Oil revenue flowing to insurgency
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Iraq's finance minister believes that 40 percent to 50 percent of black-market oil revenues are going to the insurgency, the New York Times reported Saturday.
Ali Allawi said insurgents have infiltrated management at the Baiji oil refinery and are using their positions to divert oil.
"It's gone beyond Nigeria levels now where it really threatens national security," Allawi told the Times. "The insurgents are involved at all levels."
Meshaan al-Juburi, a Sunni member of the Iraqi National Assembly, has been charged with stealing millions of dollars that was supposed to be used for pipeline protection, said Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the chairman of the Commission on Public Integrity. The director of an oil storage facility near Kirkuk was charged Saturday with helping to arrange an attack on the plant.
Radhi said armed guards did not prevent an attack on a 60-truck convoy from Baiji to Baghdad.
Editor arrested for publishing cartoons
AMMAN, Jordan, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- A Jordanian newspaper editor who ran three of the cartoons that have caused an uproar around the Muslim world was arrested Saturday.
Jihad Momani had already been fired from his post at al-Shihan. He was charged with insulting religion, the BBC reported.
On Friday, King Abdullah said Momani had abused freedom of speech and the press by running the controversial cartoons.
The international firestorm that has escalated in the past few days was sparked a few months ago by a Danish newspaper's publication of 12 cartoons featuring depictions of Mohammed. Many Muslims believe that any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous, but some of the cartoons -- including one that shows Mohammed wearing a turban morphing into a bomb -- caused offense by their content, the BBC said.
Momani's commentary was a plea for calm, suggesting that suicide bombers and hostage-takers have done more to damage Islam.
Venezuela denounces diplomat's expulsion
CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Venezuelan officials are criticizing the Bush administration's decision to expel s diplomat from Caracas' mission in Washington.
Jeny Figueredo, chief of staff of the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, was told to leave the country Friday after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez expelled an American naval attaché from the U.S. mission in Venezuela amid espionage allegations.
Chavez's decision followed last week's allegations that a group of Venezuelan military officers passed information to a navy attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.
"Venezuela does not accept the justification for the decision as being part of the process of diplomatic reciprocity," read a statement from the Venezuelan mission in Washington, sent to United Press International. "On the contrary, we view it as an act of political retaliation."
The U.S. State Department said Figueredo was being expelled in direct response to Venezuela's expulsion Thursday of Navy Cmdr. John Correa, the naval attaché at the U.S. embassy in Caracas, the Miami Herald reported Friday.
"Look, we don't like to get into ... tit-for-tat games like this with the Venezuelan government," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, "but they initiated this, and we were forced to respond."
Feminist icon Betty Friedan dies at age 85
WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Betty Friedan, feminist, writer and a founder of the National Organization for Women died of heart failure in her Washington home Saturday at age 85.
Born Betty Naomi Goldstein in 1921 in Peoria, Ill., Friedan graduated from Smith College in 1942 and was a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. She married Carl Friedan in 1947.
She was a journalist but when she had her second child she was denied maternity leave.
As a freelance writer, while raising three children, Friedan wrote about her 15-year college reunion in 1957 and found many classmates, who were also housewives, were dissatisfied. Further research led to the best-seller "The Feminine Mystique," which sold over 3 million copies.
In 1966, Betty Friedan and 27 other women and men founded NOW. She served as president from 1966-70. She was also among the founders of the National Abortion Rights Action League and one of leaders who formed the National Women's Political Caucus.
She also wrote "It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement"; "The Second Stage"; and "The Fountain of Age."
She divorced in 1969 and is survived by her three children and nine grandchildren, the New York Times said.
