WASHINGTON,
Dec. 16--A US Army officer was arrested for stealing between $80,000 and $100,000 in funds from the US governing administration in Iraq and using the money to install a deck and hot hub in her New Jersey home, Reuters reported.
The US Justice Department said Army Reserve Lt. Col. Debra Harrison, 47, who served with the Coalition Provisional Authority, was arrested on charges involving bribery, money laundering and fraud.
Harrison is the second army officer and the fourth person charged in the past few weeks in connection with the scheme.
The Justice Department said Harrison was on active duty for the US Army in 2003 and 2004, and was responsible for developing contract solicitations and ordering contracts for reconstruction efforts for the Coalition Provisional Authority--South Central Region.
According to court papers, Harrison and her co-conspirators accepted money and gifts in return for using their official positions to rig contract bids.
An affidavit filed in the US District Court in New Jersey said she used the money to add a deck and put in a hot tub at her home in Trenton, New Jersey, accepted a Cadillac Escalade worth about $50,000 and a $6,000 airline ticket from a contractor in return for rigging the bids.
Harrison was also accused of laundering funds from the CPA.
In the affidavit, Harrison was also charged with numerous firearms charges, including conspiring to embezzle and possess pistols, automatic machine guns and grenade launchers bought with CPA funds.
She is charged along with her co-conspirators of using the CPA funds to buy dozens of firearms and related military-grade hardware in North Carolina for their own use.
If convicted, Harrison faces up to 30 years in prison.

COLOMBO,
Sri Lanka, Dec. 16--New Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has invited the rebel Tamil Tigers to crunch talks amid escalating violence which has raised fears of a return to Civil war, Reuters quoted the government as saying on Friday.
“The President and the United National Party (UNP) have agreed to resume talks with the LTTE,“ government spokesman Nimal Siripala de Silva told reporters, referring to the main opposition party and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
“The President has informed the UNP delegation that he has invited the LTTE for talks with the government,“ de Silva said after a cabinet meeting.
“He sent a letter to the LTTE through Sri Lanka’s Peace Secretariat and the Norwegian facilitators,“ he added. “The government is waiting for a response from the LTTE. We expect a positive response.“
But Rajapakse’s outright rejection of the Tigers’ demand for an ethnic homeland in the north and east has been followed by a series of attacks on the military by suspected rebels, and many ordinary Sri Lankans fear a return to civil war.
The LTTE have threatened to resume their two-decade struggle next year unless Colombo comes up with a viable power-sharing blueprint, saying this is its last chance to avert a return to a war in which more than 64,000 people have been killed.
The government was willing to talk to the Tigers in an Asian country, rowing back on the previous government’s refusal to hold talks outside Sri Lanka, de Silva said.
“First we have to break the ice,“ he said.
The rebels were not available for comment on Rajapakse’s invitation because telephone lines to north were either down or blocked by the military.
But the Tigers said on Tuesday they had not decided whether to accept a Japanese offer to host talks in Tokyo.

KABUL, Afghanistan,
Dec. 16--A purported spokesman for Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban on Friday dismissed the parliament to sit next week as a fake body set up by “invader Americans“, and warned it would be a target of attacks, AFP reported.
The parliament--to convene on Monday for the first time after more than three decades of war--is another step in Afghanistan’s move to democracy launched after the Taliban were toppled in a US-led attack four years ago.
“It’s not a real parliament,“ purported Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi said. “We’ll attack them as we attack the government and invading American infidels.“
“The parliament has been made up by invader Americans. They want to impose it on Afghans,“ he told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Ahmadi claims to speak for the extremist Taliban but his links with the hardliners have not been verified. He often calls media to claim attacks on behalf of the militants, with his information having varying degrees of accuracy.
He said the new parliament was an attempt by the United States to undermine Afghanistan’s traditional Loya Jirga, an assembly of tribal chiefs and religious scholars which convenes to decide on important national issues.
There have been two main Loya Jirga gatherings following the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001: the first selected President Hamid Karzai as interim leader in 2003 and the second approved a post-conflict constitution in 2004. Karzai was elected in a presidential election in October last year.
Taliban rebels are mostly active in southern and eastern Afghanistan with a bloody insurgency leaving more than 1,500 people dead this year.
The main targets of their attacks are Afghan security forces and a US-led coalition of about 20,000 troops hunting down Taliban and other militants.
They vowed but failed to disrupt the September 18 legislative election that elected the new parliament.
The body that convenes on Monday features several warlords responsible for the devastating civil war that preceded the Taliban’s rise to power in 1996, tribal leaders and two former members of the toppled Taliban regime.

NEW DELHI, India, Dec. 16--India’s parliament was evacuated Friday after intelligence agencies warned of a possible militant bomb attack on the heavily guarded complex, AFP quoted the government as saying.
The two houses of parliament were adjourned “after intelligence agencies received a tip-off about some definite information about outfits planning to have bomb blasts,“ said Anand Sharma, spokesman for the ruling Congress party.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was in parliament, was immediately whisked away by security men to his office about a kilometer away.
Security forces threw up barricades around parliament as commandos, soldiers and police with guns drawn surrounded the complex while MPs raced out in cars with sirens wailing.
“We haven’t found a bomb but to be doubly sure we are checking again,“ Home Minister Shivraj Patil said as bomb disposal experts combed the complex.
“We think the situation will be all right,“ Patil said.
The alert came just over four years after Islamic militants staged a deadly raid on India’s parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-backed rebels. Pakistan denied any involvement.

Youths attack a man of Middle Eastern descent (c) on a beachside street at Cronulla in Sydney, December 11. (AFP File Photo)

SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 16--Australian police arrested 19 people during a night of simmering unrest in Sydney as they prepared for a major crackdown on a feared new outbreak of racial violence at the weekend, AFP quoted officers as saying Friday.
Armed with new powers granted by an emergency session of the New South Wales state parliament, police set up check points on a number of main roads in Sydney’s troubled southern suburbs.
A wave of arrests followed after several incidents, including a Molotov cocktail thrown at police, an elderly man attacked with a crowbar and an officer injured in a brawl, Assistant Commissioner Dave Owens told the national AAP news agency.
The arrests were made by a special task force set up after a mob of whites attacked people of Arab appearance at south Sydney’s Cronulla beach on Sunday, sparking days of retaliatory attacks by mainly ethnic-Lebanese men.
Police used new powers granted by an emergency session of the New South Wales parliament Thursday, after lawmakers were recalled from their summer recess.
The legislation gives police powers to “lock down“ suburbs, close pubs, enforce alcohol bans and confiscate cars.
The overnight display of force came ahead of an expected major clampdown at the weekend, when police will treble their numbers to up to 1,500 officers at troubled beaches and suburbs.
Prime Minister John Howard, writing in Australia’s Daily Telegraph Friday, said the violence was a result of people who had “no regard for the law“ and those who had “no respect for their fellow Australians“.
“It is clear the best way to deal with the challenge is for everyone to calm down,“ wrote Howard, who has dismissed suggestions that Australia is a racist society.
“The most immediate--and best--solution is maintenance of law and order.“
Despite the attacks, the overwhelming majority of Australians still had “the proper instincts and decent values“, he said.

Palestinians carry the body of Hussam Abu Nada, a member of the Popular Resistance Committee, who was killed in an Israeli air strike on Wednesday, during his funeral in Jabalya camp, northern Gaza, December 15. (Reuters Photo)

GAZA CITY, Occupied Palestine, Dec. 16--Israel launched a series of air strikes on targets in the north of the Gaza Strip overnight Thursday to Friday, Palestinian security sources said, after a rocket hit the outskirts of a southern Israeli city, AFP said.
The Israeli planes fired at least four missiles, which caused no injuries, at an uninhabited area north of Beit Hanoun, the source said.
An Israeli army spokesman in Tel Aviv said the planes had carried out “several raids“ against access roads for sites from which rockets had been fired into Israeli territory.
Earlier Thursday, a makeshift rocket fired by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip hit the outskirts of the Israeli city of Ashkelon, the army said.
The Qassam rocket, which takes its name from the armed wing of the Islamist movement Hamas, landed in sand dunes by an industrial zone of the city which lies around 10 kilometers north of Gaza. No one was injured.
Three other Qassam missiles also landed harmlessly in the southern Negev desert, military sources said.
The Israeli army responded initially by shelling the uninhabited areas from which the rockets were fired.
The armed wing of the Islamic Jihad group, the Al-Quds Brigades claimed responsibility for the rockets.
It said, in a written statement received by AFP, that the devices were “a new model ... the Al-Quds 3“.
An AFP journalist said Israeli aircraft had flown over Gaza late Thursday.
While towns and villages bordering Gaza have been regular targets of Qassam attacks, the notoriously inaccurate missiles have rarely reached Ashkelon, which is Israel’s sixth-largest city.
Israel has launched a number of air strikes on Gaza in recent days in response to Qassam attacks and a suicide bombing in the city of Netanya on December 5.
Four Palestinian militants from the Popular Resistance Committees were killed in Wednesday’s air strikes.

Nepalese student supporters of opposition parties shout slogans during a rally at Bhotahity in Kathmandu , December 16. (AFP Photo)

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Dec. 16--Nepali police fired tear gas to break up protests by rock-throwing students during a general strike in Kathmandu on Friday to protest the killing of 12 civilians by a soldier near the capital, Reuters quoted witnesses as saying.
Shops and schools were shut and public transport off the roads in the city, which mainly heeded the strike call by political parties as anger remained high following the incident around midnight on Wednesday when the soldier fired on a crowd of villagers who had gathered at a temple to mark the full moon.
The soldier, who had an argument with the villagers, also died in the shootout in the tourist town of Nagarkot, near Kathmandu, but the circumstances of his death were not clear.
Witnesses said students, trying to enforce the strike by blocking roads, threw rocks at hundreds of riot policemen who retaliated by firing tear gas. There were no reports of serious injuries. “It is quite tense,“ Kathmandu resident Saroj Khanal said, referring to the heart of the city, the scene of the protests.
Students also held protests in colleges and burnt tyres.
“King Gyanendra must take the moral responsibility for the killing,“ said Ram Chandra Poudel, general secretary of the Nepali Congress party, adding that the monarch was also the country’s defense minister.
The Nepali Congress is a constituent of an alliance of seven parties campaigning for the restoration of democracy after King Gyanendra fired the multi-party government in February and seized full control of the impoverished nation. The king justified his move as vital to crush a deadly Maoist insurgency.
Friday’s strike was called by the alliance to grieve for the victims of the shooting.
“The seven-party alliance is trying to put more pressure on the king to roll back his move (power seizure) but the king will try to ride it out,“ Kunda Dixit, editor of the widely-read Nepali Times weekly, told Reuters.