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Friday, July 9, 2010 – Daily News – 5A WORLD BRIEFING Spy swap with Russia unfolds as 10 plead guilty NEW YORK (AP) — The largest spy swap between the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War unfolded Thursday as 10 people accused of spying in suburban America pleaded guilty to conspir- acy and were ordered deported to Russia in exchange for the release of four Russian spies. The defendants plead- ed guilty in a Manhattan courtroom, were immedi- ately sentenced to time served and were ordered deported. They were expected to be sent to Russia within hours, and U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood announced that the Russian govern- ment would release four people to the United States in exchange. The swap carries sig- nificant consequences for efforts between Washing- ton and Moscow to repair ties chilled by a deepen- ing atmosphere of suspi- cion. The defendants each announced their pleas to conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign country. Some spoke with heavy Russian accents, sometimes in broken English, despite having spent years living in the U.S. posing as American and Canadian citizens. An 11th defendant was a fugitive after he fled authorities in Cyprus fol- lowing his release on bail. Bomb arrests in Norway linked to terror plots OSLO (AP) — Three suspected al-Qaida mem- bers were arrested Thurs- day in a Norwegian bomb plot linked to the same terrorist planners behind thwarted schemes to blow up New York’s subway and a British shopping mall. The alleged Norwegian plot, underscoring chang- ing al-Qaida tactics in the BOOK BARN Used Books Tues-Fri 10-5 Sat 10-2 Serving Tehama County since 1994 619 Oak St., Red Bluff (530) 528-2665 decade since the 9/11 attacks, was said to involve powerful perox- ide bombs similar to ones aimed for detonation in New York and Manches- ter, England. All three plans were organized by Saleh al- Somali, al-Qaida’s former chief of external opera- tions, who had been in charge of plotting attacks worldwide, Norwegian and U.S. officials believe. Al-Somali was killed in a CIA drone airstrike last year, but officials say the three plots had already been set in motion by the time of his death. Thursday’s arrests sug- gested how decentralized and nimble al-Qaida has become since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. The terror group has recently focused on smaller-level attacks that don’t require the intricate planning that it took to hijack airplanes and fly them into build- ings in New York and Washington. Last year, when the FBI and CIA thwarted the suicide attack in the New York subway, officials called it the most danger- ous plot since 9/11. And in the past two days, reve- lations about the related plots in England and now in Norway have illustrat- ed the terror group’s multi-country scope. Thousands of donations to help Arizona defend law PHOENIX (AP) — Retirees and other resi- dents from all over the country were among those who donated nearly $500,000 to help Arizona defend its immigration enforcement law, with most chipping in $100 or less, according to an analysis of documents obtained Thusday by The Associated Press. The donations, 88 per- cent of which came from through the defense fund’s website, surged this week after the federal government sued Tuesday to challenge the law. A document from Gov. Jan Brewer’s office showed that 7,008 of the 9,057 online contributions sub- mitted by Thursday morn- ing were made in the days following the govern- ment’s filing. Website contributions came from all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and nearly 2,000 came from within Ari- zona. Donations ranged from $5 to $2,000, with the vast majority between $10 and $100. The Arizona law includes a requirement that police enforcing another law must investi- gate the immigration sta- tus of people if there is ‘‘reasonable suspicion’’ to believe the people are in the United States ille- gally. Brewer and other sup- porters say the law will prompt illegal immigrants to leave the state and that state action was required by a failure of the federal government to secure the border. Relief well’s success depends on location THEODORE, Ala. (AP) — A relief well being drilled deep into the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico to shut down the gushing well could be completed ahead of a long-set deadline of mid- August only if conditions are ideal, government and BP officials said Thurs- day. The relief well is cur- rently the best hope for stanching the oil leak set off by the April 20 explo- sion aboard the Deepwa- ter Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and began an environ- mental catastrophe for the region. National Incident Commander and retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Thursday that the relief well is expected to intercept and penetrate the Deepwater Horizon well pipe about 18,000 feet below sea level with- in seven to 10 days. But they won’t know how long it will take to stop the oil until they get there. The gushing well has several concentric rings, and oil could be coming up through multi- COMPLETE AUTO REPAIR All makes and models. We perform dealer recommened 30K, 60K, 90K SERVICES AT LOWER PRICES Smog Check starting at $ (most cars and pick-ups) 2995 + cert. Pass or FREE retest 527-9841 • 195 S. Main St. Tombs dating back 4,300 years found SAQQARA, Egypt (AP) — Egyptian archaeologists on Thursday unveiled a newly-unearthed double tomb with vivid wall paint- ings in the ancient necropo- lis of Saqqara near Cairo, saying it could be the start for uncovering a vast ceme- tery in the area. The tomb includes two ple rings, Allen said. The plan is to pump heavy mud and then cement into the well to overcome the upward pressure of the huge oil reservoir below. Pain reliever sales plunge TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Sales of Johnson & Johnson pain relievers are collapsing as a string of recalls appears to have made consumers wary of once-sterling brands such as Tylenol and Motrin. An eighth recall, announced Thursday could worsen consumer reaction. That wariness and the huge amount of products pulled off store shelves together look to be costing J&J tens of millions of dollars a month. Thursday’s recall by Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil consumer health care unit covers 21 lots of products, including Children’s Tylenol. The string of recalls is an embarrassment for a company that set the standard on how to do it correctly when it rushed to pull bottles of Tylenol — deliberately poisoned by someone who was never caught — off store shelves in the early 1980s. This time, the culprit appears to be a lack of internal quality control. That’s harder to forgive, particularly given that the public has little tol- erance for mistakes or carelessness involving products for children, said analyst Steve Brozak of WBB Securi- ties. Authorities in Georgia claim villager turns 130 SACHIRE, Georgia (AP) — Authorities in the former Soviet repub- lic of Georgia claim a woman from a remote mountain village turned 130 on Thursday, making her the oldest person on Earth. Antisa Khvichava from western Georgia was born on July 8, 1880, said Georgiy Meurnishvili, spokesman for the civil registry at the Justice Ministry. The woman, who lives with her 40-year-old grandson in an idyllic vine-covered country house in the mountains, retired from her job as a tea and corn picker in 1965, when she was 85, records say. ‘‘I’ve always been healthy, and I’ve worked all my life — at home and at the farm,’’ said Khvichava, in a bright dress and headscarf, her withering lips rejuvenated by shiny red lipstick. Sit- ting in the chair and hold- ing her cane, Khvichava spoke quietly through an interpreter since she never went to school to learn Georgian and speaks only the local language, Min- grelian. Her age couldn’t immediately be indepen- dently verified. Her birth certificate was lost — one of the great number to have disappeared in the past century amid revolu- tions and a civil war which followed the col- lapse of the Russian Empire. false doors with colorful paintings depicting the two people buried there, a father and a son who served as heads of the royal scribes, said Abdel-Hakim Karar, a top archaeologist at Saqqara. ‘‘The colors of the false door are fresh as if it was painted yesterday,’’ Karar told reporters. Humidity had destroyed the sarcophagus of the father, Shendwas, while the tomb of the son, Khonsu, was robbed in antiquity, he said. Also insribed on the father’s false door was the name of Pepi II, whose 90- year reign is believed to be the longest of the pharaohs. The inscription dates the double tomb to the 6th dynasty, which marked the beginning of the decline of the Old Kingdom, also known as the age of pyra- mids. Sheriff investigating Mel Gibson LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mel Gibson is being investigated in a possible domestic violence incident involving his ex-girlfriend earlier this year, sheriff’s officials said Thursday. The Los Angeles Coun- ty Sheriff’s Department listed the actor-director as a potential suspect in the alleged attack on Russian singer Oksana Grigorieva at an undisclosed location in Malibu. The two have been involved in a nasty cus- tody dispute over their infant daughter — the sub- ject of a confidential court case. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said detectives interviewed Grigorieva on Monday. She has been the only per- son interviewed so far. VETERINARY HOSPITAL welcomes a new addition to our team ANTELOPE Dr Gina Pedersen is a U.C. 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