Baghdad citizens kill insurgents
Baghdad, Iraq Shopkeepers and residents on one of Baghdad’s main streets pulled out their own guns Tuesday and killed three insurgents when hooded men began shooting at passers-by, giving a rare victory to civilians increasingly frustrated by the violence bleeding Iraq.
The clash in the capital’s southern Doura neighborhood erupted when militants in three cars sprayed bullets at shoppers. Three people – a man, a woman and a child – were wounded.
The motive was unclear, but there have been previous attacks in the ethnically mixed neighborhood. Earlier in the day, gunmen in the same quarter killed a policeman as he drove to work, police Lt. Col. Hafidh Al-Ghrayri said.
A forceful citizen response is rare but not unheard of in a country where conflict has become commonplace and the law allows each home to have a weapon. Early this month, police said, townsmen in Wihda, 25 miles south of Baghdad, attacked a group of militants believed planning to raid the town and killed seven.
Sandinista official says U.S. meddling
Managua, Nicaragua
Two decades after the United States backed a civil war against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government, a top Sandinista official said Tuesday Washington is meddling again, leveling accusations against party leader Daniel Ortega to try to prevent him from returning to the presidency.
Tomas Borge, the former interior minister who is currently No. 2 in the Sandinista Party, said the United States is using a complaint about surface-to-air missiles left over from the war to try to derail a bid by Ortega to retake the presidency in elections next year.
“The United States is trying once again to meddle in Nicaragua’s internal affairs, because they are desperate and scared by a certain Sandinista victory in the upcoming elections,” Borge, the party’s vice-secretary, told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.
In fact, Ortega has lost three runs for the presidency since he stepped down after 1990 elections, and polls indicate his chances next year are slim at best.
GOP leading Dems in fund raising
Washington The Republican National Committee has jumped out to an early – and big – lead in the 2005 race for cash, announcing it has raised more than $21 million since the beginning of the year. That’s more than twice as much as the Democrats reported.
The RNC said Friday it raised $10.2 million in January, $11.4 million in February and had $22.4 million in the bank at the end of last month.
The Democratic National Committee, which reported a burst of donations after Chairman Howard Dean’s election last month, told federal election officials it raised $5.4 million in February and was sitting on a similar amount – $5.36 million – at the end of the month. It reported raising $3.4 million in January.
Bishops seek end to death penalty
Indianapolis
Death penalty opponents across the country received a boost when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops began a renewed push to abolish executions throughout the nation.
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Washington archbishop, said Catholic tradition and teaching allow for the use of capital punishment, but noted that Pope John Paul II and other Catholic leaders increasingly say the state “should forego this right if it has other means to protect society.”
The bishops also released surveys from November and this month showing adult church members, once supportive of the death penalty, are now evenly divided on the issue.