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Laura Bush criticizes Myanmarese leaders

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- U.S. first lady Laura Bush lashed out at the ruling military junta of Myanmar Wednesday in an article for The Wall Street Journal.

In an unusual venture into foreign affairs, she said the secretive military government was illegitimate.

"Gen. Than Shwe and his deputies are a friendless regime," Bush wrote. "They should step aside to make way for a unified Burma (Myanmar) governed by legitimate leaders."

Bush reportedly took a personal interest in the situation several weeks ago and contacted U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Tuesday night, the White House issued a statement saying Ban had contacted Bush and told her he was dispatching U.N. Special Envoy to Burma Ibrahim Gambari to the region "as soon as possible."

Last month, Buddhist monks and nuns led peaceful protests in Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon, over the government's steep increase in the cost of fuel. The protests spread and grew to include students and workers and the government used force to put them down.

U.S. judge nixes terror deportation

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- A Tunisian terror suspect being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot be sent home, a U.S. federal judge ruled.

Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Mohammed Rahman cannot be sent to Tunisia because he could suffer "irreparable harm," The Washington Post reported.

Two other men sent to Tunisia from Guantanamo in June claimed they were tortured and Rahman is the first detainee to succeed in avoiding forced return.

Kessler wrote "it would be a profound miscarriage of justice" if Rahman was sent to Tunisia, which has convicted him in absentia on terror charges and sentenced him to 20 years in prison, The New York Times said.

Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman, told the Post the government is considering an appeal.

U.N. warns of Iraq refugee crisis

GENEVA, Switzerland, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- The United Nations' refugee agency is warning of a humanitarian crisis for several million Iraqis displaced by four years of war and insurgency.

In Geneva, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees agency said some 4.4 million Iraqis have fled their homes, with half elsewhere in the country and the other half scattered around neighboring countries.

A statement said as many as 60,000 people are leaving their homes every month. The agency said there are 1.4 million Iraqis living in Syria and 750,000 in Jordan.

The situation is just as dire inside Iraq, Andrew Harper, the head of the UNHCR Iraq Support Unit told the BBC. He said the governors of as many as 11 of the country's 18 provinces were blocking internal migrants from entering their territories, or denying them food and education if they do get in.

In Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, aid workers have reported they can't safely reach thousands of families because of the sectarian shootings and bombings, the report said.

Wisconsin gunman had three bullets in head

CRANDON, Wis., Oct. 10 (UPI) -- The 20-year-old northern Wisconsin sheriff's deputy who gunned six people had three bullet wounds to his head when he died, state officials said.

At a news briefing, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said forensic work would take more time but one of the three bullet wounds in Tyler Peterson's head appeared to be fatal. He said all three had been fired with a gun against the skin.

Peterson was a Forest County, Wis. sheriff's deputy and part-time Crandon, Wis., police officer who confronted a former girlfriend who was with six friends early Sunday morning. He left but returned and gunned them all down.

One victim survived by playing dead after being shot three times and was listed in fair condition Tuesday at St. Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield, Wis., the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Wednesday.

Peterson fled and eluded police for several hours and died at a cabin in Argonne, Wis., when police arrived.

German awarded Nobel Prize in chemistry

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- A 71-year-old German professor from Berlin on Wednesday was announced as the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in chemistry in Sweden.

In a statement, the Nobel committee said Gerhard Ertl was awarded "for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces."

The committee noted Ertl's work in determining the mechanisms at the molecular level, of the catalytic synthesis of ammonia over iron and the catalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide over palladium.

In 1998, Ertl won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry along with Gabor Somorjai of the University of California, Berkeley for "their outstanding contributions to the field of surface science.

Ertl works as professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Chemistry, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin.

The prize, which is to be formally awarded Dec. 10, carries a cash award of about $1.5 million.