Iraq

U.S. troops battled gunmen in a mosque after their combat outpost north of Baghdad came under machinegun and rocket-propelled grenade fire that killed one soldier, the U.S. military said on Friday.
 

The military said an aircraft fired a Hellfire missile at two gunmen on the roof of the Sunni Arab mosque in the town of Tarmiya on Thursday after ordering everyone inside to evacuate.

While it is unusual for U.S. troops in Iraq to attack religiously sensitive sites such as mosques or even enter them, they have launched assaults in the past on mosques suspected of being used as bases for militants or to store weapons.

"These insurgents displayed total disregard for the community by using a mosque, a sacred place for Muslims to worship, as a sanctuary to commit their acts of terror," said Major Mike Garcia, spokesman for U.S. troops in the area.

He said the mosque sustained only minor damage in the operation in which 20 people were detained. The U.S. combat outpost had been repeatedly attacked by gunmen in the mosque since May, he added.

Tens of thousands of U.S. troops are deployed in and around Baghdad to try to clamp down on violence and give Iraqi leaders time to reach consensus on reconciling the country's warring sects.

August 16, 2007 · Uganda approves a new hydropower project. But critics say it will destroy cultural sites that are home to ancestral spirits — as well as wreak environmental havoc and ruin one of the best white-water rafting spots in the world.

Brussels; and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - When Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud was crown prince of Saudi Arabia, one of his most infamous decisions was banning the use of camera phones in 2004 – a demand from the country's Wahhabi clergy who claimed the devices were "spreading obscenity."
 

But the decision was quickly reversed when King Abdullah faced pressure from his government ministers and, allegedly, from a cadre of foreign businessmen who threatened to pull their companies from Saudi Arabia. "Abdullah was presented with a choice between the Wahhabis and good business," says one Riyadh-based businessman. "His decision [for the latter] was clear."

It is a decision that Abdullah has made time and again over the course of his reign as king, which hit its two-year mark this month. By sidelining the traditional clergy in favor of the merchant classes and more progressive religious voices, Abdullah has been challenging the "great bargain" of the Saudi state – namely the empowerment of the Wahhabi ulema (hard-line Islamic scholars) in exchange for their sanction of the House of Saud.

This unlikely reformer, who has unofficially led the kingdom since King Fahd's stroke in 1995, has propelled the country through a radical transformation. From accession to the World Trade Organization to the billion-dollar overhaul of the educational system to increased criticism of the religious "police" who enforce a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law, the closed kingdom is beginning to crack open.

'The oil boom is over'
These reforms come at a critical time. Saudi Arabia is barreling toward an economic and social crisis if it does not act fast. Almost 75 percent of Saudi citizens are under age 30 and youth unemployment is approaching 30 percent – a potential breeding ground for terrorists and regime dissidents. Current high oil prices are not enough to paper over the economic ravages of the past two decades. "The oil boom is over and will not return," Abdullah told his subjects. "All of us must get used to a different lifestyle."

Economic restructuring of the kingdom is no easy task, nor can it be separated from social reform, such as increasing women's participation in economic life and creating a business environment and laws suitable for foreign companies.

Faced with resistance from the conservative official ulema, Abdullah has adopted a strategy of "circumvention" to coerce these reforms – officially toeing the Wahhabi line, but quietly giving more leeway to the private sector.

Education, for example, had traditionally been firmly under Wahhabi control, with a focus on creating more imams than businessmen. But this won't help a country striving to become an international powerhouse. So private universities – previously shunned by the religious elite because of their relative independence – have recently been legalized, with a half-dozen Western-style institutions slated to open soon. The new King Abdullah University for Science and Technology, the kingdom's first coeducational institution, is an Abdullah initiative to create a global leader in technological innovation. He tasked the relatively secular Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources with running the project, keeping it away from the fundamentalists.

By sidelining the ulema, Abdullah has been forced to find a new source for religious legitimacy in order for him and his successors to rule over "the land of the two holy mosques."

His strategy has been to allow a wider base of voices to speak for Islam, both Sunni and Shiite. He instituted an annual forum titled "National Dialogue," which invited a variety of prominent intellectuals to make their views heard.

The forum included Sunni scholars such as Safar al Hawali, a former member of an opposition grouping called the "Awakening Sheikhs," many of which had been previously imprisoned for their biting criticism of palace policy.

Other invitees included prominent Shiite thinkers – a distinct change from earlier years, when the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia had declared Shiites to be "apostates." Most important, the official ulema were pointedly left off the guest list.

Some have criticized the weak translation of the forum's rhetoric into real action. Yet even its existence is an accomplishment, and a new building has been set up in Riyadh to host this forum. This is a sign, in the words of Saudi Arabia expert Jean-François Seznec, of how the "National Dialogue" is becoming "systematized and routinized," reflecting long-term changes in the regime's attitude.

Of course, Abdullah's reforms have been highly limited when compared with Western expectations.

The country is still an iron-fisted dictatorship: The much-heralded municipal elections of 2005 excluded women, and the trumpeted majlis (parliament) remains a body undemocratically appointed by the king. Women can't drive, and religious freedom is nonexistent. Fundamentalist forces also remain significant in the kingdom, with characters such as Prince Naif, the ultra-conservative interior minister, still wielding enormous power.

Economic impetus for reform
At 83 years old, Abdullah's time left in office may be short, and it is uncertain that those next in line to the throne will have the will or the ability to continue making crucial reforms.

The challenges facing the desert kingdom require highly tuned maneuvering skills. Reformers are counting on the durability of Abdullah's reforms regardless of his successor. His legacy is likely to be protected by the new economic elite he is helping to create.

"You can't bury your head in the sand and expect to become a global economic power," said one administrator at a new Western-style university in Saudi Arabia. "The king knows this, and he's ready to accept the consequences of reform."

Best-selling author Stephen King was mistaken for a vandal as he horrified an Australian outback bookstore, local media reported Thursday.
 

A customer at the store in remote Alice Springs raised the alarm after noticing a man walk in off the street and begin writing in several books, manager Bev Ellis told national radio.

"As the owner of a bookshop, when you see someone writing in one of your books you get a bit toey (touchy)," Ellis said.

"So we immediately ran to the books and lo-and-behold here was the signature in several books. We sort of spun around on our heels, (saying) 'where did he go, where did he go'?"

Ellis said she saw the horror writer standing in the fruit and vegetable section of the supermarket across the road in the small desert town and went over to introduce herself.

"He was lovely, very nice, charming," she said. "He introduced me to his friends and we had a talk and then I said 'Well, I'll leave you to the tomatoes.'

"I don't think he wanted people to know he was here but I told him that if I knew he was coming I would have baked him a cake."

Of the six books that King signed, five would be given to community groups for fund-raising auctions, she said.

The sixth was bought by the customer who mistook King for a vandal.

A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas base, U.S. officials said.
 

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

The owners of C&D Distributors in Lexington, South Carolina -- twin sisters -- exploited a flaw in an automated Defense Department purchasing system: bills for shipping to combat areas or U.S. bases that were labeled ``priority'' were usually paid automatically, said Cynthia Stroot, a Pentagon investigator.

C&D's fraudulent billing started in 2000, Stroot, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service's chief agent in Raleigh, North Carolina, said in an interview. ``As time went on they got more aggressive in the amounts they put in.''

The price the military paid for each item shipped rarely reached $100 and totaled just $68,000 over the six years in contrast to the $20.5 million paid for shipping, she said.

``The majority, if not all of these parts, were going to high-priority, conflict areas -- that's why they got paid,'' Stroot said. If the item was earmarked ``priority,'' destined for the military in Iraq, Afghanistan or certain other locations, ``there was no oversight.''

Scheme Detected

The scheme unraveled in September after a purchasing agent noticed a bill for shipping two more 19-cent washers: $969,000. That order was rejected and a review turned up the $998,798 payment earlier that month for shipping two 19-cent washers to Fort Bliss, Texas, Stroot said.

The Pentagon Defense Logistics Agency orders millions of parts a year. Stroot said the agency and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, which pays contractors, have made major changes, including thorough evaluations of the priciest shipping charges.

Dawn Dearden, a spokeswoman for the logistics agency, said finance and procurement officials immediately examined all billing records. Stroot said the review showed that fraudulent billing is ``is not a widespread problem.''

``C&D was a rogue contractor,'' Stroot said. While other questionable billing has been uncovered, nothing came close to C&D's, she said. The next-highest contractor billed $2 million in questionable transport costs, she said.

Guilty Pleas

C&D and two of its officials were barred in December from receiving federal contracts. A federal judge in Columbia, South Carolina, today accepted the guilty plea of the company and one sister, Charlene Corley, to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to launder money, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin McDonald said.

Corley, 46, was fined $750,000. She faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years on each count and will be sentenced in the near future, McDonald said in a telephone interview from Columbia. Stroot said her sibling died last year.

Corley didn't immediately return a phone message left on her answering machine at her office in Lexington. Her attorney, Gregory Harris, didn't immediately return a phone call placed to his office in Columbia.

Stroot said the Pentagon hopes to recoup most of the $20.5 million by auctioning homes, beach property, jewelry and ``high- end automobiles'' that the sisters spent the money on.

``They took a lot of vacations,'' she said.

In a move wildly applauded by financial markets on both sides of the Atlantic, the Federal Reserve announced Friday that it's cut the discount rate to 5.75%.
Fed policymakers acknowledged the precarious state of credit markets in making the move.
The discount rate is the interest rate charged to commercial banks and other depository institutions on loans they receive from regional Federal Reserve lending facilities. It differs from the key federal funds rate, which is the rate at which private institutions lend to other depository institutions overnight.
Cutting the discount rate from 6.25% previously, something that financial commentators have been agitating for in recent days, was seen as aimed at narrowing the gap between the discount and fed-funds rates.
The target for federal funds remains 5.25%.
"Financial market conditions have deteriorated, and tighter credit conditions and increased uncertainty have the potential to restrain economic growth," the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement. See text.
Accordingly, the FOMC said it "judges that the downside risks to growth have increased appreciably." Fed officials are "monitoring the situation" and are "prepared to act as needed to mitigate the adverse effects on the economy arising from the disruptions in financial markets," the FOMC said.
Stock futures, which had been broadly lower before the Fed's announcement, turned high almost immediately