Baghdad suicide bomber kills 28
BAGHDAD, March 8 (UPI) -- A man on a motorcycle drove into a crowd of Baghdad police recruits Sunday and detonated a explosives-laden vest, killing 28 people, officials said.
An Iraq Interior Ministry official told CNN at least 57 people were wounded in the suicide bombing.
The injured were taken to Al-Kindi and Ibn al-Nafees hospitals as chaos and panic gripped Baghdad's Palestine Street near the Iraqi Oil Ministry building. Police cordoned off the area while emergency crews tended to the wounded, the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA reported.
An unidentified police lieutenant near the scene told the New York Times there had been a protest near the police academy at the time and the bomber had mingled with the crowd before the explosion.
The incident is the latest in a string of attacks near the police academy since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Police recruits have been frequent targets for suicide bombers since then, including a Dec. 1 attack that killed 15 people near the same spot, the newspaper said.
Obama opens door to Afghan reconciliation
WASHINGTON, March 8 (UPI) -- The United States may try reconciliation with Taliban moderates in Afghanistan in an effort to turn around its war efforts there, President Barack Obama says.
In an interview published in Sunday's New York Times, Obama, when asked if the United States was winning the war against Afghan insurgents, flatly answered "no" and opened the door to the possibility of reconciliation efforts with moderate elements of the Taliban, like the U.S. military did with Iraqi Sunni militias in a successful effort to isolate al-Qaida terrorists.
"There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region," Obama told the Times, while cautioning solutions in Afghanistan won't be easy.
Obama had broached the possibility of trying to peel off moderates from the Taliban during the presidential campaign and signaled that reconciliation could become an important initiative, repeating a strategy used by Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq.
"The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex," he told the newspaper. "You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge."
N. Korea election eyed for successor clues
PYONGYANG, North Korea, March 8 (UPI) -- Western observers say they're keeping a close eye on North Korean parliamentary elections to detect an emerging successor to aging leader Kim Jong Il.
With Kim's health scare fresh in people's minds, the parliamentary elections could provide clues as to which of his three sons are emerging as the front runner to replace the secretive, 67-year-old communist dictator, CNN reported.
Analysts told the U.S. broadcaster Kim's third son, 26-year-old Kim Jong Un, has gotten recent attention as a possible successor and is thought to be running in the current election. But Kim Jong Il also has two other sons of different mothers who are also believed to be vying for power.
North Korean state media reported Kim voted Sunday amid recent themes of "bloodline" and "inheritance" in official releases, the South Korean news agency Yonhap said, perhaps signaling the country may be preparing for another hereditary transfer of power.
The winners of the elections are never in doubt: Each of the 687 parliamentary districts have only one candidate on the ballot. By noon Sunday, about 71 percent of registered voters had turned out, the North's official Korea Central News Agency said.
Obama, Mullen meet on Mexico violence
WASHINGTON, March 8 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama is concerned about growing drug cartel violence in Mexico and considering how the U.S. military can help, sources say.
Citing an unnamed U.S. military official, CNN reported Sunday that Obama, in a meeting Saturday with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Michael Mullen, inquired about how the United States could help Mexican forces with intelligence and surveillance capabilities.
Mullen returned to Washington Saturday from Mexico City, where he was on a fact-finding mission about the increasingly violent and large-scale confrontations between powerful drug cartels and the Mexican army, CNN reported.
One of the latest incidents happened last week when a U.S. citizen was found to be among three decapitated bodies discovered in Tijuana.
Pakistani militants kill 8 police officers
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 8 (UPI) -- Eight tribal police officers were slain in a gun battle with suspected Pakistani Taliban militants near the Afghan border, officials said Sunday.
Four others were injured in the Saturday violence at a village in the Mohmand Agency, one of seven semiautonomous tribal areas along the 1,500-mile border that Pakistan shares with Afghanistan, CNN reported.
Intelligence officials told the U.S. broadcaster the border region is home to many Islamic extremists who used it as a staging ground for attacks inside Pakistan and in Afghanistan.
