Suspect pleads guilty in phony plot

Suspect pleads guilty in phony plot

NEW YORK

A Bangladesh native accused of trying to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York with what he thought was a 1,000-pound car bomb pleaded guilty Thursday to terrorism charges stemming from an FBI sting.

“I had intentions to commit a violent jihadist act,” Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, said in a soft voice while entering the plea in federal court in Brooklyn.

He told the judge that he chose the Federal Reserve as the target, but he also expressed remorse, saying he no longer considers himself a jihadist.

Hostage-taker was shot multiple times

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.

A man who held a 5-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker for nearly a week before dying in a shootout with the FBI suffered multiple gunshot wounds, a county coroner said Thursday.

Dale County Coroner Woodrow Hilboldt said he was allowed into the bunker in the southeastern Alabama community of Midland City on Wednesday evening. He pronounced 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes dead at 8:58 p.m.

The body was removed from the bunker Wednesday night, FBI agent Jason Pack said Thursday, hours after the FBI announced that it had found no more explosives on the property besides those that were discovered in a PVC pipe leading into the bunker and inside the bunker itself.

Aftershocks hamper tsunami relief

SYDNEY

A strong aftershock rattled the Solomon Islands on Friday, hampering relief efforts to tsunami-ravaged villages and forcing the South Pacific nation’s prime minister to forgo a visit to the stricken area where nine deaths have been confirmed.

Prime Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo was on a plane to Santa Cruz Island in the eastern Solomons to assess damage when the aftershock hit, said Silas Lilo, a spokesman for his office. The plane was forced to return to the capital, Honiara.

Bridge champion Ira Rubin dies at 82

HACKENSACK, N.J.

Ira Rubin, a mathematician and computer programmer who played bridge at the highest level for four decades — and was regarded as one of the great theorists of the game — died Wednesday.

He was 82 and resided most recently in an assisted- living center in Edison, N.J.

The bespectacled, 6-foot-3 Rubin was known in the tournament bridge world as The Beast for his fiery intensity and, “according to some, he embraced that nickname,” said Brent Manley, editor of the Bridge Bulletin, the periodical of the American Contract Bridge League.

Rubin, who racked up more than 500 mentions in The New York Times’ authoritative bridge column, entered the league’s Hall of Fame in 2000 on the strength of 19 national titles and one world title.

Study: Many stroke victims mull suicide

One in 12 stroke survivors thought about suicide or that they would be better off dead, a federal survey reveals. That’s more than those with other health problems such as heart attacks or cancer, and it suggests that depression after stroke is more serious than many had realized.

“It was surprising” and shows a need for more treatment, said the study’s leader, Dr. Amytis Towfighi of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “When patients have their depression treated they’re more motivated to take their medication, do therapy and live a full life.”

The study was discussed Thursday at an American Stroke Association conference in Honolulu.

Combined dispatches