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FBI white-collar crime focus said lacking

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- The FBI lacks the resources to investigate burgeoning white-collar crime because it was refocused to fight terrorism after 2001, critics say.

With the global economic crisis triggering hundreds of cases of financial wrongdoing, the FBI is struggling to keep up with the workload because its criminal investigation workforce was slashed and transferred in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, current and former officials told The New York Times Sunday.

The agency's white-collar crime-fighting resources are so depleted that company executives say they can't get the FBI's attention even on fraud cases involving millions of dollars, the newspaper reported.

"Clearly, we have felt the effects of moving resources from criminal investigations to national security," John Miller, an assistant director at the FBI, told The Times. "In white-collar crime, while we initiated fewer cases over all, we targeted the areas where we could have the biggest impact."

Some say a faster reaction to white-collar crime could have deterred some of the financing schemes that eventually triggered the mortgage meltdown.

"They were very late to the game," said U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who has sparred with the FBI over its response to the mortgage crisis.

Two killed, 17 injured in Iraq blasts

BAGHDAD, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Two Iraqis were killed and 17 others were injured Sunday when a pair of bomb blasts struck Baghdad, officials say.

The first blast targeted a gas station in Baghdad's Al-Zafaraniyah neighborhood. Officials said it was caused by an improvised explosive device and went off as cars were lined up at the station, the Kuwait news agency, KUNA, reported.

Two Iraqi civilians died and 10 others were wounded, with victims taken to Ibn Nafees Hospital.

A second blast struck Baghdad 30 minutes later, authorities said. A roadside bomb went off at a police checkpoint near an outdoor market, CNN reported, wounding seven people, including three police officers.

Kidnapped boy found in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- A 6-year-old Las Vegas boy believed to have been kidnapped by drug dealers has been found alive at a bus stop in the city, authorities say.

Las Vegas police say Cole Puffinburger, 6, the subject of a nationwide "amber alert" missing child search, was found just before 11 p.m. Saturday after a four-day investigation, KVVU-TV, Las Vegas, reported. His condition was not released.

Cole's grandfather, Clemons Tinnemeyer, 51, is in custody in California. Police officials said Tinnemeyer's alleged debts to a Mexican drug gang may have been the motivation for the kidnapping, in which armed men disguised as police officers broke into the boy's home Wednesday, tied up his mother and stepfather and abducted him at gunpoint.

After Tinnemeyer was apprehended Friday in California, police canceled the amber alert for Cole. Las Vegas authorities told KVVU they were looking for a second "person of interest," Jesus Gastelum, described as a man in his 30s who may have ties to both the drug gang and Cole's family.

Elections set for troubled Indian Kashmir

JAMMU, India, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Officials in India's troubled Jammu and Kashmir state Sunday announced elections for the state assembly starting Nov. 17 to Dec. 24.

Votes will be counted on Dec. 28, the Indo-Asian News Service, IANS, reported. The state has been under federal rule since July when more than 40 people were killed in a wave of Muslim-Hindu religious strife triggered by government plans to donate land to Hindu shrine, CNN said.

"Our party always wanted the elections to be held in the state on time. We are ready to go to the people," Ashok Khajuria, president of the state unit of Bharatiya Janata Party, told IANS.

"It was (the National Conference) that gave democracy in the real sense to the people of Jammu and Kashmir," added NC Provincial President for Jammu Ajay Khajuria. "We have always faced challenges and are ready to face this as well to get a popular government in place."

FAA probing O'Hare plane-truck collision

CHICAGO, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Aviation officials say they're investigating a collision between a taxiing airplane and a maintenance truck at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

A United Express jet, operated by SkyWest Airlines, was taxiing on a closed runway at 4:49 a.m. Saturday when it collided with a City of Chicago pickup truck, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Cory told the Chicago Tribune. There were no passengers on the plane, which was being piloted by two maintenance workers, officials said.

"At this point what we have is contact with a city truck," Cory told the newspaper. "An incursion has to be investigated and determined. It's usually a loss of separation … between an aircraft and another aircraft that may be coming to the airport."

The Tribune reported the truck driver was treated at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill., and released, while the two mechanics in the plane were treated for minor injuries at Resurrection Medical Center in Chicago.