Police find car used in train bombings

Police find car usedin train bombings
MADRID, Spain -- Three months after the Madrid train bombings, Spanish police found a rental car used by the terrorists containing personal effects, including tapes of Quranic verses and chants praising jihad, an official said Saturday.
Police found the car June 13 in the town of Alcala de Henares, the departure point of three of the four trains bombed in the March 11 attack, a police spokeswoman said on anonymity.
She said that investigators think the bombers used the car, a Skoda Fabia, to transport some of the explosives used in the blasts, which killed 191 people and injured 2,000.
DNA tests on clothes found in the trunk confirmed that it was used by two suspected Islamic terrorists, one of whom later committed suicide to evade capture, she said.
More peacekeepersfor Afghanistan
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- After months of delay, NATO has ordered hundreds more peacekeepers to Afghanistan to help provide security during presidential elections, but the deployment still appeared to fall short of 3,500 troops that were promised.
NATO ambassadors meeting late Friday approved two more battalions for Afghanistan, one each from Italy and Spain. A battalion has between 600 and 1,000 soldiers.
The alliance also cleared another 500 or so troops to beef up provincial reconstruction teams. Assuming the battalions were large, that would still make only about 2,500 troops.
Search expandsfor missing woman
SALT LAKE CITY -- The search for a missing pregnant woman has expanded to include a municipal landfill and the use of cadaver dogs, police said Saturday.
"We've been out there following up on some tips and leads," Salt Lake City Police Detective Dwayne Baird said after meeting for more than an hour with the family of 27-year-old Lori Hacking, who has been missing since Monday.
Baird said he did not know when the search of the landfill started.
He also said he doesn't believe investigators have met with the woman's husband, Mark Hacking, since Wednesday. He has been in a psychiatric hospital since police found him Tuesday running naked around a motel not far from his home.
Mark Hacking, 28, has been called a person of interest, not a suspect, in the case.
Speculation about his credibility was fueled by news that he never graduated from college or applied for medical school.
He had told friends and family he was headed to medical school in North Carolina; Lori Hacking vanished days before the couple was to move.
Brutal murderergets jail sentence
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- A man has been sentenced to 69 years in prison for beating his wife to death with a sledgehammer and a board spiked with nails.
Charles Rashid, 33, who was convicted of murder in May, must serve more than 55 years before he will be eligible for parole.
Prosecutors said Rashid used a short handled-sledgehammer to crush Orquidea Tejada-Rashid's skull in their kitchen while their 2-year-old son watched "Elmo" videotapes in an upstairs bedroom of their home in Piscataway.
In a videotaped confession, Rashid said he "just snapped" while his wife was verbally attacking him.
"I picked up the hammer, threw it at her and she fell and hit her head on the crate and I guess the rest is how it ended," he said.
At his trial, his lawyer used a diminished capacity psychiatric defense.
Prosecutors said Rashid tried to make Tejada-Rashid's October 2001 death look like a carjacking by leaving her body near a trash bin and then abandoning her still-running car about two blocks away. He filed a missing-person report with police the next day.
Plane crash kills 3
FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- A twin-engine plane crashed in a neighborhood Saturday, killing all three people aboard. No injuries on the ground were reported.
Fort Collins police spokeswoman Rita Davis said the plane did not hit any homes in the community 65 miles north of Denver.
Firefighters blocked off part of the area after fuel ignited and damaged a nearby van.
Witnesses said the plane seemed to be having engine trouble before it crashed about noon.
"It fell straight out of the sky. It hit the ground and there were parts and gas everywhere," resident James Noren told The Coloradoan newspaper of Fort Collins.
Federal Aviation Administration officials said the plane, a Beechcraft 58, was headed to Omaha, Neb., after it left Fort Collins/Loveland Airport.
Associated Press