QUOTE OF THE DAY “The United States of America and Europe face common challenges.We are allies. But such an alliance can only be built on trust.
That’s why I repeat again: spying among friends, that cannot be.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel on reports that the National Security Agency had collected more than 70 million phone records in France and may have tapped her cellphone Article, 2ACrash kills pilot fighting Australian fires
SYDNEY - A pilot trying to fight one of several raging Australian wildfires died when his plane crashed Thursday, in the second fatality resulting from the fires traversing the nation’s most populous state over the past week.
The 43-year-old man was the only person on board and was trying to drop water onto a blaze in extremely rugged terrain near Ulladulla, south of Sydney, when his plane went down, Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said.
More than 100 wildfires have killed one resident and destroyed more than 200 homes in New South Wales state this month. Sixty-one fires were burning Thursday, with 23 out of control, though cooler weather had decreased the fire threat, and residents who evacuated had returned to their homes.
Also Thursday, fire officials defended Australia’s defense department after investigators revealed that a military training exercise with live ordnance ignited the largest of the wildfires. The fire near the city of Lithgow, west of Sydney, has burned 180 square miles and destroyed several houses but caused no injuries or deaths.
Bombings, gunfire across Iraq kill 10
BAGHDAD - Bombings and shootings across Iraq, including the killing of a television cameraman, left 10 people dead Thursday, officials said.
The deadliest attack happened Thursday night when gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on a small fast-food restaurant in Baghdad’s western neighborhood of Amariyah, killing four people and wounding seven, authorities said. An hour later, police said, a bomb exploded near a cafe in the town of Madain, 14 miles south of Baghdad.
The blast killed two people and wounded seven, they said.
In the northern city of Mosul, police said gunmen killed Bashar al-Nuaimi, a cameraman working for local TV channel al-Moussilyah, as he was walking near his house. They offered no immediate motive for the attack, though journalists have been targeted by militants in the past. Also in Mosul, authorities said a suicide bomber set off his explosive belt at an army checkpoint, killing three soldiers and wounding seven.
U.S. espionage claims rankle Russia
MOSCOW - Russia on Thursday angrily dismissed espionage accusations against a Russian cultural exchange official in Washington, saying the U.S. claims were unfounded.
The FBI is looking into whether Yury Zaytsev, the head of a Russian government-run cultural exchange program, tried to recruit young Americans as intelligence assets, a U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe was still underway.
The magazine Mother Jones first reported the story.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was “bewildered” by the reports and said the “fabrications they contained had nothing to do with the reality.”
It demanded the U.S. government “unequivocally and publicly disavow the ill-intended attempts to cast a shadow on the activities of the Russian Center for Science and Culture.”
Mother Jones said the organization run by Zaytsev has footed the bill for about 130 Americans to visit Russia. His center offers language lessons and cultural programs.
The magazine said FBI agents have been interviewing Americans who participated in the program.
Libyan group forms shadow government
TRIPOLI, Libya - The leaders of a movement for self-rule in oil-rich eastern Libyan unilaterally announced Thursday the formation of a shadow government, the latest challenge to the weakened central authority.
The announcement came several months after the movement, backed by some militias and local tribes, declared the eastern half of Libya to be an autonomous state, named Barqa, claiming broad self-rule powers and control over resources.
The central government in Tripoli had rejected the declaration. It had no immediate comments Thursday.
Opponents fear a declaration of autonomy could be the first step toward the outright division of the country, particularly with the turmoil that struck in the aftermath of the fall of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Also underscoring Libya’s lawlessness since the ouster of the Gadhafi regime, gunmen shot dead an air force colonel Thursday as he left his home in the eastern city of Benghazi, the birthplace of the 2011 revolt.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 10/25/2013