HOMS, Syria

Arab League monitors lead to anti-government protests

Additional Photos

Image made from amateur video released by Ugarit and accessed Wednesday purports to show anti-government forces shooting at a bus convoy in Daraa, Syria. Huge rallies have been met by lethal gunfire from security forces. The Associated Press

The presence of Arab League monitors in Syria has re-energized the anti-government protest movement, with tens of thousands turning out over the past three days in cities and neighborhoods where the observers are expected to visit. The huge rallies have been met by lethal gunfire from security forces apparently worried about multiple mass sit-ins modeled after Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

On Thursday, security forces opened fire on tens of thousands protesting outside a mosque in a Damascus suburb and killed at least four. The crowd had gathered at the mosque near a municipal building where cars of the monitors had been spotted outside.

Troops fired live ammunition and tear gas to disperse large protests in several areas of the country, including central Damascus, killing at least 26 people nationwide, activists said. A key activist network, the Local Coordination Committees, said it has documented the names of 130 people, including six children, who died since the Arab League monitors arrived Monday night..

NEW YORK

Trade center museum work halted by financial dispute

Work on a planned museum at the World Trade Center has ground to a halt because of a financial dispute, and there is now no possibility it will open on time next year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday.

The underground museum commemorating victims of the 9/11 attacks was scheduled to open in September on the 11th anniversary of the disaster, a year after the opening of a memorial at the site that has already drawn 1 million visitors.

But in recent months, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum foundation has been fighting with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey over who is responsible for paying millions of dollars in infrastructure costs related to the project.

The Port Authority, which owned the trade center and is building the museum, claims that the foundation owes it $300 million. The foundation claims that the authority actually owes it $140 million, because of delays in the project.

NEW ORLEANS

Two men killed, scores hurt in morning interstate pileup

Two men died and 61 other people were injured Thursday in a pre-dawn pileup involving about 40 cars, vans and other vehicles on a busy interstate that crosses New Orleans, closing the route for hours both ways, police said.

Drivers said they drove into thick smoke or fog that abruptly limited visibility on westbound lanes of Interstate 10 heading across eastern New Orleans. Those who came upon the scene said they heard injured motorists pleading for assistance.

“You just hear all kinds of calls and people screaming for help,” tow truck driver Wesley Ratcliff told local broadcaster WWL-TV. In 13 years responding to wrecks, he added, “this is the worst I’ve ever seen it.”

HONOLULU

Group that hauled out toys suspected in earlier theft

Members of a group suspected of hauling items out of a Hawaii toy store who claim they stole the toys as gifts for their children are also suspects in a theft two days prior of two flat-screen televisions, Honolulu police said Thursday.

Five women and a man were seen on surveillance footage carrying out boxes of merchandise on Dec. 1 at a Toys R Us at Windward Mall in Kaneohe. Several of the women contacted an attorney after police released the footage, claiming they’re unemployed, single moms who stole for their kids. Four of them surrendered Tuesday.

The man, 18, turned himself in at the Kaneohe station Thursday, police said. Like the women who surrendered earlier, he was arrested on suspicion of second-degree theft, booked and released pending an investigation. A fifth woman is expected to surrender in the coming days.

CrimeStoppers Sgt. Kim Buffett said five in the group are suspects in the Nov. 30 theft of two 40-inch flat-screens from the Wal-Mart store in Kunia.

ANKARA, Turkey

Warplanes kill villagers, spurring angry protests

Turkish warplanes mistakenly killed 35 smugglers and other villagers in an operation targeting Kurdish rebels in Iraq, a senior official said — one of the largest one-day civilian death tolls during Turkey’s 27-year drive against the guerrillas.

The killings spurred angry demonstrations in Istanbul on Thursday and several cities in the mostly Kurdish southeast, and were the latest incident of violence to undermine the Turkish government’s efforts to appease the aggrieved Kurdish minority by granting it more cultural freedoms.

Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party, said authorities were still trying to identify the dead, but that most were youngsters from an extended family in the mostly Kurdish-populated area that borders Iraq.

All of the victims were under age 30 and some were the sons of village guards who have aided Turkish troops in their fight against rebels, he said.

CAIRO

Egyptian authorities raid human rights groups’ offices

Egyptian authorities Thursday raided the offices of 17 domestic and international human rights and pro-democracy organizations, including several that receive U.S. government funding, in a sharp intensification of the military’s crackdown that recalled the tactics of the country’s ousted authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak.

The raids in Cairo and other cities appeared to be an effort by the ruling military to intimidate nongovernmental organizations that it accuses of promoting a “foreign agenda” and supporting protests against its rule.

Dozens of police officers, military personnel and judicial officials held and interrogated staff members for several hours, confiscated computers and documents, and closed at least five of the offices, the agencies said.

WASHINGTON

Federal judge turns down request for attorneys’ fees

A federal judge Thursday rejected a request for $3.1 million in legal fees for attorneys who worked to overturn the District of Columbia’s handgun ban and instead awarded them $1.1 million, a ruling the D.C. attorney general called a victory for the city.

The six attorneys who represented plaintiff Dick Heller in the historic gun-control litigation had asked the judge to order the city, which lost the case, to pay legal fees totaling $3,126,397. The office of D.C. Attorney General Irvin Nathan argued the city should be required to pay $840,166.

In a 65-page ruling filled with calculations and analyses of market rates for legal work, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington decided that $1,132,182 would be fair.

Heller’s lawsuit against the city over its decades-old ban on handgun ownership led to a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to own firearms. The decision forced the District to enact a registration system for residents who want to own handguns.

—From news service reports

Related Stories