John Moore, owner of the damaged Cakes-n-Cream's '50s Diner, said the tornado seemed to target the city's main strip, moving down the entertainment district and through the convention center.
"The theater next to me kind of exploded. It went everywhere. The hotels on the two sides of me lost their roofs."
Back in Harrisburg, where six people were killed, Osman and his sister sorted through debris and chunks of pink insulation at the site of their mother's duplex, looking for photos and financial records.
They found 10 old picture slides that were among a collection of hundreds. Some were caked in mud and damaged by water.
"My mother was a Christian," Osman said. "I know she's in a
better place. That is the only thing getting me through this."
In Missouri, one person was killed in a trailer park in the town of Buffalo, about 35 miles north of Springfield. Two more fatalities were reported in the Cassville and Puxico areas.
The tornado that barreled through the tiny eastern Kansas town of Harveyville was an EF-2, with wind speeds of 120 to 130 mph, state officials said. Much of the community was left in rubble.
The tornadoes were spawned by a powerful storm system that blew down from the Rockies on Tuesday and was headed across the Ohio and Tennessee river valleys toward the Mid-Atlantic region.
Corey Mead, lead forecaster at the U.S. Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said a broad cold front was slamming into warm, humid air over much of the eastern half of the nation.
At least 16 tornado sightings
were reported from Nebraska and Kansas across southern Missouri to Illinois and Kentucky, according to the storm center, an arm of the National Weather Service.
Near downtown Branson, a strip mall lay in tatters, its roof missing and several walls collapsed. About 170 boats and several docks were destroyed on Table Rock Lake.
Branson has long been a tourist destination for visitors attracted to the beauty of the surrounding Ozarks. But the city rose to prominence in the 1990s because of its theaters, which drew country music stars including Merle Haggard and Crystal Gale as well as other musical celebrities such as Chubby Checker and Andy Williams.
It is about 110 miles southeast of Joplin, which was devastated by a monstrous twister last May that killed 161 people. Memories of the disaster fueled residents and guests to quickly take cover after the sirens sounded early Wednesday.
"I think so many people from Branson went over to help in Joplin and having seen that, it was fresh on our minds," said Presley, the mayor whose family owns the Presley's Theater on the main strip. "We all reached for our loved ones a little sooner and got to the basement a little faster."
Branson leaders insisted Wednesday that the city remains open for business, suggesting that any repairs and rebuilding would happen in a matter of days.
Tornado season normally starts in March, but it isn't unusual to see severe storms earlier. This year, two people were killed by separate tornadoes in Alabama in January, and preliminary reports have showed 95 tornadoes struck that month.
In neighboring Kansas, the National Weather Service reported brief tornado touchdowns southwest of Hutchinson, and Gov. Sam Brownback declared a state of emergency.
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