■ United States
SUV used to avenge deaths
A recent university graduate from Iran rented a sport utility vehicle (SUV) in order to inflict the maximum amount of injury while driving through a popular campus gathering spot at the University of North Carolina, according to an affidavit filed by investigators. Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, who told authorities earlier he wanted to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world," drove a rented Jeep Grand Cherokee because it had four-wheel drive and could "run things over and keep going," according to the application for a warrant to search Taheri-azar's home.
■ United Kingdom
Police stand by policy
A review into British police procedures for dealing with a suspected suicide bomber following the fatal shooting of an innocent Brazilian man last year has found no reason to change the policy, police said on yesterday. Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead last July as he boarded a train at Stockwell underground station after police mistook him for a suicide bomber. The shooting came a day after four men had failed in an attempt to bomb the London underground network and two weeks after four men killed themselves and 52 others in a suicide attack.
■ United States
Sites to receive Pearl award
Kevin Sites, who provides dispatches from armed conflicts around the world for Yahoo News, will receive this year's Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism. Sites was chosen for his "style of work, the solitary commitment to truth, the selection of the newsworthy, the focus on the human faces, and the human fate," said Judea and Ruth Pearl, parents of the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002. Sites is traveling alone to cover every major global conflict within one year for Yahoo's "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" feature.
■ Sweden
Airport thieves spark chaos
Authorities evacuated parts of an airport in southwestern Sweden on Tuesday after masked gunmen robbed a passenger plane that had just landed from London and left a suspicious package that police said looked like a bomb. Stunned passengers waiting to disembark the jet witnessed the brazen robbery at the Landvetter airport outside Goteborg. At least five robbers, some armed with assault rifles, crashed through a gate at the airport and held up luggage handlers as they were unloading crates of foreign currency from the plane, police spokeswoman Anna Rosenberg said. No one was injured. The robbers left a suspicious package on the tarmac, and sped off in two vehicles. They spread nails on the road to block police from pursuing them, she said. Both vehicles were found burned a few kilometers from the airport.
RSS