In the News

Thousands of Nazareth residents march to protest church attack

NAZARETH, Israel – Thousands of Israeli Arab protesters marched through the streets of this biblical town Saturday demanding better protection for holy sites after a troubled family set off firecrackers inside a major Christian shrine.

Many protesters accused the government of failing to prevent the attack, and rejected the official claim that Friday’s attack was driven by personal distress and not politically motivated.

An Israeli couple accompanied by their daughter interrupted a Lent prayer service by exploding firecrackers in the basilica, one of Christianity’s most revered sites. The attack caused only light damage, but set off a riot that injured 24 people, including 13 police officers.

Police said the man involved in the attack, Haim Eliyahu Habibi, has financial problems and apparently is not a Jewish extremist. Habibi’s Christian wife, Violet, and their 20-year-old daughter were treated at a hospital before being taken into custody early Saturday.

Facing crisis in health care, China pledges help for rural poor

SHANGHAI, China – There are no official statistics tallying the toll in suffering, but by most accounts, after nearly two decades of neglect, China is confronting a rural health crisis on a monumental scale.

Up to 90 percent of the 800 million people in China’s countryside lack affordable medical care. Children go unvaccinated. AIDS patients can get free drugs, but can’t afford the monitoring and additional medicine they need.

Communist leaders are now promising to rebuild a rural health care system that has fallen apart with the decline of farm cooperatives during two decades of economic reform.

It’s part of a package of policies to redress the huge gap between China’s fast-growing cities and the rural areas where protests over poverty and corruption are spreading. Such issues are expected to dominate the annual meeting of China’s parliament, opening on Sunday.

Army to launch investigation into death of ex-NFL player

WASHINGTON – The Army said Saturday it will launch a criminal investigation into the April 2004 death of Pat Tillman, the former professional football player who was shot to death by fellow soldiers in Afghanistan in what previous Army reviews had concluded was an accidental shooting.

Col. Joseph Curtin, an Army spokesman, said the Defense Department Office of Inspector General had reviewed the matter at the Army’s request and concluded that a criminal probe was warranted.

Tillman, 27, died on April 22, 2004, when he was struck by gunfire during a firefight along a canyon road near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Army said at the time that the barrage of bullets came from enemy fire.

A report by the Army later found that troops with Tillman knew at the time that friendly fire had killed the football star. Officers destroyed critical evidence and concealed the truth from Tillman’s brother, also an Army ranger, who was nearby, the report found.

California school suspends 20 over Web site

COSTA MESA, Calif. – A middle school student faces expulsion for allegedly posting graphic threats against a classmate on the popular MySpace.com Web site, and 20 of his classmates were suspended for viewing the posting, school officials said.

Police are investigating the boy’s comments about his classmate at TeWinkle Middle School as a possible hate crime, and the district is trying to expel him.

According to three parents of the suspended students, the invitation to join the boy’s MySpace group gave no indication of the alleged threat. They said the MySpace social group name’s was “I hate (girl’s name)” and included an expletive and an anti-Semitic reference.

“With what the students can get into using the technology we are all concerned about it,” Bob Metz, the district assistant superintendent of secondary education, said Wednesday.

Metz said the students’ suspensions in mid-February were appropriate because the incident involved student safety. Some parents, however, questioned whether the school overstepped its bounds by disciplining students for actions that occurred on personal computers, at home and after school hours.