Judge issues indictments in 2004 Madrid bombings

Judge issues indictmentsin 2004 Madrid bombings
MADRID, Spain -- A Spanish judge issued the first indictments in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, charging 29 people Tuesday with murder, terrorism or other crimes after a probe that uncovered a hornet's nest of Islamic militancy but no apparent link to Al-Qaida. In a minutely detailed indictment spanning 1,471 pages, Juan del Olmo, the investigative magistrate spearheading the probe, described the birth and workings of a cell of longtime residents, most of them from Morocco and Syria. Inspired by extremist Islamic doctrine, they are said to have risen up against their adopted homeland to kill 191 people and wound more than 1,700 in the coordinated attacks.
Israeli Cabinet endsSharon's 5-year tenure
JERUSALEM -- On Tuesday the Israeli Cabinet formally ended the five-year tenure of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has been comatose since suffering a stroke in January, designating acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as his successor. The appointment will go into effect at midnight Friday, 100 days after Sharon's stroke, when the 78-year-old leader will be categorized as permanently incapacitated under Israeli law. Also Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz threatened to step up Israeli responses to rocket attacks by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, a day after a Palestinian girl was killed by an Israeli artillery shell.
Rice recalls mother'sstand against racism
WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said her mother was her "fierce defender," who stood up to the indignity of racial segregation in 1960s Alabama and lived to see her daughter begin her successful career in international politics. Shopping trips with her mother in segregated Birmingham exposed Rice to racism, she said in a magazine interview, including an incident when Rice was about 6 or 7 years old and shopping for an Easter dress. "The store clerk said, 'She'll have to try it on in there,"' and pointed to a storeroom, Rice told Good Housekeeping magazine. "And my mother said, 'Allow me to be very clear. If we are going to buy this, she is going to try it on in there,"' and pointed to the dressing room, Rice said. "And you could see this woman thinking it over, and then she sort of said, 'All right, go ahead,"' Rice said.
Navy charges 8 sailorsin sham-marriage scheme
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Eight sailors were charged Tuesday with arranging sham marriages to Polish and Romanian women to help the women obtain U.S. citizenship and to collect bigger military housing allowances for themselves. An investigation by Naval Criminal Investigative Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement found that none of the women lived with the sailors they married. In all, the eight sailors received $35,000 in fraudulent basic housing allowance payments, investigators said. If convicted, the seven current and one former sailor from the USS Kennedy and USS Simpson could face up to five years in prison per count.
Italian vote in contention
ROME -- Challenger Romano Prodi's center-left coalition won a narrow victory in the Italian parliamentary election, official results showed Tuesday, but Conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi refused to concede defeat. The Interior Ministry assigned Prodi's coalition -- an unwieldy alliance ranging from Catholics to communists -- four Senate seats chosen by Italians voting abroad, giving him the margin he needs to win both houses of Italy's parliament. That did not persuade Berlusconi. "Nobody now can say they have won," he said. He said the overseas vote that decided the final Senate seats was far from decided, and there were "many irregularities and it's possible that we won't be able to confirm that it has been a valid vote."
Breast cancer study
CHICAGO -- Research offers hopeful news to women whose breast cancers are typically more difficult to treat: Modern chemotherapy means more of them will survive than previously thought. The latest findings offer more evidence that a tumor's "personality characteristics" are more important than size and how much the cancer has spread. Often the key is whether the tumor is fueled by the hormone estrogen. About two-thirds of breast cancer patients have hormone-fueled tumors. Typically such cancers are treated with tamoxifen and other groundbreaking hormone-blocking drugs. These women sometimes get chemotherapy too. But that still leaves about 70,000 U.S. women diagnosed each year with nonhormonal cancer. The new study found that advances in conventional intravenous chemotherapy give many of those patients almost as good a chance at survival as women with estrogen-fueled tumors.
Combined dispatches