In the news

WORLD

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Female Islamic students wearing black burqas kidnapped an alleged brothel owner and held her prisoner at their seminary in the Pakistani capital, as part of an anti-vice drive in defiance of the military-dominated government.

In a separate sign of growing extremism in Pakistan, pro-Taliban militants firing rockets attacked a northwestern town and kidnapped the principal of a school where they had tried and failed to recruit students as suicide attackers. One security force member was killed.

Both of the incidents Wednesday reflect an undercurrent of fundamentalism that is challenging the moderate mainstream of this Muslim nation of 160 million people, and the failure of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s government to contain it.

A group of 30 female and 10 male Islamic students broke into the alleged brothel late Tuesday, which lies about a five minutes walk from the mosque in the center of Islamabad, after the owner, known as Aunty Shamim, ignored their warning to close it.

NATION

SAN FRANCISCO – The number of immigrants who became American citizens reached an all-time high in 2005, and the percentage of those who did so reached its highest level in a quarter-century, according to a study released Wednesday.

Growth in legal immigration, as well as a greater tendency among foreign-born residents to embrace U.S. citizenship, accounts for the trend, the Pew Hispanic Center said in its report based on federal census and immigration data.

The nation’s 12.8 million naturalized citizens made up more than half of all legal immigrants living in the United States two years ago, compared with a low of 38 percent in 1990, Pew researchers found. The percentage of immigrants becoming citizens in 2005 was about the same as in 1980.

“Today’s immigrants are interested in becoming U.S. citizens, and that’s showing up in the increased percentage of those who are eligible taking advantage of it,” said Jeffrey Passel, the study’s lead researcher. “It’s reached a point where the majority of those eligible to naturalize have done so.”

The analysis also showed that immigrants who qualify for citizenship are applying for it more quickly than in the past. A decade ago, about two-thirds of the eligible immigrants who had been in the United States for more than 20 years were naturalized. Now, about three-quarters of such long-term residents have become citizens.

STATE & LOCAL

RICHMOND – A bill that would have allowed for the swift sale of telephone companies without state regulatory approval was vetoed by Gov. Tim Kaine.

The governor also announced a veto Tuesday to legislation that would have denied local zoning boards say over where billboards displaced by road construction are relocated.

Kaine said exempting the sale of telephone service providers or their assets from State Corporation Commission purview “would represent a significant deviation from established practice and remove an important layer of oversight.”

The measure, sponsored by Delegate Terry G. Kilgore, R-Scott County, risked consumer access to telephone service in Virginia, Kaine wrote, “and it is imperative that we act reasonably to assure that this access is not diminished.”

Kaine, the former mayor of Richmond, said Delegate Timothy Hugo’s billboard legislation not only guts the authority of localities, it confers on the ubiquitous roadside advertising “preferred status among other types of property.”