US, allies urge UN action on Syria

US, allies urge UN action on Syria

UNITED NATION

Vowing to avoid “another Libya,” the U.S. and its allies challenged Russia on Tuesday to overcome its opposition to a U.N. draft resolution demanding that Syrian President Bashar Assad yield power and end the violence that has killed thousands.

Russia, one of Assad’s strongest allies, has signaled it would veto any U.N. action against Damascus, fearing it could open the door to eventual international military involvement, the way an Arab-backed U.N. resolution led to NATO airstrikes in Libya.

But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said U.N. action in Syria would not involve military intervention, unlike the NATO-led efforts that resulted in the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi.

Teen in Utah school bomb plot charged

SALT LAKE CITY

Authorities on Tuesday charged a 16-year-old boy with a felony in what they say was a plot to detonate a bomb at a Utah high school.

The teenager, along with Dallin Morgan, 18, had planned for months to bomb an assembly at Roy High School, about 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, then steal a plane from a nearby airport and flee the country, police said.

Both were arrested last week. Morgan has been charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction. He is set for a court appearance today and faces a possible life sentence if convicted on the first-degree felony charge.

Prosecutors charged the 16-year-old with the same count in juvenile court Tuesday but have filed a motion seeking to try him as an adult.

US may release Taliban from Gitmo

WASHINGTON

U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged Tuesday that the United States may release several Afghan Taliban prisoners from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an incentive to bring the Taliban to peace talks. Meanwhile, Afghan officials told The Associated Press that a plan to give Afghanistan a form of legal custody over the men if they are released satisfied their earlier objection to sending the prisoners to a third country.

Cops: Teacher assaulted 23 kids

LOS ANGELES

Detectives say the elementary-school teacher told the children it was a game. Once inside his third-grade classroom, he blindfolded them, gagged them and set cockroaches crawling on their faces.

And then, Mark Berndt photographed them, creating hundreds of images that eventually would lead to his arrest.

On Tuesday, Berndt, 61, was sitting in jail on charges that he committed lewd acts on 23 boys and girls, age 6 to 10, between 2008 and 2010. None of them complained about Berndt’s behavior, authorities said.

Police and school officials learned of it only when a film processor found Berndt’s photos more than a year ago.

Berndt was arrested Monday at his home in Torrance and was being held on $2.3 million bail.

H1N1 flu cases increase in Mexico

MEXICO CITY

Swine flu is back in Mexico, the epicenter of a world pandemic three years ago that panicked people around the globe.

The country registered more cases of all types of flu and more incidents of the H1N1 strain, originally called swine flu, in January than in all of 2011, federal health officials said Tuesday.

Despite the spike, the number of cases is well within a normal flu season for Mexico, which can see from 5,000 to 11,000 incidents of all strains, Health Secretary Salomon Chertorivski Woldenberg said.

Associated Press