Afghanistan war vet gets highest honor

Afghanistan war vet gets highest honor

WASHINGTON

The soldier in uniform extended his prosthetic hand after losing his own in battle. And the commander in chief reached out to clasp it.

It was a sobering moment toward the end of a moving ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, as President Barack Obama awarded the nation’s highest military honor to Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry for his brave actions to protect his comrades in the firefight that cost him his right hand.

“This is the stuff of which heroes are made,” the president declared, before reaching out and shaking Petry’s gray, robotic hand, which helped the soldier to remain active in the military and even redeploy to Afghanistan despite his serious injury.

Crowds call for change in Egypt

CAIRO

The tens of thousands of Egyptians whose chants for faster change are ringing through Cairo’s Tahrir Square months after they brought down Hosni Mubarak got a stern warning Tuesday from the ruling generals not to disrupt daily life in what some activists are calling a second revolution.

The crowds again packing the powerfully symbolic square that was the center of the 18-day uprising in January and February defied the military council and staged a sit-in there for a fifth-straight day, shutting down the heart of downtown Cairo and blocking access to a major government building.

Karzai’s half brother gunned down

KANDAHAR, afghanistan

The powerful half brother of President Hamid Karzai was gunned down in his heavily fortified home by a close associate Tuesday, setting off a power struggle in southern Afghanistan and raising doubts about stability in a critical area for the U.S.-led war effort.

The assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, a wheeler-dealer and the key to his half brother’s power in the south, leaves the president without an influential ally to handle the tricky job of balancing the interests of the region’s tribal and political leaders, drug runners, insurgents and militias.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, but officials immediately cast doubt that they were involved. If they were, it could undercut the president’s own effort to talk peace with insurgents as foreign forces begin their exit.

Belfast Catholics clash with police

BELFAST, Northern Ireland

Police firing plastic bullets and powerful water cannons forced Catholic militants away from a disputed Belfast road Tuesday as Northern Ireland’s annual day of Protestant marches reached a fiery climax.

Catholic youths lashed out at police both before and after the marches by the Orange Order, a Protestant brotherhood whose yearly July 12 demonstrations celebrate 17th-century military triumphs over Catholics — and often inspire a violent response from the province’s minority.

Romney refuses to sign pledge

DES MOINES, Iowa

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign said Tuesday that he will not sign a conservative Iowa Christian group’s far-reaching pledge opposing gay marriage, making him the first Republican presidential candidate to reject it. Two of Romney’s rivals for the Republican nomination, Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, have signed the The Family Leader’s 14-point pledge, which calls on the candidates to denounce same-sex marriage rights, pornography, same-sex military accommodations and forms of Islamic law.

Associated Press