Top security official among dead in blast

Top security official among dead in blast

BEIRUT

A powerful car bomb tore through the heart of Beirut’s Christian sector Friday, killing a top security official and seven others in a devastating attack that threatened to bring the war in Syria directly to Lebanon’s doorstep.

The blast sheared the balconies off apartment buildings, upended cars and sent dazed rescue workers carrying bloodied children into the streets.

Dozens of people were wounded in the blast, the worst the Lebanese capital has seen in more than four years. The state-run news agency said the target was Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, head of the intelligence division of Lebanon’s domestic security forces.

Al-Hassan, 47, headed an investigation over the summer that led to the arrest of former Information Minister Michel Samaha, one of Syria’s most loyal allies in Lebanon.

Bomb threat at Texas A&M

COLLEGE STATION, Texas

Texas A&M University’s campus was shut down for about five hours Friday after an emailed bomb threat prompted an evacuation of more than 50,000 people and a building-by-building search.

A&M Police Lt. Allan Baron said officials were still searching some buildings late Friday, but no bombs had been found and people were being allowed to come back on campus to retrieve personal belongings and their cars.

Evening activities on campus, about 100 miles northwest of Houston, were set to go on as planned.

The threat also would not prompt extra security for today’s football game between sixth-ranked LSU and No. 20 A&M.

Judge agrees to reopen O.J. case

LAS VEGAS

A Nevada judge agreed Friday to reopen the armed robbery and kidnapping case against O.J. Simpson to determine if the former football star was so badly represented by his lawyers that he should be freed from prison and get another trial.

Simpson wasn’t in a Las Vegas courtroom while Clark County District Court Judge Linda Marie Bell agreed to hear evidence and consider 18 of 22 questions cited in a May appeal by Simpson appeals lawyer Patricia Palm.

The judge dismissed four other grounds on which the 65-year-old Simpson seeks release from state prison, where he is serving nine to 33 years.

hFire destroys fair icon Big Tex

DALLAS

The man who provides the voice for Big Tex, the giant cowboy at the State Fair of Texas, was greeting people with his usual “Howdy, folks!” in a slow drawl Friday when someone rushed into his trailer to tell him the towering fair icon was on fire.

“It moved quickly,” Bill Bragg said of the fire that engulfed the 52-foot-tall structure, leaving not much more than its charred metal frame behind. “It was a quick end.”

This year’s fair was supposed to be a celebration for Big Tex, marking his 60th birthday. Instead, the beloved cowboy was hauled from the grounds on a flatbed truck two days before the end of the fair in a procession resembling a funeral.

Associated Press