Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Britain readies stronger antiterrorism laws

By wire services
Published July 18, 2005

LONDON - As investigators on Sunday explored international links to four British Muslims behind the July 7 suicide bombings of three subway trains and a double-decker bus, officials prepared to introduce tough antiterrorism legislation today that would make it a crime to incite, foster or glorify terrorism.

Britain's largest Sunni Muslim group issued a binding religious edict, a fatwa, condemning the July 7 suicide bombings as the work of a "perverted ideology." The Sunni Council denounced the bombings as anti-Islamic and said the Koran, the Muslim holy book, forbids suicide attacks.

Six more arrests were reported in the northern city of Leeds, after the detention last week of one man who knew the alleged bombers. But police said there was no connection with the London bombings.

"At this stage these arrests are not being linked to the events in London," West Yorkshire police said in a statement.

Police continued to comb through seven of 10 residences raided in Leeds and Aylesbury during the past week, searching for clues to the methods and motivations behind the blasts that killed at least 55 people, including the four bombers.

Former British leader Heath dies at age 89

LONDON - Sir Edward Heath, the prime minister who led England into what is now the European Union but lost the Conservative Party leadership to Margaret Thatcher, died Sunday (July 17, 2005). He was 89.

Sir Edward, who governed England from 1970 to 1974, died at his home in the southern cathedral city of Salisbury.

A carpenter's son who broke the tradition of blue bloods leading the British Conservative Party, he was a born politician whose major achievement was to negotiate Britain's 1973 entry into the European Community.

The entry into what became the European Union overturned years of resistance domestically and by France, which had vetoed Britain's entry in 1967.

In 1992, he became Sir Edward, a member of the country's most prestigious order of chivalry, the knights of the Garter.

Pakistani forces kill 17 in clash near Afghanistan

LAHORE, Pakistan - The Pakistani military said on Sunday that it had killed 17 people, including women and children, in a fight with militants in volatile North Waziristan province, near the Afghanistan border.

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the spokesman for the military, said the clash began when a group of fighters tried to escape a search operation, using women and children as shields. The fighters, and some of the women with them, threw grenades at the Pakistani troops, killing one, Sultan said.

Soldiers had cordoned off a house in which explosives and detonators had been found, near the town of Miranshah, the military said. Four militants were injured, along with 16 local tribesmen the military described as their accomplices. Kazakhstan passports were found on the bodies of four of those killed, Sultan said.

Anti-MacArthur protest erupts in South Korea

INCHEON, South Korea - Protesters hurled rocks, bottles and eggs during a clash Sunday over the legacy of U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who landed behind North Korean lines a half-century ago and led U.N. forces in an attack that turned the tide of the Korean War.

A small group of anti-MacArthur demonstrators marched at a MacArthur war memorial in Incheon, site of the landing, and were confronted by thousands of MacArthur supporters. No injuries were reported.

[Last modified July 18, 2005, 01:38:10]