World/Nation Briefs August 11, 2013
Obama chooses safety first to avoid attack
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama seems determined to make sure he doesn't have another Benghazi.
Pilloried by Republicans in Congress for its handling of last year's attack, his administration is responding with extra caution now that intelligence suggests a possible al-Qaida strike is in the works.
Even as the threat may be subsiding, U.S. officials say they are taking no risks less than a year after militants killed four Americans in the eastern Libyan city and with Republicans poised to pounce on any misstep.
After closing 19 diplomatic posts across the Muslim world for almost a week, the United States added to the global uneasiness Friday.
It ordered nonessential staff out of Lahore, Pakistan, and warned Americans to avoid traveling to the country. The action appeared unrelated to the al-Qaida threat stemming from Yemen, but mirrored a missive earlier in the week to U.S. embassy staffers in that country.
Another suspect in DEA agent killing to go free
MEXICO CITY - Defense attorneys believe freedom is imminent for a second member of the trio of Mexican drug kingpins responsible for the 1985 slaying of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, one of the capo's attorneys said Saturday. In the U.S., outrage grew over this week's surprise decision to overturn Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero's conviction in the notorious killing.
Caro Quintero walked free Friday after a federal court overturned his 40-year sentence in agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena's kidnapping, torture and murder. The three-judge appeals court in the western state of Jalisco ordered Caro Quintero's immediate release on procedural grounds after 28 years behind bars, saying he should have originally been prosecuted in state instead of federal court.
Also imprisoned in the Camarena case are Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, two of the founding fathers of modern Mexican drug trafficking, whose cartel based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa later split into some of Mexico's largest drug organizations.
Pilot in crash that killed 4 survived previous wreck
HARTFORD, Conn. - The plane accident that killed four people in a Connecticut neighborhood was not the first crash for the pilot, a former Microsoft executive who was taking his teenage son on a tour of East Coast colleges.
The pilot, Bill Henningsgaard, was killed along with his son, Maxwell, and two children who were in a house struck by the small propeller-driven plane on Friday. Four bodies were recovered from the wreckage and sent to the Connecticut medical examiner's office for identification.
East Haven police on Saturday released the names of the crash victims, including Henningsgaard, 54, of Medina, Wash.; his 17-year-old son; 13-year-old Sade Brantley and 1-year-old Madisyn Mitchell, who lived in the East Haven home hit by the plane.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Patrick Murray said Saturday the plane was upside down when it struck a house at about a 60 degree angle. He said the pilot was making his first approach to the airport and did not declare an emergency before the crash.
Syria's Muslim Brotherhood faces challenges
BEIRUT - For Syria's banned Muslim Brotherhood, the uprising against President Bashar Assad that erupted amid Arab Spring revolts in 2011 provided a long-sought opportunity to stage a comeback after decades spent in exile.
Thirty years earlier, the group's own violent uprising against Assad's father, the late Hafez Assad, was brutally crushed, culminating in an infamous massacre in the city of Hama that ended with the group's leadership killed, imprisoned or exiled.
Amid the chaos of the current revolt, the group quickly emerged as the best organized of Assad's political opponents, and is playing an increasingly active role on the ground by providing assistance to military brigades it supports.
It faces enormous challenges in the months ahead, however.
The downfall of the Brotherhood in Egypt has shaken its Syrian counterpart and deepened distrust of the secretive movement by other Syrians who are suspicious of its religious agenda.
- The Associated Press