US, allies to confront Iran

US, allies to confront Iran

WASHINGTON — The U.S. and its five allies trying to stop Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program plan to tell Tehran in a key meeting Thursday that it must provide “unfettered access” to its previously secret Qom enrichment facility within weeks, a senior administration official says.

The allies — the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia — also will present in the meeting a so-called transparency package covering all of Iran’s nuclear activities across the country, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss plans that are not yet ready to be announced.

The allies will demand that Iran prove to the increasingly skeptical group that its intentions with its various sites are peaceful and energy-related, as Iran claims, and not for weapons development, as the West believes, the official said Saturday.

Germans go to polls

BERLIN — Ignoring threats by Islamic militants, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her main rival held their final political rallies Saturday before Germany’s national election, focusing on the key domestic issues of jobs and economic recovery.

Two videos surfaced Friday — one by al-Qaida and another by the Taliban — threatening retaliation for Germany’s military presence in Afghanistan. The Taliban video showed top German landmarks such as the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and Munich’s world-renowned Oktoberfest.

In response, authorities on Saturday banned all flights over Oktoberfest until it ends next Sunday. The annual 16-day beer festival, which was targeted by a student bomber in 1980, draws some 6 million visitors from around the globe.

Merkel hopes to win a second four-year term in today’s national election and ditch her conservative party’s “grand coalition” with her main rivals, the center-left Social Democrats, led by her foreign minister and challenger, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Husband of Rep. Maloney dies in the Himalayas

NEW YORK — The husband of U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney has died on a mountain-climbing expedition in the Himalayas, aides to the congresswoman said Saturday.

Clifton Maloney, a millionaire investment banker and avid climber, was resting in a high-altitude camp after a successful ascent to the summit of the world’s sixth-highest mountain when he died.

He was 71, a late age for such a grueling endeavor, but had been in excellent health, aides said.

Rep. Maloney, a Democrat, was “very shaken” by the death, said Barry Nolan, a congressional aide who works with Carolyn Maloney.

Arrangements were still being made Saturday to recover the body from the slopes of Cho Oyu, a 26,906-foot peak that straddles the border of Nepal and Tibet.

Conservative Lutherans to decide on split over gays

FISHERS, Ind. — Conservative members of the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination voted Saturday to spend the next 12 months deciding whether to split from the church after it liberalized its stance on gay clergy.

About 1,200 people meeting in suburban Indianapolis approved a constitution for the conservative umbrella group Lutheran CORE and a resolution directing its steering committee to report back in a year on whether to stay within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, form their own denomination or join another.

At least 40 people die in flooding in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — More than a month’s worth of rain fell in just 12 hours Saturday as Tropical Storm Ketsana slammed ashore in the Philippines, killing at least 40 people and stranding thousands on rooftops in the capital’s worst flooding in more than 42 years.

The government declared a “state of calamity” in metropolitan Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces, said Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, who heads the National Disaster Coordinating Council. That allows officials to withdraw emergency money for relief and rescue.

US drone crashes in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A U.S. military drone crashed Saturday in northern Iraq, hitting a regional office of Iraq’s largest Sunni political party in an area that remains an insurgent stronghold, an American military official said.

The unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle crashed into the local office of the Iraqi Islamic Party in Mosul, an area the U.S. military has called the last stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Drones have been a mainstay of the U.S. war effort, offering round-the-clock airborne “eyes” watching over road convoys and tracking insurgent movements and occasionally unleashing missiles on a target.

Associated Press