Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/43482
8A Daily News – Friday, September 30, 2011 Could model airplanes become a terrorist weapon? BOSTON (AP) — Model airplanes are sud- denly on the public's radar as potential terrorist weapons. A Muslim American from suburban Boston was arrested Wednesday and accused of plotting to attack the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol with remote-con- trolled model planes packed with explosives. These are not balsa- wood-and-rubber-band toys investigators are talk- ing about. The FBI said Rezwan Ferdaus hoped to use military-jet replicas, 5 to 7 1/2 feet long, guided by GPS devices and capa- ble of speeds over 100 mph. Federal officials have long been aware of the possibility someone might try to use such planes as weapons, but there are no restrictions on their purchase — Fer- daus is said to have bought his over the Inter- net. Counterterrorism experts and model-air- craft hobbyists said it would be nearly impossi- ble to inflict large-scale damage of the sort Fer- daus allegedly envisioned using model planes. The aircraft are too small, can't carry enough explo- sives and are too tricky to fly, they said. ''The idea of pushing a button and this thing div- ing into the Pentagon is kind of joke, actually,'' said Greg Hahn, technical director of the Academy of Model Aeronautics. Syria regime supporters pelt US ambassador BEIRUT (AP) — Angry supporters of Pres- ident Bashar Assad's regime hurled tomatoes and eggs at the U.S. ambassador to Syria on Thursday as he entered the office of a leading opposition figure and then The North State's premier supplier of stoves STOVE JUNCTION The Over 25 years of experience NOW OPEN! 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Ford came under attack by about 100 Assad sup- porters as he arrived for the meeting with Hassan Abdul-Azim, who heads the outlawed Arab Social- ist Democratic Union party. Abdul-Azim is a strong critic of Assad's regime and was briefly detained by authorities earlier this year. Such incidents are usu- ally not spontaneous in Syria, and Thursday's attack came amid high tension between the two nations, as well as accusa- tions by Damascus that Washington is inciting violence in the country. Insurgent attacks trending downward in Afghanistan KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — International forces in Afghanistan released new data Thurs- day showing violence trending downward in their favor, only a day after the U.N. reported considerably more clash- es and other attacks per month than last year. 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The U.N. study measured not only Tal- iban attacks but also assaults by NATO and Afghan forces on insur- gents; it did not provide a breakdown between the two. The coalition cited methodological differ- ences between the two surveys: The U.N. report counted a wide range of security incidents that the NATO report did not, including arrests and seizures of weapons caches. Gingrich outlines 10- point plan DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Hoping to revive his flagging bid for the Republican presidential nomination, former House Speaker Newt Gin- grich is calling for an overhaul of the way Americans pay taxes, buy health care and contribute to the Social Security sys- tem. Gingrich mapped out the 10-point plan, which he's calling The 21st Cen- tury Contract with Ameri- ca, in a speech at a Des Moines insurance compa- ny Thursday. Key ele- ments include repealing President Barack Obama's health care plan, giving taxpayers the option of paying a flat tax and allowing young peo- ple to opt out of Social Security. Gingrich is putting the new Contract with Ameri- ca at the core of his cam- paign for the Republican presidential nomination, betting it will set the tone for the campaign discus- sion going forward. ''This is the essence of, hopefully, the next 10 years,'' Gingrich said. ''It shows you the direction, I think, the country has to go, it shows you how I think we can get there.'' Gingrich's floundering presidential bid has frac- tured what was once a rock star Republican image. Not long ago he was the sought-after intel- lectual guru of the GOP. Now, all but broke, he's finding himself fighting for air time — if not respect — at Republican presidential primary debates. Polls have gener- ally put him toward the back of the pack, although he ran third in a recent CNN poll behind Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Doctor took vials from Jackson's nightstand LOS ANGELES (AP) — One of Michael Jack- son's bodyguards had barely stepped into the singer's bedroom when he heard a scream: ''Daddy!'' Jackson's young daughter cried. A few feet away, the singer lay motionless in his bed, eyes slightly open. His personal doctor, Conrad Murray, was try- ing to revive him when he saw that Jackson's eldest children were watching. ''Don't let them see their dad like this,'' Mur- ray said, the first of many orders that bodyguard Alberto Alvarez testified Thursday that he heeded in the moments before paramedics arrived at Jackson's home in June 2009. What happened next — after Alvarez said he ushered Jackson's eldest son and daughter from the room — is one of the key pieces of prosecutors' involuntary manslaughter case against Murray. According to Alvarez, Murray scooped up vials of medicine from Jack- son's nightstand and told the bodyguard to put them away. ''He said, 'Here, put these in a bag,''' Alvarez said. Ex-US ambassador says fugitive hijacker lived openly LISBON, Portugal (AP) — A convicted American killer who dis- appeared after a 1972 hijacking lived openly in West Africa under his real name for years and even socialized with U.S. embassy officials there, a former U.S. ambassador said Thursday. The comments by John Blacken, a retired U.S. ambassador to Guinea- Bissau, raised new ques- tions about a decades- long FBI manhunt for George Wright, who man- aged to elude authorities for 41 years until being arrested Monday in Portu- gal. Blacken told The Associated Press he was stunned to hear about Wright's arrest because he knew him and his wife — who might have even worked on translation projects for the U.S. embassy. But Blacken had no idea that Wright was a fugitive. In Washington, the U.S. State Department had no immediate comment. Wright's years on the lam took him across the globe — from New Jersey to Detroit to Algeria to France to Guinea-Bissau and then Portugal, at the very least. Defense lawyer: Amanda Knox is a victim PERUGIA, Italy (AP) — An Italian defense lawyer argued Thursday that Amanda Knox is an innocent girl ''crucified'' in the media and wrongly convicted of killing her roommate, urging an appeals court not to be afraid to correct a mis- take. Carlo Dalla Vedova told the court in his clos- ing arguments that Knox has been the victim of a ''tragic judicial case'' and has spent more than 1,000 days behind bars as a result. The highly antici- pated verdict in the appeals case is expected Monday. Knox was convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher, a British student in Perugia, and sentenced to 26 years in prison, while co-defendant Raf- faele Sollecito was sen- tenced to 25 years. They deny wrongdoing and have appealed. ''Knox has been cruci- fied, impaled in a public square, subjected to the most sinister of specula- tions,'' Dalla Vedova said. ''All, regardless of their nationalities, have offend- ed Amanda Knox.'' Soon after her arrest on Nov. 6, 2007, Knox became a media sensa- tion, depicted either as a manipulative girl-gone- wild or as a naive young woman caught up in a judicial nightmare. The media remained hooked on the case, and hundreds of reporters, cameramen and photographers have descended on the central Italian town in anticipa- tion of the verdict. White population growth fueled by Hispanics WASHINGTON (AP) — In a twist to notions of race identity, new 2010 cen- sus figures show an unex- pected reason behind a renewed growth in the U.S. white population: more His- panics listing themselves as white in the once-a-decade government count. The shift is due to recent census changes that empha- size ''Hispanic'' as an eth- nicity, not a race. While the U.S. government first made this distinction in 1980, many Latinos continued to use the ''some other race'' box to establish a Hispanic identity. In a switch, the 2010 census forms specifi- cally instructed Latinos that Hispanic origins are not races and to select a recog- nized category such as white or black. The result: a 6 percent increase in white Ameri- cans as tallied by the census, even though there was little change among non-Hispan- ic whites. In all, the number of people in the ''white alone'' category jumped by 12.1 million over the last decade to 223.6 million. Based on that definition, whites now represent 72 percent of the U.S. popula- tion and account for nearly half of the total population increase since 2000. Broken down by state, California and Texas were home to nearly half of His- panics who identified as white, followed by Florida and New York. Together, these four states comprised nearly two-thirds of the ''white alone'' population who were Hispanic. Over- all, Hialeah, Fla.; Fargo, N.D.; Arvada, Colo.; Billings, Mont., and Scotts- dale, Ariz., posted the high- est shares in the ''white alone'' category, at roughly 90 percent or more. MEDICARE SUPPLEMENTS MEDICARE SUPPLEMENTS