US sees signs elite in Syria want out

US sees signs elite in Syria want out

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration says it is seeing growing signs that the Syrian elite, including people close to President Bashar Assad, are increasingly worried and beginning to prepare exit plans.

Two U.S. officials said Friday that one Assad family member has moved large amounts of money out of the country to avoid U.S. and other sanctions on the country and provide a nest egg for a life in exile. Similarly, a senior member of Assad’s national-security circle has left the country very recently and appears to have settled abroad, they said.

Boy, 14, shoots self in school cafeteria

WALPOLE, N.H.

A 14-year-old shot himself in the face in a New Hampshire elementary-school cafeteria filled with dozens of students eating lunch, officials said Friday.

The teen, identified by a relative and fellow students as Hunter Mack, was hospitalized after shooting himself around 11 a.m. at Walpole Elementary School in southwestern New Hampshire. Police locked down the school for several hours, but no one else was injured.

Cheshire County Attorney Peter Heed told The Associated Press the student might have been upset about a “relationship issue” with a girl.

As of Friday afternoon, the student was in serious condition in the intensive-care unit.

US issues warning on travel to Mexico

MEXICO CITY

The U.S. State Department is recommending that Americans avoid travel to all or parts of 14 of 31 Mexican states in the widest travel advisory issued since Mexico stepped up its drug war in 2006.

The department advises against any nonessential travel in all of Chihuahua, Coahuila and Tamaulipas, which border the U.S, and in the central state of Durango, as well as sections of 10 other states.

It advises caution for traveling in three other border states and many areas of central and western Mexico where drug cartels have been warring.

Man pleads guilty in plot to kill Obama

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.

A man from Uzbekistan who pleaded guilty Friday to plotting to kill President Barack Obama with an automatic rifle claimed he was acting at the direction of an Islamic terror group in his home country.

Authorities said Ulugbek Kodirov had discussed trying to kill the president as he campaigned for re-election because he would be out in public more often. Kodirov entered the plea during a hearing in Birmingham before U.S. District Judge Abdul K. Kallon, an Obama appointee.

Defense attorney Lance Bell said Kodirov, 22, avoided a potential life sentence by pleading guilty. He faces up to 30 years in prison, though Bell expected Kodirov to receive about half that.

Agency to replace memorial quote

WASHINGTON

The National Park Service announced plans Friday to remove an inscription from the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and replace it with a full quotation from the civil- rights leader — a move the memorial project’s architect said would “destroy” the monument.

Critics, including the poet Maya Angelou, had said the paraphrase didn’t accurately reflect King’s words. It reads, “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.”

Angelou had said the shortened phrase made King sound like an “arrogant twit.”

Removing the inscription now will amount to “defacing” the memorial or “scarring it for life” because any new granite added to the memorial would be a noticeably different color, said Ed Jackson Jr., the executive architect of the $120 million memorial project.

Associated Press