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Show Sunday, August 19, 2007 HERALD DAILY JM FAST FACT The Spanish Costa de Mosquitos (Mosquito Coast) is a band along the coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras. It follows the Caribbean Sea for about 225 miles. feum: It look of AMWM Compiled from Daily Herald wire services The The WORLD NATION 'I J,- .i 'La.13 ) 7. Kazakhstan election - r m ySt ; - : : ',ju V1 4, '!:sr - tom .. ... '. nt a'1 1 . considered an attempt by the president to improve the republic's democratic image while retaining his grip on power. ' The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has assessed previous elections Kazakhstan as in bong Iks than free and fair.-- . But President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who warns to see his country win the chairman-shi- p of the OSCE in 2009, has pledged to "do everything to make the elections free and fair" this time. ... The stability of Kazakhstan, the most prosperous nation in Central Asia, is of particular importance to regional powers Russia and China because of its substan? tial oil and gas reserves. The .; - United States has also sought greater access to Kazakh resources. Voters were choosing members of the lower house of parliament in the early election, which was held after a series of constitutional changes. Nazarbayev's Nur Otan party is expected to sweep most of the 98 seats up for vote. But the opposition, which holds only , one seat in the outgoing parliament, also is likely to slightly improve its representation. SO t lx T ti ' ,r rlo ' a 'S' . ,jL. t A r.cr's wij DAVID :vroi-- r Smoke rises from the abandoned Deutsche Bank Building fc enter bordering ground zero irt New York on Saturday. Two firefighters were critically injured while trying to reach the fire, which turned it into a toxic nightmare after it began about a dozen floors up in the tower left vacant since Sept. I I, fire officials said. IBRAHIM USTAAHOCWUd no plans to do so. Jason Peters, a member of for bleeding hospital the 75th Logistics Readiness ' Evan, Squadron, is scheduled to be ASHEVILLE, N.C deployed next week for about gelist Billy Graham was in 10 months. fair condition Saturday and I'm not looking forward ; resting comfortably in a hosto going back, but I'm not pital near his home after he was admitted for evaluation' crazy enough to jump out of and treatment of an intestinal a plane," he said. cation with her. A cleaning discovered her six - . . . . bleed, hospital officials said. Graham, 88, was fully alert, Texans brace for and his doctors don't think Hurricane Dean his condition is said his spokesman, SAN ANTONIO Texans battled rain and flooding SatLarry Ross. "The priority right now is urday from the remnants of rest, Ross said Tropical Storm Erin as Gulf Coast residents cast a wary Graham's blood pressure was good, and there were eye toward Hurricane Dean,, no signs of new bleeding which strengthened to a CatSaturday evening, according egory 4 storm as it charged . : -- .. . ; both released passengers of the hijacked Atlas-Je-t aircraft, at Ataturk airport in Istanbul, Turkey, on Saturday. Two men hijacked a Turkish ANKARA, Turkey passenger plane bound for Istanbul on Saturday, holding .. several people hostage for more than four hours before surrendering, officials said. Six crew members and 136 passengers were on board Atlasjet flight from Ercan airport, in northern Cyprus when the men, claiming to have a bomb, demanded that the plane be diverted to Iran, authorities said. Pilots managed to land the plane at Antalya airport in southwest Turkey, and most of the passengers escaped safely when the hijackers released the women and children on board, officials said. The hijackers held some Crew members and passengers ' hostage for more than four hours before eventually allowing them to leave and peacefully surrendering, officials said. Private CNN-Tur- k television, citing police sources, said the purported bomb turned out to be modeling clay. One of the men was Turkish, and the other was be--. lieved to be a Palestinian carrying a Syrian passport, ; Transport Minister Osman Gunes said. :. Their motives for hijacking the plane were not atety clear. Gunes said the hijackers, idept ified as Mehmet Resat Ozlu and Mommen Abdul Aziz Talikh, told an official they "apologized to the Turkish nation" for seizing .' theplane. The seizure was the latest in a string of hijackings of Turkish airplanes in recent years, despite increased security measures at airports. , . . 1 ; Prescher visited the Bank of America branch Wednesday and was given use of a privacy room to examine her valuables. Employees left her in the room when they closed the bank at about 6 pm ' ' ."They forgot she was there," sheriffs spokesman Jim Amormino said. Shortly after midnight, deputies received a call from a cleaning person who dis- covered the woman. Prescher. was unconscious and cold to the touch when authorities arrived. She may have died," Amormino said. "It just :. seems to be a terrible oversight. Bank of America said it was investigating. -Prescher said she knew nothing about what happened until she awoke at the hospital where she was treated and V . foodies are Now, hard-cor- e drooling over the prospect of .. something truly superlative from Spain, at least in price: a ham costing about $2, 100 per leg, or a cruel $160 per pound. It's a price believed to make it the most expensive ham In the world. Dont grab your wallet just yet. And forget about asking for just a slice. The 2006 Alba Quercus Reserve (as this pricey pork will . be known) wont, be available. until late 2008, aiid you must buy the whole ham or nothing at alL But that hasn't, dissuaded gastronomic Web sites and blogs from buzzing with talk of the farm where it is be-ing produced, likening it to a Mount Olympus of pork. . Its mastermind, Manuel Maldonado, 44, comes from a long line of ham producers in a country thats nuts about the . stuff. In bars and restaurants, legs of ham hanging from the wall are as common as TV " sets.. But Maldonado is taking the art of the ham to new heights, pampering his pigs with a free--, range lifestyle and topquality diet of acorns before slaughtering them, then curing the meat for two years twice as long as his competitors. Itsthat last step that Mal-- . donado credits with creating a delicacy that justifies the heavenly price. ; fflfftfiffri. Japanese expatriates choose to live in other Asian countries salt-cured just couldn't believe it, that they would leave me in there," she said. 1 - DIA preparing to outsource core intelligence tasks . . . -- - . . . f . . : . . . . . . . . . . : Asia has become ' the top region for long-ternonimmigrant expatriate Japanese for the first time since the Foreign Ministry began in. 1968 surveying Japanese living abroad, it has been learned. According to the survey, 267,064 expatriate Japanese. were staying in Asia for three months or more as of Oct. 1, 2006, excluding permanent residents. North America had been the top location since the. survey began, but came in second this time, with 263,756. ' An official of the ministrys Consular Affairs Bureau said "Many people stay overseas for a long time for business purposes. I suppose the reason. Asia has topped the list is the increase of companies actively investing in China and Southeast Asian countries." By country, the United States came in first, with 24688 Japanese. China came in second at 124,476, followed by Britain at 48289. By city. New York topped the list with 48,439 Japanese, followed by Shanghai with 43,960, and Los Angeles at 38,711. The number of Japanese combin-living overseas long-terand ing permanent residents came to 1,063,695, time.1; ; Iraqi leaders talks yield scant results BAGHDAD; Iraq Iraai . . . a 5 percent increase from the C previous survey , which topped the 1 million mark for the first TOKYO . .. . : dedicated eaters. . . ld . AL8URQUERQUE, Spain Spanish cuisine tickles the palate in a thousand ways:. ugly but delicious creatures called goose barnacles; boiled octopus with a dash of olive oil and paprika; thick, mushy sausage made from pig's blood. Spaniards are nothing if not t-- . : Spanish gourmets drooling over ham The Defense Intelligence ., Agency is preparing to pay private contractors up to SI billion to conduct core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection over the next five years, an amount that would set a new record in the out- sourcing of such functions' by the Pentagon's top spying . agency. The proposed contracts, outlined in a recent early nowatching. His older brother, Ray. California woman tice of the DLA's plans, reflect a continuing expansion of the Peters, 32, plans to skydive ' locked in bank Defense Department's with their mother Sunday in a LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. work and fit Jumping for Jason event at a woman Browne Airport in Saginaw A pattern of Bush administration transfers became trapped in is bank County,1.. of government work to priTuia Peters Said she wasn't when employees accidentally .nervous about the jump. locked her in the building vate contractors. One of us will scream like while she was looking over Since 2000, the value of a little girL arid its not gonna the contents of a safe deposit federal contracts signed by all agencies each year has be me, she told The Saginaw box. News. Marian Prescher, who has ' more than doubled to reach Jason Ffeters, like his moth-- . diabetes, apparently passed $412 billion, with the largout during the ordeal because est growth at the Defense er, has never jumped out of a plane, but unlike her he has she had not taken her medi- - : Department, according to a congressional tally in June. Outsourcing particularly accelerated among intelligence agencies after the 2001 ter- rorist attacks caught many of them unprepared to meet new demands with their existing work force. . . . . . to a statement released by through the Caribbean., At least six people died Mission Health A Hospitals in Asheville. this week because of Erin's The hospital said in a state- thunderstorms. One person ment that Graham's condition remained missing. .'. The storm's remnants had stabilized following his admission, and a endoscopy poured more rain on parts of ; and a bleeding scan found no western Texas on Saturday, and the National Weather , areas of bleeding in the gasService said flash flood warn-- , trointestinal tract.. ings remained in effect for wide sections of the state. Mom, bro of airman More than 9 indies of rain salute plan skydive had fallen in the Houston area, and more than 10 had . thomas Township,' Tirta Peters wanted Mich. been measured north of San Antonio at the town of . to do something special as a salute to her son's service to Boernesince Erin arrived, the his country as he heads back weather service said. to Iraq for a second tour so Dean,' which forecasters she's going to jump out of an . said could threaten the United States by Wednesday, blew airplane. ... The thing is, the through the Caribbean on woman has never done that Saturday with top sustained wind strengthened to 150 before. mph. It was expected to steer "My moms crazy, said next week into the Gulf of Air Force Staff Sgt. Jason Peters, 31. Til be sitting back Mexico, with its 4,000 oil and with the insurance agent, gas platforms. .. . . Ki : PiCH A woman carries a child, en-er- ; rir .." NARRAmocisM Pro near ground zero Billy Graham ill 7 . r.: Fire - :iV. 't S i? . post-Sovi- ; v - i- t ASTANA, Kazakhstan Oikich Kazakhstan held ... parliamentary elections Sat- - .' urday in an early vote widely - ; ; t 4 -- . I : watched as barometer to democracy . : : : . top five governmental leaders began a review of the law country's Saturday but appeared not to have reached an agreement onthat topic or any of the : other critical issues that have plunged the country into a p litical crisis. ' Prime Minister Nouri Presiwith a met liki, Shiite, dent Jalal Talabani, a Kurd; Vice President Tariq mj, a Sunni; Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Suite; and Massoud Barzani, presi- dent of the : Kurdish region. . ; Spokesmen for Hashimi and Abdul Mahdi and a written statement from Talabani's office characterized the meeting as productive but did not provide any specific information about the progress made during the two-hogathering. The lack erf concrete results from meetings this week diminishes hopes erf creating a unified government by Sept. 15, when President Bush and Congress are to receive a re-port about conditions in Iraq. . -- ,;- . . . Camps offer comfort to kids whose fathers were killed in war After SALADO, Texas hours of drawing and (day-- .. ing games, the youngsters gathered around table at summer camp to write letters to their fathers. But these letters weren't going to be mailed home. A counselor explained that the notes would be tied to helium balloons and released in tribute to the fathers, many of whom were killed in Ir aq or Afghanistan. "Are we gonna send them to heaven? one child asked. At Camp Good Gtief, all the children are mourning for a parent or other relative who died while serving in the military. "Age doesn't matter. The grief process is the same, said Vanessa Gabriebon, a camp counselor whose father was killed in Iraq in 2001 "Every time I go, it gets easier, and I learn something from them." ; ; . Gerra lecker, 7, looks at a balloon after she tied it to a letter shn wrote to her father, who was killed in Iraq, at Good Grief Camp in Salado, Texas, on Tuesday in this " photo released Saturday. Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, which holds an annual camp for children who ' have lost relatives in the military, has started holding one-da- y camps in cities near military bases. ihi'vdww u m vHrviif hcai iu Dfiusfi ojpeer aunng a happening" at a weeklong "climate camp" eetupby environmentalistfjuticv groups against a proposed new runway, near London's Heathrow airport on Saturday. Several hundred people are at the camp, erected in a field north of Heathrow's perimeter fence, and organizers say they hope to attract as many as 1,500 today to protest the proposed addition of the third runway at the airport and the greenhouse gases released by air travel . . . . |