Vigils for injured vet, police clear Tenn. protest (AP)

By TERRY COLLINS and JASON DEAREN, Associated Press Terry Collins And Jason Dearen, Associated Press – 1?hr?47?mins?ago

OAKLAND, Calif. – Anti-Wall Street demonstrators held vigils for an Iraq War veteran seriously injured during a protest clash with police in California as some Occupy encampments came under growing pressure from authorities to abandon sites in parks and plazas.

A crowd of at least 1,000 people, many holding candles, gathered Thursday night in Oakland in honor of 24-year-old Scott Olsen, who is hospitalized with a fractured skull.

Many in the crowd shooed away Oakland Mayor Jean Quan who retreated back into City Hall after trying to address them during a tense late-night appearance. She apologized to Olsen during a hospital visit earlier Thursday.

"I am deeply saddened about the outcome on Tuesday. It was not what anyone hoped for, ultimately it was my responsibility, and I apologize for what happened," Quan said in a written statement to protesters late Thursday. "I cannot change the past, but I want to work with you to ensure that this remains peaceful moving forward."

In Nashville, police cracked down overnight on an Occupy protest camp near the Capitol under a new policy setting a curfew for the complex. Officers moved in a little after 3 a.m. and arrested about 30, who were later released after a judge wouldn't sign the warrants. About 20 protesters who stayed on a nearby sidewalk were not arrested and were still there later in the morning as state troopers stood guard at the steps to the Capitol.

Protesters also held a vigil for Olsen in Las Vegas, which drew a handful of police officers. Afterward, protesters invited them back for a potluck dinner.

"We renewed our vow of nonviolence," organizer Sebring Frehner said.

The Marine veteran, who won medals in Iraq, has become a rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators across the nation, with Twitter users and protest websites declaring, "We are all Scott Olsen."

Joshua Shepherd, 27, a Navy veteran who was standing nearby when Olsen got struck, called it a cruel irony that Olsen is fighting an injury in the country that he fought to protect.

Despite the financial underpinnings of the protests, Olsen himself wasn't taking part out of economic need.

His friends say he makes a good living as a network engineer and has a nice apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay. Still, he felt so strongly about economic inequality in the United States that he fought for overseas that he slept at a protest camp after work.

"He felt you shouldn't wait until something is affecting you to get out and do something about it," said friend and roommate Keith Shannon, who served with Olsen in Iraq.

It was that feeling that drew him to Oakland on Tuesday night, when the clashes broke out and Olsen's skull was fractured. Fellow veterans said Olsen was struck in the head by a projectile fired by police, although the exact object and who might have been responsible for the injury have not been definitively established. Officials are investigating exactly where the projectile came from.

Even as the vigil was held in Oakland, protest organizers prepared to defy Oakland's prohibition on overnight camping on the now patchy, manure-smelling lawn outside City Hall.

Shake Anderson, an organizer with Occupy Oakland, said half a dozen tents were erected on the plaza by midday Thursday where police armed with tear gas and bean bag rounds disbanded a 15-day-old encampment Tuesday. More than two-dozen tents had been erected as food and supplies arrived late Thursday.

"We believe in what we're doing," Anderson said. "No one is afraid. If anything, we're going to show there's strength in numbers."

Few police were seen in the area during late Thursday, as Quan in her written statement said that she and interim police chief Howard Jordan hope to meet with protesters and urged them again not to camp at the plaza.

Elsewhere across the United States, protesters brushed off pressure from authorities and maintained the camps that have sprung up in opposition to growing economic inequality.

Protesters at San Francisco's Justin Herman Plaza braced for a police raid early Thursday that never came. Still, police have warned the protesters that they could be arrested on a variety of sanitation or illegal camping violations.

Officials told protesters in Providence, R.I., that they were violating multiple city laws by camping overnight at a park.

Anti-Wall Street protesters camped out in downtown Los Angeles said they're planning to continue their demonstration indefinitely, although both they and the mayor's office were eyeing alternate sites.

Meanwhile, Olsen has been improving. Doctors transferred him from the emergency room to an intensive care unit and upgrading his condition to fair on Thursday.

Dr. Alden Harken, chief surgeon at Highland Hospital, said Olsen was still unable to speak but had improved dramatically since he was hospitalized unconscious with a fractured skull and bruised brain that caused seizures.

Harken said Olsen was interacting with his parents, who flew in from Wisconsin, doing math equations and otherwise showing signs of "high-level cognitive functioning." The doctor said he may require surgery, but that's unlikely.

"He's got a relatively small area of injury and he's got his youth going for him. So both of those are very favorable," Harken said.

Olsen smiled during Quan's visit and expressed surprise at all the attention his injury has generated, hospital spokesman Vintage Foster said.

His uncle in Wisconsin told The Associated Press that Olsen's mother was trying to understand what had happened.

"This is obviously a heartbreaker to her," George Nygaard said. "I don't think she understands why he was doing this."

The group Iraq Veterans Against the War blamed police for Olsen's injury. Jordan said the next day that Oakland police will investigate whether officers used excessive force.

Police have said they responded with tear gas and bean bag rounds only when protesters began throwing bottles and other items at them.

On Tuesday, Olsen had planned to be at the San Francisco protest, but he changed course after his veterans' group decided to support protesters in Oakland after police cleared a two-week long encampment outside City Hall.

"I think it was a last-minute thing," Shannon said.

A video posted on YouTube showed Olsen being carried by other protesters through the tear gas, his face bloodied. People shout at him: "What's your name? What's your name?" Olsen just stares back.

People at OPSWAT, the San Francisco security software company where Olsen works, were devastated after learning of his injuries. They described him as a humble, quiet man.

Olsen had been helping to develop security applications for U.S. defense agencies, building on expertise gained while on active duty in Iraq, said Jeff Garon, the company's director of marketing.

Olsen was awarded seven medals while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, which he left as a lance corporal in November 2009 after serving for four years. One of them was the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal.

Olsen moved to the Bay Area in July, and quickly found friends in the veterans against the war group.

His tours of duty in Iraq made him more serious, Shannon said.

"He wasn't active in politics before he went in the military, but he became active once he was out ... the experience in the military definitely shaped him," Shannon said.

___

Dearen reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee, Garance Burke in San Francisco, Julie Watson in San Diego, Lucas L. Johnson II in Nasvhille, Tenn., and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

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What did Conrad Murray tell police after Michael Jackson's death? (The Christian Science Monitor)

Jurors at the trial of Michael Jackson’s personal physician heard portions of a dramatic tape recording on Friday of Conrad Murray’s first statement to police, given two days after the pop legend died of an overdose of the powerful anesthetic propofol.

The statement, introduced as evidence by prosecutors, has never before been released to the public. It provides Dr. Murray's moment-by-moment account of Mr. Jackson’s final hours.

Murray gave the statement with his lawyers present before toxicology tests showed that Jackson died of an overdose. After those results, Murray emerged as a suspect in Jackson’s death.

IN PICTURES: Michael Jackson – King of Pop

Murray admitted that in an attempt to help Jackson sleep he gave intravenous doses of two sedatives and propofol from 1 a.m. to about 11 a.m. on June 25, 2009.

The doctor said he had been treating Jacksona€?s chronic insomnia for more than two months by giving him nightly doses of propofol. He said he was worried that Jackson had developed a dependency, and he was trying to wean him from relying on the anesthetic.

“Three days before his death I started to wean Mr. Jackson from propofol,” Murray told the detectives. “I told him I wanted him to assume a more natural pattern of sleep.”

It didn’t work. Jackson was under intense pressure from his concert promoters – and ultimately his fans – to deliver spectacular performances in rehearsals and eventually in London. As the pressure intensified, so did Jackson’s insomnia.

It all came to a head at about 10:50 a.m. on June 25, 2009.

The crucial few hoursJackson had been complaining through the early morning hours of his inability to fall asleep. “All the time he complained that if he could not perform, he would have to cancel rehearsal,” Murray said. “It would not satisfy his fans if he was not rested well. There was a lot of pressure there.”

At one point Murray even checked the IV where he had administered two sedatives in four different doses. He said he wanted to make sure the connection was flowing into Jackson and had not leaked onto the bed.

Murray told police that by 10:40 a.m. Jackson was pleading for propofol, which he had nicknamed “milk.”

“He said, ‘Please, please give me some milk so I can sleep,’ ” Murray said on the tape. The detectives seemed to think for a moment he meant something quaint like milk and cookies. But Jackson’s request was for heavy sedation.

Murray eventually surrendered to Jackson’s wishes and said he injected 25 milligrams of propofol into Jackson’s IV.

“He fell asleep,” Murray said. “He was not snoring. I was a little bit hesitant that he would jump out of sleep.” He added: “He does that.”

Murray said he sat at Jacksona€?s bedside and monitored his heart rate and other vital signs until he felt confident that a€?everything was stable.a€

He said went to the bathroom and returned in about two minutes. “I came back to his bedside and it looked like he wasn’t breathing,” Murray said. “I was able to get a pulse. His body was warm. There was no change in color. I assumed everything happened very quickly.”

The doctor said he immediately started CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

At one point he said he ran downstairs to try to get someone to help him with CPR. He said he called Jackson’s personal assistant on his cell phone and asked that security come help him. In addition, he gave an intravenous dose of the antidote flumazenil, which is administered to help wake overmedicated patients.

It didn’t work.

Murray told the detectives that he did not immediately call 911 or ask someone else to call because Jackson was his patient and he was doing the best he could. Eventually, when one of Jackson’s security guards arrived, Murray told him to call 911. The call was made at 12:20 p.m.

“I love Mr. Jackson. He was my friend,” Murray told the police. “He opened up to me in different ways and I wanted to help him as much as I can.”

The physician added, “He was a single parent and I always thought about his children, as I would think about mine.”

What it means for the trialAlthough it was offered by prosecutors, the tape recorded account presents some useful openings for Murray’s defense team.

Murray has been charged with involuntary manslaughter for his role in Jackson’s death. If convicted he faces up to four years in prison and loss of his medical license.

Murray’s lawyers maintain that the doctor did not administer a fatal dose of propofol. They suggest that Jackson – frustrated by his inability to sleep – somehow self administered the deadly dose.

In his June 27, 2009 taped statement, Murray told police that Jackson wanted to infuse the propofol into his own system. Jackson told Murray other doctors had allowed him to do so.

“I refused him that option,” Murray said on the tape. He said the anesthetic is so fast acting that self dosing would be dangerous.

The most important aspect of the tape recording for prosecutors is that it highlights an extremely selective account of Jackson’s final hours – particularly the critical minutes from 11 a.m. to the arrival of paramedics at 12:26 p.m.

According to prior witnesses and telephone records, Murray was talking on his cellphone to his office and his girlfriend during the critical hour between his injection of propofol into Jackson and his apparent discovery that Jackson was in danger at around 11:56 a.m.

It is unclear why 911 was not called immediately. It is also unclear why at certain moments during that crucial time Murray appeared to be trying to clean up drug vials and a drip bag before paramedics would arrive in Jackson’s bedroom.

Ultimately, the case against Murray will come down to the issue of whether he acted recklessly or instead provided appropriate care to Jackson.

“I took all precautions that were available to me,” he told the detectives. “I made sure there was oxygen at the bedside, that he was placed on oxygen every night.” He added that he used a finger tip oximeter to track Jackson’s heart rate.

But medical experts say it is unheard of to administer propofol in a residential bedroom. The anesthetic requires monitoring devices with alarms, a full array of resuscitation equipment, and the constant attention of a skilled anesthesiologist, they say.

The trial is set to continue on Tuesday.

IN PICTURES: Michael Jackson – King of Pop

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Police: Md. pilot watched mom die, swam to shore (AP)

HAGERSTOWN, Md. – A pilot watched his injured, 78-year-old mother die in the rough waters of the Chesapeake Bay as they both tried to swim to safety after his single-engine airplane crashed and sank more than a mile off the shore of Smith Island, Maryland State Police said Monday.

Lanson C Ross III, 48, of Fort Washington, was treated for minor injuries after reaching the island at about 8 p.m. Sunday, more than four hours after his Globe GC-1 Swift plane disappeared from radar. Police said the plane was about three miles southwest of the island when it disappeared.

His mother was Mary L. Lagerquist, of Sequim, Wash.

Ross told police that he had flown his mother in the two-seater on Sunday from Hyde Field in Clinton to Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. They were starting their trip back to Clinton when the plane malfunctioned, he said. Police say Ross radioed the nearby Patuxent River Naval Air Station and told them he would try to reach Smith Island.

He told police he was forced to land in the water and the plane sank rapidly after he and his mother got out. Ross said his mother was hurt but managed to swim about a mile with his help.

"Ross said after about a mile of swimming in rough water with waves three to five feet high, his mother passed away Ross continued on and was able to reach the island," Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley said in a written statement.

The plane hasn't been found, Shipley said.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it has assigned an investigator to the case.

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UK police: Cops protected Olympics sites in riots (AP)

LONDON – British police revealed Tuesday that they sent officers to protect major shopping centers and the 2012 Olympics sites after intercepting phone and social network messages saying they were targets for rioters.

Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens of London's Metropolitan Police told a committee of lawmakers that police sent extra officers to London's Oxford Circus, two malls and the Olympic Park on Aug. 8 after seeing messages on Twitter and the BlackBerry devices of people who had been arrested for rioting.

Owens said that "through Twitter and BBM there was intelligence that the Olympic site, Westfields (shopping malls) and Oxford Street were going to be targeted."

"We were able to secure all those places and indeed there was no damage at any of them," she said, according to London's Evening Standard newspaper.

Police and politicians claim young criminals used Twitter and Blackberry's simple and largely cost-free messaging service to coordinate looting sprees during the riots.

The government has said it will debate whether cell phone services could be disrupted or blackouts imposed on social networks during riots — proposals that have already been fiercely opposed by civil libertarians.

The acting chief of London's police force, Tim Godwin, told Parliament's home affairs committee that police had considered seeking approval to switch off such services, but decided against it. He said the legality of such action was "very questionable," and social networks were a useful intelligence asset.

Police have arrested more than 3,000 people over riots that erupted Aug. 6 in north London and flared for four nights across the capital and other English cities.

A 16-year-old boy was ordered Tuesday to stand trial for the murder of a retiree attacked when he confronted rioters in London, as judges and prosecutors used tough punishment and name-and-shame tactics against hundreds of alleged participants in the mayhem.

The government said police would get better training and stronger powers to deal with a new and unpredictable era of street disturbances.

"We will make sure police have the powers they need," said Home Secretary Theresa May — including, she suggested, the power to impose blanket curfews in troubled areas.

A teenager, who has not been named because of his age, appeared in court Tuesday accused of killing 68-year-old Richard Bowes, who was found lying in a street during violence in Ealing, west London, on Aug. 8.

CCTV footage captured Bowes being punched and falling to the pavement after he tried to stamp out a fire set by rioters. He died of head injuries three days later.

The suspect, dressed in a black shirt and with his arms crossed, was charged with murder, violent disorder and the burglary of a bookmakers, a supermarket, a video store and a restaurant.

He did not enter a plea and was ordered detained as he awaits trial at the Central Criminal Court.

The boy's 31-year-old mother has been charged with obstructing the police investigation. She also was denied bail.

So far about 1,400 people have been charged with riot-related offenses. More than 1,200 have appeared in court — often in chaotic, round-the clock-sessions dispensing justice that is swifter, and harsher, than usual.

Although a public opinion favors stern punishment for rioters, a few cases have made headlines and sparked debate. A London man received six months in jail for stealing a case of water worth 3.5 pounds ($5) from a looted supermarket. A Manchester mother of two who did not take part in the riots was sentenced to five months for wearing a pair of looted shorts her roommate had brought home.

Most of the convicted suspects have been sent for sentencing to higher courts which have the power to impose longer terms of imprisonment. Two-thirds of the accused have not been granted bail. The usual rate for the magistrates' courts hearing their cases is 10 percent.

Although Prime Minister David Cameron said last week that those who participated in the riots should go to prison, the government denied trying to influence the judiciary.

The courts service said "sentencing is a matter for the independent judiciary," though it acknowledged that magistrates in London were being told by their legal advisers "to consider whether their powers of punishment are sufficient in dealing with some cases arising from the recent disorder."

May, the home secretary, said she had pressed prosecutors to lift anonymity from underage defendants convicted of riot-related offenses. Defendants under 18 are customarily offered anonymity by law, even if they are convicted.

Five people died during the unrest, including three men hit by a car in Birmingham, central England as they protected local shops from looters. Two men and a teenage boy have been charged with murdering Haroon Jahan, 20, and brothers Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31.

Several suspects have also been questioned about the death of a man who was shot in the head during rioting in south London.

The Association of British Insurers has estimated the cost from wrecked and stolen property at 200 million pounds ($326 million) but expects the total to rise.

___

David Stringer contributed to this report.

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U.K. police hit out at Cameron's hiring of U.S. crime guru (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – British police chiefs Sunday hit back at Prime Minister David Cameron's plans to enlist a U.S. crime expert after last week's riots, as the conservative leader vowed "zero tolerance" against street violence.

Cameron, criticized by some in his party as being too liberal on crime and punishment, has taken a tough stance after four nights of looting and arson hit cities across England.

"We haven't talked the language of zero tolerance enough, but the message is getting through," Cameron said in an interview in the Sunday Telegraph.

The prime minister, who has suggested the initial police response to the riots was too timid, has enlisted former New York, Los Angeles and Boston police chief William Bratton to advise his coalition on how to tackle street gangs, which he blamed for much of the violence.

But senior police officers, who have criticized the Conservative-led coalition's plans for police cuts, have reacted skeptically to the plan. "I am not sure I want to learn about gangs from an area of America that has 400 of them," Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, told the Independent Sunday.

"It seems to me, if you've got 400 gangs, then you're not being very effective. If you look at the style of policing in the States, and their levels of violence, they are so fundamentally different from here," said Orde, a front runner for the position of head of London's police.

Cameron has dismissed suggestions that political and economic grievances lay behind the violence which killed five people, calling it "criminality pure and simple."

More than 2,800 people have been arrested and courts have worked around the clock and during the weekend to clear a third of those cases.

Two men, aged 17 and 26, were charged late Saturday with the murder of three Muslim men knocked down in Birmingham while trying to protect their communities.

About 20,000 people were due to attend a multi-faith peace march Sunday in the central England city with the aim of keeping a lid on any potential racial tension.

PUBLIC UNHAPPY WITH RESPONSE

The riots have shocked Britons, many of whom are still asking why the mass disturbances occurred, and were allowed to spread so quickly from London to other major English cities with arsonists and looters seemingly taking over many streets with ease.

A ComRes poll for the Independent Sunday and Sunday Mirror newspapers found only 29 percent of voters thought Cameron and his government had handled the riots well, while 48 percent were dissatisfied with the response.

The mass disturbances, the worst in decades, began in Tottenham, north London, after a demonstration against the police shooting of a suspect.

Most offenders are unemployed young men, though they have included a millionaire's daughter, a charity worker, a journalism student and a soldier.

The Liberal Democrats, the junior coalition partner, have been more restrained in their comments, and its deputy leader Simon Hughes, writing in the Observer newspaper, advised against "knee-jerk solutions including over-hasty moves to change the social contract and approaches to sentences."

Planned police cuts include reducing the national police budget by 20 percent, with the loss of about 16,000 officers, as the government deals with a record budget deficit.

Theresa May, the interior minister, said the planned cuts would go ahead. She told Sky News: "I know it is possible to make cuts in police budgets without affecting their ability to do the job the public want them to do."

Finance minister George Osborne told the BBC Saturday that throwing money at the problem was not the answer, saying the country needed to tackle deep-seated social problems.

But the ComRes poll showed 70 percent of people thought the cuts should be immediately reversed.

Opinion polls during the past week have seen Britons calling for stronger police measures, including imposing curfews, being allowed to use water cannon and rubber bullets.

Cities were largely quiet Friday and Saturday after police flooded the streets again to ensure weekend drinking did not reignite the rioting.

"What became clear was that although the Met had put more officers on the streets Monday night that hadn't actually been sufficient," May told Sky News.

"The Met commissioner came forward with proposals, the prime minister and I were very clear about two things. We wanted to see a presence on the streets, we also wanted to see a tougher arrest policy, that has been followed through."

The government's police cuts have been questioned by Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson, less than year before the city hosts the Olympics.

"The general movement (of police numbers) has got to be static or at least upwards, and that is vital for policing in London," he told Sky.

(Editing by Rosalind Russell)

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Norway police to interview gunman Friday on new leads (AFP)

OSLO (AFP) – Norwegian police said they will question Anders Behring Breivik again on Friday after new information emerged relating to his killing spree, as prosecutors warned he would not go on trial before 2012.

Friday's interrogation will be only the second time police have quizzed the far-right extremist since Saturday, the morning after his shooting rampage on Utoeya island and the bomb blast in downtown Oslo that together killed 76 people.

Police official Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby said officers will question Behring Breivik on "the information received over the last few days -- which is a lot," although he did not reveal the nature of the information.

European counter-terrorism experts met in Brussels to look at wider lessons that can be drawn from the attacks, and an Oslo gun club said Behring Breivik had been a member since 2005.

But as the depth and complexity of the investigation spread, the Norwegian king's prosecutor general Tor Aksel Busch -- the country's highest legal officer -- said time would be required to sift through the evidence.

"We hope that we can conduct the court trial in the course of next year," he said, adding that Behring Breivik's indictment "will not be ready before the end of the year."

The possibility that the killer had been working with anyone else was receding, officials said, despite an international intelligence probe.

That possibility "has become weaker over time," police spokesman Henning Holtaas told AFP, although "we are checking all his communications."

He did not confirm that Behring Breivik was carrying the walkie-talkie radio on Utoeya island, where he shot 68 mostly young people dead, but two witnesses have said he was.

"He was dressed like a policeman. He had all the equipment -- the walkie-talkie, the arms, everything," 15-year-old survivor Jo Granli Kallset told AFP.

A functioning walkie-talkie would not reach much further than the mainland as little as half a mile away.

Locals have cast doubt on whether the device would be anything more than a prop as part of his disguise as a police officer.

Behring Breivik boasted before the attack in a 1,500-page manifesto that he was one of up to 80 "solo martyr cells" recruited across western Europe to topple governments tolerant of Islam.

Norway's intelligence service has been liaising with counterparts across Europe and in the United States but has found nothing so far to verify the gunman's claims of active cells forming a terror "organisation," made during a court hearing and in the tract.

Norway's intelligence services chief Janne Kristiansen said in an interview with AFP that the possibility the killer had acted as a "lone wolf" could make it more difficult for police to uncover his trail.

"He has done this very carefully and meticulously and so far he has succeeded in avoiding any radar, or radar of the secret services."

European Union terrorism experts meeting in Brussels warned that the bloodbath in Norway, which they said was almost "impossible to prevent", simply underlined the need for stronger European counter-terrorism action, both against "lone wolves" and all forms of extremism.

Police are still searching the waters around Utoeya and the bomb site in downtown Oslo for missing persons, although they said Thursday that the land search on the island had ended.

Officials did not revise their tolls from the two attacks. Eight people died in an initial car bomb blast in central Oslo that also sowed confusion among the police before the shooting spree.

Norwegian police on Thursday released the identities of 24 more people, aged between 14 and 30, all but one of whom were killed on Utoeya island.

The list included one Georgian, and brought the total number of confirmed dead whose names have been made public to 41.

Survivor Emma Martinovic told in a blog entry how "I heard the bastard laugh, I heard him shout 'you won't get away'," testimonials emerged to a lost generation of future Norwegian political leaders so brutally cut down.

These included Anders Kristiansen, an 18-year-old whose mother said he "dreamed of becoming prime minister since the age of five," and whose shining talent was lauded by Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere in the national press.

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Norway police say bomb seems to have caused blast (Reuters)

OSLO (Reuters) – Norwegian police said that a blast that rocked central Oslo Friday seemed to have been a bomb and that explosives may have been placed in a car.

"It was a bomb," Sveinung Sponheim, acting police chief at Oslo police, told a news conference. He later said, however, that it was an explosion, adding that "explosions are caused by explosives."

Another senior police officer, Thor Langli, told Reuters that "it may have been a car bomb."

Oslo police Friday also confirmed that a shooting incident had occurred at Utoeya, an island south of Oslo where Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's Labor party's youth section's yearly gathering was taking place.

Norwegian daily VG said on its website a man dressed as a policeman was shooting wildly and had hit many. It was unclear if the shooting was linked to the blast in Oslo.

(Reporting by Oslo newsroom)

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UK police now asked to investigate phone 'pinging' (AP)

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER and JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Raphael G. Satter And Jill Lawless, Associated Press – 1?hr?35?mins?ago

LONDON – With Britain still coming to terms with the illegal voicemail interception at one of its biggest newspapers, Scotland Yard was asked Thursday to look into an even more intrusive technique: "Pinging."

A member of the board that oversees London's police force has asked it to investigate claims that News of the World reporters paid officers to obtain people's locations by tracking their cell phone signals — a practice known as "pinging" because of how cell phones signals bounce or "ping" off relay towers as they try to find reception.

Jenny Jones, a Green Party member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, cited claims that reporters at the now-defunct tabloid were able to trace mobile phones in return for payments to corrupt police officers.

The allegation was made by the late Sean Hoare, a former News of the World reporter who spoke to the New York Times about skullduggery at the tabloid. Hoare — who was fired in 2005 — said that officers were paid 300 pounds (nearly $500) per trace. The paper cited a second unnamed former News of the World journalist as corroborating Hoare's claim.

Hoare was found dead on Monday at his home near London; police say the death is not suspicious.

Jones is asking Scotland Yard to examine the records of all cases in which police accessed phone-tracking data "to ensure those were valid requests."

In an interview with The Associated Press, Jones said that going through the cell phone tracing requests "is a relatively simple way of finding corrupt officers" given that it would be clear who was being targeted and when.

"The information is there and you can check," she said.

Pinging joins a host of alleged media misdeeds being put under the microscope as police, politicians, and the public weigh allegations that journalists at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World engaged in years of lawless behavior to get scoops.

What began in 2005 as a slow-burning scandal over one reporter's efforts to spy on voicemails left on the phones of Britain's royal household has exploded into a crisis which has shaken Murdoch's media empire and led to resignations of two of Scotland Yard's most senior officers.

British politicians have felt the heat too, with the country's top two party leaders falling over each other to distance themselves from papers they once both courted assiduously.

Prime Minister David Cameron's former communications director — a veteran of the Murdoch press — came under fresh scrutiny Thursday after it was reported that he did not have a top-level security clearance, which spared him from the most stringent type of vetting.

The Guardian said that Andy Coulson, a former editor of the News of the World, would have been vetted when he went to work for Cameron once he became prime minister last year. The fact that he didn't have a top-level clearance "will fuel suggestions that Cameron failed to take proper steps to check allegations that Coulson had been involved in illegal behavior," the paper said.

The Cabinet Office, which oversees the civil service, said all employees in the prime minister's office have at least the second-highest level of clearance. They would be subject to a check of company records, credit and MI5 records. An interview can be required if any security concerns are unresolved.

A spokeswoman at Cameron's office said the level of vetting depended on whether someone had access to top secret material. She declined to comment on why Coulson didn't have that level of clearance.

"We don't comment on individual vetting," she said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

Cameron was asked several times about the issue in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

"He had a basic level of vetting," Cameron said. "He was not able to see the most secret documents in the government."

When the question was raised again, Cameron said, "I feel that a number of honorable members are looking for some sort of secret behind a curtain that simply is not there."

Helen Goodman, one of the opposition Labour Party members, said "one can but speculate" why Coulson would not have been subjected to the highest level of vetting.

"Your guess about the prime minister's motives is as good as mine, but I certainly haven't had clear answers from him so far," Goodman said.

Although the issue had been covered off-and-on over the years, almost exclusively by the Guardian, allegations of illegal behavior at the News of the World received feverish attention after July 4, when it was alleged that someone there had hacked the phone of 13-year-old murder victim Milly Dowler at a time when police were still searching for her.

The temperature cooled a bit on Thursday, with Parliament closed for the first day of its summer recess, but the investigation appeared to be intensifying.

London's Metropolitan Police said Wednesday that it was assigning 15 more officers to help the 45 already involved in the investigation.

News Corp., meanwhile, said it had instructed the law firm of Harbottle and Lewis to answer police questions about emails and other documents from an internal investigation at News of the World in 2007. That inquiry said found no evidence that Coulson was aware of hacking by reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Both were sentenced to prison for hacking into phones of the royal household.

Harbottle and Lewis had said there was no evidence of wider criminality at the newspaper.

The file of emails and document was turned over to police in June.

Ken MacDonald, the former director of public prosecutions, reviewed emails from that file which related to payments to police. He had been hired to advise the News Corp. board.

On Tuesday, MacDonald told a parliamentary committee that it took no more than five minutes to read the material. "I cannot imagine anyone looking at that file and not seeing evidence of crime on its face," MacDonald said.

Since the Milly Dowler hacking was reported, London's police chief and the head of its antiterrorist operations have resigned; so have Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, which runs Murdoch's British papers, and Les Hinton, a longtime associate of Murdoch who formerly headed News International. The News of the World was shut down, leaving 200 employees looking for work, and the BSkyB bid was shelved.

Shutting News of the World apparently will cost Rupert Murdoch's surviving British newspapers their exclusive access to British athletes ahead of the 2012 London Olympics.

Team 2012, an initiative supporting British Olympians, had signed up News International as its official partner to help raise funds for athletes. But without the News of the World, Team 2012 said News International can no longer meet its contractual obligations, and it is looking for new media partners.

___

Robert Barr and Cassandra Vinograd contributed to this report.

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Police: Phone-hacking whistleblower found dead (AP)

By JILL LAWLESS and CASSANDRA VINOGRAD, Associated Press Jill Lawless And Cassandra Vinograd, Associated Press – 1?min?ago

LONDON – Britain's tabloid phone-hacking scandal enveloped the London police force Monday with the rapid-fire resignations of two top officers and claims of possible illegal eavesdropping, bribery and collusion. U.K officials immediately vowed to investigate.

Prime Minister David Cameron, feeling the political heat from his own close ties to individuals within Rupert Murdoch's media empire, cut short his trip to Africa and called an emergency session of Parliament for Wednesday so he could address lawmakers on the scandal.

U.K lawmakers on Tuesday will grill Murdoch, his son James and Rebekah Brooks, the ousted chief executive of Murdoch's U.K. newspaper arm, in a widely anticipated televised public hearing on the scandal. Lawmakers hope to learn more about the scale of phone hacking by U.K. journalists and who — if anyone — in Murdoch's empire was aware of what allegedly took place at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid.

One of the first voices to blow the whistle on the phone hacking — former News of the World journalist Sean Hoare — was found dead Monday in Watford, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of London. Police said the death was being treated as unexplained but was not considered suspicious, according to Britain's Press Association.

Hoare was quoted by The New York Times saying that phone hacking — listening to the voice mail of celebrities, politicians, other journalists or even murder victims — was widely used and even encouraged at the News of the World under then-editor Andy Coulson.

Coulson — who most recently served as Prime Minister David Cameron's communications chief — was arrested as part of the widening investigation into phone hacking and police corruption.

The crisis has also triggered upheaval in the upper ranks of Britain's police. Monday's resignation of Assistant Commissioner John Yates — Scotland Yard's top anti-terrorist officer — followed that Sunday of police chief Paul Stephenson — both for links to an arrested former executive from Murdoch's shuttered News of the World tabloid.

The scandal over Murdoch journalists hacking into cell phones for scoops and paying police for information has knocked billions off the value of Murdoch's News Corp. The media baron was already forced to shut down the 168-year-old News of the World tabloid, accept the resignations of top deputies in Britain and in the U.S. and abandon his dream of taking full control of a lucrative satellite broadcaster, British Sky Broadcasting.

Britain's police watchdog on Monday said it had received allegations of potential wrongdoing in connection with phone hacking against four senior officers — Stephenson, Yates and two former senior officers. One of the claims is that Yates inappropriately helped get a job for the daughter of former News of the World editor, Neil Wallis, one of 10 people arrested in the scandal.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission said it was looking into the claims.

Yates insisted he had done nothing wrong. "I have acted with complete integrity," he said. "My conscience is clear."

But the government quickly announced an inquiry into police-media relations and corruption.

"Who polices the police?" asked Home Secretary Theresa May as she announced an inquiry into "instances of undue influence, inappropriate contractual arrangements and other abuses of power in police relationships with the media and other parties."

London's police force is also under intense pressure to explain why its original hacking investigation failed to find evidence to prosecute anyone other than a single reporter and a private investigator.

Yates was the official who decided two years ago not to reopen police inquiries into phone hacking and police bribery by tabloid journalists, saying he did not believe there was any new evidence to consider.

Detectives reopened the investigation earlier this year and now say they have the names of 3,700 potential hacking targets — celebrities, politicians, other journalists and even murder victims.

Cameron is under heavy pressure after the resignations of Stephenson and Yates, and Sunday's arrest of Brooks — a friend and neighbor whom he has met with at least six times since entering office 14 months ago.

Brooks was arrested on suspicion of hacking into the cell phones of people in the news and bribing police for information to fuel sensational scoops for her gossipy tabloids.

Cameron's critics grew louder in London as the prime minister visited South Africa on a two-day visit to the continent. The trip was already cut in half by the crisis and Cameron trimmed another seven hours from his itinerary as his government faced growing questions about its cozy relationship with the Murdoch empire.

Parliament was to break for the summer but Cameron demanded that lawmakers reconvene Wednesday "so I can make a further statement."

Cameron insisted his Conservative-led government had "taken very decisive action" by setting up a judge-led inquiry into the wrongdoing at the now-defunct Murdoch tabloid News of the World and into the overall relations between British politicians, the media and police.

"We have helped to ensure a large and properly resourced police investigation that can get to the bottom of what happened, and wrongdoing, and we have pretty much demonstrated complete transparency in terms of media contact," Cameron said.

But opposition leader Ed Miliband said Cameron needed to answer "a whole series of questions" about his relationships with Brooks, James Murdoch and Coulson, the former News of the World editor whom Cameron later hired as his communications chief. Coulson resigned from that post in January was arrested earlier this month in the scandal.

"At the moment, he seems unable to provide the leadership the country needs," Miliband said of Cameron.

At Tuesday's televised hearing, politicians will seek more details from the two Murdochs and Brooks about the scale of criminality at the News of the World. The Murdochs will try to avoid incriminating themselves or doing more harm to their business without misleading Parliament, which is a crime.

The showdown comes as James Murdoch — chairman of BSkyB and chief executive of his father's European and Asian operations — appears increasingly isolated following the departure of Brooks.

James Murdoch did not directly oversee the News of the World, but he approved payments to some of the paper's most prominent hacking victims, including 700,000 pounds ($1.1 million) to Professional Footballers' Association chief Gordon Taylor. That could make him a possible candidate for arrest or resignation.

James Murdoch said last week that he "did not have a complete picture" when he approved the payouts.

Murdoch is eager to stop the crisis from spreading to the United States, where many of his most lucrative assets — including the Fox TV network, 20th Century Fox film studio, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post — are based.

News Corp. on Monday appointed lawyer Anthony Grabiner to run its Management and Standards Committee, which will deal with the phone hacking scandal. It said the committee will cooperate with all investigations on hacking and alleged police payments, and carry out its own inquiries.

In New York, News Corp.'s widely traded Class A shares fell 69 cents, or 4.4 percent, to $14.96 in early afternoon trading on Monday. The shares are down 15.5 percent since the end of June.

Judd Legum, a media expert at the Washington-based Center for American Progress, said there was "potential liability" in the U.S. for News Corp., which could face substantial fines if found to have violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He said the Justice Department had been aggressively pursuing such cases.

"Even if it happens abroad, under U.S. law you can't bribe foreign officials for business," said Legum, noting that investigators would have to determine whether top executives were "directly involved" in bribery if individual prosecutions were to proceed.

Stephenson, the London police chief, resigned Sunday over his ties to Wallis, who has been arrested in the scandal and was employed as a part time PR consultant to the force for a year until September. He said he had nothing to do with the earlier phone hacking inquiry or with Wallis, but was resigning to allow his agency to focus on the London 2012 Olympics instead of leadership changes.

Yates, also accused of links to Wallis, resigned after being told he would be suspended pending an ethics investigation. Yates will be replaced by Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick on an interim basis.

At an 2003 appearance before U.K. lawmakers, Brooks admitted that News International had paid police for information. But she has always said she did not know any phone hacking was going on when she was editor of the News of the World between 2000 and 2003 — a claim many find hard to believe.

It was under Brooks' watch that News of the World journalists accessed the phone of slain teenager Milly Dowler in 2002 while police were looking for the missing 13-year-old — a revelation that has fueled outrage in Britain.

Brooks was detained and questioned for nine hours Sunday before being released on bail. Her lawyer, Stephen Parkinson, released a defiant statement Monday professing her innocence, and saying that police would "have to give an account of their actions" considering "the enormous reputational damage" the arrest had caused her.

Police have arrested 10 people in all, including other former News of the World reporters and editors, but on Monday cleared one of them, Press Association royal reporter Laura Elston. No one has been charged in the investigations.

___

Meera Selva, Danica Kirka and Christopher Torchia contributed to this report.

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Top British police quit as PM pressed over hacking (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) – Britain's phone-hacking scandal claimed the scalps of two top policeman as Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday cut short a trip to Africa to deal with a crisis that threatens his own position.

Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who refused to reopen an investigation into the now-defunct News of the World tabloid in 2009, resigned Monday, a day after the departure of his boss Paul Stephenson, chief of London's Metropolitan Police.

Yates had expressed regret last week over his earlier decision that the inquiry into the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper did not need to be revived, but pinned the blame on Murdoch's empire for failing to cooperate.

"Assistant Commissioner John Yates has this afternoon indicated his intention to resign," said a Scotland Yard statement. "This has been accepted."

Yates was one of the Met's most senior officers and had responsibility for special operations, but came under fire after dectectives reopened the investigation in 2011 and found thousands of alleged hacking victims.

He quit when he found out he was about to be suspended.

As the scandal kept scything through the heart of the British establishment, Cameron's aides announced that he would cut short a visit to South Africa and Nigeria, flying back on Tuesday evening instead of early Wednesday.

They said the Conservative leader wanted to prepare a statement that he will deliver during an emergency session of parliament on Wednesday, having delayed the summer break for lawmakers for a day.

Cameron has also been forced to defend his own position after Stephenson, Britain's most senior police officer, took a swipe at the prime minister's decision to hire former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his media chief.

Stephenson quit on Sunday over the force's hiring of Neil Wallis -- who was deputy to Coulson at the tabloid -- and over a spa break he accepted from a firm where Wallis was a consultant.

"I don't believe the two situations are the same in any way, shape or form," Cameron told a joint news conference in Pretoria with South African President Jacob Zuma when asked about a comparison with the troubles at Scotland Yard.

Coulson resigned from Downing Street in January and was arrested on July 8. Wallis was arrested on July 14.

Opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband piled pressure on Cameron -- also facing criticism for his social contacts with Murdoch aides -- by calling on him to apologise for hiring Coulson.

Asked whether Cameron should consider his position, Miliband said there was a "sharp contrast between his actions and the honourable actions of Sir Paul Stephenson who resigned over the hiring of Mr Coulson's deputy."

Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of Murdoch's British newspaper unit, News International, and editor of News of the World when it allegedly hacked a murdered girl's phone, was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of phone hacking and bribing police. Her lawyer Stephen Parkinson said she was "not guilty of any criminal offence" and that Scotland Yard would have to account for the "enormous reputational damage" to the 43-year-old -- who is a personal friend of Cameron's.

He said she still planned to testify alongside the Australian-born Murdoch and his son James, who is chairman of News International, before a committee of British lawmakers on Tuesday.

At a previous hearing in 2003 the flame-haired Brooks, the 10th person and most senior Murdoch aide to be arrested over the scandal, admitted the paper had made payments to police.

An original police investigation into the tabloid in 2006 led to the jailing of its former royal editor and a private investigator, but it later emerged that thousands more celebrities, royals and even crime victims also had their voicemails targeted by alleged "industrial-scale" hacking.

The chairman of a British parliamentary committee which grilled Yates last week over his refusal to reopen the investigation told him his evidence had been "unconvincing".

Senior police officers have since faced criticism for having a series of dinners with top News of the World executives.

Murdoch's US-based News Corp. is in crisis, having also had to abandon its bid for full control of pay-TV giant BSkyB and accept the resignations on Friday of Dow Jones chief Les Hinton, who had worked with the media baron for 52 years.

Shares in News Corp. plummeted 5.82 percent in Australian trade on Monday.

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Second police chief quits as scandal pressures Cameron (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – A second senior British policeman resigned Monday over the corruption scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch's global media empire and forced Prime Minister David Cameron to defend his own position.

Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism chief, John Yates, quit a day after the head of the Metropolitan Police. The force faces a storm of questions from parliament and voters over officers' relationships with the Murdoch press and their failure to probe allegations of phone-hacking by the News of the World.

With events accelerating in an affair that has electrified public life and strained ties among Britain's press, police and politicians, Cameron curtailed a visit to Africa and defended himself from police criticism over his choice of the tabloid's former editor as government spokesman.

Though he faces no challenge yet to his leadership, some of his Conservative supporters began to raise the possibility, albeit remote, that Cameron might face pressure to go himself. He will return from Africa late Tuesday, rather than early Wednesday, to face a new parliamentary debate on the scandal.

Following the arrest Sunday of Murdoch's British newspaper chief Rebekah Brooks, a personal friend of Cameron and one of two top News Corp executives to resign on Friday, the Murdoch family's management of its global business interests was also being questioned by investors.

The company said it was setting up an independent ethics committee under Anthony Grabiner, a commercial lawyer and member of the upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords.

Rupert Murdoch, 80, and his son and heir apparent James, 38, along with the 43-year-old Brooks, a former editor of the News of the World, will be quizzed by the media committee of the lower house Tuesday in what promises to be a fiery showdown.

News Corp shares were 3.7 percent down in New York. That was over 16 percent lower than when news broke on July 4 that police were investigating whether journalists in 2002 had hacked voicemail for a missing teen-ager who was later found murdered.

That has reignited a five-year-old scandal that once had seemed limited to spying on the rich, famous and powerful. Ten journalists have been arrested and released on bail.

POLICE CRITICIZE CAMERON

Police, under pressure for failing to probe more widely after the jailing of a News of the World reporter in 2007, have since said an inquiry they relaunched in January has the names of some 4,000 people who may have been spied on, including child crime victims and the parents of soldiers killed in war.

Yates, who was savaged by a parliamentary committee at a public hearing last week, had been the focus of complaints that in 2009 he reviewed evidence of phone-hacking by the News of the World and ruled that it did not merit reopening inquiries. The mayor of London said Yates, an assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had resigned rather than be suspended.

In stepping down as Britain's top policeman Sunday, Yates's boss Paul Stephenson, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said he could not carry on while investigations continue into the appointment by his force of a former deputy editor of the News of the World as a public relations consultant.

Stephenson also made an unusual, if veiled, personal attack on the prime minister by contrasting Cameron's defiant reaction to revelations about his spokesman Andy Coulson with the police chief tendering his resignation in response to the hiring of Neil Wallis, Coulson's former deputy, as an adviser.

Stephenson noted that Cameron had appointed Coulson in 2007, shortly after Coulson resigned as the paper's editor following the jailing of a reporter for hacking. And he said Wallis had, until this month, not been linked to the scandal at all.

"Unlike Mr. Coulson, Mr. Wallis had not resigned from News of the World or, to the best of my knowledge, been in any way associated with the original phone-hacking investigation," Stephenson said.

Picking up on that, opposition Labor leader Ed Miliband highlighted the "sharp contrast" between Cameron and the police response, but he stopped short of calling outright for the prime minister, in office for only 14 months, to resign.

Cameron, beginning a two-day trip to Africa which had already been curtailed by the need to deal with the scandal, said the case of the government and police was not comparable.

"I don't believe the two situations are the same in any shape or form," he told a news conference in Pretoria.

"There is a contrast with the situation at the Metropolitan Police, where clearly the issues have been around whether or not the investigation is being pursued properly."

Cameron also said parliament would delay its summer recess by a day to let him address lawmakers again Wednesday.

POLITICAL FALLOUT

Cameron, a 44-year-old former public relations executive, revived Conservative fortunes after taking the leadership in 2005, winning power last year after 13 years of Labor rule.

Many see the scandal as his biggest test to date.

His deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, leader of coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, rubbished any suggestion of Cameron's resignation Monday -- analysts note that Clegg's party's own dismal poll ratings after its first taste of power in 70 years ensures they will not provoke an early election.

Asked whether Cameron might be forced out over the scandal, Clegg replied: "Of course not. Let's keep some perspective."

However, some commentators said his troubles were not over.

"This crisis has understandably shaken the Cameron circle. Some dared to hope the storm had passed," wrote Andrew Grice, political editor of the Independent newspaper. "Yesterday they realized the storm is still gathering pace. It could last for years. No one knows where it will end, least of all Mr Cameron."

Iain Dale, a prominent Conservative commentator, wrote on his blog: "I can't believe I am even writing this, but it is no longer an impossibility to imagine this scandal bringing down the prime minister, or even the government."

Yet, he said, that remained far-fetched, as did Toby Young, a commentator blogging at the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph, who cited Cameron's assured demeanor in public and efforts to highlight Labor's own long relationship with the Murdoch press as reasons for expecting the crisis to blow over.

"I don't rule out the prime minister being toppled by this scandal," Young wrote. "I just don't think any of the details that have emerged so far, or his handling of the crisis, put him in serious jeopardy."

MURDOCHS UNDER FIRE

The affair has prompted Murdoch to shut down the 168-year-old News of the World, Britain's top-selling Sunday paper, and to drop a bid for highly profitable BSkyB that was a key part of News Corp's global expansion in television. That in turn has raised questions from investors over the family's management.

"People would rather be cautious and mark it down rather than find a reason to defend it," said Jackson Leung at News Corp shareholder Invesco of the multinational's share price.

James Murdoch is the executive most in the firing line, many analysts believe, following the resignations Friday of Brooks and of her former colleague in London Les Hinton, head of Murdoch's Dow Jones & Co, publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

Shares in British pay-TV network BSkyB, in which News Corp owns 39 percent, were little changed Monday, still 15 percent down on their July 4 level after political uproar forced Murdoch last week to drop the $12-billion buyout bid.

Some minority shareholders said James Murdoch may have to step aside as chairman of the broadcaster.

Labor leader Miliband, who wants to block any future takeover of BSkyB by Murdoch, called for new rules to curb how much of Britain's media could be controlled by one proprietor: "Concentrations of power damage our culture," he said.

Murdoch, who some media commentators say at first misjudged the strength of public anger against a man who has influenced British politics for decades, published apologies in several rival newspapers at the weekend. He also apologized in person to the parents of the murdered schoolgirl whose phone was hacked.

His company, and Cameron's government, are likely to face many uncomfortable moments over the coming months as the police investigation and public inquiry more ahead. However, interest among voters may wane, with an election not likely before 2014.

"If the story continues and starts affecting the government it will obviously be huge. But phone-hacking has been going on for years so why has it gone so big all of a sudden?" said London teacher Robert Rogers, 26.

"It's terrible the victims have had their privacy invaded. But after tomorrow it will all blow over and will be forgotten in a week."

(Additional reporting by Jodie Ginsberg in Pretoria and Stephen Mangan, Christina Fincher, Sven Egenter, Ralph Gowling and Michael Roddy in London; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Myra MacDonald)

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London police chief quits over hacking ties (AP)

LONDON – London's police chief has quit over his links to a former News of the World editor caught up in the phone hacking scandal.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Stephenson denies any wrongdoing.

Stephenson has been criticized for hiring Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive editor arrested last week in the scandal, as a part-time PR consultant for a year until September 2010.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LONDON (AP) — London's police chief has quit over his links to a former News of the World editor caught up in the phone hacking scandal.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Stephenson denies any wrongdoing.

Stephenson has been criticized for hiring Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive editor arrested last week in the scandal, as a part-time PR consultant for a year until September 2010.

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MP, top Karzai aide feared killed: police official (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – Gunmen killed a top advisor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a member of the country's parliament in a residential district of Kabul on Sunday, just days after the president's brother was gunned down at home, officials said.

The spokesman for Kabul's police chief said two or three armed men started a gun battle around 8 o'clock at the house of Jan Mohammad Khan, a former governor of southern Uruzgan province and close aide to the president.

"The battle between gunmen and security forces is still going on," spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai said, adding that the attack began around 8.00 pm local time (1530 GMT).

Lawmaker Hashim Watanwal was also killed, said Stanekzai and Obaidullah Barekzai, a member of parliament from Uruzgan province who had seen the bodies of both men being brought out.

Hours after the attack began, gunfire could still be heard in western Karte Seh district, home to the country's parliament, many Afghan politicians and media and some embassies.

There was a heavy presence of security troops in the area and the streets leading to Khan's home were cordoned off.

The attack came on the day that Afghanistan began a long-promised transition to control of its own security, but the process kicked off in the relatively peaceful central province of Bamiyan, half a day's drive from Kabul.

A surge of U.S. troops has helped improve security in the south of the country over the last year, but there has been spreading insecurity in once peaceful northern areas, fiercer fighting in the east and record civilian casualties.

The first half of this year was the deadliest six months for civilians in the last decade of conflict, with nearly 1,500 killed, the United Nations said in a recent report.

(Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison, editing by Myra MacDonald)

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Police: Someone sabotaging UK newspaper inquiry (AP)

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER and GREGORY KATZ, Associated Press Raphael G. Satter And Gregory Katz, Associated Press – 4?mins?ago

LONDON – British police said Monday they believe someone is trying to sabotage their investigation into Rupert Murdoch's News of The World tabloid by leaking distracting details of the inquiry to the media.

In an unusual statement, Scotland Yard said a story claiming that police tasked with protecting the royal family had sold personal details about the queen and her closest aides was "part of a deliberate campaign to undermine the investigation into the alleged payments by corrupt journalists to corrupt police officers and divert attention from elsewhere."

The British press has been furiously reporting allegations that journalists at the News of the World tabloid hacked into phones of young murder victims, families of dead servicemen and terrorism victims.

The widening scandal has prompted Murdoch's News International to close the tabloid and has since spread to take in allegations that reporters gave officers bribes for tips and other information.

On Monday afternoon London's Evening Standard newspaper and others claimed that bosses at News Corp., News International's parent company, had discovered a series of e-mails indicating that employees had been making payments to members of Scotland Yard's royal and diplomatic protection squad in return for personal details about the monarch and her entourage.

The Evening Standard cited "sources" without saying who the sources were or how they would be in a position to know.

Buckingham Palace has also declined to be drawn on any of the reports.

Scotland Yard has declined to specifically address the claims, but in a statement directly referencing the Standard's story they said that they were "extremely concerned and disappointed that the continuous release of selected information — that is only known by a small number of people — could have a significant impact on the corruption investigation."

So who does Scotland Yard accuse of trying to derail its inquiry?

Police have refused to say — although they named News International and its legal representatives as other parties to its information.

Meanwhile political hostility grew surrounding Murdoch's bid to take over satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg emerged from a meeting with the family of Milly Dowler, the murdered schoolgirl whose phone was allegedly hacked by the News of The World's reporters, to deliver a harsh message to Murdoch. Clegg urge him to do the "decent and sensible thing" and backtrack on his power play.

"I would simply say to him, 'look how people feel about this, look how the country has reacted with revulsion to the revelations," said Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Britain had become accustomed to accounts of the News of the World eavesdropping on royals and celebrities, but revelations that it broke into the cell phone of Dowler, the teenage murder victim — even as her family and police were frantically searching for her — set of a torrent of horror and disbelief.

The fallout could just be beginning.

For now, the News Corp. chief appears focused on scrambling to prevent his controversial $19 billion bid for BSkyB from becoming a casualty of the scandal. But questions are mounting about his future and that of his sprawling business empire amid a wave of global outrage.

Clegg's condemnation of Murdoch — coming as it did even as Prime Minister David Cameron holds his fire — has generated speculation about the health of the Conservatives' coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which was already on shaky footing.

The criminal activities at Murdoch's now shuttered tabloid have given his many adversaries an opening amid signs that the government is leery of its once close ties to Murdoch, who has substantial newspaper, television, film and book publishing interests in Britain, the United States, Australia and other countries.

Murdoch got more bad news Monday when Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who had given preliminary approval to the BSkyB bid, announced plans to ask the communications regulator, Ofcom, whether News Corp. is "fit and proper" to hold a broadcasting license.

He raised questions about whether the phone hacking charges undermine Murdoch's bid for the satellite broadcaster.

"These allegations are stomach-churning and everyone is shaken." Hunt said. "New information has come out in the last week. Things have changed in the last week, and these things have shocked everyone." He said Britain's long tradition of quality journalism is under threat.

If Ofcom decides Murdoch is not fit, a license would be denied. The uncertainty sent BSkyB shares sharply lower Monday.

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Police: Mich. gunman targeted 2 ex-girlfriends (AP)

By TOM COYNE and JOHN FLESHER, Associated Press Tom Coyne And John Flesher, Associated Press – 34?mins?ago

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – An ex-convict who went on a deadly shooting spree targeted two ex-girlfriends, fatally shooting both of them and five members of their families, including his own 12-year-old daughter, police said Friday.

At the start of his hours-long rampage, Rodrick Shonte Dantzler tracked down his daughter and her mother and killed them, along with the mother's own parents. He then went to a different house and killed another former girlfriend, plus her sister and 10-year-old niece.

Dantzler "went out hunting" his victims, Grand Rapids Police Chief Kevin Belk said. He said the gunman used cocaine and alcohol sometime on the day of the slayings.

The 34-year-old former prison inmate began the spree Thursday afternoon before leading police on a high-speed chase through downtown Grand Rapids. He crashed his car and took several hostages in a stranger's home, then killed himself with a shot to the head late that night.

Investigators did not know what triggered the attack, but the police chief said Dantzler appeared to be "mentally unstable."

"I don't have a clinical diagnosis," Belk said. "Clearly he was a very troubled individual."

Records show Dantzler was released from state prison in 2005, after serving time for assault less than murder. A spokesman for the prison system said Dantzler had not been under state supervision since then.

After getting a 911 call that a man had acknowledged killing several people, police went to Dantzler's home, but he wasn't there.

Authorities soon got a call from a woman who said her relatives had been shot. Next came a call about someone finding four gunshot victims at another house.

Officers found three bodies in a home on Plainfield Avenue. An hour later, they discovered the other four across town in a house on a cul-de-sac called Brynell Court.

"It makes no sense to try to rationalize it, what the motives were," Belk said. "You just cannot come up with a logical reason why someone takes seven peoples' lives."

While police were investigating the seven slayings, Belk said, officers received a report of a "road rage" shooting.

Dantzler had apparently shot at a man through the rear window of the vehicle he was driving. Police spotted him, and began a chase that included Dantzler crashing into a patrol car downtown and exchanging gunfire with officers. A female bystander was shot in the shoulder.

Karissa Swanson, 18, said her mother was the woman who was shot, and that she had known Dantzler for many years.

Swanson said her mother, 35-year-old April Swanson, was driving and chatting on her cellphone when Dantzler suddenly pulled up beside her.

"My mom turned her head and he was right there, yelling her name, like, `April, April, I gotta talk, I gotta talk to you,'" Swanson said. "So my mom hung up the phone and called the police and was like, `He's right next to me.'"

The daughter said Dantzler chased her mother until they got caught at a stoplight, when he shot at her car.

Pickup driver Robert Poore, who also was shot during the chase, told police that the bullet ricocheted off a titanium plate that had been inserted in his nose during cancer treatment when he was a child, according to WOOD-TV. Poore suffered only minor injuries.

Dantzler drove a sport utility vehicle north from downtown and onto Interstate 96, crossing a grassy median and heading the wrong way down the highway while more than a dozen squad cars pursued him.

He eventually crashed the vehicle while driving down an embankment into a wooded area.

Dantzler then made his way toward a nearby home, firing several shots as he forced his way inside and took hostages he did not know, police said. Dozens of officers with guns drawn cordoned off the neighborhood in the northern part of the city.

That was around 7:30 p.m. Over the next five hours, Dantzler alternately threatened to shoot the hostages and pleaded with police to take him out, even asking negotiators whether there were snipers outside the home and where he should stand. He sometimes fired his gun at officers and inside the home, Belk said.

Authorities identified the dead as: 29-year-old Jennifer Marie Heeren, an ex-girlfriend; 12-year-old Kamrie Deann Heeren-Dantzler, Dantzler's daughter; 52-year-old Rebecca Lynn Heeren, Jennifer Heeren's mother; 51-year-old Thomas Heeren, her father; 23-year-old Kimberlee Ann Emkens, a woman Dantzler had previously dated; 27-year-old Amanda Renee Emkens, Kimberlee Emkens' sister; and 10-year-old Marissa Lynn Emkens, Amanda Emkens' daughter.

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Associated Press writers Kathy Barks Hoffman in Grand Rapids, and Corey Williams, Jeff Karoub and David N. Goodman in Detroit contributed to this report.

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NATO air strike kills 13 civilians: Afghan police (AFP)

KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) – Up to 13 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in a NATO air strike on Thursday in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, provincial police chief Mohamad Zazai said.

The coalition said those killed were family members of insurgents who also died in the strike that was called in after Afghan-led forces came under fire.

The deaths triggered protests blocking the main highway to Kabul nearby, with civilian casualties in Western military operations extremely sensitive in war-torn Afghanistan, where the Taliban have waged a decade-long insurgency.

"Unfortunately eight women, four children, and one man were killed in a NATO air strike on a residential house in Dowamanda district early this morning," Zazai said, adding that four Taliban-linked Haqqani militants were also killed.

"The body of a Haqqani commander and three fighters have also been recovered from the vicinity of the house. A delegation has been sent to investigate the incident," he said.

A spokesman for the provincial governor confirmed that civilians had been killed in the incident but gave no further details.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said those killed were family members of the Haqqani network, which is a target of the alliance force. It did not say how many civilians were among the dead.

A spokesman for the coalition said Afghan-led forces had gone in search of the insurgents when they came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire.

"Responding to the insurgent attack, the security forces returned fire and called in an air weapons team. The subsequent air strike killed several insurgents and unintentionally a number of associated family members," he said.

The air strike came a day after provincial authorities in southern Ghazni province said two civilians were killed and one other injured in another military incident. NATO said it was looking into the allegations.

Eight Afghan policemen were meanwhile killed Thursday when their vehicle struck a mine in Jawzjan province in northern Afghanistan, police in the province said.

Police also said that six Afghan policemen and a civilian were killed in another landmine blast in the restive southern province of Uruzgan late Wednesday.

The Taliban were not available to comment on the attacks but roadside bombs are one of their most widely used weapons against the Western-backed Afghan government.

Civilians are the biggest casualties in the near 10-year war in Afghanistan, where 150,000 foreign forces are stationed.

Last year was the bloodiest yet for civilians, with the United Nations recording 2,777 fatalities.

In May this year alone, a total of 368 civilians were killed, 301 of them in insurgent attacks, according to figures released by the UN mission in Afghanistan, making it the deadliest month for civilians since at least 2007.

The UN has blamed insurgents for more than three-quarters of the civilian deaths last year, but the issue enflames anger among ordinary Afghans toward foreign forces, as they blame NATO's presence for the increased danger.

The latest civilian deaths are a reminder of the depth of the task facing the Afghan government as it takes increasing responsibility for security following the announcement of the first wave of foreign troop withdrawals.

The United States has announced that 33,000 "surge" forces will leave the war by the end of next summer, while Britain has said another 500 troops will return next year. France and Belgium have also announced limited withdrawals.

Civilian casualties are a huge bone of contention between foreign forces and President Hamid Karzai who issued a "last warning" to the military in early June to avoid "arbitrary and unnecessary" operations that kill civilians.

Those comments came after he said 14 people died in an air strike in southern Helmand province. NATO said nine civilians were killed in the strike.

In another high-profile case this year, two NATO helicopters killed nine Afghan boys as they collected firewood in northeastern Afghanistan, leading to a rare apology from the US commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.

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Israel deploys airport police to screen activists (AP)

JERUSALEM – Israel deployed hundreds of extra police at its already heavily guarded international airport Thursday and asked European airlines to bar potential troublemakers from Tel Aviv-bound flights in anticipation of the arrival of hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists.

In Paris, eight activists were blocked from boarding a Malev Airlines flight Thursday. One of those turned away, Philippe Arnaud, said Malev showed him a list provided by Israeli authorities of nearly 400 people being barred from Israel. German carriers Lufthansa and Air Berlin said they also received lists.

The activists, expected to arrive in Israel late Thursday and Friday, say they are on a peaceful mission to the West Bank to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Israel holds complete control over who enters and exits the West Bank.

But Israel has been wary of entanglement with foreign activists since Israeli naval commandos clashed with passengers aboard an international Gaza-bound flotilla last year, killing nine people. Israeli concerns were further heightened by deadly clashes in recent weeks with pro-Palestinian activists along its frontiers with Lebanon and Syria.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said officers deployed at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport have been prepared to deal with scenarios ranging from uneventful landings to airport officials being attacked.

Israel is known for its strict airline security, beginning with check-ins on incoming flights, and officials claim they have sophisticated intelligence procedures in place to identify potential troublemakers. It's unclear how many activists would be denied entry after landing at the airport.

Israel says it will not stop people because of their political beliefs, but that its only concern is to stop people who plan to carry out illegal or violent acts.

Rosenfeld said airport facilities could hold as many as 80 detainees, and that any overflow would be sent to a prison in southern Israel.

The airborne activists, meanwhile, have denied any direct connection with the latest attempt to breach the Gaza blockade, which appears to have largely fizzled in recent days. The flotilla ships were held up by mysterious malfunctions and Greek authorities who did not let them set sail from ports in Greece where the ships had mustered.

Organizers of the flights to Tel Aviv say their people will tour the West Bank in solidarity with the Palestinians and that some would take part in weekly protests against Israel in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. They say all their activities will be nonviolent.

In Europe, German federal police said as long as passengers had valid tickets and passports, they had no grounds to stop any activists at airports there.

Two German airlines, flagship carrier Lufthansa and Air Berlin, said Thursday they received lists of people from Israel who are not allowed into the country.

Lufthansa said it would comply. Lufthansa "is obliged not to transport any passengers who do not hold valid entry permits or whose entry into the respective state has been denied by local authorities beforehand as in this case," company spokesman Patrick Meschenmoser said Thursday. He declined to say how many passengers were on the list, or whether any of them had planned to fly with the airline.

German authorities also said that German citizens of Palestinian descent would not be allowed into Israel. The vast majority of Palestinians are barred from using Israel's airport.

Arnaud, the activist turned away in Paris, has led calls to boycott Israeli products in France. He said Malev refused to let him and seven others board at Charles de Gaulle Airport. "They showed us a letter from the (Israeli) interior ministry with a list of nearly 400 people, with names ... saying to bar us from traveling to Israel," he said by telephone from the Paris airport.

The French airport authority wouldn't comment on the incident, and Malev Airlines officials in Paris could not be reached.

In London, Britain's Foreign Office said it had not been asked by Israel to prevent anyone from boarding flights to Israel.

The prospect of an influx of pro-Palestinian sympathizers has agitated Israel. The Israeli public security minister claimed some of the potential arrivals were "hooligans," and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a show of reviewing security agencies' plans at the airport before flying to Romania on Wednesday.

The "Welcome to Palestine" movement has estimated that between 500 and 700 people would arrive on flights over the weekend. It accused Israeli authorities of badly overreacting, noting that there are strict security procedures before boarding the plane.

"This is a total circus by the Israeli authorities, who are painting us as criminals," said French activist Olivia Zemor.

She said some 300 of the 600 activists planning to go to Tel Aviv and then the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem are French, aged between 9 and 85.

Some Israeli critics accused officials of appearing unnecessarily hysterical and painting the country as a police state.

"The State of Israel has lost its senses," columnist Eitan Haber wrote in Thursday's Yediot Ahronot newspaper. "We are playing right into the hands of a few bands of troublemakers who are successfully trying to make Israel look bad around the world?"

Israel's Tourism Ministry, anticipating possible inconveniences or delays at the airport, said it would greet incoming visitors over the weekend with flowers.

"We need to maintain a sense of normality at the airport, sending out a message to the international press that Israel is a safe country and an attractive tourism destination," said tourist minister, Stas Misezhnikov.

At any given time, hundreds of foreigners, many of them aid workers or activists, are in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, Israel says it has the right to determine who passes through its borders and routinely denies entry to people of Palestinian origin and their foreign supporters, including high-profile academics like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein.

The only way to get to the West Bank is through Israel-controlled crossings — either by arriving at Ben-Gurion and driving to the West Bank, or from Jordan, by passing through the Israeli-controlled crossing on the Jordan-West Bank border.

Access to blockaded Gaza, run by the militant Hamas group, is even more difficult. Israel allows few people to cross its border with Gaza. And with few exceptions, Gazans can only travel abroad by crossing into Egypt through their shared border.

During a visit Thursday to Bulgaria, Netanyahu said Israel would exercise the "basic right" that every country has to block provocateurs from entering.

"We have a restrained resolve to deal with provocations, to prevent disruptions of the public order," Netanyahu said.

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Police, protesters clash for 2nd day in Egypt (AP)

CAIRO – Egyptian security forces clashed for a second day in Cairo Wednesday with hundreds of youths demanding that the country's military rulers speed up prosecution of police officers accused of brutality during mass protests that forced Hosni Mubarak to step down. More than 1,000 people have been injured, a senior official said.

In scenes reminiscent of the 18-day uprising that ousted Mubarak on Feb. 11, riot police deployed around the Interior Ministry building and fired in the air or used tear gas as demonstrators threw rocks and firebombs. The fighting left streets littered with rocks and debris and a heavy, white cloud of tear gas hung over the area.

By late afternoon, army troops backed by armored vehicles took over from riot police who had been protecting the Interior Ministry, closing all roads leading to the complex, the official Middle East News Agency, MENA, reported.

The protests attest to the ongoing upheaval in Egypt nearly five months after Mubarak stepped down. The country is struggling with a worsening economic crisis and as a security vacuum that has led to a surge in crime.

The question of meting out justice to those responsible for the deaths of some 850 protesters during the uprising, as well as for regime stalwarts charged with corruption, is among the most divisive in post-Mubarak Egypt. Many of those who took part in the uprising accuse the ruling military of showing too much reverence to key figures of the old regime and lenience with senior police commanders accused of ordering the killing of protesters.

Gigi Ibrahim, one of the protesters, said security forces rained tear gas on them.

"It was like January 25," she said, referring to the first day of the uprising. "The protesters have enough anger, either because change has not come or because the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces hasn't done enough" to meet their demands.

MENA quoted Assistant Health Minister Abdul-Hameed Abazah as saying that of the injured, some 900 were treated on the spot and more than 120 went to hospitals.

Most of the injured suffered from gas inhalation or concussions, officials said. At least 18 cars and 11 stores were damaged.

Ambulances ferried the wounded to hospitals, and volunteer doctors and nurses treated others on sidewalks.

The military issued a statement on its Facebook page claiming the clashes were designed to "destabilize the country" and drive a wedge between the groups behind the uprising and the security forces. It called on Egyptians not to join the protests.

Some of the protesters used scarves to shield them from tear gas. They pelted police cars with rocks and advanced when the riot police lines retreated. The main chant back in January and February was "The people want to oust the regime." But that has been replaced by screams of "The people want to oust the field-marshal" — a reference to Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak's longtime defense minister and chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that has taken over. Some of the youth groups behind the uprising see Tantawi as tainted because he was a key member of the Mubarak regime.

Critics also charge that Tantawi's policies are designed to keep the old order, and accuse him of deliberately stalling the process of purging Mubarak loyalists and failing to reform the hated Interior Ministry and its security agencies.

The clashes are likely to widen the rift between many Egyptians and the police, blamed for most of the human rights abuses during Mubarak's nearly three decades in power. They also are likely to delay efforts aimed at empowering the police to fully take back the streets. Police melted away following deadly clashes with protesters during the first few days of the uprising and army troops replaced them.

Mubarak's security chief, former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly, is on trial along with several of his top aides for ordering the use of deadly force against protesters. This week, his trial was adjourned until July 25, a decision that touched off clashes between relatives and police deployed outside the courthouse. Some of the victims' relatives want Mubarak to be included in the case against el-Adly.

Mubarak has been under arrest at a hospital in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh and has been separately charged with ordering the killing of the protesters. Both men face the death penalty if convicted.

The clashes began Tuesday evening when some 100 people, claiming to be relatives of the uprising's victims, tried to storm a ceremony held at a Nile side theater to honor the memory of 10 protesters killed in the uprising. Clashes between them and security guards at the theater began when they were denied entry. The men pelted the theater with rocks.

Police arrested seven of the attackers, but the rest headed to the road outside the state television building across the river. They persuaded relatives of the victims staging a sit-in outside the building to join them. Together, they marched to the Interior Ministry, where they clashed with police and later headed to the nearby Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the uprising. They battled the police again until authorities ordered the police to pull back.

There were an estimated 6,000 protesters at the peak of the riots late Tuesday night.

Wednesday's clashes centered on streets leading to the Interior Ministry close to the downtown campus of the American University in Cairo.

Tahrir Square was closed to traffic on Wednesday, but about 1,500 protesters remained out on the streets.

A key youth group, April 6, described the police's handling of the latest protests as "brutal" and called in a statement for a sit-in in central Cairo to protest what it said was the failure to implement many of the demands from the uprising and to show solidarity with the families of the uprising's victims.

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