Prayers sent via Twitter

Prayers sent via Twitter

JERUSALEM — For centuries, people have stuffed prayers written on scraps of paper into the ancient cracks in the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. In recent years they could fax or e-mail their prayers — and now they can tweet them, too.

The Western Wall now has its own address on the social networking service Twitter, allowing believers around the globe to have their prayers placed between its 2,000 year-old-stones without leaving their armchairs.

The service’s founder, Alon Nil, says petitioners can tweet their prayers, and they will be printed out and taken to the wall, where they will join the thousands of handwritten notes placed by visitors who believe their requests will find a shortcut to God by being deposited there.

Bin Laden son likely killed

WASHINGTON — Saad bin Laden, a son of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, may have been killed in a U.S. airstrike, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The son was likely killed in Pakistan in the last several months, approximately in late spring, said a counterterrorism official, one of three Obama administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.

Though many in the intelligence community believe he is dead, they can’t be 100 percent certain because no body or DNA evidence was recovered to prove it, one official said.

Boys charged in assault

PHOENIX — Prosecutors filed sexual-assault charges against four boys age 9 to 14, officials said Thursday, alleging they “brutally” attacked an 8-year-old girl after luring her to a shed with chewing gum.

The boys held the girl down while they took turns assaulting her, according to police. All five children are refugees from the West African nation of Liberia.

“They restrained her, and she was brutally sexually assaulted for a period of about 10 to 15 minutes,” police Sgt. Andy Hill said, calling it one of the worst cases the department has dealt with.

Authorities said the victim was in the care of Child Protective Services after her parents blamed her for the attack and bringing shame to the family.

Jackson’s doctor targeted

LOS ANGELES — Michael Jackson’s personal doctor is the target of the manslaughter investigation into the singer’s death, according to court documents filed Thursday, the day after agents seized items from the physician’s Houston clinic.

A search warrant approved by a Houston judge allowed authorities to seek “property or items constituting evidence of the offense of manslaughter that tend to show that Dr. Conrad Murray committed the said criminal offense.”

A receipt for the search warrant detailed items seized when federal drug agents and Los Angeles police descended on Murray’s clinic Wednesday. Among them: 27 tablets of the weight-loss drug phentermine, a tablet of the muscle relaxant clonazepam, two hard drives, notices from the IRS and a controlled-substance registration.

Hepatitis-case indictment

DENVER — A grand jury indicted a surgery technician infected with hepatitis C on several charges Thursday, alleging she stole syringes with painkillers and replaced them with needles she had used. Prosecutors allege that at least 19 people contracted the disease as a result.

The allegations by prosecutors, also made Thursday, are the first direct link of hepatitis C cases to 26-year-old Kristen Diane Parker, who has tested positive for the ailment. Her attorney, Gregory Graf, did not immediately return a message.

Thursday’s indictment charges Parker with 21 counts of tampering with a consumer product and 21 counts of obtaining a controlled substance by deceit and subterfuge.

‘Blacklist’ sparks outrage

CARSON CITY, Nev. — Politicians from Nevada and Florida expressed outrage Thursday at a report that some federal agencies have put the two tourist hotspots in the states on a “blacklist” when deciding where to hold conferences or meetings.

A Wall Street Journal article published Wednesday cited e-mails from the FBI and Department of Agriculture encouraging conference locations that aren’t resort destinations and don’t appear to be “lavish.”

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, a Republican, called the reported blacklist “an outrageous insult to the working families in Nevada” and urged the state’s congressional delegation to press President Barack Obama for a change in such policies.

Associated Press