World / Nation Briefs November 5, 2011

Officials: Car runs down 3 at Occupy DC protest

WASHINGTON - District of Columbia authorities say a car drove through a crowd near an Occupy DC protest and struck three people late Friday night.

D.C. fire department spokesman Lon Walls said the three were transported to two area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries. He said none was in critical condition but that some injuries were "fairly serious."

Lt. Kelvin Cusick of the D.C. police department said the driver was cited and released. He said he did not know yet what the driver was cited for, or whether he had been given a blood alcohol test.

"It's being investigated as an accident at this time," he said of the collision, which occurred at 10 p.m.

Hundreds of protesters affiliated with Occupy DC shut down streets Friday near the city's convention center in downtown Washington, where a conservative group was holding a gathering.

Fox 5 reported that the vehicle struck two people, kept driving, and then struck a third person. Cusick said he could not confirm this account because the full police report hadn't been filed.

Police said the accident victims were all conscious.

One protester, 29-year-old Jesse Folks of Riverdale, Md., told The Washington Post that he was standing in the street with other demonstrators near the convention center when the car "just gassed it into a bunch of people."

Top FARC leader killed in military raid in Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia - The top leader of Colombia's main rebel group, the bookish ideologue Alfonso Cano, was killed Friday in a military raid in the country's southwest, authorities said.

The death was a major victory for President Juan Manuel Santos, coming just over a year after the military killed the rebels' field marshal. It was anything but a fatal blow, however, to the nearly half-century-old peasant-based insurgency.

Cano was killed in "a standard military operation" in Cauca state in a bombing raid followed by an attack by ground troops, said one senior security official who confirmed the death.

The official, who said Cano was positively identified by his fingerprints, spoke on condition he not be further identified.

Former President Andres Pastrana, who knew Cano from failed 1998-2002 peace negotiations he held with the rebels, told The Associated Press that the death "has to make the FARC think it's losing the war."

Cano, the 63-year-old head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had been the top target of Colombian authorities since September 2010, when they killed the insurgency's military chief, Jorge Briceno, in a bombing raid.

Greek PM wins confidence vote, pledges transition

ATHENS, Greece - Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou survived a confidence vote early today, calming a vicious revolt in his Socialist party with an emotional pledge to step aside if necessary and seek a cross-party government lasting four months to safeguard a new European debt agreement.

Papandreou won the critical parliamentary confidence motion 153-145 after a week of drama in Athens that horrified Greece's European partners, spooked global markets and overshadowed the Group of 20 summit in the French resort of Cannes.

The threat of a Greek default or exit from the common euro currency has worsened the continent's debt crisis, which is already struggling under bailouts for Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, who warned that the debt-ridden country still faced "mortal danger," said the new government would last until the end of February.

But conservative opposition leader Antonis Samaras demanded immediate elections. He did not say whether he would join coalition talks, due to be formally launched later today when Papandreou meets the country's president.

Cain accused of several incidents of harassment

WASHINGTON - One of Herman Cain's accusers alleged "several incidents of sexual harassment" in a formal complaint more than a decade ago, her lawyer disclosed Friday a fresh allegation that could complicate the Republican presidential hopeful's determined bid to lay the politically explosive controversy to rest.

The lawyer, Joel Bennett, said his client - married then and now - accepted a financial settlement in leaving her job at the National Restaurant Association shortly after lodging the complaint against Cain, who was then the trade group's head. Bennett did not name the woman, who he said had decided not "to relive the specifics" of the incidents in a public forum.

Cain, who tried to return to normal campaigning Friday, has repeatedly denied ever sexually harassing anyone. His spokesman, J.D. Gordon, said in response to Bennett's comments, "''We're looking to put this issue behind us and focus on the real issues, which are fixing this broken economy, putting Americans back to work and strengthening national security."

Apart from disclosing that his client alleged more than one incident, Bennett's remarks added little of substance to a controversy that erupted nearly a week ago.

- The Associated Press