BEIRUT

Opposition group upset at U.S. bid to pick representatives

Members of Syria’s opposition-in-exile bristled Thursday at the Obama administration’s suggestion that Washington will handpick more representative leaders at a crucial conference in Qatar next week.

The new U.S. push appears aimed at creating a unified leadership that could work more closely with the West. But there are signs of resistance among deeply fractured opposition groups wary of attempts by foreign backers to dictate strategy in the civil war against President Bashar Assad.

“This direct tutelage and these dictates are not acceptable to the Syrian people anymore,” said Zuhair Salem, the London-based spokesman for Syria’s banned Muslim Brotherhood opposition group.

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands

Offshore investment meeting can’t talk about Bush speech

Organizers of an investment conference in the Cayman Islands say they have been forbidden from disclosing any details about a speech by former President George W. Bush in the offshore financial haven, an event spokesman said Thursday.

The keynote speech by the former president is “totally closed to all journalists,” and conference organizers are forbidden from discussing any aspect of it even in general terms, spokesman Dan Kneipp said.

“We’ve got a complete blackout on discussing the Bush details,” Kneipp told The Associated Press.

NAPERVILLE, Ill.

Mother stabs son, 7, girl 5, to death in anger at husband

A suburban Chicago woman stabbed her 7-year-old son 100 times then turned the knife on a 5-year-old girl who witnessed the attack, killing both children as they begged for their lives, a prosecutor said Thursday.

Elzbieta Plackowska, 40, told investigators she stabbed the children and slashed their throats on Tuesday night at a Naperville home because she was angry that her truck driver husband was often away, DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said.

“She told the detectives that she thought by killing (her son) Justin she would make her husband hurt the way she hurt in their relationship,” Berlin said. Plackowska told investigators she found Justin and Olivia Dworakowski – whom she was babysitting that night – jumping on the bed, Berlin said.

“She had grabbed the knife and she made both victims kneel and begin praying. She began stabbing her son Justin and told him he was going to heaven tonight. He pleaded for his life and told her to stop. But she continued stabbing him until he was dead,” he said at a news conference after the hearing.

— From news service reports

 

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