Small government plane reported missing

Small government planereported missing
MIAMI -- A small plane that was part of a Colombian drug-eradication program disappeared Monday in the Bahamas on its way to Patrick Air Force Base in Cocoa Beach, Fla., State Department and Coast Guard officials said.
The two-seater plane left the Turks and Caicos Islands early Monday morning, said Susan Pittman, a State Department spokeswoman in Washington, D.C.
The Federal Aviation Administration told the pilot to try to land in Freeport, Fla., but that was the last contact with the aircraft, said Verla Davis, a spokeswoman at Patrick, home of the State Department Air Wing. She said she did not know why the pilot was urged to land.
The Coast Guard said the only person aboard was a pilot with 20 years of experience with the State Department, which contracts with Virginia-based DynCorp to do the spray program. The pilot's identity was not released.
Early today, the Coast Guard still had one plane searching for the aircraft.
Petty Officer Robert Suddarth said the pilot might have been looking for a spot to land because of bad weather conditions.
Indian leader blamesPakistan for attack
SRINAGAR, India -- India's leader said today that he has written a letter to President Bush blaming Pakistanis for the worst terrorist attack in Kashmir in two years.
As the death toll from the car bombing outside the state legislature in India's Jammu-Kashmir state rose to 38, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee suggested Pakistan is lying when it says there are no terrorist groups operating from its territory.
"There is a limit to the patience of the people of India," Vajpayee wrote.
Shortly after the explosion Monday, a Pakistan-based militant group fighting for the independence of Jammu-Kashmir state claimed responsibility, naming a Pakistani citizen as the driver of the car bomb, which also wounded 60 people.
"Ironically, it comes only a day after the Pakistan president announced on television that his country has no terrorist groups operating from its territory," Vajpayee told Bush. "Incidents of this kind raise questions for our security, which ... I have to address in our supreme national interest."
Slain reporter buriedin Northern Ireland
LURGAN, Northern Ireland -- Protestant and Catholic politicians united in silence as more than 2,000 mourners walked behind the coffin of one of Northern Ireland's most courageous journalists -- and the first to be slain in three decades of violence here.
A harsh rain fell Monday as journalists from both parts of Ireland took turns helping to carry the coffin of Martin O'Hagan, 51, from his home in Lurgan to the city cemetery.
The investigative reporter for the Sunday World, Ireland's best-selling tabloid newspaper, died by his wife Marie's side Friday night after Protestant extremists shot him several times in the back near his home.
His killers cited his reports into their activities as the reason.
"Martin was gunned down because he got nearer the truth than the rest of us," said the Rev. Brian d'Arcy, a Roman Catholic priest and columnist for the Sunday World, who gave the graveside oration. "The best honor we could pay his memory is to carry on that quest for truth undeterred."
In Belfast, members of Northern Ireland's cross-community government offered a minute's silence Monday in honor of O'Hagan. And press freedom organizations worldwide appealed to Great Britain to devote extra resources to imprisoning the killers that O'Hagan spent his career trying to unmask.
Congressional bid?
TAMPA, Fla. -- Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who hit the national spotlight during last fall's presidential election recount, appears on the verge of making her candidacy for a seat in the U.S. Congress official.
Harris, a Republican, planned to make a "significant statement" today in her hometown of Sarasota. She refused to confirm she was running, but she said she's convinced she can "make a difference" in Congress, and GOP officials said in July that she intends to seek the 13th District seat being vacated by veteran Rep. Dan Miller.
Harris scheduled a series of interviews with reporters at the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport and planned to release a statement this morning.
Associated Press