Former president Bill Clinton's Harlem office was shut down on Friday afternoon after a woman in the office opened a letter and a suspicious white powder spilled out, police said. The substance was later found to be nontoxic, but its disco-very led the authorities to evacuate two floors of the building and to decontaminate several workers in the office. Police said the letter included a "rambling diatribe." It was the third time since 2001 that a letter containing a mysterious but nontoxic substance had been sent to Clinton's office.
■ United States
Airborne laser aircraft rolls in
The Missile Defense Agency has rolled out an airborne laser aircraft (ABL), the latest development in a missile-defense system that was once ridiculed as a "Star Wars" fantasy. In a ceremony held on Friday at Boeing Co's Integrated Defense Systems facility in Wichita, Kansas, the agency announced it was ready to flight test some of the low-power systems on the ABL aircraft, a modified Boeing 747-400F designed to destroy enemy missiles. The laser weapon's system is designed to detect, track and destroy ballistic missiles in their boost flight phase. "I believe we are building the forces of good to beat the forces of evil," said Henry "Trey" Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency
■ United States
Rove speaks on Iraq
Presidential advisor Karl Rove blasted Democrats for even suggesting the US withdraw from Iraq, saying the US can't leave one of the world's largest oil reserves in terrorist hands. Rove also said the military must be flexible in its tactics. "More sacrifice is going to be required," Rove told a ballroom full of Republicans at a fundraiser on Friday for Wisconsin candidates. "We will either create a world in which our children and our grand-children have a hope of an optimistic future or we will leave to them a world with a hateful empire centered in the Middle East."
■ Colombia
Uribe strikes deep
Famed for his tough approach, President Alvaro Uribe went one step further on Thursday when he ordered a local official suspected of corruption arrested as he sat in the audience listening to the presidential speech. Speaking in the port city of Buenaventura, Uribe accused the city mayor's secretary of trying to get a naval officer to hand over a captured stash of cocaine and ordered police to detain him. "You are unworthy to carry out your duties," Uribe said, wagging his finger as two plainclothes officers escorted the official out of the hall. "The government cannot do battle when someone in a position as important as yours lacks patriotism."
■ Canada
Sex offender not welcome
An American sex offender who was sentenced by a US judge to three years "exile" in Canada was arrested by Canadian border guards on Thursday and faces deportation, the government said. Federal ministers and legislators had expressed deep unhappiness after a New York state judge allowed former teacher Malcolm Watson -- convicted of having sex with a 15-year-old girl -- to live in Canada on probation rather than spending time in a US jail. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said the government had officially requested that Watson be deemed inadmissible because of his conviction. Immigration officials will start examining the case at a hearing on Friday.
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