In brief: Suspected leader of Mumbai attack out on bail
ISLAMABAD – The suspected mastermind of the deadly Mumbai attacks in 2008 was released on bail Friday by a Pakistani court – a move likely to further strain relations with India, which has accused Islamabad of turning a blind eye to Islamic militancy.
The release of Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who has been held since his arrest in 2009, drew expressions of concern from both India and the United States.
His lawyer, Rizwan Abbasi, called it “a triumph for law and justice.”
Lakhvi has been described as the operations chief for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the series of bombings and shootings in the heart of the Mumbai that killed 166 people.
Abbasi said the trial is continuing, with a list of more than 150 witnesses, and Lakhvi must attend the next hearing, scheduled for Wednesday.
Mayors take lead in drought fight
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced this week that his city would be deploying water cops and offering money to rip up lawns in an effort to save water during an escalating drought.
He’s among several leaders of California cities, including Los Angeles, proclaiming commitment to water conservation and vowing to move ahead of the state in slashing water use with initiatives including awareness programs, incentives and beefed-up enforcement.
Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown signed an executive order mandating water use reductions as the Sierra snowpack, California’s key water source, vanishes.
The governor’s moves are providing some cover to local officials who may have to implement fines for water waste and increase water rates, politically unpalatable measures.
“Mayors can say, ‘We have to do this. Not only because it’s right, but we really don’t have a choice; it’s a mandate from the governor,’ ” said Sherry Bebitch-Jeffe, a senior political science fellow at the University of Southern California.
Man charged with plotting base attack
TOPEKA, Kan. – A man charged Friday with plotting a suicide bomb attack on a Kansas military base to help the Islamic State group is mentally ill and was acting strangely only days before his arrest, according to a Muslim cleric who said he was counseling him at the request of the FBI.
John T. Booker Jr., 20, of Topeka, is accused of planning a suicide attack at Fort Riley, about 70 miles west of Topeka. Prosecutors allege he told an FBI informant he wanted to kill Americans and engage in violent jihad on behalf of the terrorist group, and said he believed such an attack was justified because the Quran “says to kill your enemies wherever they are,” according to a criminal complaint.
Authorities arrested Booker on Friday as he was trying to arm what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb outside the Army post, according to prosecutors.
Imam Omar Hazim of the Islamic Center of Topeka told the Associated Press that two FBI agents brought Booker to him early in 2014 for counseling, hoping to turn the young man away from radical beliefs.
U.S. nixed invite to Kim Jong Un
UNITED NATIONS – A former ambassador to South Korea says he once suggested that Kim Jong Un be invited to the United States for an “orientation trip” when Kim’s father still led North Korea, but the idea was rejected – which he calls a mistake.
Donald Gregg spoke to reporters Friday about his new memoir. He said he wrote to Vice President Joe Biden when Biden was still leading the Senate’s foreign relations committee, saying the young Kim should be invited because he was educated abroad, spoke some English and would be in power for decades.
But Gregg said the idea was brushed aside amid worries about what Republicans might think. “I think there was a chance for us to act early on and make a huge difference in a young man who’s going to be around for a long, long time.”
Analysis: Work was likely Shakespeare’s
Chalk up another one for The Bard.
“Double Falsehood,” a play said to have been written by William Shakespeare but whose authorship has been disputed for close to three centuries, is almost certainly the work of the 16th-century poet and playwright, new research finds.
Those findings came after two researchers subjected the play’s language to exhaustive psychological scrutiny and computer analysis. The researchers’ method supercharges the practice of “styleometry” long used by scholars of literature by recruiting computers to churn through millions of sentences of text.
In the end, two psychology professors from the University of Texas in Austin declared that the author of “Double Falsehood” was Shakespeare, and not his acolyte Lewis Theobold.
Theobold, a Shakespeare scholar and avid collector of manuscripts, published the play in 1728, claiming it came from three original manuscripts written by the Bard. Those manuscripts, however, were said to have burned in a library fire. In the absence of physical proof, scholars’ suspicions fell upon Theobold as a literary impostor.