In the News

Afghan convert may be unfit to stand trial

KABUL, Afghanistan – An Afghan man facing the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity may be mentally unfit to stand trial, a state prosecutor and presidential adviser said Wednesday.

Abdul Rahman, 41, went on trial last week in Kabul. He was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian. The conversion is a crime under Afghanistan’s Islamic laws, and a death sentence is possible.

But prosecutor Sarinwal Zamari said questions have been raised about his mental fitness.

“We think he could be mad. He is not a normal person. He doesn’t talk like a normal person,” he told The Associated Press.

Afghan troops kill 15 suspected Taliban

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Afghan security forces attacked a group of suspected Taliban rebels after they crossed the border from neighboring Pakistan, killing at least 15 of them, an army commander said Wednesday.

Among the dead was a midlevel Taliban commander, Mullah Shien, who for months has allegedly led several cross-border raids from secret bases on the Pakistani side of the border, said Abdul Razak, the frontier security commander. Shien’s followers would regularly attack foreign and Afghan troops and bomb trucks hauling gasoline for the U.S.-led coalition, he said.

“We got a tip-off about them coming across the border. We went down there and fought them,” Razak said. “We now have all the dead bodies.”

Four insurgents fled back across the Pakistani border after the two-hour gunbattle late Tuesday near the border town of Spin Boldak in Kandahar province, Razak said.

The fighting was the deadliest in weeks in Afghanistan and may further inflame a dispute between Kabul and Islamabad about militants sneaking back and forth across the two countries’ 1,470-mile border, most of which is unmarked and unguarded.

Microsoft to delay Windows Vista release

SEATTLE – Computer afficionados who were hoping to find a PC featuring Microsoft Corp.’s brand-new operating system under the tree this December are going to be out of luck.

The Redmond software-maker said Tuesday that it would delay the consumer release of the new system, dubbed Vista, until January 2007. It’s a move analysts said would hurt computer makers and retailers most of all, since they were likely looking forward to a new operating system to boost holiday sales.

“It’s a much bigger deal for the computer makers than it is for anybody else,” said David Smith, a vice president with Gartner Inc.

Windows Vista is Microsoft’s first major update to the company’s flagship operating system since Windows XP was released in late 2001, meaning partners will be left with a fifth major holiday season without a new version of the operating system to promote sales.

Charges dropped in Fla. student sex case

TAMPA, Fla. – A former teacher sentenced to three years of house arrest for having sex with a 14-year-old student in one Florida county won’t face charges again.

Prosecutors in Marion County decided to drop charges Tuesday after a judge rejected a plea deal that would have kept Debra Lafave out of prison.

Prosecutors, defense attorneys and the victim’s mother urged the judge to accept the deal so the boy wouldn’t have to testify. A psychiatrist who examined the teenager told the judge previously that the boy suffered extreme anxiety from the media coverage of the case.

Marion County Circuit Judge Hale Stancil, however, said the lack of prison time for Lafave under the plea deal “shocks the conscience of this court.”

Assistant State Attorney Richard Ridgway explained the situation.

“The court may be willing to risk the well-being of the victims in this case in order to force it to trial. I am not.”