Carroll County Times

NATION/WORLD Monday, July 5, 2010, Page A5

Nation
AP PHOTO
Fourth of July goes on at Gulf
A group of children play on the beach at
Henderson Point near Pass Christian, Miss.,
as Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Team
workers look for tar balls from the Deep-
water Horizon oil spill Sunday.
Horses bolt during Iowa
parade; 1 killed, 23 hurt
BELLEVUE, Iowa — Two runaway horses
pulling a wagon trampled spectators at a small-
town Fourth of July parade, killing a 60-year-old
woman and injuring at least 23 other people, four
critically.
The horses bolted after one rubbed its head
against the other, removing that horse’s bridle,
police said. They galloped for several blocks with
the wagon in tow, trampling parade- goers. The
wagon flipped and ejected its two passengers, po-
lice said. Among those injured were children who
had stooped in the street to pick up candy that
had been tossed to them.
Police declined to identify the woman who
died, but said she passed away at the University
of Iowa Hospital in Iowa City. Four people were
hospitalized in critical condition, five others were
seriously hurt and 14 others sustained minor in-
juries, police said.
Teen convicted of murder
seeks help from hit man
DETROIT — Davontae Sanford was just 14
when he told police he killed four people in a drug
den, drawing their bodies like stick figures to
show where the victims died — on the floor, a
couch, a chair.
Sanford was sentenced to at least 38 years in
prison for the 2007 slayings, which police say
were planned as a robbery. But now he insists his
confession was a lie. A veteran homicide investi-
gator agrees that the young man’s statements
were unreliable. And his attorney is seeking help
from an unlikely ally: A hit man convicted in no
fewer than eight other murders.
“It’s our hope that he will testify for us,” defense
attorney Kim McGinnis said of Vincent Smothers,
who has told police he took part in the slayings.
For more than a year, a judge has been hearing
testimony on the teen’s request to take back his
In it
to win
Petraeus takes
over war effort
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KABUL, Afghanistan — “We are in
this to win,” Gen. David Petraeus said
Sunday as he took the reins of an Afghan
war effort troubled by waning support,
an emboldened enemy, government cor-
ruption and a looming commitment to
withdraw troops even with no sign of vi-
olence easing.
Petraeus, who pioneered the coun-
terinsurgency strategy he now oversees
in Afghanistan, has just months to show
progress in turning back insurgents and
convince both the Afghan people and
neighboring countries that the U.S. is
committed to preventing the country
from again becoming a haven for al-
Qaida and its terrorist allies.
“We are engaged in a contest of wills,”
Petraeus said as he accepted the com-
mand of U.S. and NATO forces before
several hundred U.S., coalition and
Afghan officials who gathered on a
grassy area outside NATO headquarters
in Kabul. AP PHOTO
Petraeus, widely credited with turning Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in
around the U.S. war effort in Iraq, said Afghanistan, holds the ISAF flag during a ceremony in which he formally
the Taliban and their allies are killing assumed the command Sunday in Kabul, Afghanistan.
and maiming civilians — even using
“We are engaged in a contest of wills.”
“unwitting children to carry out attacks”
— in an attempt to undermine public
confidence in the Afghan government Gen. David Petraeus
and the international community’s abil- On the Afghan war
ity to prevail.
“In answer, we must demonstrate to
the people and to the Taliban that least the perception that the NATO mis- — and to the world — that al- Qaida and
Afghan and international forces are here
sion needs to be righted. June was the its network of extremist allies will not
to safeguard the Afghan people, and that deadliest month for the allied force since be allowed to once again establish sanc-
we are in this to win,” Petraeus said on the war began, with 102 U.S. and inter- tuaries in Afghanistan from which they
Independence Day. national troops killed. Progress in stabi- can launch attacks on the Afghan peo-
Continual discussion about President lizing Taliban strongholds in the south ple and on freedom- loving nations
Barack Obama’s desire to start with- has been slow, support for the war is around the world.”
drawing U.S. forces in July 2011 has waning in America and foreign capitals Petraeus suggested he would refine
blurred the definition of what would and doubts persist about the Afghan — or at least review — the implemen-
constitute victory. government’s willingness and ability to tation of rules under which NATO sol-
That coupled with the abrupt firing of fight corruption. diers fight, including curbs on the use
Petraeus’ predecessor, a move that laid “After years of war, we have arrived at of airpower and heavy weapons if civil-
bare a rift between civilian and military a critical moment,” Petraeus said. “We ians are at risk, “to determine where re-
efforts in the country, has created at must demonstrate to the Afghan people finements might be needed.”

Seized sub a leap in drug evasion

2008 guilty plea and seek a new trial.

Salt Lake City government

won’t boycott Arizona
SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake City Coun- It is the first one
cil has decided not to boycott Arizona businesses
over the state’s toughest-in-the-nation immigra- found that can be
tion law.
Salt Lake City does about $21 million in business fully submerged
with Arizona firms each year and was urged to
join a growing boycott of the state by the Los An- ASSOCIATED PRESS
geles City Council. BOGOTA, Colombia — A
Salt Lake City Council members say they’re 100- foot, twin- screw diesel
worried a boycott could have unintended conse- submarine seized at a jungle
quences. Arizona’s immigration law generally re- shipyard in Ecuador marks a
quires officers enforcing another law — like quantum, if anticipated, leap
speeding or jaywalking — to question a person’s in drug- smuggling evasion
immigration status if there’s a reasonable suspi- technology, the top U.S.
cion that the person is in the country illegally. counter- drug official for the
region said Sunday.
Sinking oil threatens “It is the first fully func-
tional, completely submersible
historic Gulf shipwrecks submarine for transoceanic
TIMBALIER ISLANDS, La. — Not just flora and voyages that we have ever
fauna are getting caked in oil. So is the Gulf of found,” Jay Bergman, Andean
regional director for the Drug
Mexico’s barnacled history of pirates, sea battles
Enforcement Administration,
and World War II shipwrecks.
The Gulf is lined with wooden shipwrecks, told The Associated Press.
American-Indian shell midden mounds, World Until now, all the smuggling
War II casualties, pirate colonies, historic hotels vessels seized on the high seas
and old fishing villages. Researchers now fear this or at clandestine shipyards
treasure seeker’s dream is threatened by BP PLC’s built to haul multi-ton loads of
deepwater well blowout. Within 20 miles of the cocaine under the Pacific’s
well, there are several significant shipwrecks — surface were semi- sub-
ironically, discovered by oil companies’ underwa- mersibles. They typically un-
ter robots working the depths — and oil is most load off Central America and
likely beginning to cascade on them. Mexico drugs destined for the
The wrecks include two 19th-century wooden United States.
ships known as the “Mica Wreck” and the “Mardi Equipped with air intake and
Gras Wreck.” engine exhaust pipes, none of
those craft were capable of
— Associated Press fully submerging so they could
Soldiers stand on a seized submarine in the jungle re-
gion of La Loma in Ecuador Saturday. DEA officials said
that the diesel electric- powered submarine was con-
structed in a remote jungle.
evade radar and heat-seeking
technology of drug- interdic-
tion aircraft.
The camouflage- painted
vessel seized by Ecuadorean
police Friday appears by con-
trast to be capable of long-
range underwater operation —
a development U.S. analysts
have long expected, Bergman
said. Acting on a DEA tip, the
Ecuadoreans found it at a so-
phisticated shipyard with liv-
AP PHOTO
ing quarters for at least 50
people on a jungle estuary
several miles from the Colom-
bian border, he said. It had yet
to make a voyage.
Built of fiberglass and other
composites, it has a conning
tower, periscope and air con-
ditioning system and meas-
ures about 9 feet high from the
deck plates to the ceiling, the
DEA said. Ecuadorean police
told the DEA the vessel has
the capacity for about 10 met-
ric tons of cargo, a crew of five
or six people and the ability to
fully submerge, Bergman said.
Compared to semi- sub-
mersibles, which cost less than
$1 million each to build, “this
is in a new maritime drug-
trafficking class of its own,”
Bergman told the AP.
He said U.S. nautical engi-
neers would be taking the sub-
marine apart in the next few
days to determine its dynam-
ics. The regional head of
Ecuador’s anti- narcotics po-
lice, Maj. Enrique Bautista,
would not offer details of the
sub when contacted by the AP.
He referred calls to the na-
tional anti- narcotics police
chief, who did not respond to
messages left on his cell
phone.
Bautista said the seizure was
“in preliminary stages of in-
vestigation.”
Bergman said one man was
arrested in Friday’s raid on the
jungle shipyard and said it was
hoped he would shed some
light on how long it took to
build the submarine and who
engineered it.
He said authorities are still
investigating who financed the
sub’s manufacture and which
trafficking organization in-
tended to use it.

World
Blasts mar Biden’s Quake rattles
call for new govt. northern Japan
BAGHDAD — Vice Presi-
dent Joe Biden urged rival
Iraqi politicians Sunday to
end months of delays and
select new leaders for their
wobbly democracy, predict-
ing a peaceful transition
of power even as suicide
bombers struck govern-
ment centers in two major
cities.
The attacks in Mosul and
Ramadi underscored per-
sistent fears that insurgents
AP PHOTO will exploit Iraq’s political
Bus fire in China proves fatal uncertainty to stoke wide-
spread sectarian violence.
A policeman checks on the wreckage of a shuttle Four people were killed
bus in Wuxi, in east China’s Jiangsu province, early and 25 injured in the two
today. Twenty- four people were killed and 19 in- blasts that occurred hun-
jured after fire engulfed the shuttle bus Sunday. dreds of miles apart.
TOKYO — A quake with
a magnitude of 6.3 jolted
northern Japan early Mon-
day, but there was no dan-
ger of a tsunami, the Japan
Meteorological Agency
said.
The quake occurred off
the coast of Iwate, some 310
miles north of Tokyo Mon-
day. Iwate police official
Takahiro Fujibayashi said
there were no reports of
damage.
Brother fails to
take presidency
WARSAW, Poland — In-
terim president Bronislaw
Komorowski appeared to
have held off a last- minute
surge from the identical
twin brother of the late
president, who died in an
April plane crash that
shocked the country and
forced Sunday's early elec-
tion. Exit polls showed Ko-
morowski with a slight edge
over Jaroslaw Kaczynski,
who essentially conceded
defeat in the presidential
run- off.
Official results based on
95 percent of polling sta-
tions reporting appeared to
bear out the exit polls. They
showed that Komorowski
won 52.63 percent of the
vote and Kaczynski 47.37
percent, the state electoral
commission said early this
morning.
Puerto Rico panel
to probe clash
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico
— Puerto Rico has launched
a probe of last week’s vio-
lent clash between police
and demonstrators at the
Capitol, the U.S. island ter-
ritory’s civil rights commis-
sion said Sunday.
Judge Crisanta Gonzalez
will lead a commission of
members appointed by the
governor as it investigates
whether anyone’s civil
rights were violated.
The melee broke out
Wednesday when university
students and other protest-
ers tried to storm the legis-
lature.
— Associated Press