Desperate Somalis pursue asylum via ‘back-door’ route to United States

LANCASTER, CA _ The asylum seeker from Somalia hung his head as an immigration judge grilled him about his treacherous journey from the Horn of Africa. By air, sea and land he finally made it to Mexico, and then a taxi delivered him into the arms of U.S. border agents at San Diego.

Islamic militants had killed his brother, Mohamed Ahmed Kheire testified, and majority clan members had beaten his sister. He had to flee Mogadishu to live.

The voice of the judge, beamed by videoconference from Seattle, crackled loudly over a speaker in the mostly empty courtroom near the detention yard in the desert north of Los Angeles. He wanted to know why Kheire had no family testimony to corroborate his asylum claim.

Kheire, 31, said he didn’t have e-mail in detention, and didn’t think to ask while writing to family on his perilous trek.

It seemed like the end of Kheire’s dream as he waited for the judge’s ruling. He clasped his hands, his plastic jail bracelet dangling from his wrist, and looked up at the ceiling, murmuring words of prayer.

Obama says al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen apparently responsible for airliner bombing plot

HONOLULU _ An al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen apparently ordered the Christmas Day plot against a U.S. airliner, training and arming the 23-year-old Nigerian man accused in the failed bombing, President Barack Obama said Saturday.

“This is not the first time this group has targeted us,” Obama said, reporting on some of the findings of an administration review into how intelligence agencies failed to prevent Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding Detroit-bound Northwest Flight 253.

In his most direct public language to date, Obama described the path through Yemen of Abdulmutallab. He also emphasized that the United States would continue its partnerships with friendly countries _ citing Yemen, in particular _ to fight terrorists and extremist groups.

The U.S. plans to more than double its counterterrorism aid to the impoverished, fragmented Arab nation in the coming year to support Yemen’s campaign against al-Qaida.

Obama’s homeland security team has been piecing together just how Abdulmutallab was able to get on the plane. Officials have described flaws in the system and by those executing the strategy and have delivered a preliminary assessment.

Karzai, rebuked, must rethink his Cabinet after Afghan lawmakers reject 17 of his 24 nominees

KABUL _ A chastened President Hamid Karzai must submit new Cabinet picks after defiant lawmakers rejected 17 of his 24 nominees Saturday, including a powerful warlord and the country’s only woman minister.

The Afghan parliament rejected nominees viewed as Karzai’s political cronies, those believed to be under the influence of warlords and others deemed unqualified.

“I think, unfortunately, that the criteria were either ethnicity or bribery or money,” lawmaker Fawzia Kufi said of Karzai’s picks.

The vote was a setback to Karzai, though one political analyst in Kabul speculated that it could free up the president to appoint qualified professionals rather than settle political debts.

“There were lots of demands on Karzai from people asking for Cabinet positions because they campaigned for him,” Mohammad Qasim Akhgar said. “This was the only way he could reward them and if parliament didn’t approve them, it wasn’t his fault. Very soon, Karzai will come out with a new list with the names of people he really wants to have in his Cabinet.”

Somali charged with attempted murder for attack on Dane who drew Prophet Muhammad cartoon

COPENHAGEN _ An ax-wielding Somali man with suspected al-Qaida links was charged Saturday with two counts of attempted murder after breaking into the home of a Danish artist whose Prophet Muhammad cartoon outraged the Muslim world three years ago.

The suspect, who was shot twice by a police officer responding to the scene, was rolled into a Danish court on a stretcher, his face covered. He was ordered held for four weeks on preliminary charges of attempting to murder the cartoonist, as well as the police officer who shot him.

Efforts to protect the artist _ 74-year-old Kurt Westergaard _ were immediately stepped up, as he was moved to an undisclosed location.

The suspect, described by authorities as a 28-year-old Somali with ties to al-Qaida, allegedly broke into the house late Friday armed with an ax and a knife. The house is in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city, 125 miles (200 kilometers) northwest of Copenhagen.

Jakob Scharf, head of Denmark’s PET intelligence agency, said Saturday the man might have attacked spontaneously.

US commander in Iraq says troop drawdown on track despite election delay

FORWARD OPERATING BASE COBRA, Iraq _ The top U.S. general in Iraq says the country’s delay in holding elections will not keep American combat forces from leaving as scheduled by the end of August.

Gen. Ray Odierno said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press that he expects the U.S. to have about 100,000 troops in the country during the March 7 elections.

About 60 days after the vote, he will assess whether the country is on stable footing and then begin moving troops out.

Iraq was originally scheduled to hold elections in January but political wrangling over the election law delayed the nationwide vote until March.

Under a U.S. plan, all combat troops are slated to leave Iraq by the end of August.

Yemen sends hundreds of troops to regions of strongest al-Qaida presence

SAN’A, Yemen _ Yemen deployed several hundred extra troops to two mountainous eastern provinces that are al-Qaida’s main strongholds in the country and where the suspected would-be Christmas airplane bomber may have visited, security officials said Saturday.

The reinforcements, aiming to beef up the military’s presence in a remote region where the government has little control, were Yemen’s latest move in a stepped-up campaign to combat al-Qaida. The United States plans to more than double its counterterrorism aid to the impoverished, fragmented Arab nation in the coming year to boost the fight.

Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. general who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and who announced the increased aid, arrived in Yemen on Saturday and met with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Yemeni government official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

The confrontation with al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen gained new urgency after the failed attempt on Christmas Day to bomb a U.S. airliner headed to Detroit.

President Barack Obama said Saturday that al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen was behind the attempt. A 23-year-old Nigerian accused in the attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.

Cities, counties take back tax breaks they gave companies that broke promises to create jobs

CHICAGO _Cash-strapped communities have a message for corporations that promised jobs in return for tax breaks: A deal’s a deal.

As the economy sputters along, municipalities struggling to fix roads, fund schools and pay bills increasingly are rescinding tax abatements to companies that don’t hire enough workers, that lay them off or that close up shop. At the same time, they’re sharpening new incentive deals, leaving no doubt what is expected of companies and what will happen if they don’t deliver.

“We will roll out the red carpet as much as we can (but) they are going to honor the contract,” said Brendon Gallagher, an alderman in DeKalb, Ill., where Target Corp. got abatements from the city, county, school district and other taxing bodies after promising at least 500 jobs at a local distribution center.

So when the company came up 66 workers short in 2009, Target got word its next tax bill would be jumping almost $600,000 _ more than half of which goes to the local school district, where teachers and programs have been cut as coffers dried up.

The newfound boldness comes from communities and states that have long bent over backward to lure companies and jobs by offering abatements and other incentives _ to the tune of an estimated $60 billion a year in the United States, according to the Washington-based economic development watchdog group Good Jobs First.

Muslims, Hindus crank up volume in stereotype-smashing ‘Taqwacore’ punk rock bands

WAYLAND, Mass _ Artwork from the Punjab state of India decorates the Ray family home. A Johann Sebastian Bach statue sits on a piano. But in the basement _ cluttered with wires, old concert fliers and drawings _ 25-year-old Arjun Ray is fighting distortion from his electric guitar.

For this son of Indian immigrants, trained in classical violin and raised on traditional Punjab music, getting his three Pakistani-American bandmates in sync is the goal on this cold New England evening. Their band, The Kominas, is trying to record a punk rock version of the classic Bollywood song, “Choli Ke Peeche” (Behind the Blouse).

“Yeah,” said Shahjehan Khan, 26, one of the band’s guitarists, “there are a lot of contradictions going on here.”

Deep in the woods of this colonial town boils a kind of revolutionary movement. From the basement of this middle-class home tucked in the woods west of Boston, The Kominas have helped launched a small, but growing, South Asian and Middle Eastern punk rock movement that is attracting children of Muslim and Hindu immigrants and drawing scorn from some traditional Muslims who say their political, hard-edged music is “haraam,” or forbidden.

The movement, an anti-establishment subculture borne of religiously conservative communities, is the subject of two new films and a hot topic on social-networking sites.

Police find man passed out in car at Tennessee gas station, meth lab cooking in back seat

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. _ Police say a driver passed out in his car at a Tennessee gas station while a batch of methamphetamine was cooking in the back seat.

An employee at the gas station in Murfreesboro, about 30 miles southeast of Nashville, called police because the car was sitting at the pump for about an hour on New Year’s Day.

Police say a chemical process to make the drug was in progress. Some meth-making ingredients can be explosive.

Murfreesboro Assistant Fire Chief Allen Swader told The Daily News Journal that gas pumps were shut off as a precaution.

Thirty-one-year-old Nathan E. Beasley is being held on a $15,000 bond on charges of driving under the influence, driving on a suspended license, reckless endangerment and manufacturing meth. No attorney was listed in police records.

NBA coach calls locker-room gun case involving Wizards’ Gilbert Arenas a ‘scary thing’

WASHINGTON _ Amid conflicting reports on what happened in the Washington Wizards locker room, the matter clearly goes beyond the team’s original statement about Gilbert Arenas storing unloaded guns in his locker.

What began with the NBA looking into a possible violation of its own rules has turned into an investigation involving the U.S. Attorney’s Office and District of Columbia police. The implications are serious, with the legal system, the league and the Wizards in line to take possible action if the allegations prove true.

We’re all watching this very closely to see how the story develops right now,” Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said Saturday. “It’s so early in the story and there’s so much speculation, it’s hard to figure out what’s fact and what’s fiction, but it is a scary thing for the NBA and we all want to see what happens.”

The Wizards said on Christmas Eve that Arenas stored unloaded firearms in a locked container in his locker, with no ammunition. Arenas said he wanted them out of the house after the birth of his latest child.

An official within the league told The Associated Press on Saturday that he was briefed before Dec. 24 by officials reviewing the incident. He said the review included a dispute over card-playing, gambling debts and a heated discussion between Arenas and another player. He said the review did not refer to Arenas and Javaris Crittenton drawing guns on each other _ as the New York Post has reported _ although he said that doesn’t preclude that it might have happened.