News Briefs

Local

Uzenski retrial gets under way

The retrial of a former Winterville police officer charged with planting bombs along N.C. 11 last year began Monday.

Prosecution and defense attorneys selected a jury in U.S. District Court by lunchtime.

Uzenski faces two counts each of possessing and manufacturing a destructive device and one count of obstruction of justice. The first effort to prosecute him ended in a mistrial after four days when the jury couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. This trial is expected to be resolved by Monday.

The prosecution called the same four witnesses in the same order to build the government's case against Thomas Uzenski.

Raleigh murder case goes to jury

Wake Assistant District Attorney Becky Holt pounded out each of the 56 times Nguyen Truong was stabbed during the robbery of his Southeast Raleigh laundry. As Holt walked back and forth in front of the jury box, she counted each blow that she delivered to the wooden divider separating the jury from the rest of the courtroom.

Armando Ortez is charged with first-degree murder in the death of the 31-year-old business owner at the Brightwash Groceries and Coin Laundry on July 26, 2002.

World

Congress to review TSA after box cutter incident

Congress wants to know how a 20-year-old college student apparently spirited box cutters and other suspicious items onto two airplanes, where they lay undetected for weeks after he allegedly told the Transportation Security Administration what he had done.

Nathaniel Heatwole, 20, of Damascus, Maryland, was charged Monday in federal court in Baltimore with taking a dangerous weapon aboard an aircraft. The case followed discovery of bags containing box cutters, bleach and other prohibited items aboard two Southwest Airlines planes.

Heatwole sent an e-mail to federal authorities in mid-September saying he had put the items aboard two specific Southwest flights as an act of civil disobedience to expose weaknesses in the security system, an FBI affidavit said. The objects were not found until last week.

Man survives plunge over Niagara Falls

A man survived a plunge over Niagara Falls with only the clothes on his back, witnesses said, the first person known to have done it without safety devices and lived.

Only one other person is known to have survived a plunge over the Canadian falls without a barrel or other contraption: a 7-year-old boy wearing a life preserver who had been thrown into the water in a 1960 boating accident.

About a dozen daredevils have taken the plunge in barrels or other protective chambers since 1901. About half have survived.

Suicides are not uncommon at Niagara Falls, although police on both sides of the border are reluctant to give numbers.

Parks Police said emergency crews responded to a report of a man going over the Canadian falls around 12:45 p.m. Rescuers descended the gorge in a tourist elevator to an observation deck and reached him from there.

National

More than 40 detained in Iraq mosque raid

Backed by U.S.-led coalition forces, Iraqi police and security troops detained more than 40 people in a pre-dawn raid Tuesday at a mosque in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Karbala, coalition officials said.

The officials said 21 people surrendered who claim loyalty to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr after having taken control of al-Mukhayam Mosque. Sadr has opposed the U.S. occupation and called for an Islamic republic in Iraq. He was not believed to be among the detainees.

Ten more people were captured in the mosque's parking lot, and 11 others were picked up in four nearby vehicles, the coalition said.

Saudi raids net weapons, terrorism suspects

Saudi Arabia said Monday that it seized huge quantities of weapons and explosives, including bomb belts worn by suicide attackers, in raids that also resulted in the capture of an undisclosed number of terrorism suspects.

Some of them may be linked to the bombings at a complex housing Westerners that killed almost two dozen people and 12 suspected attackers in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, in May.

Monday's raids were staged in a shopping district in Riyadh, a villa in Jeddah, an underground storage cache in Mecca, and homes, farms and desert wells around the kingdom, said a statement from the Saudi Interior Ministry.

The number of people taken in for questioning was not disclosed, but sources said some already were wanted on suspicion of possible links to the May attacks. Nine of those killed were Americans.