Authorities moved quickly

Authorities moved quickly
TORONTO -- Canadian authorities decided to move quickly against a suspected homegrown terror ring and head off any attack on Ontario targets after undercover Mounties delivered bomb-making materials in a sting operation, according to a news report Sunday. The Toronto Star said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police itself delivered the three tons of ammonium nitrate that authorities reported Saturday had been acquired by a group of Muslims apparently inspired by al-Qaida. Once the deal was done, police moved in for the arrests, the Star said. It added that investigators had learned of the group's alleged plan to build a bomb and then controlled the sale and transport of the fertilizer. It wasn't clear how the sting sale developed.
U.S. seeks relationship
HANOI, Vietnam -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday the United States wants to expand its military relationship with Vietnam, but has no plans to seek access to military facilities in this former enemy nation. Arriving in Hanoi just days after the United States signed a trade agreement with Vietnam, Rumsfeld planned to meet with the U.S. military team involved in finding and identifying the remains of hundreds of U.S. servicemen still missing in action from the Vietnam war. En route to Hanoi, Rumsfeld talked only generally about his goals for the U.S. military relationship with a country that has come to symbolize one of the military's most divisive and politically explosive wars.
Husband claims innocence
SAN FRANCISCO -- It started out as an afternoon of sun and fun on a personal watercraft in San Pablo Bay, until Corbin and Jennifer Easterling ran into trouble and wound up clinging all night to their broken-down, barely floating machine. Corbin Easterling says that when he woke up, his wife was dead. Authorities say he killed her, and that autopsy results show he covered her mouth and nose and held her head underwater. Opening statements in his murder trial are planned this week. Easterling, 36, steadfastly maintains his innocence. He says that while he slept, his wife of five months and the mother of their daughter, now 2, died of hypothermia in the cold water.
Focus is on remembrance
INDIANAPOLIS -- A neighborhood mourned the deaths of seven family members Sunday, somewhat comforted by news that police believed they had arrested everyone responsible for the city's worst mass murder in at least 25 years. A memorial service was scheduled Sunday night in front of the home where couple Emma Valdez, 46, and Alberto Covarrubias, 56, were gunned down during a robbery three days earlier along with two adult children, two young children and a grandchild. The sidewalk in front of the home in a working-class neighborhood had become a shrine to the family, with neighbors, friends and others leaving an angel statue, candles, flowers, ribbons and stuffed animals in tribute to them. A manhunt for the main suspect had gripped the city for two days before ending Saturday night, when 28-year-old prison parolee Desmond Turner surrendered to officers at a fast-food restaurant while accompanied by relatives. Turner was being held without bond Sunday on seven charges of murder and one charge of robbery.
Tiananmen anniversary
BEIJING -- Chinese police tore up a protester's poster and detained at least two people on Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Sunday as the country marked 17 years since local troops crushed a pro-democracy demonstration in the public space. An elderly woman tried to pull out a poster with apparently political material written on it, but police ripped it up and then took her away in a van. A farmer tried to stage a protest apparently unrelated to the 1989 crackdown, but he also was taken away in a van. After dawn, a group of tourists tried to open a banner while posing for a photo, catching the attention of police, who quickly forced them to put the nonpolitical material away. They were not detained. Discussion of the crackdown is still taboo in China outside of the semiautonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
Associated Press