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Alleged confessions appear to form the crux of the government's case against seven Marines and a Navy corpsman charged with murder, kidnapping and other crimes in an Iraqi man's slaying last April. Defense attorneys challenge the validity of the statements and say without them the government's case is baseless. Details about the prosecution's case emerged Wednesday during preliminary hearings for two of eight men accused in the shooting death of 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad in the village of Hamdania. At Marine Cpl. Marshall L. Magincalda's hearing, prosecutors submitted a thick packet of evidence and pointed to three documents they say...

LONDON (AFP) - A 13th person was charged in connection with the foiled alleged terror plot to blow up US-bound passenger jets from Britain, a police spokesman told AFP. Nabeel Hussain was one of 25 people arrested since police staged pre-dawn raids on August 10 in connection with the plot. Five have since been released without charge. Police also have warrants to quiz the remaining seven until Wednesday. Under British anti-terror laws, suspects can be detained for up to 28 days without being charged, subject to regular court approval. Hussain is the ninth of the terror suspects to be hit...

LOS ANGELES Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger settled a libel lawsuit Friday with a former late-night British TV personality who claimed she was groped by the Hollywood actor during a 2000 interview and later defamed by his aides during his 2003 campaign for governor. "The parties are content to put this matter behind them and are pleased that this legal dispute has now been settled," said a two-sentence statement issued jointly in London by lawyers for Schwarzenegger and Anna Richardson. No details were released. The statement said Richardson and the three people she sued the governor and two top aides, Sean Walsh...

Mackinac Bridge; Alleged Target Of Terror Aug 13, 2006 10:47 AM EDT (TV5) -- We are following breaking news today after it was revealed that the goal of an alleged terror plot, uncovered in Mid-Michigan, was apparently to hit the Mackinac Bridge. The suspects are 21 year old Adham Abdelhamid Othman, 18 year old Maruan Awad Muhareb, and 23 year old Louai Abdelhamied Othman; all are apparently from Texas. All have been charged with one count each of collecting and providing material support for terrorism; and one count of surveillance of a vulnerable target (that target allegedly being the Mackinac...

NORTH COUNTY ---- The focus at Camp Pendleton is about to shift from teaching troops the latest warfare techniques to trying Marines for alleged war crimes in Iraq. Separate cases involving two Camp Pendleton units allege members of two platoons violated the Pentagon's rules of engagement and killed 25 Iraqis, many of whom authorities say were clearly noncombatants. One case, which arises out of the slaying of a 52-year-old Iraqi man in the village of Hamdania on April 26, has landed seven Marines and a Navy corpsman in the base brig on charges of premeditated murder and kidnapping. The other...

SANTA ROSA A Roman Catholic church official apologized Saturday for waiting several days to notify authorities about sexual abuse allegations against a priest, a delay that may have allowed the priest to flee to Mexico. Bishop Daniel Walsh of the Santa Rosa diocese said in a one-page statement to parishioners he put "caution" before "doing the right thing" in handling the allegations against priest Xavier Ochoa. Church officials say Ochoa admitted April 28 to sexually abusing a 12-year-old altar boy, but the allegations were not reported to Child Protective Services until May 1, and Ochoa disappeared the next day. "I...

I'm fairly certain if I were to submit a manuscript titled, "Ann Coulter Is Destroying America" I'd have a six figure book deal tomorrow; such is the public fascination, or alternatively horror, with the what-will-she-say-next shtick that Coulter's been playing in the media to promote her new book, 'Godless'. David Carr, in The New York Times, looks at the current controversy in light of his previous article on Coulter, noting the transfixing dichotomy between the package and the message. Coulter's act, as we've previously noted, is the same kind of over-the-top, calculated, "look at me" stuff we've seen here previously...

A Chicago man arrested last month and charged with illegal possession of a weapon has been identified by federal prosecutors as a former member of an alleged group of aspiring terrorists based in Miami. In court documents filed Thursday, prosecutors identified the man as Charles Stewart or "Sultan Khan Bey," and said he apparently belonged to an organization called the Moorish National Republic, for which he was trying to recruit members. Stewart has not been charged in the terrorism case. The group in Miami was arrested June 22. Six men are accused of seeking to support what they thought was...

Federal prosecutors allege that a law enforcement official who was investigating a fake passport scheme was subjected to an illegal background check by indicted private eye Anthony Pellicano, who was representing the subject of the probe. Prosecutors claim Pellicano had checks run on George Mueller, an investigator with the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, and five other people connected to the probe of a Frenchman named Christopher Rocancourt. Mueller said that while he was investigating Rocancourt in the mid-1990s, Rocancourt called him to boast of a "contact" with access to confidential law-enforcement information. "Knowing that a suspect in a...

... Snow said that he has been assured by the Pentagon that "all the details" will be made available... Rep. John Murtha... has said Marines shot and killed unarmed civilians in a taxi at the scene and went into two homes and shot others. On Tuesday, [Snow] said President Bush learned of the killings only after a reporter from Time magazine asked questions... Asked when Bush was first briefed about the events in Haditha, an insurgent stronghold in western Iraq, Snow replied Tuesday: "When a Time reporter first made the call." According to the attorney for one of three Marine...

Eight workers at the city's Department of Water and Power have been arrested because they were unauthorized to work in the United States, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. The agency arrested five people Tuesday and had previously arrested three others as part of a yearlong review of the utility's employment records by the agency and the utility itself. The workers held both blue collar and management jobs, according to an ICE statement. All had been with the company for at least three years and one made more than $100,000 a year. The joint investigation was part of a...

BOCA RATON, Fla. - Oscar-winning actor Joe Pesci will not be charged for allegedly punching a fan who photographed him in a shopping center parking lot, officials said Wednesday. The Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office will not file charges against the "Goodfellas" star because there was no likelihood of conviction, said to Assistant State Attorney Jill Estey Richstone. "The investigating officer was unable to determine who the primary aggressor was and there are no independent witnesses to the incident," Richstone wrote in response to a Boca Raton police warrant request. Broward Community College student Juan Carlos Montenegro, 24, told...

CHICAGO - With a long beard and hair reaching his shoulders, reputed mob boss Joey "The Clown" Lombardo sat stunned as FBI agents ordered him out of his car. Lombardo had been a fugitive for nine months, but it was Friday the 13th and his luck had run out, FBI officials said Saturday as they described Lombardo's arrest on racketeering and conspiracy charges. The 77-year-old man had been missing since April when he and 13 others were indicted in connection with at least 18 unsolved mob murders, including one that was graphically portrayed in the 1995 Martin Scorsese movie "Casino."...

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain said on Thursday it had arrested a Moroccan man suspected of heading two al Qaeda-linked cells and helping men involved in the 2004 Madrid bombings flee the country. In an Interior Ministry statement, the man was named as Omar Nakhcha, the alleged ring-leader of two cells believed to have recruited Islamist fighters for Iraq. The units were dismantled by police earlier this week and 20 people were arrested. Nakhcha, 23, was arrested in the northeastern province of Barcelona. Larbi Ben Sellam, a suspected Islamist militant arrested in June last year, told police that Nakhcha helped three...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 2005 – Senior U.S. military leaders in Iraq are now investigating allegations that information about U.S. operations in Iraq was improperly placed in Iraqi newspapers, according to a Multinational Force Iraq news release today. "Recent news coverage concerning information operations in Iraq has generated concerns regarding military communications objectives and procedures," the release stated. U.S. commanders in Iraq consider information operations an important communications tool, the news release stated. "Serious allegations have been raised that suggest the process may be functioning in a manner different than is intended or appropriate," the news release stated. The issue surfaced...

Contact: Robert Sanders rsanders@berkeley.edu 510-643-6998 University of California - Berkeley Alleged 40,000-year-old human footprints in Mexico much, much older than thought Berkeley -- Alleged footprints of early Americans found in volcanic rock in Mexico are either extremely old - more than 1 million years older than other evidence of human presence in the Western Hemisphere - or not footprints at all, according to a new analysis published this week in Nature. The study was conducted by geologists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center and the University of California, Berkeley, as part of an investigative team of geologists and anthropologists from the...

SYDNEY, Australia - Three recently arrested terror suspects had been stopped and questioned by police last December near Australia's only nuclear reactor, according to a police document released Monday. The document also outlined what it said were plans by the men to stockpile chemicals for making explosives and that they "obtained extremist advice and guidance" from a firebrand cleric arrested along with them. The three men arrested near the nuclear reactor were among 18 terror suspects arrested in Sydney and Melbourne last week and accused of plotting to carry out a "catastrophic" attack in Australia. The police document identifies the...

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A federal judge on Monday denied bail for two Chinese nationals accused of conspiring to steal sensitive documents on U.S. Navy warship technology and smuggle them to China. Tai Wang Mak, a broadcast and engineering director for the Phoenix North American Chinese Channel, and his wife, Fuk Heung Li, were arrested Oct. 28 in Los Angeles as they prepared to board a flight to China. In Li's luggage, authorities found a disk that contained information on U.S. technology designed to suppress the noise of submarine propulsion systems, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Deirdre Eliot. The disk had...

SAN DIEGO – A man suspected of being the "FedEx Bandit," so dubbed because he allegedly used an envelope from the delivery company to stash money during numerous holdups, pleaded innocent Wednesday to 32 counts of bank robbery. Farzad Farhbaksh, a 40-year-old Iranian national who also has used the names Farzad Naroii and Ernest Lozano, was ordered held on $5 million bail. Deputy District Attorney George Bennett asked for bail to be set at $1 million, but Judge David Szumowski said that amount was too low and announced the higher figure. In addition to the 32 holdups in San Diego...

LYNWOOD, Calif. - Sheriff's deputies shot and wounded a man who allegedly pointed a handgun at them and later found a woman who was allegedly shot by the man, officials said Sunday. Deputies patrolling in Lynwood heard gunshots Saturday about 2 p.m. and drove around to find the source, said Deputy Oscar Butao of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The spotted a man running down a street with a handgun and tried to detain him, Butao said. The man allegedly pointed a handgun at the deputies and they opened fire and struck him in the lower torso, Butao said....