Hamas steals blankets, food from U.N. warehouse

Hamas steals blankets, food from U.N. warehouse

JERUSALEM — Armed Hamas police broke into a Gaza warehouse packed with U.N. humanitarian supplies and seized thousands of blankets and food packages, officials said Wednesday.

It was a rare public clash between the international agency that feeds much of the territory and the militant group that rules it. And the incident highlighted difficulties facing donors seeking to bypass Hamas while helping Gazans survive and rebuild after Israel’s punishing military operation.

Hamas policemen stormed an aid warehouse in Gaza City Tuesday evening and confiscated 3,500 blankets and over 400 food parcels ready for distribution to 500 families, said United Nations Relief and Works Agency spokesman Christopher Gunness.

Election fraud claimed

BAGHDAD — A senior Sunni tribal leader claimed Wednesday to have hundreds of documents proving fraud in weekend elections in Anbar province, escalating a crisis that has threatened to reignite violence in the former insurgent stronghold.

Iraq’s electoral commission, which is overseeing the process, promised it was taking the complaints seriously and warned the findings from an investigation could affect election results for the province.

Official early returns were due to be released today. But complaints about irregularities based on projections by political parties already have marred the outcome.

Study: 9/11 causes illness

NEW YORK — Researchers tracking Sept. 11 responders who became ill after working at the World Trade Center site found many had lung problems years later in a study the authors said proves persistent illness in people exposed to toxic dust caused by the twin towers’ collapse.

The study by the Mount Sinai Medical Center’s medical monitoring program examined more than 3,000 responders between 2004 and 2007, repeating exams conducted between the middle of 2002 and 2004.

Experts have struggled since the 2001 attacks to find standards to define post-Sept. 11 illness and the time it would take to develop. The city’s medical examiner recently added to the official victims’ list a man who died in October of cancer and lung disease, citing his exposure to the dust cloud that enveloped the city when the 110-story towers collapsed.

Coroner: Boy killed self

EVANSTON, Ill. — A 10-year-old boy reportedly found hanging from a coat hook at his suburban Chicago school took his own life, according to a preliminary coroner’s office ruling Wednesday.

A daily ledger released by the Cook County medical examiner noted “hanging” and “suicide” as the cause of death for fifth-grader Aquan Lewis, who was found unresponsive in a bathroom at the Evanston school Tuesday afternoon and was pronounced dead at a hospital Wednesday morning.

Speaking before the coroner’s finding, a community activist who accompanied Lewis and acted as her spokeswoman said the mother, Angel Lewis, did not believe her boy committed suicide.

Craigslist hit-man case

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A Michigan woman who advertised online seeking a hit man to kill her lover’s wife has been sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison.

Ann Marie Linscott was sentenced Wednesday in a federal court in Grand Rapids, near her suburban Rockford home. She pleaded guilty in April to three counts of a charge related to interstate commerce.

Prosecutors say the 48-year-old advertised a freelance job in November 2007 on the popular Web site Craigslist, providing no details. She used e-mail to ask three respondents to kill the Oroville, Calif., woman and offered $5,000 to two of them.

Tylenol case reviewed

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Federal agents searched the home of a man linked to the fatal 1982 Tylenol poisonings in Illinois on Wednesday, and the FBI in Chicago said authorities are reviewing evidence in the deaths, which triggered a nationwide scare and prompted dramatic changes in the way food and medical products are packaged.

No one was charged with the deaths of seven people who took the cyanide-laced drugs. The FBI would not immediately confirm that the search at the apartment of James W. Lewis was related to the Tylenol case, only that it was part of an ongoing investigation.

Lewis served more than 12 years in prison for sending an extortion note to Johnson & Johnson demanding $1 million to “stop the killing.”

Associated Press