NEW CASTLE -- Knowing the value of phoning home, Lawrence County veterans have started collecting money to provide phone cards for troops overseas.
Veterans of Foreign Wars Posts 522 and 315 have signed up with Operation Uplink, which provides prepaid telephone cards to troops deployed away from home. The phone cards will enable military personnel from Lawrence County to call home.
A church's charity group is collecting care packages and letters for troops through Operation Life Line.
Injured protester returns from Iraq
PHILADELPHIA -- A student protesting the war who traveled to Iraq last month has returned home, after a hurried car ride from Baghdad to Jordan in which he suffered a minor injury.
Shane Claiborne, who attends Eastern University in St. Davids, said he traveled to Baghdad to show solidarity with Iraqi civilians. He returned home Tuesday with an injured arm after a rush across western Iraq.
Claiborne, 27, spent about two weeks in Baghdad, during which time American and British forces were bombing the capital.
"It's good to be home," Claiborne said as he arrived at Philadelphia International Airport to TV cameras and hugs from about 20 friends.
Claiborne dislocated his shoulder while leaving Iraq. The car in which he was a passenger blew out a tire; the vehicle spun out of control and landed in a 10-foot ditch.
He said the Iraqi people embraced him during his stay but constantly questioned why the United States was invading their nation.
"This war is a mistake," said Claiborne, a member of The Simple Way, a Christian group based in Philadelphia.
Chat room links troops' families
ALLENTOWN -- Lisa Lane has discovered a new evening activity since the war in Iraq began -- talking on the Internet with other women whose family members are deployed in the Middle East.
Lane, 47, created "Support 4 Deployment" -- an America Online chat room that she runs nightly from her Allentown home. She has a son, a sister and a nephew involved in the war.
"I was so depressed," Lane said. "I had nobody to talk to."
On a recent night, Lane chatted with 10 women from across the country. Lane, barefoot and smiling, sent messages of support to the women.
"This is a good night," said Lane, scanning the rolling messages on her computer screen. "They got letters and phone calls."
Seoul
South Korea to send support troops to Iraq
South Korea will send about 700 noncombat troops to Iraq to support the U.S.-led war even as many people at home oppose the government's involvement.
The government may send about 600 medical and engineering troops and 60 guards to protect them, according to a bill passed by more than two-thirds of 256 legislators, the prime minister's office said in a statement.
The bill passed after President Roh Moo Hyun appealed to legislators, saying their nation needs U.S. assistance to resolve differences with North Korea. Lawmakers twice postponed the vote as civic groups and students stage rallies and demonstrations opposing the U.S. war with Iraq.
Roh is trying to balance South Korea's alliance with the United States against fragile ties with neighboring North Korea, which has criticized the U.S.-led attack against Iraq. Roh was one of the first heads of state to voice support for the United States after the war started March 20.
South Korea and its allies, including the United States, are trying to persuade North Korea to abandon a nuclear arms program. The United States has rejected Pyongyang's call for direct talks, saying it would only agree to discussions involving South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
Karachi, Pakistan
Radical Islamic groups on rise, spurred by war
Riding a wave of anti-American sentiment, outlawed Islamic extremist organizations that were forced underground by the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan in 2001 are making a comeback.
Recruitment in Pakistan of potential terrorists appears to be on the rise. Militant leaders freed from house arrest have returned to the mosques to rally the faithful against the United States. Muslim radicals are feeding on anger over the war in Iraq to regroup and revitalize, raising the threat of more anti-U.S. terrorism around the world.
"They are defiant. They are angry. More and more people are angry," said Abu Mujahed, a militant using a fake name.
Analysts say the Iraq war is emboldening militants, who believe the United States is distracted by the fighting.
"Militants know that the United States is fully engaged in Iraq and that has diluted their focus on the war on terror," said Riffat Hussein, a political analyst.
"The militants feel the government will not maintain as close a watch on them because the American pressure to keep down or stop altogether the activities of militants is off."
Old militant groups, outlawed as terrorist groups, have re-emerged under new guises and operate openly as "political" groups. Other Islamic countries face a similar surge of support for violent movements: Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, to name those most friendly toward the United States.
Baghdad
Iraqis ordered to give up satellite phones
Citing an "authorized source," state television appealed to Iraqis on Wednesday to hand over to authorities their satellite cell telephones to make it easier on the government to identify "infiltrating" telephone transmissions.
It said the government would return the phones after the war, adding that some British and U.S. intelligence agents have used them to relay information about "vital targets" in Iraq.
The statement said that failing to hand over the phones would bring offenders under the full weight of the law, "which doesn't show mercy on traitors."
Berlin
U.K. proposes postwar conference on Iraq
U.K. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw proposed a postwar conference, modeled after the self-rule forum for Afghanistan, to shape a new Iraqi government, as Germany called for the quick demise of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"The new Afghanistan was run by its citizens, and it's exactly that principle that needs to define the post-conflict Iraq," Straw said in Berlin.
Straw expressed optimism about mending the rift within the European Union over policy toward Iraq by reaching a "common EU position" on how the country should be administered after the war. The British minister spoke at a Berlin hotel before meeting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
Fischer, whose government opposed the U.S.-led invasion, made the strongest statement yet about the outcome of the war.
"We hope the regime collapses there as soon as possible and that no further innocent civilians or soldiers die," he said.
Straw's diplomatic mission came a day before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell meets EU foreign ministers in Brussels to discuss who should run Iraq after Saddam's defeat.
France and Germany want the United Nations to govern the country while the United States aims to install its own transitional government of military occupation. While the United Kingdom has been vague on what U.N. role it favors, both Germany and France say a compromise may be reachable.
Cairo
Arabs warn U.S. to soften stance
Arab commentators and officials have warned the United States its war on Iraq was widening its circle of enemies in the Middle East and urged Washington to refrain from picking new fights.
The comments came in the wake of recent threats by senior members of the Bush administration against Syria and Iran, and later Israeli warnings to Damascus, that they would be held to account if they gave support to Iraq.
Samir Ragab, editor of mainstream Egyptian daily newspaper al-Gomhuria , said threats issued by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell were hurting Washington's standing in the area.
"It will not be in U.S. interests to hurl threats at certain countries and create the impression that they are next on the list of U.S. targets," Ragab wrote in a comment column. "Otherwise it will widen the circle of its enemies."
Powell and Rumsfeld have signaled in separate comments that Syria must abandon what they say is its support for Iraq and "terrorism" or face the consequences.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz appeared to add fuel to the fire when he said both Israel and the United States viewed as "very grave" the aid Syria has allegedly given to Iraq.
In Algiers, Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem told parliament in an extraordinary session on Iraq that U.S. threats to Syria would worsen the crisis in the Middle East.
New York
Professor makes more controversial remarks
A Columbia University professor who wants to see U.S. troops suffer "a million Mogadishus" in Iraq has defended his stand -- and dug his hole a little deeper, the New York Post reported.
In his latest remarks, Assistant Professor Nicholas De Genova said he believes that ultimately what has to happen in Iraq is "more like another Vietnam."
"Vietnam was a stunning defeat for U.S. imperialism," he declared in a letter to the editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator.
The anthropology and Latino-studies professor was unavailable for comment as controversy raged over his "Mogadishu" remark last week at a Columbia "teach-in." He was referring to the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" incident in which 18 GIs were slain in Somalia.
New York Gov. George Pataki, a graduate of Columbia Law School, "believes De Genova's comments are a disgrace. He was appalled," his spokeswoman said. "It's one thing to oppose the war, and another thing to wish harm on our soldiers and cheer for their defeat."
De Genova, in his letter to the Spectator, said the newspaper -- which first reported his remarks -- took them out of context when it quoted his comment about Mogadishu but not "the perspective that framed" it.
He said he had pointed out that Iraqi liberation can only be achieved by the Iraqi people themselves, "both by resisting and defeating the U.S. invasion, as well as overthrowing a regime whose brutality was long sustained by none other than the U.S."
