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Durbin: CIA allegations should be probed

WASHINGTON, July 12 (UPI) -- The U.S. Senate should investigate whether the CIA withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress, a key senator says.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., speaking Sunday on ABC Television's "This Week" program, said the Senate "absolutely" should investigate allegations that intelligence officials illegally withheld information about an as-yet unidentified anti-terrorism program from senior lawmakers during the Bush administration.

"We have a system of checks and balances," Durbin said. "There's accountability in our Constitution. The executive branch of government cannot create programs like these programs and keep Congress in the dark. There is a requirement for disclosure."

The New York Times reported Sunday that former Vice President Dick Cheney personally ordered the CIA to withhold details of the program from congressional oversight committees.

U.S. Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., appearing on the same show, countered that any investigation of the CIA should wait.

"What if it's a top-secret program?" he said. "Of course, (Cheney) and the president would both be responsible for that. Let's don't jump to conclusions is what I'm saying."

Search ends for presumed mudslide victims

LOGAN, Utah, July 12 (UPI) -- A 12-hour rescue operation in Logan, Utah, for a mother and her two children presumed buried by a mudslide has been called off, police say.

Logan police Chief Russ Roper said the search for Jackeline Alanis, her 13-year-old son Victor and 12-year-old daughter Abbe ended Saturday because of an unstable hillside behind the search site, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Sunday.

The family's neighbors reportedly witnessed Alanis and her children enter their home minutes before Saturday's mudslide consumed the home.

"They were aware there was a problem and they were removing belongings from the house," Roper said.

Logan Fire Chief Mark Meaker said given how buried the home was by the landslide and the elapsed time, rescuers had lost hope for the family members.

"There's not any reasonable chance of anyone surviving in what's left there," Meaker told the Deseret News. "We don't believe there's savable lives."

"Everything that could be done, was done."

At least 6 Indian police officers killed

RAIPUR, India, July 12 (UPI) -- A Maoist ambush resulted in the deaths of at least six Indian police officers Sunday, an official said.

The attack, which also injured more than a dozen other officers, happened in Chhattisgarh state's Rajnandgaon district, The Times of India-IANS reported.

"Six policemen were killed and several injured in an ambush in a thickly forested stretch of Rajnandgaon district where a reinforcement party is struggling to reach due to the hilly terrain," police official Girdhari Nayak said.

Nayak said district police superintendent B.K. Choubey was among those wounded and was battling for his life.

31 Indian women feared drowned

NAGPUR, India, July 12 (UPI) -- At least 31 women laborers may have died when two boats capsized in the Wainganga River in India, authorities said Sunday.

The boats carrying the women overturned in the Bhandara district Saturday when the women were returning home from work in paddy fields.

The women may have unbalanced the boats by panicking when a bolt of lightning struck nearby, police told Press Trust of India in a story published Sunday.

Two boatmen and four women made it to shore safely. The bodies of 15 women had been recovered from the swift-moving river as of Sunday.

Swiss al-Qaida hostage released in Mali

BERN, Switzerland, July 12 (UPI) -- A Swiss man held hostage in Mali for six months by a group calling itself al-Qaida in the Islamic Magreb has been freed, officials said Sunday.

Werner Greiner was seized in Niger on Jan. 22 and was the last of six Western hostages held by the group, the BBC reported.

"The Swiss Foreign Ministry (learned) with joy that the efforts towards the liberation of the last Swiss hostage in Mali have been successful," the ministry said in a statement.

Greiner was reportedly being treated in Mali before being flown back to Switzerland.

The al-Qaida group said in May it had executed British hostage Edwin Dyer after demanding the release of radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada from a British prison, the BBC said.