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Fatah on the comeback trail? With a portrait of late Palestinian Yasser Arafat in the background, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, right, speaks at the Fatah conference in Bethlehem. The Palestinians’ Fatah movement came together Tuesday for its first convention in 20 years, trying to rise from division and defeat with a political program and new leaders.
AP photo
TEHRAN, Iran
Trio may face spy charges
Iran has arrested three Americans for illegally entering the country from neighboring Iraq and a prominent Iranian lawmaker said Tuesday that authorities were investigating whether to charge them with spying.
A U.S. official rejected the allegation, and a security official in Iraq said the three were merely backpackers who got lost while hiking in a mountainous region where the Iran-Iraq border is not clearly marked.
The case is the latest source of friction with Washington over the detention of Americans, following the espionage trial earlier this year of American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi.
The Americans — freelance journalist Shane Bauer, his girlfriend Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal — were hiking in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region near the Iranian border that is known for lush vegetation, pistachio groves and fruit trees.
DYERSBURG, Tenn.
3 dead; agency examined
Neighbors in Tennessee are asking why a teenage girl fatally shot by her father was placed with a foster family just two doors down after he was accused of abusing her.
Christopher Milburn, 34, killed the 15-year-old and her foster father and wounded her foster mother before taking his own life Sunday, authorities said.
Officials at the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services insist there was nothing unusual about placing the teenager in a house less than 200 feet from the father she accused of abuse.
Agency spokesman Rob Johnson would not speak specifically about the case, citing the privacy of surviving relatives, but he did say the department is looking into how the matter was handled.
State House Minority leader Rep. Gary Odom, a Nashville Democrat, has followed problems with DCS for years.
“I think the department needs to look very carefully, very closely at their procedures and protocol,” he said.
MELBOURNE, Australia
Alleged terrorists arrested
A handful of extremists with ties to an al-Qaida-linked group in Somalia planned to storm one of Australia’s largest military bases and launch a fight to the death with troops, police said Tuesday.
Police revealed details of the alleged plot after arresting four suspects — Australian citizens aged between 22 and 26 with Somali and Lebanese origins — in pre-dawn raids Tuesday on 19 houses in the southern city of Melbourne, the culmination of a seven-month intelligence operation.
BRIDGEVILLE, Pa.
5 die at health club
A gunman strolled into an exercise class at a health club in suburban Pittsburgh on Tuesday night and started spraying bullets, leaving five people dead, including himself, and injuring at least 10 others, police and a hospital said.
“He did not say anything,” Allegheny County police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said. “He walked right into the room where the shootings occurred as if he knew exactly where he was going.”
Area hospitals were treating the other victims, including two in fair condition.
The shooting was at the L.A. Fitness Center in Bridgeville, a community of about 5,000 residents not far from downtown Pittsburgh.
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