Three bombings kill at least 13
Suicide car bombers struck twice Sunday in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least six people and wounding dozens of others, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. A car bomb killed seven other people in Baghdad.
The series of attacks shows the ongoing security challenges facing Iraq as the U.S. shifts responsibility to this country’s own soldiers and police following the sharp decline in violence since last year.
The governor of the province that includes Mosul, Duraid Mohammed Kashmoula, said Saturday that about 3,000 Christians have fled the city during the past week to escape threats and attacks by Sunni extremists.
He called on the government to step up military operations against Sunni extremists in the city.
U.S. officials are concerned that violence may rise in the run-up to provincial elections, which are expected by the end of January. Voters will select ruling councils in most of the country’s 18 provinces. No date for the election has been set.
BOSTON
Manatee dies on trip to Florida
An animal welfare official says a wayward manatee that was rescued from cold Cape Cod waters died on the way home to Florida.
Chris Cutter, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, says the juvenile male manatee died Sunday outside Orlando. The cause of death will be investigated.
The animal wandered into a harbor near Dennis, Mass. Wildlife officials who feared for his health in the chilly water decided to pull him out Saturday.
Manatees normally are found off Florida and Georgia and stop feeding if they get too cold.
Washington
Sept. 11 suspects denied Web access
Guantanamo guards must furnish confessed al-Qaida kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators with enough battery power to use their prison camp laptops 12 hours a day – but the Sept. 11 accused can’t surf the Internet, a military judge ruled.
Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann issued the decision a week ago. It turned up Sunday on a Defense Department Web site.
The five former CIA-held detainees are accused in the deaths of 2,973 people on Sept. 11, 2001, in a complex conspiracy case that seeks military execution as the ultimate punishment.
They allegedly trained, financed and coordinated the Sept. 11 hijackers, and are in pre-trial hearings at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba, where three of the five are now acting as their own attorneys.
At issue of late has been what resources they are allowed to use to prepare for the case.
“Reasonable access does not equate to a right or an entitlement to be placed on the same footing as a technologically state-of-the-art law office,” Kohlmann wrote in his three-page ruling.