Al-Qaida bomb maker killed in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- A key al-Qaida weapons maker has been killed by a CIA Predator drone strike in Pakistan, the terrorist group said Sunday.
A statement posted on a Web site linked to al-Qaida said Midhat Mursi, a 55-year-old Egyptian also known Abu Khabab al-Masri, was slain in a village in Pakistan's remote tribal areas, The Guardian reported.
U.S. officials had put a $5 million bounty on Mursi's head and linked him to the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors, as well as to plots to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999 and the 2001 airliner shoe bombing attempt.
The Guardian said Mursi was believed to have led chemical weapons research at an al-Qaida lab in a camp outside Jalalabad, Pakistan. He was once thought to have been killed in a 2006 attack but later resurfaced.
The al-Qaida statement said Mursi's work was being carried on by others, and confirmed that other al-Qaida members had died in the Predator attack.
EU studies female terrorist threat
BRUSSELS, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- European intelligence officials say they are investigating the potential threat from women who are connected to radical Islamic groups.
Sources told the EU Observer Sunday women are involved in everything from propaganda and logistics for potentially dangerous radicals all the way to being recruited for suicide bombing missions.
"This phenomenon has not been really taken into account yet and we need to explore and understand it," said one diplomatic official. "It is a new strategy by al-Qaida."
While women involved with terrorism has become commonplace in Iraq, a growing concern is that they will start becoming prominent in terror groups operating in Algeria.
The European Union's Joint Situation Center is expected to issue a report on the threat sometime in the fall.
120 die in India shrine stampede
HIMACHAL PRADESH, India, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- More than 120 religious pilgrims were trampled to death and 40 more were injured Sunday during a stampede in northern India, officials say.
Emergency workers said most of those killed were women and children from the Indian state of Punjab who were trampled to death when rumors of a landslide panicked a crowd at the hilltop Naina Devi temple in Himachal Pradesh, the Indo-Asian News Service reported.
The pilgrims had gathered at the temple as part of the 10-day Shravan Ashtami fair, in which devotees come to the shrine to commemorate the Hindu story of Sati, Lord Shiva's consort, whose eye, they say, fell to the ground there. The shrine is one of the most popular in the country.
Officials said a panic gripped the crowd when a false rumor spread that boulders were crashing down the side of the hill. Inclement weather hampered efforts by rescuers to reach the injured, most of whom were bunched about 1,300 feet from the temple, the news service said.
Iran says nuclear issue cooling off
TEHRAN, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Iran's president says he believes the United States and the West have accepted the idea of negotiations in the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a news conference in Tehran Sunday following a summit with Syrian President Bashar Assad that Iran was serious about negotiations and that "all those who stood against Iran over the past years have now reached a conviction that in this issue there is no other way but to involve into dialogue and consultation."
Ahmadinejad also said Iran was prepared to talk about "different issues on the regional and international stage," according to the Syrian news agency SANA.
Israel's Debkafiles intelligence site said Assad's visit was arranged so Iran and Syria could come up with a follow-up plan after out-maneuvering the West in the nuclear dispute.
Debkafiles contends the Bush administration and Europe took all of the pressure off Iran by opening back-channel talks with the Islamic republic and predicted Syria would soon back away from its diplomatic efforts with Israel.
Obama agrees to three presidential debates
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Likely Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Barack Obama agreed to three debates with his presumptive Republican opponent, campaign officials said Sunday.
The decision means a proposal by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for joint "town hall"-style appearances likely won't happen, The Washington Post reported. A fourth debate between vice presidential candidates was also approved by the Illinois senator's campaign.
"Due to the late date of the two parties' nominating conventions, and the relatively short period between the end of the conventions and the first proposed debate, it is likely that the four commission debates will be the sole series of debates in the fall campaign," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe wrote in a letter to the heads of the Commission on Presidential Debates, the newspaper reported.
McCain suggested earlier that the candidates appear together at a series of town hall-style gatherings, and while Obama said he would think about it, his campaign opted out of the idea after a cursory round of talks, the Post said.
