Robertson's jet crashes

Robertson's jet crashes
GROTON, Conn. -- A Learjet registered to religious broadcaster Pat Robertson crashed in Long Island Sound while flying in heavy fog Friday, killing both pilots, authorities said. All three passengers escaped without serious injury. The twin-engine Learjet 35 went down a half-mile short of the runway at Groton-New London Airport. Authorities said the passengers were able to get out on their own and were pulled from the water and taken to the hospital with minor injuries. Preliminary information showed that the plane may have hit an approach light mounted in a cove near the airport, said Christopher Cooper, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation. The plane was registered to Virginia-based Robertson Asset Management. The company is owned by Robertson and is separate from the Christian Broadcasting Network, spokeswoman Angell Vasko said. She said Robertson was not on the plane and rents it out because he uses it infrequently.
Oil workers kidnapped
ABUJA, Nigeria -- Eight foreign workers, including one American, were kidnapped from a drilling rig off Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta Friday in the latest incident highlighting the tenuous security of oil operations in Africa's largest crude producer. The kidnappers have offered to negotiate the release of the hostages -- six Britons, the American and a Canadian -- taken before dawn from the drilling rig Bulford Dolphin, according to the company that operates the rig. Oil prices jumped by more than $2 a barrel Friday after the report revived concerns about the stability of Nigerian supplies. Analysts said anxiety over Iran's nuclear ambitions also supported crude futures. "We understand that the group [of kidnappers] has been in touch with the local companies about negotiations," said Sheena Wallace, a spokesman for Aberdeen, Scotland-based Dolphin Drilling Ltd. She said she did not have the names of the missing crewmen, information about demands or what group was behind the kidnapping.
Iran defies pressure
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran insisted Friday that the West will not deprive it of nuclear technology and must drop conditions on negotiations, defying pressure to accept a package of incentives to stop its nuclear activities. Iranian officials did not respond directly to the offer agreed to Thursday by the permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany that calls on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. Details have yet to be formally presented to Tehran. But Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said Europe should "leave out excuse-seeking and illogical conditions and come back to negotiation and cooperation." "Iran is ready for any unconditional, just and indiscriminatory negotiations," he was quoted as saying by state-run television. Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also struck a defiant tone, vowing "the efforts of some Western countries to deprive us will not bear any fruit."
Somalis denounce U.S.
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Thousands of Somalis denounced the United States and called for Islamic law at a protest Friday in the war-torn capital, where Islamic militias have been battling a secular alliance. Eleven people were killed in fighting in the capital's northern suburbs and four people died in the city when a booby-trapped bicycle exploded. A Muslim leader at the rally called the U.S. an enemy of Islam and said Washington had been supporting the secular warlords, whose battle with Islamist fighters has spawned some of Somalia's worst fighting in 15 years of anarchy.
Census Bureau cleared
WASHINGTON -- Congressional investigators found no evidence that the Census Bureau manipulated the release date of unfavorable poverty data in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election. Still, the Government Accountability Office recommended in a report Friday that census officials do a better job of documenting policies for disseminating the annual report on income, poverty and health insurance. Some Democrats complained in 2004 that the Bush administration moved up the release of poverty statistics by a month, to August, so they wouldn't be made public so close to Election Day. Democrats also complained about how the bureau released poverty statistics in 2003. The information was made public on a Friday at the bureau's headquarters in suburban Maryland rather than in downtown Washington. The data for both years showed the poverty rate climbing.
Associated Press