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NEW YORK: The identity of the high-priced prostitute at the
center of the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal emerged Thursday after the
embattled crime-busting New York state governor declared that he
would resign. The brunette—identified in federal court papers as
“Kristen,” a call girl for the Emperors Club VIP agency—was
revealed to be Ashley Alexandra Dupre, 22, the New York Times
reported. “I just don’t want to be thought of as a monster,”
Dupre, an aspiring R’n’B singer from a broken home in New
Jersey, was quoted as telling the newspaper.
-- AFP
KABUL: A suicide car bomber rammed a convoy
carrying foreign troops near the airport in the Afghan capital Kabul
Thursday, killing six civilians and wounding another 18, police
said. The extremist Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the
blast, which happened during the morning rush hour on one of the
city’s busiest roads and damaged around a dozen vehicles. Kabul
police chief General Salim Ahsas told Agence France-Presse the blast
did not harm foreign troops who were traveling on the road to
Kabul’s international airport.
-- AFP
GAZA: Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Holy War)
movement said on Thursday that its militants resumed rocket attacks
on southern Israel in revenge for the killing of four Palestinian
militants by Israel in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Saraya al-Quds,
the armed wing of the movement, said in a statement that a total of
25 missiles have been fired since early Thursday with 14 homemade
rockets targeting the southern Israeli town of Sderot and other
mortar shells fired at Israeli army posts alongside Gaza-Israel
borders.
-- Xinhua
PANAJI, India: Police in the Indian resort state
of Goa said Thursday they have charged an alleged drug dealer with
the murder of a British teenager, amid continued accusations of law
enforcement links to the crime. Placido Carvalho was arrested and
charged late Wednesday with murdering 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling,
more than three weeks after her bruised and partially naked body was
found on Goa’s popular Anjuna beach, police said. Goa police
superintendent Bosco George told Agence France-Presse that Placido
was arrested because of giving drugs to Scarlett.
-- AFP
DEHRA, India: Indian police Thursday arrested a
group of 100 Tibetan exiles trying to walk to their homeland as part
of a major protest ahead of the Beijing Olympics, although the
demonstrators vowed their march would go on. The marchers were
rounded up as they approached the border of Himachal Pradesh
state’s Kangra region in defiance of a restraining order banning
them from heading further north into the Himalayas and toward
Chinese-governed Tibet.
-- AFP
WASHINGTON: The seven crew of the space shuttle
Endeavour boarded the International Space Station on Thursday after
docking high over Southeast Asia, NASA said. The space rendezvous
took place 342 kilometers over Singapore at 0349 GMT, two days after
Endeavour blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a
NASA TV commentator said. A bell rang on the ISS after docking was
complete to welcome the shuttle on board, in a tradition borrowed
from nautical practice.
-- AFP
TEHRAN: Conservatives are expected Friday to
tighten their grip on Iran’s parliament in an election dismissed
by the United States but seen by its leaders as the chance to send a
defiant message to the West. Campaigning was banned on Thursday for
the final day before the elections, where reformists are expected to
make only a limited impact after pre-vote vetting disqualified
hundreds of their candidates.
-- AFP
BAGHDAD: The US military on Thursday announced
the capture of five suspects following a suicide bomb attack in
central Baghdad that killed five American soldiers and their Iraqi
interpreter. The five were captured on Tuesday, one day after the
attack in Mansur neighborhood that also killed two Iraqi civilians
and wounded three other US soldiers, a military statement said. It
said four of those captured had been “positively identified for
their alleged involvement” in Monday’s attack.
-- AFP
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