Group denies reported ties to bin Laden
WASHINGTON, June 24 (UPI) -- A member of a Pakistani militant group denied a report a cellphone found in a raid on Osama bin Laden's complex held data tying his group to bin Laden.
The member of Harakat-ul-Mujahedin said he was unaware of any support his group gave bin Laden during the years the al-Qaida leader was in hiding at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, CNN reported.
The statement by the man contradicts a New York Times article that reported a cellphone belonging to a bin Laden courier had contact information for members of Harakat-ul-Mujahedin. The Times article, published Thursday, said Harakat-ul-Mujahedin also has ties to Pakistani intelligence services.
In recent weeks U.S. and Pakistani diplomats have been trying to repair the relationship between the two countries, which has deteriorated since the raid in which bin Laden was killed in May. The United States believes Pakistan isn't pursuing al-Qaida and other extremists aggressively enough while the Pakistanis are upset with what they consider unilateral steps taken by the United States within Pakistan's borders.
The New York Times said officials and analysts want to know whether Harakat-ul-Mujahedin and other militant groups helped shield bin Laden on behalf of the Pakistani spy agency in return for being allowed to operate in Pakistan for years.
U.S. officials said calls traced on the cellphone by analysts showed Harakat-ul-Mujahedin commanders had called Pakistani intelligence officials. But the officials said the calls were not necessarily about bin Laden and thus provided no "smoking gun" to show the spy agency had protected bin Laden, the Times reported.
However, the numbers on the cellphone are a "serious lead" to the critical question as to how bin Laden could live for years in Abbottabad, a garrison town just northeast of Islamabad, one official said.
Gadhafi could flee Tripoli
WASHINGTON, June 24 (UPI) -- Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is considering leaving Tripoli for a more secure location away from the fighting, U.S. intelligence says.
Gadhafi "doesn't feel safe anymore" in Tripoli, the nation's capital, because of regular airstrikes by NATO aircraft and battlefield gains of rebel troops, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Officials said they don't believe Gadhafi will flee the country.
"NATO's efforts to reduce the Libyan regime's capability to command and control military forces are having an effect," a senior defense official said in the Journal report. "It is becoming increasingly difficult for him to operate inside Tripoli."
Some U.S. lawmakers have questioned the legal grounds for the action in Libya. The House planned Friday to vote on a measure authorizing U.S. participation in Libya for 12 months, but it would require "a full and updated rationale" from the Obama administration for conducting military operations.
Another bill, also expected to come up Friday, would block U.S. drone strikes in Libya.
"NATO's efforts to reduce the Libyan regime's capability to command and control military forces are having an effect," a senior defense official told the Journal. "It is becoming increasingly difficult for him to operate inside Tripoli."
Official: Minot bracing for a 'Noah flood'
MINOT, N.D., June 24 (UPI) -- Minot, N.D., is bracing for a flood of historic proportions -- a "Noah flood" -- with more than 5,000 homes expected to be inundated, officials said.
Eleven-thousand of the city's 40,888 residents had already been evacuated, the Dakota Farmer reported Friday.
Authorities said the flooding in Minot likely will be far worse than had been predicted, with the Souris River topping a 130-year-old record by more than 8 feet.
"This'll be historic," National Weather Service meteorologist Harlyn Wetzel in Bismarck, N.D., told The Wall Street Journal.
"This is a Noah flood -- as in big, large, historic," U.S. Army Corps of Engineers district engineering Chief Michael Bart told The New York Times.
The river was expected to rise far higher and faster than first forecast, cresting as high as 1,565 feet above sea level, washing 2 to 3 more feet of river water over the city. Waters had already spread across the downtown area, threatening to split the city in two, the Times said.
Nobody could have anticipated a flood of this magnitude, with water levels almost six times what the area's 40-year-old, flood-protection systems were designed to take, Bart said.
The river, swollen by recent downpours, spilled out of its regular channel and cut down a valley to Lake Darling, the last flood-control point north of Minot, Wetzel said.
Arizonans ponder unpredictability of fires
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz., June 24 (UPI) -- Arizona residents, weary after days of dealing with wildfires, wonder why some homes burned and others were undamaged, officials said.
The Monument fire near Sierra Vista burned nearly 60 homes and consumed 29,000 acres in the past nine days, leaving some homes undamaged while nearby structures burned to the ground, the Arizona Daily Star reported Friday.
The fire was 59 percent contained Thursday.
Resident Tom Green said he did everything he could to save his home, which burned "from the inside out." His home was surrounded by a firewall and a 6-foot perimeter covered with rock.
"I had done everything right," Green said, looking at the crumpled metal roof of his destroyed 3,000-square-foot stucco home.
Green said firefighters told him the fire on June 14 "came through so hot it blew my windows out and burnt the house down from the inside out."
The Arizona Republic said the Wallow fire, in eastern Arizona, burned more than 532,000 acres since it started about four weeks ago, making it the largest fire in Arizona history.
The Wallow fire was 61 percent contained Thursday.
The Horseshoe Two fire in southern Arizona, which started nearly seven weeks ago, is expected to be contained within the next couple of days, fire officials said.
Extreme diet seen as diabetes treatment
NEWCASTLE, England, June 24 (UPI) -- An extreme diet of just 600 calories a day has been shown to reverse the effects of Type 2 diabetes in as little as a week, British researchers say.
Professor Roy Taylor of Newcastle University says the diet causes fat levels in the pancreas to plummet, restoring normal function, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.
Taylor asked 11 volunteers recently diagnosed with the condition to go on a diet of specially formulated drinks and non-starchy vegetables for eight weeks.
After just the first week the patients' pre-breakfast blood-sugar levels measured normal, suggesting correct pancreas function had been restored.
At the end of the eight weeks, all the study participants had managed to reverse their diabetes.
Taylor acknowledged that the extreme nature of the diet made him a little pessimistic about how many people could stick with it.
"Maybe 5 percent," he said. "However, if they did, it would save the [National Health Service] many millions of pounds."
