Pentagon: Satellite’s fuel tank destroyed

Pentagon: Satellite’s
fuel tank destroyed

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Monday it has a “high degree of confidence” that the missile fired at a dead U.S. spy satellite in space destroyed the satellite’s fuel tank as planned.

In its most definitive statement yet on the outcome of last Wednesday’s shootdown over the Pacific, the Pentagon said that based on debris analysis it is clear the Navy missile destroyed the fuel tank, “reducing, if not eliminating, the risk to people on Earth from the hazardous chemical.”

The tank had 1,000 pounds of hydrazine, a toxic substance that U.S. government officials believed posed a potential health hazard to humans if the satellite had descended to Earth on its own.

Access to YouTube blocked

NEW YORK — Most of the world’s Internet users lost access to YouTube for several hours Sunday after an attempt by Pakistan’s government to block access domestically affected other countries. The outage highlighted yet another of the Internet’s vulnerabilities, coming less than a month after broken fiber-optic cables in the Mediterranean took Egypt off line and caused communications problems from the Middle East to India.

An Internet expert explained that Sunday’s problems arose when a Pakistani telecommunications company accidentally identified itself to Internet computers as the world’s fastest route to YouTube. But instead of serving up videos of skateboarding dogs, it sent the traffic into oblivion.

On Friday, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered 70 Internet service providers to block access to YouTube.com, because of anti-Islamic movies on the video-sharing site, which is owned by Google Inc.

The authority did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release a movie portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

Iranian official: Weapons
allegations fabricated

UNITED NATIONS — Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations said Monday that an Iranian opposition group is feeding fabricated evidence to Washington that purports to show the Tehran government tried to produce nuclear weapons.

Ambassador Mohammad Khazee said in an interview with The Associated Press that the U.S. is getting unreliable intelligence from the Mujahedeen Khalq, also known as the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, which was allied with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The U.S. and European Union list it as a terrorist group.

Khazee insisted Iran has resolved all outstanding issues about its nuclear program and said Tehran should not face any new U.N. sanctions.

Pakistani official killed

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber killed the Pakistan army’s surgeon general Monday in the highest-level assassination since President Pervez Musharraf joined the U.S. war against terror.

The strike was a reminder of the extremist threat just as Musharraf resists pressure to quit from opponents who swept last week’s parliamentary election.

A presidential spokesman on Monday dismissed suggestions from three U.S. senators that the embattled Pakistani leader might beat a “graceful” retreat from power.

Musharraf was elected to a new five-year presidential term last year by Pakistani lawmakers, “not by any senator from the United States,” spokesman Rashid Qureshi told Dawn News television. “So I don’t think he needs to respond to anything that is said by these people.”

Students return to classes

DEKALB, Ill. — Students carried backpacks stuffed with books, headed in and out of class, grabbed something to eat and plopped down in the library just like always.

But there was nothing normal about Northern Illinois University on Monday. Not with white crosses on a small knoll and television news trucks parked around campus. And not with crime scene tape strung in front of the auditorium where 11 days earlier a gunman wordlessly pumped bullets and buckshot into a crowded class, ending the lives of five students before taking his own.

“You’ve got to move on,” said Jonathan Brock, a 25-year-old studying industrial management, who was clearly not quite ready to do that as he looked for a spot to add his thoughts to message boards on which students have expressed their grief, faith and anger.

Associated Press