Tuesday, March 2, 2004

* Several explosions hit major Shiite shrines in Baghdad and Karbala
where thousands of pilgrims were gathered to for a religious festival.
Details of casualties are confused, with up to 25 people reported
killed. In Karbala, five blasts went off almost simultaneously near two
major Shiite Muslim shrines. In Baghdad, three explosions targeted the
Kazimiya shrine, too, killing and injuring scores of people, an
Associated Press Television News reporter said. Shiites were gathered
at the shrines to mark Ashoura, a mourning festival commemorating of
the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a top Shiite saint and the grandson of
the prophet Muhammad. Security was tight in Karbala because of fears
that the festival would be a target for attacks. This was the first
time in decades that Iraq’s majority Shiite community had been able to
freely observe their holy day Ashoura. More than a million people have
flocked to the city to commemorate the death of Imam Hussein in 680.
The festival had been banned under Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated
regime for fear it would foment rebellion.

* After six years of believing her daughter was dead, a mother found
that her daughter was actually kidnapped. Police authorities in
Philadelphia, ruled that a fire killed the 10-day-old girl. But on
Monday they discovered it was a plot to kidnap the infant. The baby,
Delimar Vera, was sleeping in the upstairs front bedroom when a fire
broke out at her family’s two-story row house in north Philadelphia on
December 15, 1997. Luz Cuevas, her mother, could not find Delimar when
she ran into the room. Her two other children also survived, police
said. Remains of the infant’s body were never found, and police
concluded they had been incinerated in the flames. But Cuevas never
fully believed her daughter died in the fire. In January, she attended
a birthday party for the child of an acquaintance and was struck by the
resemblance of a 6-year-old girl to herself and her other children.
Telling the girl she had bubble gum in her hair, Cuevas was able to
take strands of her hair in hopes a DNA test would prove she was right.
A state legislator helped put Cuevas in touch with police, who launched
an investigation and had DNA tests performed that confirmed the girl is
her daughter. Police say Carolyn Correa, 41, a resident of Willingboro,
New Jersey, a Philadelphia suburb, started the fire and kidnapped
Delimar, whom she passed off as her own daughter. When police returned
to Correa’s home to confront her about the DNA results, she had fled,
leaving behind three other children. She remains a fugitive from
multiple arrest warrants on charges that include arson, kidnapping and
concealing the whereabouts of a child.

* The exiled former President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has
said that he was forced to leave his country. In interviews with US
television and news agencies, he said he had been the victim of a “coup
d’etat.” But he repeatedly refused to answer direct questions about
whether he had been kidnapped. Mr. Aristide is now in the Central
African Republic with his wife and children after leaving Haiti on
Sunday on a US plane. In an interview with CNN television, Mr. Aristide
said he had been in his palace in Port-au-Prince when American agents
arrived to take him to the airport. He said he had signed his
resignation documents because he was worried that violence would erupt
if he did not do as he was being asked. He said, “…when I asked how
many people may get killed, they said thousands may get killed.” He
claimed he was unaware of where he and his family were being flown to.
“We spent 20 hours in that plane without knowing where we were going,
without having the right to contact our people,” he said. Luis Moreno,
the deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Port-au-Prince, said
six US security guards had been present at the departure and that
nothing had been done to coerce the president into leaving. Mr.
Aristide’s supporters in the U.S., including the Democratic party
activist the Reverend Jesse Jackson, are outraged. They are calling for
an inquiry into whether the US Central Intelligence Agency had a role
in the rebellion which led to the downfall of Mr. Aristide and his
democratically elected government.

*****

Heilman Lecture: Osvaldo Romberg–“The Artist as Educator”
LPAC Cinema, 4:30 p.m.

Living Wage and Democracy Campaign Meeting
Kohlberg 228, 6:30 p.m.

Fireside Chat: ITS
Kohlberg Coffee Bar, 7:30 p.m.

*****

SPORTS UPDATE

Today:
There are no contests scheduled for today.

Tomorrow:
There are no contests scheduled for tomorrow.

*****

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced
at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not
accompanied by at least one laugh.”
–Friedrich Nietzsche

*****

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