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Tuesday, July 27, 2010 – Daily News – 5A WORLD BRIEFING Pentagon tries to assess the damage of leaked reports WASHINGTON (AP) — The monumental leak of classified Afghan war documents threatened Monday to create new conflict with Pakistan, whose spy agency was a focus of much of the material, and raised questions about Wash- ington’s own ability to protect military secrets. The White House called the disclosures ‘‘alarm- ing’’ and scrambled to assess the damage. The documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by var- ious military units that provide an unvarnished look at combat in the past six years, including U.S. frustration over reports Pakistan secretly aided insurgents and civilian casualties at the hand of U.S. troops. WikiLeaks.org, a self-described whistle- blower organization, posted 76,000 of the reports to its website Sunday night. The group said it is vetting another 15,000 docu- ments for future release. Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military would probably need ‘‘days, if not weeks’’ to review all the documents and deter- mine ‘‘the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners.’’ The White House says it didn’t try to stop news organizations who had access to secret U.S. military documents from publishing reports about the leaks. Howev- er, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said it did ask WikiLeaks — through reporters who were given advanced copies of the documents — to redact information in the documents that could harm U.S. mili- tary personnel. Immigration enforcement through fingerprints DENVER (AP) — The federal government is rapidly expanding a pro- gram to identify illegal immigrants using finger- prints from arrests, draw- ing opposition from local authorities and advocates who argue the initiative amounts to an excessive dragnet. The program has gotten less attention than Ari- zona’s new immigration law, but it may end up hav- ing a bigger impact because of its potential to round up and deport so many immigrants nation- wide. The San Francisco sheriff wanted nothing to do with the program, and the City Council in Wash- ington, D.C., blocked use of the fingerprint plan in the nation’s capital. Col- orado is the latest to debate the program, called Secure Communities, and immigrant groups have begun to speak up, telling the governor in a letter last week that the initiative will make crime victims reluctant to cooperate with police ‘‘due to fear of being drawn into the immigration regime.’’ Under the program, the fingerprints of everyone who is booked into jail for any crime are run against FBI criminal history records and Department of Homeland Security immi- gration records to deter- mine who is in the country illegally and whether they’ve been arrested pre- viously. Most jurisdictions are not included in the pro- gram, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been expanding the initia- tive. Since 2007, 467 juris- dictions in 26 states have joined. ICE has said it plans to have it in every jail in the country by 2013. Secure Communities is currently being phased into the places where the government sees as having the greatest need for it based on population esti- mates of illegal immi- grants and crime statistics. Twin bombs kill 25 in Iraqi city of Karbala BAGHDAD (AP) — Two car bombs targeting Shiite pilgrims during a religious festival in the holy city of Karbala killed 25 people on Mon- day, Iraqi police and hos- pital officials said. Sunni extremists are suspected. Militants detonated two parked cars filled with explosives about two miles (three kilome- ters) apart as crowds of pilgrims passed by. Police and medical offi- cials in Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad, said 68 people were injured in the attacks. The pilgrims were on their way to Karbala to take part in an important religious holiday, known as Shabaniyah, that attracts devout Shiites from around the country. There was no immedi- ate claim of responsibili- ty for the Monday bomb- ings, but the method is the hallmark of Sunni extremists. While violence has dropped dramatically in the past years in Iraq, suspected Sunni insur- gents regularly target Shiite religious cere- monies and holy places in an attempt to re-ignite sectarian tensions that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war in 2005 and 2007. Pelosi, McConnell differ on jobless LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday urged state lawmakers to lobby for House-passed initia- tives endangered in the Senate, while Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell complained congressional Democrats were out of touch with voters. The two leaders gave starkly different assess- ments of the country’s current course in partisan- tinged speeches at the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Their comments to the biparti- san gathering previewed potential election-year attacks by both parties in their struggle for control of Congress. Pelosi credited last year’s $787 billion stimu- lus package, passed over deep Republican objec- tions, with creating or sav- ing as many as 3.6 million jobs so far. She asserted that more jobs will be cre- ated in the first eight months of 2010 than in the eight years of Republi- can George W. Bush’s presidency, Republicans have though fre- quently disputed those numbers. ‘‘The fact is that those eight years took us into a financial crisis, a deep recession and took us into deep deficits,’’ the Cali- fornia Democrat said. A short time later, McConnell countered that the massive stimulus ‘‘hasn’t kept us from los- ing another 2 1/2 million jobs’’ with unemployment at 9.5 percent. Khmer Rouge jailer found guilty of war crimes PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A U.N.-backed tribunal sentenced the Khmer Rouge’s chief jailer to 35 years for overseeing the deaths of up to 16,000 people — the first verdict involving a senior member of the ‘‘killing fields’’ regime that devastated a gener- ation of Cambodians. Victims and their rel- atives burst into tears after learning that Kaing Guek Eav — also known as Duch — will actually serve only 19 years after being con- victed of war crimes and crimes against humanity after taking into account time already served and other factors. That means the 67- year-old could one day walk free, a prospect that infuriated many who have been demand- ing justice for victims of the regime that killed an estimated 1.7 million people between 1975- 79. ‘‘I can’t accept this,’’ said Saodi Ouch, 46, shaking so hard she could hardly talk. ‘‘My family died ... my older sister, my older brother. I’m the only one left.’’ M-F 6am-2pm * FREE KIDS HAIR CUTS Sun. Aug. 15 2-6 pm Red Bluff River Park FREE FOOD ★ KIDS GAMES LIVE MUSIC 529-4074 Beauticians needed Now on Facebook We now have fresh ground, fresh brewed coffee!!! 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