Obama photo causes stir

WASHINGTON - A photograph circulating in the Internet of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama dressed in traditional local garments during a visit to Kenya in 2006 is causing a dustup in the presidential campaign over what constitutes a smear.
The Associated Press photograph portrays Obama wearing a white turban and a wraparound white robe presented to him by elders in Wajir, in northeastern Kenya. Obama’s estranged late father was Kenyan and Obama visited the country in 2006, attracting thousands of well-wishers.

The gossip and news Web site The Drudge Report posted the photograph Monday and said it was being circulated by “Clinton staffers” and quoted an e-mail from an unidentified campaign aide.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe immediately accused Clinton’s campaign of “the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election.”

Obama’s foreign policy adviser, Susan Rice, said the circulation of the photograph was divisive and suggests “that the customs and cultures of other parts of the world are worthy of ridicule or condemnation.”

The Clinton campaign did not comment on the distribution of the photo, but campaign manager Maggie Williams said the Obama campaign’s reaction was inflaming passions and distracting voters.

“Enough,” Williams said in a statement. “If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.

“This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry.”

In a teleconference with reporters, retired Air Force Gen. Scott Gration, an Obama adviser who accompanied the Illinois senator to Kenya two years ago, said the senator was there to learn how tribes were organizing themselves.

“And in the course of this, Senator Obama was given an outfit and as the guest that he was, the great guest, he took this outfit and they encouraged him to try some of it on,” Gration said. “It was a thing that we all do.”

In December, two Clinton Iowa volunteers resigned after forwarding a hoax e-mail that falsely said Obama is a Muslim possibly intent on destroying the United States. Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ and says he has never been a Muslim, but false rumors about Islamic ties are circulating on the Internet.

Homicide Bomber in Wheelchair Attacks Iraqi Police Center, Killing Assistant Chief

An Iraqi police official was killed and at least four other people were wounded Monday when a homicide bomber in a wheelchair attacked a police facility in Samarra.

The bomber detonated explosives he’d concealed in the wheelchair in a blast that took the life of Samarra assistant police chief Major-General Abdul-Jabbar Rabee Muttar, Capt. Luay Mohammed told Reuters.

The attacker had gone into the Samarra police operations center and asked to speak in private with Muttar, whom he’d met before, according to Reuters. Mohammed didn’t know what they had talked about in the past.

“Then we saw flames and an explosion. The assistant police chief was beheaded,” Mohammed, who was slightly injured in the blast, told Reuters. “There were pieces of flesh from the suicide bomber.”

No one has yet come forward to take responsibility for the attack, though it resembled others executed by Sunni Islamist Al Qaeda — which, according to the American military, is behind most of the homicide bombings in Iraq, Reuters reported.

Samarra is about 60 miles north of Baghdad in a region where U.S. and Iraqi forces have concentrated their efforts to eradicate Al Qaeda operatives.

Stealth bomber crashes pilots safe

A B-2 stealth bomber plunged to the ground shortly after taking off from an air base in Guam on Saturday, the first time one crashed, but both pilots ejected safely, Air Force officials said.

A B-2 stealth bomber taxis at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, in a 2005 photo.

The aircraft was taking off with three others on their last flight out of Guam after a four-month deployment, part of a continuous U.S. bomber presence in the western Pacific. After the crash, the other three bombers were being kept on Guam, said Maj. Eric Hilliard at Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii.

At least one B-2 bomber had taken off safely from Andersen Air Force Base but was brought back when another aircraft plunged to the ground.

There were no injuries on the ground or damage to buildings, and no munitions were on board. Each B-2 bomber costs about $1.2 billion to build.

Thick, black smoke could be seen billowing from the wreckage at Andersen, said Jeanne Ward, a resident in the northern village of Yigo who was on the base visiting her husband. Video Watch smoke rise from crash site »

Ward said she didn’t witness the crash but noticed a rising plume of smoke behind the base’s air control tower.

She said crowds began to gather as emergency vehicles arrived. “Everybody was on their cell phones, and the first thing everyone wanted to know was did the pilots make it out in time,” she said.

The Air Force, without identifying the pilots, said one was medically evaluated and released, and the other was in stable condition at Guam Naval Hospital.

A board of officers will investigate what caused the aircraft to crash at 10:30 a.m., shortly after taking off from a runway. It was the first crash of a B-2 bomber, said Capt. Sheila Johnston, a spokeswoman for Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

All 21 stealth bombers are based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, but the Air Force has been rotating several of them through Guam since 2004, along with B-1 and B-52 bombers.

The rotations are designed to boost the U.S. security presence in the Asia-Pacific region while other U.S. forces diverted to fight in the Middle East.

The B-2 was first publicly displayed in 1988 and took its first flight a year later. The first bomber was delivered to Whiteman in 1993.

The bombers on Guam were scheduled to return to Missouri now that six B-52s from the 96th Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, have arrived to replace them.

The distinctive B-2 is described as a “multi-role bomber” that blends stealth technology with a highly efficient aerodynamic design. It is able to deliver large payloads at great range and has been used in combat over Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.
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The accident occurred 11 days after a Navy plane crashed into the ocean about 20 miles northeast of Guam’s Ritidian Point. Four aircrew members ejected from the EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft and were rescued by helicopter.

Pakistan blocks ‘objectionable’ YouTube

Pakistan has become the latest country to block access to the video-sharing Web site YouTube on the grounds that one or more videos on the site offend Islam, authorities said Monday.

Protests burn a Danish flag in Karachi over the publication of drawings depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

The Pakistani government is also asking YouTube to remove “objectionable content,” said Nabiha Mehmood, a spokeswoman for the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority.

If YouTube removes the video or videos that concern Pakistan, she said, the government may once again let its people post and view video clips.

It is unclear what the video or videos in question depict, but a PTA official, who asked not to be identified, told the Associated Press that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocks Web sites that show controversial drawings of the Prophet Mohammed.

Such drawings were originally printed in Danish newspapers in 2006 and were reprinted by some papers earlier this month, sparking protests throughout Pakistan, with demonstrators burning Danish flags and effigies of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Wahal us Siraj, one of the founders of the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan, told CNN Monday that the telecommunications authority sent him a link to a YouTube video that concerned Pakistani authorities. A click on that link Monday yielded a message saying the “video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”

In a statement released Monday, YouTube did not address the Pakistani government blocking access to its site. However, it said that an issue related to its site in Pakistan affected the access of users around the globe to YouTube for about two hours on Sunday.

“Traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous Internet Protocols, and many users around the world could not access our site,” the statement said.

YouTube added, “We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan. We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again.”

The 3-year-old video sharing Web site has exploded in popularity by letting ordinary people post their own videos online and watch videos that others have posted. Yet the Web site’s growth also has spawned efforts around the world to regulate the site.

Authorities in Brazil, China, Iran, Morocco, Myanmar (also known as Burma), Syria and Thailand have blocked access to YouTube in the last few years, according to Reporters Without Borders, a press advocacy organization.

The countries acted after concluding that YouTube videos were subversive (China), immoral (Iran), embarrassing to well-known figures (Brazil) or critical of a country’s king (Thailand), the group said.

Governments also have sought to regulate user-supplied Internet content to stymie allegations that they abuse human rights, the group said.

A few months ago, YouTube took down videos posted by an award-winning Egyptian human rights advocate that showed what he described as police abuse. YouTube subsequently restored his account and let him continue posting videos.

In Pakistan, a committee made up of representatives from various government ministries ordered the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority to block YouTube access, Mehmood said.

The authority sent a letter to Internet service providers on Friday evening ordering them to prevent people in Pakistan from visiting YouTube, she said.

The decision has received mixed reactions.

“Some people are quite upset and screaming. They say they have been using YouTube regularly,” said Siraj, who helped found an association representing about 50 Internet service providers in Pakistan, including Micronet Broadband, where he is the chief executive officer. “There are others who say that YouTube is full of videos … that are damaging to the character of children.”

Roughly 3 to 5 million of Pakistan’s 165 million people have Internet access, the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan says.

Reporters Without Borders condemned the government’s decision

The group said in a statement on its Web site that Pakistani authorities cited an increase in the proportion of “non-Islamic objectionable material” on YouTube.

“It should not be up to the (Pakistan Telecommunications Authority) to order this kind of blocking,” the group’s statement. “Such a decision should be taken by the courts, not by a body that is under the government’s control.”