Protesters, police clash in Iran
Authorities gird for unrest ahead of Shiite observance
TEHRAN, Iran — Several thousand protesters took to Tehran’s streets Thursday and clashed with security forces in the latest round of unrest over the disputed June presidential election, according to witnesses and amateur video posted to the Internet.
The latest unrest in the capital comes as Iran steels itself for a potential outbreak of violence around the country this weekend during Ashoura, the annual commemoration of the 7th century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a revered figure.
Protesters gathered at Imam Khomeini Square in central Tehran as police in full riot gear circled. Demonstrators chanting “Death to the dictator” and police played cat and mouse into the early evening.
In Zanjan, a mostly ethnic Azeri city of 375,000 in western Iran, there were also clashes between security forces and mourners attempting to honor Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the nation’s leading dissident cleric, who died Saturday, several opposition Web sites reported.
Iranian authorities have called the opposition movement a tool of foreign powers. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and his deputies have repeatedly called on protesters to put the election in the past, to little avail.
On Thursday, supporters of opposition figures Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who ran and lost against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June election, released a 370-page report detailing voting fraud. Iranian authorities maintain that Ahmadinejad’s opponents failed to prove any significant cheating in the elections. In an interview this week with ABC News, Ahmadinejad described Iran as a paragon of civil liberties.
“We have freedom in Iran,” he said. “We have more freedom than in America. People are free to speak and to demonstrate. Some people are opposed to the government. That is natural. There is no problem with it. They express their views.”
— Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, Tribune Newspapers
Suicide bomber strikes in hard-hit Pakistani city
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Soldiers guard the site Thursday where a suicide bomber killed five people near a police checkpoint in a neighborhood that is home to government buildings. The attack was the second in three days in Peshawar and the latest in a wave of violence that has killed more than 500 people in Pakistan since October.
NATION
Senate OKs raising debt ceiling to $12.4 trillion
More Top Picks Espresso Machine
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Thursday to raise the ceiling on the government debt to $12.4 trillion.
The Senate’s rare Christmas Eve vote, 60-39, follows House passage last week and raises the debt ceiling by $290 billion. The vote split mainly down party lines, with Democrats voting to raise the limit and Republicans voting against doing so. There was one defection on each side, by senators whose seats will be on the ballot next year: GOP Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio and Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., did not vote.
With the exception of Voinovich, Republicans uniformly derided the bill, though they routinely supplied votes for eight previous increases totaling $5.4 trillion under President George W. Bush.
Ire at government led to standoff, hostage says
WYTHEVILLE, Va. — A man accused of taking three people hostage in a Virginia post office told them he was angry at the federal government because his son had died in Afghanistan and his truck was about to be repossessed, one of the hostages said Thursday.
Warren Taylor, 53, of Sullivan County, Tenn., was arraigned Thursday on kidnapping and other federal charges. The hostages were released unharmed after about eight hours Wednesday, and Taylor surrendered without incident.
WORLD
Taliban: Video shows GI
KABUL — The Taliban released a video Friday purporting to show captured U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who disappeared more than five months ago in Afghanistan.
Bergdahl, a U.S. airborne infantryman, was captured by the Afghan Taliban in Paktika province on June 30.
It could not be confirmed immediately that it was Bergdahl in the new video. A man is shown wearing sunglasses and what appears to be a U.S. military helmet and uniform. A caption says “War prisoner: Bowe Robert Bergdahl.”
On one side of the image it says: “An American soldier imprisoned by the Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” The man identifies himself as Bergdahl, born in Sun Valley, Idaho, and gives his rank, birth date, blood type and mother’s maiden name.
In an earlier portion of the video he says, “This is just going to be the next Vietnam unless the American people stand up and stop all this nonsense.”
Dissident gets 11 years
BEIJING — A Chinese court sentenced a prominent dissident to 11 years in prison Friday on subversion charges after he called for sweeping political reforms and an end to Communist Party dominance.
The sentencing of Liu Xiaobo comes despite international appeals for his release, which China sternly rejected as interference in its internal affairs.
Liu was the co-author of an unusually direct appeal for political liberalization in China called Charter 08. He was detained just before it was released last December. More than 300 people, including some of China’s top intellectuals, signed it.
Extradition to U.S. OK’d
ROME — A court in Turin has approved a U.S. extradition request for a fugitive American doctor accused of fraud and malpractice who was found in a tent near Mont Blanc, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Deputy chief prosecutor Gianfranco Burino said Mark Weinberger, arrested Dec. 15, did not fight extradition at Tuesday’s hearing.
Weinberger, of Merrillville, Ind., was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2006 on 22 counts of fraud alleging he schemed to overbill insurance companies for procedures that were either not needed or sometimes never performed. In addition, Weinberger is facing about 300 civil claims filed by patients, his Merrillville attorney James Hough has said.
THE NUMBER: $640
Spent by a mysterious donor in Colorado Springs, Colo., this week so 15 homeless people could live indoors for a week for Christmas. Employees at the Express Inn motel say a woman who gave her name as “Linda Craft” walked in Tuesday and paid for four rooms for a week and insisted they be given to homeless men and women camping along Fountain Creek.
The Gazette newspaper, however, could not find anyone by that name. The woman said God told her to rent the rooms.
One of those benefiting from her generosity is Steve Sample, 52. He called the gift of a warm bed “a wonderful thing.”