World/Nation Briefs October 19, 2012

Obama and Romney civil at charity dinner

NEW YORK - President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney poked gentle but sharp fun at one another Thursday night during an esteemed New York Catholic charity dinner that has long been a required stop for presidential candidates. Romney mocked his own wealth while taking aim at the president for running up the federal debt while Obama noted the "nice long nap" he had taken during the first presidential debate.

The two rivals donned tuxedos and white ties to share the dais at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, an annual gala that has drawn political leaders and other notables since the end of World War II.

The event was a comedic pause in a contest that has drawn increasingly nasty and close with less than three weeks left before the Nov. 6 election. On Tuesday, Obama and Romney sparred in a nationally televised debate in which each questioned the other's character and truthfulness.

Investigators say Bangladesh man was bent on jihad

NEW YORK - Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis was a terrible student in his native Bangladesh, and his middle-class parents say he persuaded them to send him off to study in the U.S. as a way of improving his job prospects.

At the Missouri college where he enrolled, one classmate said Nafis often remarked that true Muslims don't believe in violence - an image that seemed startlingly at odds with Nafis' arrest in an FBI sting this week on charges of trying to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York with what he thought was a 1,000-pound car bomb.

"I can't imagine being more shocked about somebody doing something like this," said Jim Dow, a 54-year-old Army veteran who rode home from class with Nafis twice a week. "I didn't just meet this kid a couple of times. We talked quite a bit, sir. And this doesn't seem to be in character."

Federal investigators, often accused by defense attorneys of entrapping and leading would-be terrorists along, said the 21-year-old Nafis made the first move over the summer, reaching out for accomplices and eventually contacting a government informant, who then went to federal authorities.

They said he also selected his target, drove the van loaded with dummy explosives up to the door of the bank, and tried to set off the bomb from a hotel room using a cell phone he thought had been rigged as a detonator.

Army: Shooting suspect can be forcibly shaved

FORT WORTH, Texas - An Army appeals court ruled Thursday that the Fort Hood shooting suspect can have his beard forcibly shaved off before his murder trial.

The U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the military trial judge's decision to order Maj. Nidal Hasan to appear in court clean shaven or be forcibly shaved, according to a release from Fort Hood. The opinion came on the heels of last week's hearing at Fort Belvoir in Virginia in which the court heard arguments from both sides.

Hasan, who did not attend the hearing, has said he grew a beard because his Muslim faith requires it, despite the Army's ban on beards. A few exceptions have been made for religious reasons.

inventor of hybrid car battery dies in Detroit at 89

DETROIT - Stan Ovshinsky, the self-taught inventor who developed the nickel-metal hydride battery used in the hybrid vehicle industry, has died at his home in suburban Detroit after a fight with cancer. He was 89.

Ovshinsky, who ran Energy Conversion Devices, a car battery development company, also created a machine that produced 9-mile-long sheets of thin solar energy panels intended to bring cheaper, cleaner power to homes and businesses.

His son, Harvey Ovshinsky, said his father was passionate about science and alternative energy, but also about civil rights and other social causes. He said his father died of complications from prostate cancer Wednesday night at his home in Bloomfield Hills.

"Here was a man who spent his youth and his adulthood determined to change the world," the younger Ovshinsky said. "That's not a 9-to-5 job. My father worked tirelessly 24-7, even up until he got sick, to change the world and its attitude toward sustainable energy and alternate platforms for information."

Stan Ovshinsky, for whom ovonics was named, made possible such technological discoveries as the solar-powered calculator. Ovonics changes the electrical resistance and structure of materials in response to sunlight.

- The Associated Press