WORLD DIGEST || Bachmann becomes Swiss citizen

Bachmann becomes Swiss citizen

MINNEAPOLIS

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann has been granted citizenship in Switzerland.

Bachmann’s spokeswoman Becky Rogness says the congresswoman has been eligible for dual citizenship since she married her husband of Swiss descent in 1978. Rogness tells Minnesota Public Radio that some of the couple’s children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual citizenship, so they went through the process as a family.

Bachmann calls it a “non-story.” In a statement, she says she automatically became a dual citizen of the U.S. and Switzerland in 1978 when she married her husband, Marcus, and that her family just recently updated its documents. She adds that she is “proud to be an American.”

Relative: Suspect said girls were his

GUNTOWN, Miss.

A Mississippi man killed a Tennessee mother and her teenage daughter so he could abduct two young sisters who still are missing, according to court documents filed Wednesday, and a relative says the suspect thought the two younger girls might be his daughters.

The developments gave the first hint of a motive in the case that began in southwest Tennessee, stretched into Mississippi and led the FBI to put Adam Christopher Mayes, 35, on its Ten Most Wanted list. Authorities said they think the missing girls, Alexandria, 12, and Kyliyah Bain, 8, are still with Mayes, nearly two weeks after he took them.

Saudis emerge as key US ally

WASHINGTON

A decade after hijackers mostly from Saudi Arabia attacked the United States with passenger jets, the Saudis have emerged as the principal ally of the U.S. against al-Qaida’s spinoff group in Yemen and at least twice have disrupted plots to explode sophisticated bombs aboard airlines. Details emerging about the latest unraveled plot revealed that a Saudi double agent fooled the terror group, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, passing himself off as an eager would-be suicide bomber. Instead, he secretly turned over the group’s most up-to-date underwear bomb to Saudi Arabia, which gave it to the CIA. Before he was whisked to safety, the spy provided intelligence that helped the CIA kill al-Qaida’s senior operations leader, Fahd al-Quso, who died in a drone strike last weekend.

2 officers to be tried in homeless death

SANTA ANA, Calif.

Two Southern California police officers were ordered Wednesday to stand trial in the death of a mentally ill homeless man after a violent arrest last summer.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Walter Schwarm made the ruling after a hearing that included surveillance video of the confrontation between the officers and 37-year-old Kelly Thomas in Fullerton.

Officer Manuel Ramos is charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Cpl. Jay Cicinelli is charged with involuntary manslaughter and assault or battery by a public officer. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Body parts found near retiree haven

MEXICO CITY

Chopped-up parts of at least 15 bodies stuffed into two vans were discovered Wednesday on the road to Lake Chapala, Mexico’s largest inland body of fresh water and a popular retirement community for U.S. citizens.

The bodies found just south of Guadalajara, in Jalisco state, may be the latest victims in a bloody turf war between the vicious Zetas gang and an offshoot of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, a fight that has bloodied the area around Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, for a year or so.

Combined dispatches