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World/Nation Dispatches

NEW YORK

NYPD surveillance draws ire of U.S. civil rights groups

Thirty-three civil rights groups from around the country complained to the New York attorney general Friday about police documents that showed the New York Police Department recommending increased surveillance of Shiite mosques based solely on their religion.

The letter urged Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate NYPD's surveillance operations, revealed by an Associated Press investigation, which monitored entire neighborhoods and built databases about everyday life in Muslim communities.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have insisted that police only follow legitimate leads and do not conduct preventative surveillance in ethnic communities. A May 2006 report addressed to Kelly, however, recommended increased spying at mosques and an assessment of the region's Palestinian community to look for potential terrorists.

LOS ANGELES

Second teacher in school held on child sex charges

A second teacher at an inner-city elementary school where a teacher is accused of committing lewd acts on 23 children was arrested Friday on suspicion of fondling two girls in his classroom.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Capt. Mike Parker said Martin B. Springer, 49, of Alhambra was arrested four days after allegations surfaced against the first teacher, but there was no known connection between the two cases. Springer was being held on $2 million bail. Parker said the victims in the second case were about 7 and 8 years old and were fondled once each in a classroom at Miramonte Elementary School during the past three years.

CAIRO

Soccer riot fuels public anger, clashes over lawlessness

Protesters filled the streets and clashed for a second day Friday with police who fired tear gas and birdshot in Cairo, as a deadly soccer riot focused rising public anger over lawlessness and collapsing security a year after Egypt's uprising.

Six people have been killed and more than 1,500 injured in the latest bloodshed that followed a violent melee and stampede after a soccer game Wednesday in the Mediterranean city of Port Said in which 74 people died.

MOGADISHU, Somalia

Surveillance drone crashes into hut in refugee camp

Witnesses say a surveillance drone has crashed into a refugee camp in the Somali capital.

Drones have been used by the U.S. to attack or observe al-Qaida-linked militants in the Horn of Africa nation. Refugees and soldiers in Mogadishu's Badbado camp say they watched the drone crash Friday into a hut made of sticks, corrugated cans and plastic bags.

Sacdiyo Sheikh Madar, a refugee at the camp, says African Union peacekeepers came to remove it.

STOCKHOLM

Sheep-herding bunny becomes a YouTube hit

Champis the bunny doesn't only hop - he also knows how to herd his masters' flock of sheep, possibly having picked up the skill after watching trained dogs do the job.

The 5-year-old pet rabbit from the small village of Kal in northern Sweden shot to online fame last week, having garnered more than 700,000 YouTube hits so far, after a clip of his sheep herding skills surfaced on a blog.

The June video shows a persistent Champis running back and forth on the farm, trying to keep Nils-Erik and Greta Vigren's sheep together.

Greta Vigren said she first noted his talent last spring when they let out the sheep to graze for the first time after the long Swedish winter.

"He just started to behave like a sheepdog," she recalled, adding that while he likes to round up the sheep, he is consistent about leaving the farm's hens alone, treating them more gently.

-- From news service reports