Justice Ginsburg briefly hospitalized again

Justice Ginsburg briefly hospitalized again

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had cancer surgery earlier this year, was kept at a hospital Wednesday night after she became drowsy and fell from her seat aboard an airplane. Court officials blamed a reaction to medicine.

It was the second time Ginsburg, 76, has been hospitalized in the last month. She was taken to a hospital Sept. 24 after falling ill at her Supreme Court office.

Ginsburg, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia, was heading to London to take part in ceremonies marking the opening of Britain’s new Supreme Court.

Doctors attributed her symptoms to a reaction caused by the combination of a prescription sleeping aid and an over-the- counter cold medicine.

Drop that taco! Mexico City puts cops on diet

MEXICO CITY — Some Mexico City cops are taking too many bites out of more than crime.

The Mexican capital is putting 1,300 of its heaviest police officers on a diet, concerned about rapidly expanding waistlines in the force.

At least 70 percent of the 70,000-member force is overweight, said Nora Frias, the city’s Public Safety deputy secretary for citizen participation. The diet program will start with the officers with the most serious weight- related health problems.

She said officers will be given blood and cholesterol tests to determine a personalized diet plan for each.

Mexico is quickly catching up with the United States as one of the world’s fattest countries, according to the Mexican government. Nearly half of Mexico’s 110 million people are overweight, and the number of fat children has climbed 8 percent a year over the last decade.

Militants launch assaults on 3 police compounds

LAHORE, Pakistan — Islamist militants launched coordinated assaults on three police compounds in Pakistan’s second-largest city Thursday, the latest in a wave of attacks by insurgents bringing the war to the country’s heartland ahead of an expected offensive against their Afghan border sanctuary.

The dramatic escalation in violence appears to be an attempt by the Taliban- and al-Qaida-led insurgency to seize the initiative from the army and deliver a warning to the U.S.-backed civilian government: Attack us in South Waziristan, and we will fight back in your cities.

It also discredits Pakistani claims that the Taliban were on the ropes after this year’s military campaign in the Swat Valley and the killing of their leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in a U.S. airstrike in August.

Italy, NATO deny bribing Taliban to keep the peace

ROME — Italy and NATO on Thursday denied a newspaper report that Italian intelligence secretly paid the Taliban thousands of dollars to keep the peace in an Afghan area under Italian control.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s office called the report in the Times of London “completely groundless.” The Italian defense minister denounced it as “rubbish” and said he wanted to sue the newspaper.

In Kabul, a U.S. spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan denied the allegations. “We don’t do bribes,” Col. Wayne Shanks said. “We don’t pay the insurgents.”

30 detainees planned attacks, Turkish police say

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish police detained Thursday more than 30 suspects allegedly linked to the al-Qaida terror network, saying they were planning to stage attacks on NATO facilities as well as U.S. and Israeli missions in the country.

Anti-terrorism police detained the suspects in simultaneous raids in the cities of Van, Erzurum, Konya, Batman and Istanbul. The police did not say which facilities or missions were the planned targets. Authorities were not available for further comment late Thursday.

Turkey increased security around all U.S., Israeli, NATO and other diplomatic missions in the country following al-Qaida linked suicide bombings in 2003 against the British consulate, a British bank and two Jewish synagogues in Istanbul. The attacks killed 58 people.

Associated Press