Arizona's trailblazing immigration law if two lawmakers can get enough support to pass bills they say they intend to introduce next year

AUSTIN, Texas, April 28 Texas could follow Arizona’s trailblazing immigration law if two lawmakers can get enough support to pass bills they say they intend to introduce next year.Texas state Rep. Leo Berman says he is planning a package of bills next January that include one measure that would make it a crime to be an undocumented worker and another allowing law enforcement officials to ask people they believe may be in the country illegally about their status, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Wednesday.

“I think almost every state in the union will follow suit,” Berman said.Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, has said she also plans to introduce a similar bill.”The first priority for any elected official is to make sure that the safety and security of Texans is well-established,” Riddle told Hearst Newspapers. “If our federal government did their job, then Arizona wouldn’t have to take this action, and neither would Texas.”

Tyler’s KLTV-TV reported Berman also wants to require U.S. presidential and vice presidential candidates to prove their citizenship to the Texas secretary of state before their names can be put on the ballot, a nod to the so-called birther movement.The station said opponents of the proposed legislation say it will get a different reception in Texas than in Arizona.(UPI)

3 People Killed In Clashes in North Yemen

Sanaa Three people were killed in clashes in northern Yemen, according to several sources, Thursday, in the latest violence threatened to disrupt the truce that has lasted two months. Shia rebels and government agreed a ceasefire to end the war in the region in February. Several previous truce failed to be enforced. The truce which came into force Friday (12 / 2) it is the government’s latest effort to end the rebellion in the north that has killed thousands of people and caused 250,000 people to flee.

A number of rebels and tribal sources provide information about the maze of clashes Thursday, which highlights the confusion surrounding the conflict in Saada, north Yemen. “Houthi rebels opened fire towards the position of the central security forces, who then shot back,” said one source about the clash Yemeni tribe, who added that three rebels were killed. Rebels denied involvement in the incident, saying the armed tribesmen who clashed with security forces after they tried to extort money from them at a checkpoint in Saada on Wednesday.

The rebels said on their news site, the three people killed were civilians caught in the cross fire. A Yemeni government official denied there has been violence. However, several people were injured in separate clashes between rebels Houthi and pro-government militia, and dozens of pro-rebel gunmen held a peaceful march to protest that Sanaa did not mean an end to the conflict. Zaidi or Houthi rebel group, the name of their deceased leader, based in the mountains on the border of Saudi Arabia, where they engaged in battle with Yemeni and Saudi forces.

Government forces engaged in sporadic battles with Shiite groups since 2004. Violence in southern Yemen has also increased in recent time was when separatist protesting against the administration of President Ali Abdullah Saleh who clashed with security forces killed three policemen and five protestors.

Tensions rose in southern Yemen after a protester was shot dead the police on February 13. The incident sparked riots in which the separatists set fire to shops owned by people north and attempted to blockade a main road. Authorities conduct security operations and arrested about 180 people in the southern provinces. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen has urged people not to listen to appeals for secession, which he said the same as treason. North Yemen and South Yemen formally united to form the Republic of Yemen in 1990, but many parties in the southern region, which is where most of the oil in Yemen, says that northern people use it to dominate the unification of natural resources and discriminate against them.

Western countries and Saudi Arabia, Yemen neighbors, worried that the country will fail and Al-Qaeda used the turmoil to strengthen their grip on the impoverished Arab country and turn it into a place to launch further attacks. Yemen into the world spotlight when the regional wing of Al-Qaeda of masterminding a bomb attack AQAP states fail against U.S. passenger plane on Christmas Day.

AQAP declared in late December, they gave Nigerians suspect “means that technically sophisticated” and told Americans that more attacks would be carried out. Analysts fear that Yemen will collapse under Shia rebellion in the northern region, the separatist movement in the southern region and the attacks of Al-Qaeda. Poor country that borders Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporting country. Sanaa said that Yemeni forces kill dozens of al-Qaeda members in two attacks in December.

British Embassy in Sanaa also become targets of suicide attacks planned Al-Qaeda Yemeni security forces foiled in mid-December. An Al Qaeda cell that was destroyed in Arhab, 35 kilometers north of the Yemeni capital, “aims to infiltrate and blow up targets including the British Embassy, government buildings and foreign interests”, according to a statement posted on the site 26Sep.net letter news of the defense ministry. Besides the rebellion, Yemen was hit by kidnappings of foreigners in recent years.( Reuters)

senior official said on Monday Iran has started work on a new uranium enrichment nuclear plant

Iran has started work on a new uranium enrichment nuclear plant, a senior official said on Monday, part of a big expansion of its nuclear program which has contributed to fears in the West it aims to build a bomb.Defying Western pressure to curb its sensitive nuclear work, Iran announced in November it planned to expand its enrichment activities by building 10 new sites. The announcement was condemned by the United states and its European allies.”The president has confirmed the designated location of a new nuclear site and on his order the building process has begun,” Mojtaba Samareh-Hashemi, a senior adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told the semi-official ILNA news agency.

“New locations on which the plants should be constructed this year have been determined and initial construction is underway,” Samareh-Hashemi was quoted as saying.Iran’s top nuclear official Akbar Salehi told Reuters in February that Iran would start construction of two enrichment sites by March 2011.Washington is pushing for a fourth round of United Nations sanctions on Iran in the coming weeks to pressure it to halt its enrichment-related work, which Tehran says is entirely peaceful.Iran started higher-level enrichment in February, saying it needed the 20 percent enriched fuel for a research reactor in Tehran making medical isotopes. Such potent material is not necessary to generate electricity.

Tehran has said it is still willing to swap low-level enriched uranium for higher-grade fuel enriched abroad — a move which would help address fears about Iran’s enrichment activities — but the exchange must happen on Iranian soil.The West believed it had persuaded Iran, at talks in Geneva last October, to hand over some of its uranium stocks to be enriched abroad, but that deal fell apart soon afterwards.Samareh-Hashemi said any import of enriched uranium would not mean Iran planned to stop its own enrichment.”The domestic production of (nuclear) fuel does not contradict importing it,” he said.

“We have started to produce uranium domestically based on our need to provide fuel for the Tehran research reactor and this will continue until our needs are met.”In a separate development, state-owned Jam-e-Jam daily said Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, would soon be stepping down as his term was coming to an end. Soltanieh was not immediately available to comment.(Reuters)

Qatar Diplomat Sparks Bomb Scare After Smoking On United Airlines Flight To Denver

DENVERA Qatari diplomat trying to sneak a smoke in an airplane bathroom sparked a bomb scare Wednesday night on a flight from Washington to Denver, with fighter jets scrambled and law enforcement put on high alert, officials said.No explosives were found on the man, and officials do not believe he was trying to harm anyone, according to a senior law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.An Arab diplomat briefed on the matter identified the diplomat as Mohammed Al-Madadi.The sources asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Officials said air marshals aboard the flight restrained the man and he was questioned. The plane landed safely as military jets were scrambled.Flights continued to land and take off at Denver International Airport, one of the nation’s busiest. Passengers from other flights picked up their luggage in the airport’s baggage area, apparently unaware of any emergency.

A senior State Department official said the agency was aware of the tentative identification of the man as a Qatari diplomat and that there would be “consequences, diplomatic and otherwise” if he had committed a crime.The latest edition of department’s Diplomatic List, a registry of foreign diplomats working in the United States, identifies a man named Mohammed Yaaqob Y.M. Al-Madadi as the third secretary for the Qatari Embassy in Washington. Third secretary is a relatively low-ranking position at any diplomatic post and it was not immediately clear what his responsibilities would have been.

Foreign diplomats in the United States, like American diplomats posted abroad, have broad immunity from prosecution. The official said if the man’s identity as a Qatari diplomat was confirmed and if it was found that he may have committed a crime, U.S. authorities would have to decide whether to ask Qatar to waive his diplomatic immunity so he could be charged and tried. Qatar could decline, the official said, and the man would likely be expelled from the United States

Tobacco companies defended menthol cigarettes to a U.S. advisory panel on Wednesday

Tobacco companies defended menthol cigarettes to a U.S. advisory panel on Wednesday as health advocates called for a government ban on the popular flavoring.About 19 million Americans smoke menthol cigarettes. Health advocates say the minty flavor masks the harshness of tobacco, making it easier to start smoking and harder to quit.

Manufacturers told a Food and Drug Administration panel that adding menthol did not make a cigarette more harmful or addictive.”Overall the weight of scientific evidence indicates menthol does not change the inherent health risks of cigarette smoking,” said James Dillard, a senior vice president at Altria, which sells menthol versions of its Marlboro brand cigarettes.

The panel of outside experts is studying the health effects of menthol and is due to submit a report by March 2011. The FDA eventually could ban menthol, although some activists and industry analysts doubt that will happen. Stronger warnings or advertising limits are other possibilities.Any government action against menthol could be a blow to Lorillard, the nation’s third-largest cigarette company and maker of the top-selling menthol brand Newport.

A 2009 tobacco law banned cigarette flavors such as chocolate, clove and fruit that could lure children. But Congress exempted menthol, the most popular flavoring with about 27 percent of the cigarette market, and instead called for an FDA review.The issue is racially sensitive as blacks overwhelmingly favor menthol and suffer more from smoking-related illnesses and deaths than whites. A government survey showed 83 percent of adult black smokers chose menthol cigarettes.The American Academy of Pediatrics and others urged a ban on menthol flavoring, telling the FDA panel that it appealed to young people.

“Menthol has become the industry’s last holdout and last hope for disguising the taste of tobacco… we should not allow companies to sweeten the poison,” said Brandel France de Bravo of the National Research Center for Women & Families, a consumer group.

R.J. Reynolds said there was no evidence of greater health risks with menthol.”There is no scientific basis to treat menthol cigarettes differently than regular cigarettes,” said Michael Ogden, an official with Reynolds American unit R.J. Reynolds, which markets menthol-flavored Camels.Lorillard Senior Vice President Bill True said there was no data to show that youth smoking rates would drop if menthol cigarettes were no longer available.

Advisory committee members drafted a broad list of questions they wanted the industry to answer in time for the next public meeting, expected in a few months.The topics included lists of menthol content by brand, data on consumer perceptions of menthol’s effects and details on any marketing campaigns aimed at particular groups.The FDA will seek answers from the manufacturers and provide information to the committee, agency spokeswoman Kathleen Quinn said.(Reuters)

Pakistani troops killed at least 34 militants after about 150 Taliban attacked a military checkpost in the northwest on Friday

Pakistani troops killed at least 34 militants after about 150 Taliban attacked a military checkpost in the northwest on Friday, challenging government assertions crackdowns have weakened the group.Homegrown Taliban rebels are seeking to topple the U.S.-backed government of unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari, who has been pressured to hand over some of his key powers, such as dissolving parliament and appointing military chiefs.

A senior military officer and four paramilitary soldiers were also killed in the attack in Orakzai, a day after Pakistani jets killed nearly 50 people, mostly militants, in strikes on a school and a seminary in the same region, a government official said.Fourteen soldiers were wounded in the Taliban assault.

Orakzai, one of seven Pakistani tribal regions near the Afghan border, also known as agencies, has seen a surge in military attacks in recent months, targeting militants who were driven out of their bastion of South Waziristan.Pakistan mounted two offensives last year in the northwestern Swat Valley and in South Waziristan on the Afghan border, which it says threw al Qaeda-linked militants into disarray.But despite losing ground, the Taliban hit back with bombings that killed hundreds, prompting troops to step up attacks in other northwestern regions where militants are believed to have taken refuge after offensives.In the latest attack, about 150 Taliban launched a pre-dawn assault on a checkpoint in Orakzai, triggering fierce fighting.

“They attacked from three sides which continued for nearly three hours in which a lieutenant colonel and four other security officials were killed,” said government official Khaista Rehman.”Security forces launched the counter-attack in which 24 militants have been killed,” he said. A paramilitary official, said as many as 30 militants may have been killed.

Army jets and helicopter gunships later targeted suspected militant hideouts in various parts of Orakzai and killed another 10 militants, said government official Mohammad Asghar Khan.Orakzai is considered a militant stronghold of Pakistan Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who is widely believed to have been killed in a U.S. drone aircraft attack in January.

Pakistani action against militants along its Afghan border is seen as crucial to the U.S. efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan, particularly as Washington sends more troops there to fight a raging Taliban insurgency before a gradual withdrawal starts in 2011.

The two allies pledged increased cooperation in tackling militants during two days of talks in Washington that ended on Thursday, with Washington promising to speed up overdue military payments.U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates praised Pakistan for increased coordination over stabilizing Afghanistan, including the recent arrest of a key Afghan Taliban commander in what has been described as a joint American-Pakistani raid in Karachi.(Reuters)

earthquake sent a sharp jolt across the Los Angeles area Tuesday, but the magnitude 4.4 temblor was barely strong enough to knock items off shelves

earthquake sent a sharp jolt across the Los Angeles area Tuesday, but the magnitude 4.4 temblor was barely strong enough to knock items off shelves. It was, however, sharp enough to frazzle residents, many of whom felt a “strong bang.” The epicenter was 10 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles in Pico Rivera, and the quake was felt as far away as San Diego and Ventura County. Los Angeles County fire official Ed Pickett, who was in East Los Angeles, said the jolt at 4:04 a.m. felt “like the building dropped.” He described feeling the quake for about “15 seconds at the most.”

But at the epicenter, there appeared to be no major damage. Not a single bottle broke at Walt’s Liquor Store in Pico Rivera, said owner Letti Talamantes.Jose Palomera, who was cleaning a taco stand in Pico Rivera, first thought the shaking was a rolling big rig. “It just felt like a big wave just passing by,” he said. Pico Rivera soon returned to normal. Buses picked up passengers, cars waited in drive-through lines and customers watched the morning news while buying doughnuts and coffee.The quake was weaker than the magnitude 5.4 Chino Hills quake in July 2008 and the 4.7 May 2009 Inglewood quake, which shattered windows and caused minor damage.

Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson said Tuesday’s quake appears to have occurred along the 25-mile-long Puente Hills thrust fault, which runs from the Puente Hills near Whittier northwest through downtown Los Angeles, ending in Beverly Hills. The quake was triggered when one side of the fault slid over the other, causing shaking.The Puente Hills thrust fault is the same one that triggered the magnitude 5.9 Whittier Narrows earthquake in 1987 that killed eight people and caused $358 million in damage. Tuesday’s quake produced about 500 times less energy than the 1987 temblor.

The Puente Hills thrust is a slow-moving fault and is less likely to have major earthquakes than, say, the San Andreas fault. But major temblors can happen on slow-moving faults, Hauksson said, which is what happened in the 7.9 quake that struck China in 2008, killing about 70,000 people.Earthquakes with a magnitude of 4 are quite common in Southern California, occurring every month or two, said Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton.The last magnitude 4 quake occurred Saturday in northern San Diego County.Tuesday’s quake was a reminder of the tectonic forces that have been shaping the region for 3 million to 4 million years. The quakes are triggered as the Pacific plate moves northwest, shifting against the North American plate.

Pakistan A pair of suicide bombers targeting army vehicles detonated explosives within seconds of each other Friday

LAHORE, Pakistan A pair of suicide bombers targeting army vehicles detonated explosives within seconds of each other Friday, killing at least 39 people in this eastern city and wounding nearly 100, police said. It was the fourth major attack in Pakistan this week, indicating Islamist militants are stepping up violence after a period of relative calm.About ten of those killed were soldiers, said Lahore police chief Parvaiz Rathore.

The bombers, who were on foot, struck RA Bazaar, a residential and commercial neighborhood where several security agencies have facilities. Security forces swarmed the area as thick black smoke rose into the sky and bystanders rushed the injured into ambulances. Video being shot with a mobile phone just after the first explosion showed a large burst of orange flame suddenly erupting in the street, according to GEO TV, which broadcast a short clip of the footage shot by Tabraiz Bukhari.”Oh my God! Oh my God! Who are these beasts? Oh my God!” Bukhari can be heard shouting after the blast in a mixture of English and Urdu.Senior police official Tariq Saleem Dogar said 39 people were killed, and another 95 were hurt. Some of the wounded were missing limbs, lying in pools of blood after the enormous explosions, eyewitness Afzal Awan said.

“I saw smoke rising everywhere,” Awan told reporters. “A lot of people were crying.”No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion quickly fell on the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida.The militants are believed to have been behind scores of attacks in U.S.-allied Pakistan over the last several years, including a series of strikes that began in October and lasted around three months, killing some 600 people in apparent retaliation for an army offensive along the Afghan border.In more recent months, the attacks were smaller, fewer and confined to remote regions near Afghanistan.But on Monday, a suicide car bomber struck a building in Lahore where police interrogated high-value suspects – including militants – killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.Also this week, suspected militants attacked the offices of World Vision, a U.S.-based Christian aid group, in the northwest district of Mansehra, killing six Pakistani employees, while a bombing at a small, makeshift movie theater in the main northwest city of Peshawar killed four people.The attacks show that the loose network of insurgents angry with Islamabad for its alliance with the U.S. retain the ability to strike throughout Pakistan despite pressure from army offensives and American missile strikes against militant targets.

The violence also comes amid signs of a Pakistani crackdown on Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida operatives using its soil. Among the militants known to have been arrested is the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.The Pakistani Taliban, meanwhile, are believed to have lost their top commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a U.S. missile strike in January. The group has denied Mehsud is dead but has failed to prove he’s still alive.

Militant attacks in Pakistan frequently target security forces, though civilian targets have not escaped.During the bloody wave of attacks that began in October – coinciding with the army’s ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in the South Waziristan tribal area – Lahore was hit several times.In mid-October, three groups of gunmen attacked three security facilities in the eastern city, a rampage that left 28 dead. Twin suicide bombings at a market there in December killed around 50 people.(AP)

U.S. led forces in Afghanistan will launch a new military operation later this year to get full control of Kandahar

WASHINGTON   U.S. led forces in Afghanistan will launch a new military operation later this year to get full control of Kandahar, the former “capital city” of the Taliban, a senior U.S. official said on Friday. The top U.S. general in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, had already flagged his intention to target Kandahar following an offensive, now in its third week, to retake control of the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in neighboring Helmand province.

“If our overall goal for 2010 in Afghanistan is to reverse the momentum (of the Taliban) … then we think we’ve got to get to Kandahar this year,” said the senior Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.Militants have over the past year made startling gains in the area around Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement. Reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar ruled Afghanistan from there before U.S.-led forces invaded in 2001.McChrystal described the city in his assessment of the war last August as the “key geographic objective” of the Quetta Shura Taliban, the main faction led by Mullah Omar.

The U.S. official was offering an assessment of the offensive in Marjah, which the administration views as key preparation for the potentially bigger battle of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city.

TEST CASE FOR BIG PRIZE

Marjah is one of the biggest operations in the more than eight-year-old Afghan war. It is also an early test of President Barack Obama’s plan to add 30,000 more troops to win control of Taliban strongholds and eventually transfer them to Afghan authority.”The way to look at Marjah is that it is the tactical prelude to larger more comprehensive operations later this year in Kandahar city,” the administration official said.

“Bringing comprehensive population security to Kandahar city is really the centerpiece of operations this year and therefore Marjah is the prelude,” he said.The British commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan said last week that NATO forces would sweep toward Kandahar over the next six months.

On Thursday, Afghan authorities raised the Afghan flag over Marjah to signify the handover of control to the government from NATO troops led by U.S. Marines.The official said military commanders on the ground believed it would take several weeks yet to clear the remaining pockets of resistance in and around Marjah.”We are somewhere between clear and hold and that is pretty much on track. What is going to be more challenging than the clearing process will be the building process,” he said.

He acknowledged U.S. and Afghan security forces would not initially have the trust of Marjah’s residents.”It is not so much a matter of a physical contest about who controls the weapons, it’s a question of who controls the confidence of the people. That will only come after we are able to deliver,” he said.Washington hopes its latest offensive will decisively turn the momentum in a war that commanders say has been going the way of the Taliban.Under Obama’s new strategy, NATO and Afghan security forces are to secure population centers across Afghanistan so that the government can move in.(Reuters)

Iraqi police say a car bomb targeting a police building has killed three people in the capital of Iraq's western Anbar province

RAMADI,  Iraqi police say a car bomb targeting a police building has killed three people in the capital of Iraq’s western Anbar province.The bombing comes as Iraq is preparing for March 7 parliamentary elections. Insurgents have been repeatedly targeting government institutions in Anbar and the rest of Iraq in an attempt to destabilize the country ahead of the vote.Police officials say a suicide bomber exploded the car outside the Internal Affairs office in the provincial capital, Ramadi.The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.Anbar province was considered the hotbed of the insurgency until many fighters turned against the insurgents in what is considered one of the key turning points of the war.Three mortar rounds hit central Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone on Monday, injuring at least six people and damaging homes and cars, in the latest attack on government targets ahead of March 7 elections.

A police officer in the nearby Kharkh police department said he did not know whether Iraqi or American military personnel were among the injured. He and an Interior Ministry official who also confirmed the blast spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.The U.S. military said it had a report of an indirect fire incident in the Green Zone, referring to a rocket or mortar attack, but had no further information.Government targets such as the Green Zone, a sprawling area where the Iraqi government compound and U.S. Embassy are located, have increasingly come under assault as insurgents attempt to destabilize the Iraqi government ahead of the March 7 parliamentary vote.

Iraqi citizens who live in areas such as the Green Zone sometimes find themselves caught in the fire, hit by mortar rounds or rockets intended for government targets.While violence has fallen dramatically in Iraq since the height of sectarian tensions in 2006 and 2007, sporadic attacks still occur. Hundreds of people have been killed in attacks on government and other targets since August, angering many Iraqis who accuse their government of being unable to protect Iraqi. (AP)