Sheriff: 3 children drown after car goes in Ark. lake

Sheriff: 3 children drown after car goes in Ark. lake

PLUMERVILLE, Ark. — Three children died early Sunday when the car they were in drove straight into a man-made lake, authorities said.

Arkansas State Police investigators and deputy sheriffs questioned the children’s mother about what happened just after 3:30 a.m., when she apparently drove down an old state highway that dead-ends into Brewer Lake.

Conway County Sheriff Mike Smith declined to immediately identify the children, ages 2, 7 and 8, or their 26-year-old mother.

Smith declined to offer any specifics about the drownings, saying deputies wanted to verify the mother’s account of what happened. The Morrilton woman had not been arrested or charged as of Sunday afternoon, the sheriff said.

Slain mom had blogged that husband under stress

MIDDLETOWN, Md. — A man who killed his wife, their three young children and himself in their northwest Maryland home had a hard time adjusting to his new manager’s job for a railroad, and it was causing him stress, according a blog entry his wife posted last month.

The children’s grandfather discovered the murder-suicide Saturday when he went to check on the family at their Middletown home, authorities said. Francis Billotti Wood, 33, and her children suffered “traumatic cuts” and each had at least one wound from a .25-caliber handgun, Frederick County Sheriff Charles Jenkins said. Her husband, 34-year-old Christopher Alan Wood, was found at the foot of his bed, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.

Francis Wood grew up in the Middletown area; the family moved back last year. Her husband had been transferred from Jacksonville, Fla., for work as an account manager in the sales and marketing group at CSX Corp. in Baltimore, a company spokesman said. In a blog under her name and photo that she appears to have started in 2006, she said she thrived on the excitement that change brings, but he didn’t handle it as well as she did.

Pakistan: Suspected U.S. missiles kill 3, injure 5

ISLAMABAD — Suspected U.S. missiles leveled a Taliban compound in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, officials said, killing three people despite militant threats of a wave of suicide bombings if the strikes don’t end.

Meanwhile, a hard-line cleric who mediated a deal that imposes Islamic law in a northwest valley in exchange for peace with the Taliban warned that the Pakistani government must enforce the law, not simply make announcements about it.

Sunday’s suspected strike occurred in South Waziristan tribal region, the main stronghold of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who is believed allied with the al-Qaida terrorist network.

2 aid workers kidnapped

MOGADISHU, Somalia — About 25 masked gunmen armed with machine guns kidnapped two European aid workers in central Somalia on Sunday, aid workers and a witness said.

Michel Peremans, a spokesman for the Belgian chapter of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), confirmed that a Dutch and a Belgian staff member of his relief agency were missing in the Bakool region, where the attack occurred. But for security reasons he declined to say whether they had been taken hostage.

Witness Abdirahman Isaq was in the convoy when it was stopped as it traveled between Radhure village and the town of Wajid. The group of kidnappers motioned for his vehicle filled with clan elders to continue, but captured the two foreigners.

Iraq’s military probes gangland-style heists

BAGHDAD — Iraq created a military task force Sunday to battle gangland-style crime after the latest bloodshed: gunmen with silencer-fitted weapons killing at least seven people during a daylight heist of jewelry stores.

The swift government response to the robberies appeared to reflect worries by Iraqi officials about a rise in violence in recent weeks and their efforts to display a tough stance.

Although attacks remain well below levels of past years, Iraqi authorities are under pressure to show greater competence as U.S. commanders gradually hand over security duties before their planned withdrawal from most urban bases by June 30.

In parliament, meanwhile, lawmakers finally ended a long political impasse by electing a prominent Sunni member as its new speaker, opening the way for lawmakers to start dealing with critical reforms that have been on hold for nearly four months.

Associated Press