World/Nation Briefs April 9, 2013
Suicide bomber kills at least 15 in Damascus
DAMASCUS, Syria - A suicide car bomber struck Monday in the financial heart of Syria's capital, killing at least 15 people, damaging the nearby central bank and incinerating cars and trees in the neighborhood.
The attack was the latest in a recent series of bombings to hit Damascus in the civil war, slowly closing in on President Bashar Assad's base of power in the capital. Rebel fighters have chipped away at the regime's hold in northern and eastern Syria, as well as making significant gains in the south, helped in part by an influx of foreign-funded weapons.
The blast was adjacent Sabaa Bahrat Square - near the state-run Syrian Investment Agency, the Syrian Central Bank and the Finance Ministry - and dealt a symbolic blow to the nation's ailing economy.
In the early days of the 2-year-old uprising, the grandiose roundabout was home to huge pro-regime demonstrations with a gigantic poster of Assad hung over the central bank headquarters.
The area was a very different scene Monday.
Obama warns Congress not to delay on guns
HARTFORD, Conn. - With time running out on the chance to pass gun control legislation, President Barack Obama on Monday warned Congress not to use delaying tactics against tighter regulations and told families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims that he's "determined as ever" to honor their children with tougher laws.
Obama's gun control proposals have run into resistance on Capitol Hill, leaving their fate in doubt. Efforts by Senate Democrats to reach compromise with Republicans over expanding required federal background checks have yet to yield an agreement, and conservatives were promising to try blocking the Senate from even beginning debate on gun control legislation.
"The day Newtown happened was the toughest day of my presidency," Obama said in an emotional speech from Connecticut's capital, an hour's drive from Newtown. "But I've got to tell you, if we don't respond to this, that'll be a tough day for me too."
Some of the Sandy Hook families are making an attempt to push through the bill. Obama met with them privately before his speech at the University of Hartford Monday evening, then brought 12 family members back to Air Force One for the trip back to Washington. The relatives want to meet with senators who've yet to back the legislation to encourage their support in memory of their loved ones.
"Nothing's going to be more important in making sure that the Congress moves forward this week than hearing from them," Obama said. His eyes teared as he described Nicole Hockley, who lost her 6-year-old son, Dylan, saying how she asks him every night to come to her in her dreams so she can see him again.
Korean conflict on display at shared factory
SEOUL, South Korea - A factory complex that is North Korea's last major economic link with the South was a virtual ghost town today after Pyongyang suspended its operations and recalled all 53,000 of its workers, cutting off jobs and a source of hard currency in its war of words and provocations against Seoul and Washington.
Only a few hundred South Korean managers remain at the Kaesong industrial complex, which has been run with cheap North Korean labor and South Korean capital and know-how for the past decade. The managers have not been forced to leave the facility just north of the Demilitarized Zone.
One manager said today that he and his colleagues are subsisting on ramen but planned to stay and watch over the company's equipment as long as their food lasted.
Pyongyang said Monday it would recall all 53,000 North Korean workers from the complex and would decide later whether to shut it down for good. The work stoppage at the biggest employer in the North's third-biggest city shows that Pyongyang is willing to hurt its own shaky economy in order to display its anger with South Korea and the United States.
Pyongyang has unleashed a torrent of threats at Seoul and Washington following U.N. sanctions punishing the North for its third nuclear test, on Feb. 12, and joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea that allies call routine but that Pyongyang sees as invasion preparation.
Father sobs and prays on 911 call after kids buried
STANLEY, N.C. - A North Carolina man tearfully begged authorities to hurry to his house to rescue his daughter and her cousin, who were buried when the walls of a 24-foot deep pit he dug on his property collapsed.
Jordan Arwood, 31, was operating a backhoe Sunday night in the pit when the walls collapsed and he called 911.
Arwood's desperate voice is heard on a recording released by the Lincoln County communications center on Monday, when the children's bodies were recovered.
"Please hurry ... My children are buried under tons of dirt ... They're buried under tons of clay ... It fell on top of them," he said sobbing.
When the dispatcher asked him if he could see the children, Arwood said he couldn't.
The bodies of the two young cousins, 6-year-old Chloe Jade Arwood and 7-year-old James Levi Caldwell, were dug out Monday.
- The Associated Press