National news in brief

Karzai remarks raise questions

KABUL

President Hamid Karzai has interfered in corruption cases and even threatened to join the Taliban if foreigners didn’t stop meddling.

Now he is demanding that the U.S.-led coalition begin reducing its military operations and stop what the military believes is its most successful tactic — night raids against suspected Taliban commanders.

It’s the latest in a series of rifts between the international community and the mercurial president.

NATO, US near missile-shield deal

WASHINGTON

The U.S. and its NATO allies are close to an agreement to erect a missile shield over Europe, a project that would give the military alliance a fresh purpose while testing President Barack Obama’s campaign to improve relations with Russia.

The deal is likely to be sealed at a two-day NATO summit starting Friday in Lisbon, Portugal, officials say, as part of what the alliance calls its new “strategic concept” — the first overhaul of its basic mission since 1999.

Man pleads to 1965 killing of black man

MARION, Ala.

A former state trooper took a plea deal Monday in the 1965 slaying of a black man that prompted the “Bloody Sunday” march at Selma and helped galvanize America’s civil-rights movement.

Indicted on a charge of murder more than four decades after the fatal shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Bonard Fowler, 77, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to six months in jail.

It was a mixed victory for civil-rights era prosecutions. The prosecutor and Jackson family members did not get the murder conviction they sought, but the jail time and an apology from Fowler seemed to help close a painful chapter in U.S. history.

Change in drug rule

WASHINGTON

A headache awaits people who use those tax-free health-spending accounts to pay for over-the-counter allergy relievers, heartburn blockers and other drugstore remedies. Starting next year, you’ll need a prescription for the drugs to qualify.

The change in so-called Flexible Spending Accounts is part of the new health-care law, and doctors are bracing for patient confusion and annoyance as they decide how to handle prescription requests for products that people normally use on their own.

US: Gangs buy jets for drug flights

NEW YORK

U.S. prosecutors in a series of court cases say they are beginning to unravel the latest innovation in drug smuggling: South American gangs that are buying old jets and other planes, filling them with cocaine and flying them more than 3,000 miles across the ocean to Africa.

At least three gangs have struck deals to fly drugs to West Africa and from there to Europe, according to U.S. indictments.

Opryland hotel reopens after flood

NASHVILLE, Tenn.

Decked out in more than 2 million Christmas lights, the sprawling Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center reopened Monday after historic Nashville flooding shuttered the cornerstone of the city’s tourism business for six months.

The hotel, known for its indoor waterfalls and garden-filled atriums, has 2,881 guest rooms and bills itself as the largest nongaming hotel in the continental United States.

Associated Press