Haitian police barricaded themselves inside their station Wednesday and said they could not repel a threatened rebel attack on Cap-Haitien, the last government bastion in the north. The two-week-old rebellion has killed some 60 people.
DEADLY SUICIDE BOMB: Suicide car bombers killed at least 11 Iraqis and wounded 58 foreign troops Wednesday in two attacks on a military base south of Baghdad. Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers captured seven insurgents with possible links to Al Qaeda during a raid in Baquba, 40 miles north of Baghdad.
LOTTERY LOSER: Michael Carroll picked up his $18 million lottery check wearing a court-issued electronic tracing tag. And the petty criminal’s worries have only gotten worse. Carroll–called the “Lotto lout” by the British press–recently pleaded guilty to drug possession.
“PASSIONATE” PLEA: A Jewish leader met with the Vatican this week to ask that Catholic Church teachings on the Crucifixion be restated, saying Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” contradicts the church’s position that Jews were not responsible for Jesus’ death.
POWER OF PASTA: America’s battle against the bulge has trashed pasta. But defenders of macaroni and its floppy kin rebelled in Rome this week at the Pasta Fights Back conference. “How is it that it can be called a low-carb diet when in fact it is a dangerous high-fat diet?” railed K. Dun Gifford, president of a Boston-based food issues think tank that organized the event.
TECHNO BUZZ: British scientists are studying insect flight in their development of a tiny spy aircraft no bigger than a bee. The microplanes could take detailed video footage of battlegrounds and avoid the need for human scouts, among other uses. The researchers said they were working on the aerodynamics and that a prototype would follow in a couple of years if the research is successful.
———-
Compiled from RedEye news services and edited by Patrick Olsen (polsen@tribune.com) and Chris Courtney (cdcourtney@tribune.com)
