Texas, La. coasts brace for Edouard
GALVESTON, Texas, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Residents on either side of the Texas-Louisiana state line Tuesday braced for Tropical Storm Edouard to make landfall.
Tropical storm-force winds flogged parts of the shoreline before dawn Tuesday as forecasters predicted Edouard would gain strength as it approached land, CNN reported.
Tropical storm warnings were issued from the Mississippi River to Port O'Connor, Texas. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Edouard's center at 5 a.m. Tuesday was about 50 miles southeast of Port Arthur, Texas, and 85 miles east of Galveston, Texas.
National Guard troops were mobilized Monday to help with food distribution, clean-up or search-and-rescue operations if needed, Capt. Adam Collett of the 72nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team in Houston told The Galveston County Daily News.
Edouard nipped parts of the Louisiana coast, where New Orleans saw wind gusts of 30-35 mph and rainfall of about a quarter of an inch, National Weather Service meteorologist Tim Destri told The (New Orleans) Times-Picauyne.
Destri said rainfall in other areas, however, averaged 3 inches and tides were 1-2 feet above normal along the coast.
Quake rocks China's Sichuan province again
BEIJING, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- A 6.0-magnitude earthquake Tuesday shook China's Sichuan province, which is still recovering from a huge temblor in May, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damages in the area, CNN reported.
The Olympic torch relay was moving through portions of Sichuan Tuesday, three days before the Summer Games begin in Beijing, about 800 miles away. The earthquake occurred a few hours after the relay made al stop in Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, CNN said.
The quake's epicenter was about 30 miles north-northwest of Guangyuan near the Sichuan-Gansu province border.
A 5.9-magnitude earthquake in May killed nearly 70,000 people and left 18,000 missing and 5 million homeless.
Bush arrives in S. Korea, meeting with Lee
SEOUL, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush arrived in Seoul for talks with his South Korean counterpart on military, economic and diplomatic issues.
Discussions between Bush and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak also were expected to touch on the recently resumed U.S. beef imports, as well as North Korea's denuclearization, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Bush and Lee are expected to release a joint statement Wednesday that reaffirms their commitment to a forward-looking U.S.-South Korea alliance, South Korean government officials said.
Bush and the U.S. entourage stopped in Seoul en route to the Summer Olympics in Beijing.
The Korean National Police Agency said it deployed about 7,000 personnel along Bush's scheduled routes, with about 16,000 riot police standing by, Yonhap reported. South Korea's Presidential Security Service also mobilized a special security team in conjunction with local police and the U.S. Secret Service.
Book: CIA forged key Iraq war document
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- The White House ordered the CIA to forge a document that purported to establish a link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, a new book alleges.
Author Ron Suskind writes in "The Way of the World" that the White House ordered the CIA to fabricate a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam, Politico reported Tuesday.
Suskind writes that the Bush administration had information from Iraqi intelligence "that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion."
The White House has denied the allegations and accused Suskind of making a living by writing "gutter journalism."
"He is about selling books and making wild allegations that no one can verify, including the numerous bipartisan commissions that have reported on pre-war intelligence," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.
The (London) Sunday Telegraph published a story about the letter in December 2003, on the same day that Saddam was captured in Iraq, Politico said. Following news reports about the existence of the letter, it was cited in media reports as evidence that there was an operational connection between al-Qaida and Iraq.
Mladic protected by Serbian military
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Ratko Mladic, wanted for genocide, has been protected by Serbian military and intelligence officials for years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Considered the military leader who carried out the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s that killed 15,000 people and accused of organizing the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, Mladic is thought of as a hero by Serbian nationalists, the newspaper said. Sources said Mladic has been harbored at various military bases since the Balkans war ended.
With Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic now captured and extradited to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, international pressure is building on Serbia to end its protection of Mladic and send him, too, to face charges of genocide. But loyalty to him runs deep in Serbia's military and unlike Karadzic, he prefers to keep a low profile and is skilled at hiding, sources said.
A leaked 2006 Serbian military intelligence report said Mladic had been hidden in army facilities in Bosnia and Serbia until 2002 when Serbia agreed to cooperate with The Hague. After that, he disappeared, the newspaper said.
