Plea for journalist’s release

Plea for journalist’s release

WASHINGTON — Executives of several major news outlets demanded Tuesday that Iran specify how a detained American journalist broke the law, and that the country allow an outside group to evaluate her health and living conditions.

Top news officials at NPR, ABC, BBC, PBS, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News Channel and Feature Story News sent a letter Tuesday urging the Iranian government to release 31-year-old Roxana Saberi if she’s not formally charged.

In a separate statement later in the day, The Associated Press joined those outlets in insisting charges against Saberi be made public and urging Iran to allow the welfare check.

Saberi is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Iran who has reported for NPR, ABC, BBC and other media, according to the statement issued by the organizations earlier in the day.

Iranian officials have said the freelance journalist, who was detained about a month ago, was engaged in “illegal” activities because she continued working in Iran after the government revoked her press credentials.

Contaminated by needles

EL PASO, Texas — Sixteen patients exposed to a mismanaged insulin needle program have tested positive for hepatitis C, Army officials said Tuesday.

The William Beaumont Army Medical Center patients were among more than 2,000 diabetics who may have been exposed to blood-borne illnesses between August 2007 and January 2009 because of the program that systematically gave multiple patients injections from the same insulin pen.

Top Taliban was at Gitmo

WASHINGTON — The Taliban’s new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the latest example of a freed detainee who took a militant leadership role and a potential complication for the Obama administration’s efforts to close the prison.

U.S. authorities handed over the detainee to the Afghan government, which in turn released him, according to Pentagon and CIA officials.

Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, formerly Guantanamo prisoner No. 008, was among 13 Afghan prisoners released to the Afghan government in December 2007. Rasoul is now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a nom de guerre that Pentagon and intelligence officials say is used by a Taliban leader who is in charge of operations against U.S. and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan.

A very big mix-up

PHILADELPHIA — Employees of a Pennsylvania pet store expecting a shipment of tropical fish and salt water got a man’s dead body instead.

Mark Arabia owns the Pets Plus store in northeast Philadelphia, where the mix-up was discovered Tuesday. He says he learned the body was that of a 65-year-old San Diego-area man who died of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

The body was supposed to go to a research laboratory in Allentown, a 70-mile drive away.

US Airways Inc. released a statement saying the air cargo problem was caused by a “verbal miscommunication between a delivery driver and the cargo representative.” The Tempe, Ariz.-based airline says it’s deeply sorry.

The fish were shipped in three boxes. The corpse was shipped in a wooden coffin wrapped in cardboard.

Arabia says the fish were left at the airport and probably died.

Effects of shuttle’s end

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Shuttle Discovery is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center about 9:20 p.m. today, leaving only eight more scheduled missions before NASA retires the fleet in 2010 — and devastates the Space Coast economy.

Figures released by NASA this week predict the retirement of the shuttle will result in the loss of at least 3,500 jobs at KSC. Some industry officials say the number could be as high as 10,000. The best-case scenario would result in the loss of 9,870 other jobs in the surrounding community; the worst-case number is 28,000.

N. Korea continues threats

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea vowed “every necessary measure” today to defend itself against what it calls U.S. threats, claiming American military exercises in South Korea are a preparation to invade the communist nation.

The statement by North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, however, was far less harsh than rhetoric issued by the country’s military in the run-up to the annual war games that started across the South on Monday. The military has threatened South Korean passenger planes and put its troops on standby for war.

Combined dispatches