In the News

Actor Don Knotts dies at 81

LOS ANGELES – Don Knotts, the skinny, lovable nerd who kept generations of television audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on “The Andy Griffith Show,” has died. He was 81.

Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the cable network TV Land, which airs “The Andy Griffith Show,” and another Knotts hit, “Three’s Company.”

Unspecified health problems had forced him to cancel an appearance in his native Morgantown, W.Va. in August 2005.

The West Virginia-born actor’s half-century career included seven TV series and more than 25 films, but it was the Griffith show that brought him TV immortality and five Emmys.

Smart cameras, armed guards to protect rebuilt World Trade Center site

NEW YORK – Visitors to the complex that eventually will fill the World Trade Center site may have to submit to iris scans or thumb-print analysis to get into buildings, while smart cameras try to match their faces to a photo database of known terrorists. Well-paid armed guards would be on patrol and sensors would test the air for lethal gases.

Preliminary details of a plan to make the redeveloped 16-acre site as terrorism-proof as possible were provided to The Associated Press this past week by former FBI agent James Kallstrom, Gov. George Pataki’s senior counterterrorism adviser.

Kallstrom and city and federal officials are aiming for a higher standard of security than is currently in use for public spaces around the nation.

“This’ll be reflective of the times we live in,” Kallstrom said. “The consequences of attacking here could have more significance to the terrorists. It has a lot of symbolism. It’s going to be extremely well protected.”

Construction is set to begin this spring on a memorial to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Freedom Tower, a 1,776-foot skyscraper that some say is having trouble attracting tenants because of security concerns. A transit hub, performing arts center and more office towers also are planned.

Bombs and bullets kill more than 50 as U.S. steps up efforts to calm Iraqi chaos

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Bombs and gunfire killed about 60 people as another daytime curfew Saturday failed to halt violence that has claimed nearly 200 lives since the destruction of a Shiite shrine set off a wave of retribution against Sunnis and pushed Iraq toward civil war.

In an unusual round of telephone diplomacy, President Bush spoke with seven leaders of Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political parties in a bid to defuse the sectarian crisis unleashed by the bombing of the Shiites’ Askariya shrine in Samarra.

Bush “encouraged them to continue to work together to thwart the efforts of the perpetrators of the violence to sow discord among Iraq’s communities,” said Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council.

Reprisal attacks that followed the Wednesday blast in Samarra have derailed talks on a forming new Iraqi government and threaten Washington’s goal of building up a self-sufficient Iraq free of U.S. military involvement.

Attack shows battered Al-Qaida can still hit inside Saudi Arabia

MANAMA, Bahrain – Al-Qaida on Saturday vowed more attacks on Saudi oil facilities, a day after an attempt to bomb the world’s biggest oil processing complex showed the group still can strike inside the kingdom.

A strike on the Abqaiq complex, near Saudi Arabia’s eastern Persian Gulf coast, could have been devastating. Nearly two-thirds of the country’s oil flows through the facility for processing before export.

By foiling the attack, Saudi Arabia demonstrated its success in putting tough security around the oil industry, the source of the royal family’s wealth, oil analysts said.

Two suicide bombers in explosives-packed cars traded fire with police at a checkpoint before a gate in the first of three fences around the sprawling, heavily guarded complex. One bomber collided with the closed gate, exploding and blowing a hole in the fence, a senior Saudi security official said.

The second bomber drove through the hole before police opened fire, detonating his car, the official added on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.