Pakistan frees pro-Taliban leader and announces peace accord

By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A pro-Taliban leader who sent thousands of fighters against the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan was freed by Pakistan on Monday, and an official said his militant group signed a peace deal with the provincial government in the restive northwest.
.
The group founded by radical cleric Sufi Muhammad renounced attacks on government forces in the six-point accord but it will be allowed to peacefully campaign for the implementation of Islamic law in Pakistan, provincial government spokesman Faridullah Khan said.

Read the rest:
 

Firefighters Stand Tall

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Firefighters racing the weather for control of a turbulent wildfire near this popular resort got a break Wednesday as high winds forecast to arrive by early afternoon held off, giving crews time to shore up their defenses

While the wind picked up slightly after dark, the day of calm allowed firefighters to fortify their lines, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Crews were trying to keep the wildfire from consuming more buildings near the small town of Meyers where it started, and from reaching several densely populated subdivisions near where one flank of the blaze jumped a containment line. The fire has destroyed 200 homes and other buildings since it emerged over the weekend.

“The worst-case scenario is the fire would break out in multiple locations,” said Rich Hawkins, a U.S. Forest Service fire commander. “The biggest problem is just that there are so many homes in a combustible environment.”

The governors of the two states Lake Tahoe straddles, California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Nevada’s Jim Gibbons, toured neighborhoods charred by the fire.

Examining the remains of a house in the Tahoe Mountain neighborhood, just outside South Lake Tahoe, the ex-bodybuilder Schwarzenegger hoisted a dumbbell from the debris, marveling that it was one of the few objects to survive. “Amazing,” he told an aide.

Little else survived the inferno. Metal mattress coils, a bicycle, tools, half-melted televisions, concrete foundations and chimneys were about all that was left of the burned houses. Some neighboring buildings stood virtually untouched.

“It could have been much worse, if we hadn’t had such well-trained firefighters,” said Schwarzenegger, mentioning his decision in May to free up more money for firefighters and equipment after the dry winter.

He signed an executive order suspending replacement fees for those who lost personal records such as drivers licenses or vehicle registration documents to the fire. He also asked state tax authorities to grant extensions to those affected, and to consider waiving penalties.

California’s insurance commissioner, citing figures from the El Dorado County sheriff’s department, pegged the total property damage at $150 million.

Hundreds of homes within view of the lake remained under mandatory evacuation orders, while residents of already damaged areas were still being asked to stay away.

Many returned anyway — at least long enough to stuff more belongings into cars and trucks before leaving again. Others came back and camped out, readying garden hoses and even buckets to douse embers expected to land nearby if winds kicked up as expected. In all, about 2,000 people were evacuated, according to South Lake Tahoe Police Lt. Martin Hale.

The blaze has charred more than 3,000 acres — about 4.7 square miles — and was 55 percent contained on Wednesday, fire officials said. With stiffer gusts in the forecast this week, officials acknowledged that more homes, including some in the most affluent waterfront neighborhoods, could be threatened. Several officials said the wind could also present a danger to firefighters themselves.

“It really is hard to predict what these winds are going to do,” said Kelly Martin, a fire behavior analyst who addressed hundreds of firefighters at a pre-dawn briefing Wednesday.

Officials thought they had a handle on the original edge of the blaze on Tuesday, but a surprisingly big gust of wind in the afternoon was all it took to push firefighters off the line they had held for more than a day outside a 300-home subdivision.

It was in an area where firefighters had set a fire the night before in an effort to keep the main blaze from reaching more houses and Lake Tahoe itself. The gust blew embers from the burn area over the fireline and started new spot fires, Hawkins said.

The blaze descended so quickly that two firefighters were forced to deploy the emergency shelters they carry to protect themselves as a last resort. They were unhurt but would have died without the shelters, Hawkins said.

Fire investigators on Wednesday were interviewing around 10 witnesses believed to be among the first to spot the blaze as it whipped up from a popular jogging and hiking path about seven miles southwest of the lake.

Authorities have said they believe the fire was caused by human activity, but there was no indication it was set intentionally.

Forest Service spokeswoman Beth Brady, a member of the four-person group leading the investigation, said they were confident they had isolated the spot where the first spark landed. But after the fire flared again Tuesday, they delayed an expected announcement about the cause and decided to double-check their findings against witness accounts.

To the southwest, a small brush fire threatened dozens of homes near downtown San Rafael in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Residents evacuated 50 homes just north of Boyd Memorial Park on San Rafael Hill, police spokeswoman Margo Rohrbacher said.

About 30 to 35 acres of hillside had burned by nightfall, Rohrbacher said.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

Pakistan’s Musharraf urges tribes to expel Al-Qaeda

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - President Pervez Musharraf told tribesmen from a troubled border region that they would cause international embarrassment for Pakistan if they failed to expel Al-Qaeda “terrorists”, a report said.

Military ruler Musharraf, a key US ally, told a jirga or grand tribal meeting in the northwestern city of Peshawar late Tuesday that they must live up to peace deals under which they agreed to oust foreign rebels.

Musharraf faces international pressure to crack down on insurgents based in the semi-autonomous tribal belt, who are allegedly involved in global terrorism and cross-border attacks on foreign forces in Afghanistan.

“Foreign terrorists are the biggest threat to our country and therefore they have to be flushed out”, the official Associated Press of Pakistan quoted Musharraf as telling the meeting.

Pakistani authorities signed peace deals involving tribal elders and militants in the South Waziristan area in 2005, in North Waziristan in 2006 and the Bajaur area in March 2007.

The deals followed bloody military operations in the region which left 700 soldiers and 1,000 militants dead. But they were criticised by NATO and US officials who alleged that attacks in Afghanistan rose as a result.

Musharraf said violations of the peace deals were a “matter of embarrassment for the country”.

“I am always at the forefront to defend your case during foreign tours and try to brush aside the negative propaganda against you there after 9/11, besides demanding funds for your development”, Musharraf said.

He told the tribal leaders the agreements needed “hundred percent implementation” and urged them to ensure that “you do not go back on your words which is your history and character.”

“I am sure you will keep your words in future also,” he said.

Hundreds of foreign Al-Qaeda militants fled Afghanistan for Pakistan after the US-led invasion that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Many more foreign Islamist fighters have been living in the area since the “jihad” against Soviet forces who invaded Afghanistan and left in 1989.

“We have been housing them (foreign elements) and providing them hospitality for the 28 years but now it is becoming a threat for our solidarity and peace,” the president said.

Pakistan says it is now pursuing a policy of development in the tribal areas. Washington in March pledged 750 million dollars in development funds for the region over the next five years.

Cheney role as power broker in spotlight again

By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney was back this week in a place he intensely dislikes: the spotlight.

Cheney’s penchant for secrecy and his unprecedented role within the Bush administration have dominated recent White House news briefings, drowning out discussions of everything from Iraq to immigration to the Middle East.

A newspaper series on how Cheney wields his power and his feud with an obscure record-keeping agency have stirred the latest controversies.

Cheney, a master at the Washington power game, is depicted as operating behind the scenes and pushing his hard-line views on issues such as the treatment of terrorism suspects in a four-part series in the Washington Post that began on Sunday.

The series portrays Cheney as bypassing top officials at the State Department, Justice and the National Security Council to gain the upper hand in battles over the handling of terrorism suspects at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and other issues.

“Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden ‘torture’ and permitted use of ‘cruel and inhuman or degrading’ methods of questioning,” the Post said.

Cheney also is facing scathing criticism from lawmakers for refusing to comply with a record-keeping request from an office in the National Archives.

Democrats accuse the vice president of trying to cast himself as a “fourth branch of government” because of his legal argument in resisting the record-keeping request. His office told the National Archives that it was not an “entity within the executive branch.”

“It comes as no surprise that the ‘imperial president’ and his vice president are once again trying to dodge scrutiny with a ridiculous claim that Dick Cheney is not part of the executive branch of government,” said Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives leadership, proposed cutting funding for Cheney’s office unless he clarifies which branch of government he is part of.

Cheney’s critics have drawn a link between his resistance to providing the information and his past refusal to disclose the list of participants in his 2001 task force on energy policy.

That dispute ended up in the Supreme Court and Cheney won.

The White House has backed Cheney’s insistence that he is exempt from the requirement of providing data to the archives office, although Bush’s aides have stopped short of fully embracing his argument that his office is not part of the executive branch.

“I think that that is an interesting constitutional question, and I think that lots of people can debate it,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. “I’m not opining on it.”

She said, however, that the question about the nature of Cheney’s office was not relevant to the flap over the record-keeping request.

The procedures for record-keeping were detailed in an executive order that Bush himself issued and the president never intended for Cheney to be covered by the reporting requirement, Perino said.

Blocked China Web users rage against Great Firewall

BEIJING (Reuters) - Yang Zhou is no cyberdissident, but recent curbs on his Web surfing habits by China’s censors have him fomenting discontent about China’s “Great Firewall.”

Yang’s fury erupted a few days ago when he found he could not browse his friend’s holiday snaps on Flickr.com, due to access restrictions by censors after images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre were posted on the photo-sharing Web site.”

“Once you’ve complained all you can to your friends, what more can you do? What else is there but anger and disillusionment?” Yang said after venting his anger with friends at a hot-pot restaurant in Beijing.

The blocking of Flickr is the latest casualty of China’s ongoing battle to control its sprawling Internet. Wikipedia, and a raft of other popular Web sites, discussion boards and blogs have already fallen victim to the country’s censors.

China employs a complex system of filters and an army of tens of thousands of human monitors to survey the country’s 140 million Internet users’ surfing habits and surgically clip sensitive content from in front of their eyes.

Its stability-obsessed government says the surveillance machinery, commonly known as the “Great Firewall,” is necessary to let Internet users enjoy a “healthy” online environment and build a “harmonious” society.

Yang just thinks it’s a pain.

“I just want to look at some photos! What’s wrong with that?” said the 24-year-old accountant, typical of millions of young urban-dwelling professionals who are increasingly aware of and fed up with state intrusions into their private life.

Privacy, once regarded with suspicion in pre-reform China, has become a sought-after commodity among China’s burgeoning middle class, according to Nicholas Bequelin from Hong Kong-based Human Rights Watch.

“Of course, it’s the first thing people seek when they have the economic resources,” Bequelin said. “We see this growing in China in the wake of ideas of ownership and property.”

PRIVACY BATTLES

Away from cyberspace, the battle for privacy between China’s secretive government and its increasingly active citizens has turned violent in recent months.

In Bobai county, in the southern region of Guangxi, hundreds of farmers smashed government offices and burnt cars after local officials imposed punitive fines on residents who had defied family planning laws and had too many children.

The battle for control of China’s Internet, however, will remain much more covert than confrontational, according to Liu Bin, an IT consultant with Beijing-based consulting firm BDA.

He believes it will take a long time before the government loosens control over web content, especially because the Internet-savvy middle class is unlikely to take to the streets — like the farmers of Bobai county — over lack of web access.

“Many educated people feel they can accept the current status quo because it doesn’t have much impact on their daily lives … They have been living with government propaganda for over 1,000 years,” Liu said.

Such an attitude grates on Du Dongjin, a 40 year-old IT worker in Shanghai.

Du has decided to sue his Internet service provider, the Shanghai branch of state-owned behemoth China Telecom, who he said had blocked a Web site that had carried financial software he hoped to market.

“If the court authorities aren’t influenced and they can hear the case fairly, I will win,” Du said.

ANONYMOUS GRIEVANCES

Most frustrated Web surfers, however, would rather air their grievances in the relatively safe realms of Internet anonymity.

They still have their anonymity because a state push to have China’s millions of bloggers register with their real names to ensure they only posted “responsible” Web content was abandoned after an outcry from the Internet industry and due to the impossible task of keeping lists of exploding numbers of users.

“The thirst for information in China is so strong, it is very difficult for the (Communist) Party to stay ahead of the curve,” Bequelin explained.

Within days of the blocking of Flickr, links to browser plug-ins and how-to explanations to subvert the filters and see Flickr photos were gleefully posted on blogs and in chat-rooms.

Many posts were preceded by tirades against the censors for “harmonizing” Flickr.

One blogger posted an image of a voodoo doll, calling it the Great Firewall and inviting users to — digitally — stick pins in it.

Yang said restrictions on Flickr probably wouldn’t motivate him to write a blog, much less push him down the road of “potentially dangerous” activism.

But he liked the idea of the Great Firewall voodoo doll.

“Have you got the link? Maybe I’ll go stick a pin in it,” he said.

Putin backs away from missile rhetoric

By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 8, 2007

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany — Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday toned down his opposition to a U.S. plan to install a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe, saying that if the U.S. instead chose a site in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, he would not retarget missiles toward Europe.
    
At the annual Group of Eight meeting on the Baltic Sea, leaders — including President Bush — also agreed to call for substantial global emissions reductions to fight global warming and cited a goal of a 50 percent cut by 2050.
    
In their first one-on-one meeting since the furor erupted last month, Mr. Bush and the Russian president talked for an hour about the U.S. plan to install a radar system in the Czech Republic and deploy 10 missiles in Poland. For weeks, Mr. Putin ramped up the rhetoric, saying Mr. Bush had begun another Cold War and threatening to aim Russia’s missiles at sites across Europe.
    
But yesterday, both presidents pulled back from the escalating dispute, with each seeking a middle ground. Mr. Putin’s proposal caught U.S. officials off guard, prompting at least one senior presidential aide to suspect that the Kremlin leader had always planned to offer a compromise that would benefit him.
    
Throughout the public spat, Mr. Bush repeatedly offered Russia access to the sites, saying that the missile-defense system was intended to protect NATO nations from a rogue state such as Iran. Yesterday, Mr. Putin took him up on the offer.
    
“The first proposal is to use the radar station rented by us in Azerbaijan which is entitled Gabala,” Mr. Putin said after his meeting with Mr. Bush.
    
“Yesterday, I had a conversation of this matter with the president of Azerbaijan. The existing agreement with Azerbaijan makes it possible for us to do this. And the president of Azerbaijan stressed that he will be only glad to contribute to the cause of global security and stability.
    
“We can do this automatically, and hence the whole system which is being built as a result will cover not only part of Europe but the entire Europe without an exception,” Mr. Putin said. “This would also … allow us not to redirect our rockets [to targets in Europe] and, on the contrary, allow us to create conditions for joint work.”
    
Mr. Bush called the idea one of several “interesting suggestions” offered by Mr. Putin.
    
“As a result of our discussions, we both agreed to have a strategic dialogue, an opportunity to share ideas and concerns,” Mr. Bush said. “This is a serious issue and we want to make sure that we all understand each other’s positions very clearly. As a result of these conversations, I expect there to be better understanding of the technologies involved and the opportunities to work together.”
    
A Kremlin spokesman said last night that Mr. Putin’s suggestion of using a Russian-operated radar in Azerbaijan would remove any need for a U.S. radar in the Czech Republic or anywhere in eastern Europe.

But U.S. officials who briefed reporters after the presidents’ meeting did not say whether accepting the Azerbaijan offer would mean canceling the installation in the Czech Republic and Poland.
   
One senior Bush aide said the proposal would require careful scrutiny because of the Kremlin’s influence over Azerbaijan and because the Russian military operates the radar system. The aide said that one concern is that Moscow may later seek to put restraints on the U.S. plan.

Mr. Putin did set out a few caveats, urging Mr. Bush to take Russia’s concerns into account, and asking that he give all sides “equal access” to the system and make its installation and operation transparent.
    
“Then we will have no problem,” the Russian leader said.
    
White House National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley told reporters that Mr. Putin’s idea of using the Soviet-era radar system, which Russia now leases, was “a bold proposal.” U.S. officials would study the offer and discuss it with the Russians.
    
“I think President Putin wanted to de-escalate the tensions a little bit on this issue, and I think it was a useful thing that he did,” he said, implying that the Kremlin had backed down first.
    
On climate change, the G-8 leaders agreed that global emissions reductions are needed, calling for a 50 percent cut by 2050. While German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the target “very great progress and an excellent result,” she did not succeed in her goal of persuading Mr. Bush to agree to mandatory cuts.
    
As is often the case, the language of the declaration had few mandatory and concrete provisions. It called for the eight countries, the world’s leading industrial powers, to “seriously consider” following the European Union, Japan and Canada in seeking to halve emissions by 2050.
    
Mr. Hadley said the ideas in the G-8 declaration were in the proposal the president issued last week.
    
“The president made clear last week that he accepted the principle of a long-term goal,” he said. “I think it’s very consistent with some ideas that the president had last week, but it was also consistent with ideas that have been advanced by others.”

Lincoln in the library

By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
The Washington Times
June 1, 2007

I begin most days in the library of my Northern Virginia home a couple of blocks from a Confederate war memorial. From atop a stone pedestal, a young soldier, hands clasped on the muzzle of his rifle, peers forever south toward Richmond, once the capital of the Confederacy. Two blocks from the brooding soldier I sit, taking my coffee and reading the morning newspapers under an enormous picture of Abraham Lincoln. It is my first irreverent act of the day, but on a good day it is not my last.
    
The library is known in my family as “The Lincoln Library,” because of this old picture of the savior of the Union. Given by the president’s son to my great-great-grandfather, its thick mahogany frame bears a bronze plaque, which reads: “Presented To P.D. Tyrrell, U.S.S.S. By Robert T. Lincoln April 14, 1887 For Loyalty And Service To His Father Abraham Lincoln.” April 14 was the date on which the President had been shot 12 years earlier on Good Friday. That Easter Sunday, it would have been a rare church that did not echo with comparisons between the assassinated president and Christ. I assume it was not coincidental that Robert Lincoln made his gift to my ancestor on April 14.
    
In a fine new book, “Land of Lincoln,” my friend, Andy Ferguson, describes how the eponym of my library has been reinterpreted through the years, usually through evolving contemporary values. Recently, you will recall, Lincoln was reintroduced to the reading public as a supposed homosexual. Soon he will doubtless be presented as an opponent of global warming.
    
Former Gov. Mario Cuomo has served up the resolute conqueror of Confederate armies as a likely opponent of the war in Iraq. “Lincoln hasn’t been forgotten,” Mr. Ferguson writes, “but he’s shrunk” to conform to our “wised-up world.” It is only a matter of time before Bill Clinton announces the 16th president is endorsing Hillary and, perhaps, making a small donation to the Clinton Library, possibly through a Swiss bank account.
    
For some reason, books on Lincoln are suddenly in season. Another superb book just out is Thomas J. Craughwell’s “Stealing Lincoln’s Body.” The book explains how I came to be the possessor of the aforementioned picture. In the 1880s my great-great-grandfather was a Secret Service agent, pursuing counterfeiters, for that was then the Secret Service’s main duty. Counterfeiting and stealing bodies for ransom were major crimes in those days.
    
When Capt. Tyrrell got wind of a plot by Chicago counterfeiters to steal Lincoln’s corpse from its burial place in Springfield, Ill., he maneuvered to insert his agency into a police action that might otherwise have been left to local authorities. Mark it down as another expansion of federal authority. From the attempt to steal Lincoln’s body on, the Secret Service’s responsibilities for presidential protection spread. 

The attempt itself was comic, described by a reviewer at the Times of London as a plot hatched by the three stooges. Mr. Craughwell’s books conveys the comedy and more serious stuff: the tragic assassination at Ford’s Theatre, the suffering of the Lincoln family, crime and police work in early Chicago, and the drama of the now forgotten Lincoln Guard of Honor, which took it as a sacred trust to protect the Lincoln remains from ever again being desecrated. Mr. Craughwell’s book would make a hell of a movie.     

I admire both of these books, but apparently in my admiration I can be viewed as an oddity, at least by New York Post columnist John Podhoretz, who has written about the Ferguson book. In a column of tortured praise for it, Mr. Podhoretz notes” “Writers don’t really root for each other. Usually they root against each other.” Well many of us writers have long been in awe of Mr. Podhoretz’s essential smallness. Here he reveals himself as so cemented in it that he psychologically projects smallness on the rest of us.     

Acknowledging that Mr. Ferguson has written a fine book, Mr. Podhoretz confides “The dark secret is that I would have been happy to think ‘Land of Lincoln’ wasn’t very good.” It takes a colossal narcissism to make such an admission in public, but I thank him for it. The ass gave me another good day.     

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of the American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His book “The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President’s Life After the White House” has just been published by Thomas Nelson.
    

Lebanese army, militants resume fight

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press

TRIPOLI, Lebanon - Artillery and machine gun fire echoed around a crowded Palestinian refugee camp for a third straight day Tuesday, as the Lebanese government ordered the army to finish off the Fatah Islam militants holed up inside the camp in the country’s north.
Black smoke billowed from the area after artillery and machine gun exchanges at the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the port city of Tripoli.

Relief supplies could not enter the camp as the U.N. Relief and Works Agency scrambled to evacuate one of its employees, a Palestinian aid worker wounded Monday, Taleb al-Salhani of UNRWA said.

Lebanese army stopped six UNRWA trucks, including a water tanker, saying it was too dangerous to enter the camp, leaving them parked by the roadside. Al-Salhani said he hoped for a cease-fire later in the day to allow the U.N. convoy through.

Inside the city itself, security forces moved in against a suspected Fatah Islam hideout in an apartment building, witnesses said.

Shots rang out on Mitein Street at midmorning as security forces, after receiving a tip about armed men in an apartment, raided the building using tear gas and leaving it gutted. Apparently no one was caught.

The developments reflected the government’s determination to pursue the Islamic militants who have staged attacks on Lebanese troops since Sunday, killing 29 soldiers. Some 20 militants have also been killed, as well as an undetermined number of civilians.

Lebanon’s Cabinet late Monday authorized the army to step up its campaign and “end the terrorist phenomenon that is alien to the values and nature of the Palestinian people,” Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said.

Major Palestinian faction leaders met with Prime Minister Fuad Saniora for the second time in as many days.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived Tuesday in Beirut to discuss the latest crisis gripping Lebanon.

A spokesman for Fatah Islam, Abu Salim Taha, said the group managed to repulse several attempts by Lebanese troops to advance on their positions inside the camp.

“The shelling is heavy, not only on our positions, but also on children and women. Destruction is all over,” he said. Speaking to The Associated Press by telephone from the camp, he denied his group was behind bomb blasts in Beirut on Sunday and Monday night.

The latest fighting has raised fears that Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war could spread in a country with an uneasy balancing act among various sects and factions.

Palestinian refugees have been hiding in their homes inside the camp and Palestinian officials there said nine civilians were killed Monday. Reports from the camp of food and medical supplies running out could not be confirmed because officials and reporters could not enter.

Mufti Salim Lababidi, a Sunni spiritual leader of Palestinians in Lebanon, denounced the shelling which he claimed has killed or wounded some 100 civilians. “There are thousand ways to uproot Fatah Islam … there are ways other than this,” he said on al-Jazeera television.

The camp is home to more than 31,000 people living in two- or three-story white buildings on densely packed narrow streets. It is one of more than 12 impoverished camps housing more than 215,000 refugees, out of a total of 400,000 Palestinians here. Lebanese authorities do not enter the camps, according to a nearly 40-year-old agreement with the Palestinians.

Major Palestinian factions have distanced themselves from Fatah Islam, which arose here last year and touts itself as a Palestinian liberation movement. But many view it as a nascent branch of al-Qaida-style terrorism with ambitions of carrying out attacks around the region.

The military assault adds yet another layer of instability to Lebanon’s potentially explosive politics. Saniora’s government already faces a domestic political crisis, with the opposition led by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah demanding its removal.

Raising fears of spreading violence, an explosion went off in a shopping area in a Sunni Muslim sector of Beirut late Monday, wrecking parked cars and injuring seven people — a day after a bomb blast in a Christian part of the capital killed a woman. The confluence of two bombings while the fighting was going on in Tripoli was highly unusual.

Saniora also risks a backlash among Palestinians in Lebanon’s other refugee camps, where armed groups and Islamic extremists have been growing in influence. The White House said it supports Saniora’s efforts to deal with the fighting, and the State Department defended the Lebanese army, saying it was working in a “legitimate manner” against “provocations by violent extremists” operating in the camp.

The leader of Fatah Islam, Palestinian Shaker al-Absi, has been linked to the former head of al-Qaida in

Iraq and is accused in the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan. He moved into Nahr el-Bared last fall after being expelled from

Syria, where he was in custody.

Since then, he is believed to have recruited about 100 fighters, including militants from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Arab countries, and he has said he follows the ideology of al-Qaida leader

Osama bin Laden. Among the militants killed in the fighting Sunday was a man suspected in a plot to bomb trains in Germany last year, according to Lebanese security officials.

Beirut security officials accuse Syria of backing Fatah Islam to disrupt Lebanon, charges that are denied by Damascus, which controlled Lebanon until 2005 when its troops were forced to withdraw from the country following the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Virginia Tech Massacre: The Men and Women we Honor Most

As a way of honoring those killed at Virginia Tech, we chose to introduce each of these lovely people to you. 

Ross Abdallah Alameddine

Alameddine, 20, of Saugus, Mass., was a sophomore who had just declared English as his major.

He was “Rossmo” to his friends, a kid with a subversive sense of humor and an intellect that produced a memorable take on everything from iPods to “The Big Lebowski.”

“My bro’s a spunky, too smart-for-his-own-good, awesome guy,” his sister Yvonne wrote as part of a series of memorials on Facebook. “SO much life was left and it’s totally insane anything could happen like this. . . . 25,000 kids at the school.”

Friends created a memorial page on Facebook.com that described Alameddine as “an intelligent, funny, easygoing guy.”

“You’re such an amazing kid, Ross,” wrote Zach Allen, who along with Alameddine attended Austin Preparatory School in Reading, Mass. “You always made me smile, and you always knew the right thing to do or say to cheer anyone up.”

Alameddine was killed in the classroom building, according to Robert Palumbo, a family friend who answered the phone at the Alameddine residence Tuesday.

Alameddine’s mother, Lynnette Alameddine said she was outraged by how victims’ relatives were notified of the shooting.

“It happened in the morning and I did not hear (about her son’s death) until a quarter to 11 at night,” she said. “That was outrageous. Two kids died, and then they shoot a whole bunch of them, including my son.”

Ross Abdallah Alameddine’s MySpace.com profile

Christopher James Bishop

Bishop, a 35-year-old German professor known as “Jamie,” wore his hair long, rode his bike to campus and worked alongside his wife in the foreign languages department at Virginia Tech, according to the Los Angeles Times. He was known for his gentle manner and generosity toward students. He is the son of science fiction writer Michael Bishop.

“I don’t think he was the type of person who had an enemy,” Troy Paddock, a close friend whose wife, told the Times. “He was a very friendly person. He was a nice and helpful person.”

The Georgia native was an avid hiker, movie and Atlanta Braves fan, and was said to be very popular with students.

“He was very outgoing, a very personable individual,” Richard Shryock, the chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, told the Times. “He was someone who took teaching very seriously and was a good colleague to be with.”

Bishop earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in German and was a Fulbright scholar at Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany. He helped run an exchange program at Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany.

According to his Web site, Bishop spent four years living in Germany, where he “spent most of his time learning the language, teaching English, drinking large quantities of wheat beer and wooing a certain fraulein.”

The “fraulein” was Bishop’s wife, Stephanie Hofer.

http://chronicle.com/news/profiles/2029/christopher-james-jamie-bishop

Brian Roy Bluhm

Bluhm, 25, of Stephens City, Va., was an avid fan of the Detroit Tigers, who announced his death before Tuesday’s game against Kansas City.

“He went to a game last weekend and saw them win, and I’m glad he did,” said Bluhm’s close friend, Michael Marshall of Richmond, Va.

The master’s student in civil engineering and water resources also received his undergraduate degree in civil engineering at Virginia Tech and was getting ready to defend his thesis. He had already accepted a job in Baltimore, Marshall said.

Bluhm moved from Iowa to Detroit to Louisville, Ky., before coming to Virginia. His parents moved to Winchester while he was in school, so Blacksburg became his real home, Marshall said.

Bluhm also loved the Hokies, and a close group of friends often traveled to away football games. But Marshall said it was his faith and work with the Baptist Collegiate Ministries that his friend loved most.

“Brian was a Christian, and first and foremost that’s what he would want to be remembered as,” he said.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/people/b/brian_bluhm/
index.html

Ryan Christopher Clark

Clark, a 22-year-old senior from Martinez, Ga., was called “Stack” by his friends, many of whom he met as a resident assistant at West Ambler Johnson Hall, where the first shootings took place.

He was “an amiable senior memorable for his ready smile and thoughtful ways,” according to the student paper.

Clark was a fifth-year senior majoring in psychology who also was studying biology and English and hoped to pursue a doctorate in psychology with a focus on cognitive neuroscience. He was well-liked and a member of the university’s marching band, and carried a 4.0 grade-point average.

Courtney Dalton, who met Clark two years ago when they worked together at a campus restaurant, described him as helpful and a good listener.

“When I was upset about something, he would come over and ask, ‘Are you O.K.?’ … If you ever needed to talk about your problems, he’d listen,” she said.

“He was just one of the greatest people you could possibly know,” friend Gregory Walton, 25, said after learning from an ambulance driver that Clark was among the dead. “He was always smiling, always laughing. I don’t think I ever saw him mad in the five years I knew him.”

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/people/c/ryan_clark/
index.html

Austin Michelle Cloyd

Cloyd, 18, an international studies major and member of the honors program from Blacksburg, Va., was so inspired by an Appalachian service project that helped rehabilitate homes that she and her mother started a similar program in their Illinois town, her former pastor said.

The Cloyds were active members of the First United Methodist Church in Champaign, Ill., before moving to Blacksburg in 2005, the Rev. Terry Harter said. The family moved when Cloyd’s father, C. Bryan Cloyd, took a job in the accounting department at Virginia Tech, Harter said.

Harter, whose church held a prayer service for the family Tuesday night, described Cloyd as a “very delightful, intelligent, warm young lady” and an athlete who played basketball and volleyball in high school. But it was the mission trips to Appalachia that showed just how caring and faithful she was, he said.

“It made an important impact on her life, that’s the kind of person she was,” he said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/18/
virginiatechshooting/main2698537.shtml

Jocelyne Couture-Nowak

Couture-Nowak was a French instructor and former Montreal resident originally from Truro, Nova Scotia.

She taught at Virginia Tech for eight years, along with her husband, Jerzy Nowak, a horticulture professor and the head of the horticulture department at Virginia Tech.

Couture-Nowak was passionate about trying to spread the French language, according to The New York times. Bernie MacDonald, an administrator at Nova Scotia Agricultural College where Couture-Nowak taught French, said she was “vibrant, enthusiastic and dynamic,” the Times reported.

She helped establish the first French school in the town of Truro in 1997, according to the Times.

Couture-Nowak leaves behind a grown daughter named Francine and a second daughter in her mid-teens named Sylvie, friend Claire Russell told the Times.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/04/17/qc-quebecvictim20070417.html

Daniel Alejandro Perez Cueva

Perez Cueva, 21, was a native of Peru and a sophomore majoring in international studies. He was active in the Peruvian campus community, according to The New York Times.

He had also lived in Woodbridge, Va.

Perez Cueva was killed while in a French class, said his mother, Betty Cueva.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/
people/c/daniel_perez_cueva/index.html

Kevin Granata

Engineering science and mechanics professor Granata and his students researched muscle and reflex response and robotics.

Granata served in the military and later conducted orthopedic research in hospitals before coming to Virginia Tech. The head of the school’s engineering science and mechanics department called Granata one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy.

Engineering professor Demetri P. Telionis said Granata was successful and kind.

“With so many research projects and graduate students, he still found time to spend with his family, and he coached his children in many sports and extracurricular activities,” Telionis said. “He was a wonderful family man. We will all miss him dearly.”

http://www.esm.vt.edu/php/person.php?id=10012

Matthew Gregory Gwaltney

Gwaltney, 24, of Chester, Va., was a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering, according to his father and stepmother, Greg and Linda Gwaltney. He also did his undergraduate work at Virginia Tech, graduating in 2005, The New York Times reported.

As a graduate student, he focused on stormwater management and along with Brian Bluhm served as a teaching assistant, according to the Times.

He worked on river restoration and mechanics, the Times reported, and also enjoyed playing softball and basketball.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/
people/g/matthew_gwaltney/index.html

Caitlin Millar Hammaren

Hammaren, 19, of Westtown, N.Y., was a sophomore majoring in international studies and French, according to officials at her former school district.

“She was just one of the most outstanding young individuals that I’ve had the privilege of working with in my 31 years as an educator,” said John P. Latini, principal of Minisink Valley High School, where she graduated in 2005. “Caitlin was a leader among our students.”

Minisink Valley students and teachers shared their grief Tuesday at a counseling center set up in the school, Latini said.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/people/h/caitlin_hammaren/
index.html

Jeremy Michael Herbstritt

Herbstritt, 27, was from Bellefonte, Pa., according to Penn State University, his alma mater and his father’s employer. He had two undergraduate degrees from there, one in molecular biology and biochemistry and the other in civil engineering, according to The New York Times.

A 1998 graduate of Bellefonte Area High School in Pennsylvania and a Penn State graduate, Herbstritt was a Virginia Tech graduate student studying civil engineering.

He loved to run and was the kind of person who went out of his way to make others feel comfortable, the Times reported.

“His smile is half his face,” family friend Pam Vaiana, the principal of Herbstritt’s Catholic grammar school, told the Times.

He was the oldest in a family of four children — two boys and two girls — and was raised on a farm in western Pennsylvania, the paper reported. He was known for being happy and outgoing and was a track-and-field and cross-country running star.

Several former coaches said he wanted to compete in marathons for the rest of his life and had already run in three.

His parents — who were planning to visit their oldest son at college on the way back from watching his sister run the Boston Marathon, according to the Times — released this statement to the press: “Thoughts and prayers for the Herbstritt family are encouraged and deeply appreciated. The family also extends their deepest sympathies to the families of the other victims of this tragedy. The family’s prayers are with them all.”

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/people/h/jeremy_herbstritt/index.html

Rachael Elizabeth Hill

Hill, 18, was a freshman studying biology at Virginia Tech after graduating from Grove Avenue Christian School in Henrico County.

Hill, of Glen Allen, Va., was an only child. She was popular and funny, had a penchant for shoes and was competitive on the volleyball court.

“Rachael was a very bright, articulate, intelligent, beautiful, confident, poised young woman. She had a tremendous future in front of her,” said Clay Fogler, administrator for the Grove Avenue school. “Obviously, the Lord had other plans for her.”

Her father, Guy Hill, said the family was too distraught to talk about Hill on Tuesday, but relatives were planning to have memorial events later in the week. “We just need some time here,” he said tearfully.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/18/
virginiatechshooting/main2698496.shtml

Emily Jane Hilscher

Friends posting messages of tribute on Facebook.com Monday night remembered Hilscher, a 19-year-old freshman from Woodville, Va., as a vibrant girl with an engaging personality.

“Emily was a kind and wonderful person who always put a smile on my face,” wrote Jessica Gould.

Hilscher, a freshman majoring in animal and poultry sciences, was known around her hometown as an animal lover.

“She worked at a veterinarian’s office and cared about them her whole life,” said Rappahannock County Administrator John W. McCarthy, a family friend.

According to several friends and neighbors of the family, her boyfriend, with whom she had attended high school and who is also a Virginia Tech student, had dropped her off for class before the rampage began.

A friend, Will Nachless, also 19, said Hilscher “was always very friendly. Before I even knew her, I thought she was very outgoing, friendly and helpful, and she was great in chemistry.”

Click here for Emily Hilscher’s Web page.

Jarrett Lee Lane

Jarrett Lane, from Narrows, Va., was a senior civil engineering student who was valedictorian of his high school class in tiny Narrows, Va., just 30 miles from Virginia Tech. His high school put up a memorial to Lane that included pictures, musical instruments and his athletic jerseys.

Lane, 22, played the trombone, ran track, and played football and basketball at Narrows High School. “We’re just kind of binding together as a family,” Principal Robert Stump said.

Lane’s brother-in-law Daniel Farrell called Lane fun-loving and “full of spirit.”

“He had a caring heart and was a friend to everyone he met,” Farrell said. “We are leaning on God’s grace in these trying hours.”

In a posting on MSNBC.com, Jessica Green wrote that “the small but very close community of Narrows, VA lost a dear friend and an amazing guy. Jarrett Lane was a very humble and down-to-earth guy and there couldn’t have been any sweeter person to have a conversation with. Our small town is feeling the effects of this heinous crime that took place just 20 minutes away.”

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/people/l/jarrett_lane/index.html

Matthew Joseph La Porte

La Porte, 20, a sophomore from Dumont, N.J., was majoring in university studies. He had been an Air Force cadet at Virginia Tech, according to his former platoon leader, David Wheeler.

La Porte credited the Carson Long Military Institute in New Bloomfield, Penn., with turning his life around during his years there from 1999 to 2005. “I know that Carson Long was my second chance,” he said during a graduation speech, printed in the school yearbook.

“Matthew was an exemplary student at Carson Long whose love of music and fellow cadets were an inspiration to all on campus,” Carson Long said in a statement.

La Porte graduated third in his class and was also drum major for the school’s drum and bugle corps during his senior year.

Click here for Matthew La Porte’s Web page.

Henry J. Lee

Born Henh Ly, the 20-year-old Roanoke, Va., first-year student majoring in computer engineering was ecstatic to earn his U.S. citizenship in 1999. It was then that he changed his name to Henry Lee, The New York Times reported.

He had enough advanced-placement credits to be considered a sophomore at Virginia Tech.

His family emigrated from China by way of Vietnam, and when Lee first arrived in the States as an elementary school student, he couldn’t speak English, according to the Times.

During high school, Lee worked at Sears part-time. The same year he became an American citizen, he graduated from William Fleming High School as salutatorian of his class, with a 4.47 grade point average, the Times reported.

As a reward for Lee’s academic successes, a local Burger King gave his class vouchers for free Whoppers.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/people/l/henry_lee/index.html

Liviu Librescu

Librescu, 76, a Holocaust survivor and an Israeli lecturer in mathematics and engineering science and mechanics, was born in Romania and was known internationally for his research in aeronautical engineering. He had taught at Virginia Tech for more than 20 years, joining the faculty in 1985.

“His research has enabled better aircraft, superior composite materials and more robust aerospace structures,” said Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department.

Video: Click here to hear more about Liviu Librescu’s heroic efforts

Librescu’s son, Joe, said his father’s students sent e-mails detailing how the professor saved their lives by guarding the doorway of his classroom from the approaching gunman before he was fatally shot.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu said Tuesday in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv, Israel. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

G.V. Loganathan

Loganathan, 51, was born in the southern Indian city of Chennai and had been a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech since 1982.

Loganathan won several awards for excellence in teaching, had served on the faculty senate and was an adviser to about 75 undergraduate students.

“We all feel like we have had an electric shock. We do not know what to do,” his brother G.V. Palanivel told the NDTV news channel from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. “He has been a driving force for all of us, the guiding force.”

He is survived by his wife, Usha, and two daughters, Uma — an engineering student at The University of Virginia — and another daughter who is a student at Blacksburg Middle School.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._V._Loganathan

Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan

Lumbantoruan, 34, of Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, was a civil engineering doctoral student, according to ministry spokesman Kristiarto Legowo. He was also an aspiring teacher, according to The New York Times.

“Mora,” as his friends called him, was only two semesters shy of graduating, after which he planned to go home to Indonesia to teach, when he died in Norris Hall, the Times reported.

Lumbantoruan got his master’s in civil engineering from Parahyangan University in Java before coming to the U.S. in 2004, according to the Times.

His father said his family had sold cars and property to help him pay the $8,000-a-semester tuition.

“We wanted him to succeed,” said his father, retired military officer Tohom Lumbantoruan, “but he met a tragic fate.”

Lumbantoruan was studious and clean-cut, his friends told the Times, and could often be tracked down buried in a book in the library. He was one of only 16 Indonesian students at the university.

Those who knew him well described him as smart, funny and a good cook. He was close to the Indonesian student organization on campus.

“We were his family here,” Rhondy Rahardja, the president of the Indonesian Students Organization, told the Times.

It was Rahardja who took the Indonesian students to clean up their friend’s apartment after his death. While they were doing that, they discovered Lumbantoruan had a secret affinity for war movies.

“He had 30 films, all about war,” Rahardja told the Times, “from ‘The Thin Red Line’ to ‘The Alamo.’”

Lumbantoruan’s stepmother, who lives in the Central Java town of Semarang, was seen weeping on the privately run ANTV shortly after the tragedy.

Family members said they hoped the body would be returned home soon for a public burial in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.

http://chronicle.com/news/profiles/2097/partahi-mh-lumbantoruan

Lauren Ashley McCain

On her MySpace page, McCain, of Hampton, Va., listed “the love of my life” as Jesus Christ.

Her family said the 20-year-old freshman international studies major became a Christian some time ago.

“Her life since that time has been filled with His love that continued to overflow to touch everyone who knew her,” the family said in a statement.

Her uncle, Jeff Elliott, told The Oklahoman newspaper that she was an avid reader, was learning German and had almost mastered Latin. She was home-schooled, he said, and had worked at a department store for about a year to save money for college.

Click here for Lauren McCain’s Web page.

Daniel Patrick O’Neil

O’Neil, 22, a first-year graduate student in environmental engineering from Lincoln, R.I., graduated in 2002 from Lincoln High School and last year received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., before heading to Virginia, according to The Providence Journal.

A Lafayette publication said that while there, O’Neil was vice president of the Arts Society. His high school yearbook noted he was on the cross country and outdoor track teams, the drama club and the National Honor Society, according to the Providence Journal.

A high school friend, Steve Craveiro, said O’Neil played guitar and wrote his own songs. Craveiro described O’Neil as smart, responsible and a hard worker.

He said O’Neil was destined to be extremely successful.

Click here for Daniel O’Neil’s Web page.

Juan Ramon Ortiz

Ortiz, 26, who was from Bayamon, Puerto Rico, was teaching a class as part of his graduate program in civil engineering at Virginia Tech.

The family’s neighbors in the San Juan suburb of Bayamon remembered Ortiz as a quiet, dedicated son who decorated his parents’ one-story concrete house each Christmas and played in a salsa band with his father on weekends.

“He was an extraordinary son, what any father would have wanted,” said Ortiz’s father, also named Juan Ramon Ortiz.

Marilys Alvarez, 22, heard Ortiz’s mother scream from the house next door when she learned of her son’s death. Alvarez said she had wanted to study in the United States, but was now reconsidering.

“Here the violence is bad, but you don’t see that,” she said. “It’s really sad. You can’t go anywhere now.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/vatechshootings/victims/
Juan_Ramon_Ortiz.html

Minal Hiralal Panchal

Panchal, 26, of Mumbai, India, wanted to be an architect like her father, who died four years ago. She was a first-year graduate student in architecture.

She was very keen to go to the United States for postgraduate studies and thrilled when she gained admission last year, said Chetna Parekh, a friend who lives in the bustling middle-class Mumbai neighborhood of Borivali, India, where Panchal lived before coming to Virginia Tech. “She was a brilliant student and very hardworking. She was focused on getting her degree and doing well.”

Panchal was worried about her mother, Hansa, living alone and wanted her to come to the U.S., neighbor Jayshree Ajmane said. Hansa left earlier this month for New Jersey, where her sister and brother-in-law live.

Ajmane called Panchal a bright, polite girl who would help the neighborhood children with their schoolwork.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/people/p/minal_panchal/index.html

Erin Peterson

Peterson, 18, of Chantilly, Va., graduated in 2006 from Westfield High School, three years after gunman Cho Seung-Hui graduated from the same school. It wasn’t clear if the two knew each other.

Peterson was a star basketball player at her high school, according to The New York Times.

She was an international studies major, according to her father, Grafton Peterson.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/vatechshootings/victims/erin_peterson.html

Michael Steven Pohle Jr.

Pohle, 23, of Flemington, N.J., was expected to graduate in a few weeks with a degree in biological sciences, said Craig Blanton, Hunterdon Central’s vice principal during the 2002 school year, when Pohle graduated.

“He had a bunch of job interviews and was all set to start his post-college life,” Blanton told The Star-Ledger of Newark.

At the high school, Pohle played on the football and lacrosse teams.

One of his old lacrosse coaches, Bob Shroeder, described him as “a good kid who did everything that good kids do.”

“He tried to please,” Shroeder told the newspaper. “He was just a great kid.”

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/people/p/michael_steven_pohle_jr/
index.html

Julia Kathleen Pryde

Pryde, 23, of Middletown, N.J., was a graduate student in biological systems engineering. She traveled to Peru with a professor to work with students there on improving water systems in South America, was fluent in Spanish and enjoyed hiking the Appalachian Trail.

She was hoping to improve water quality in mountainous areas with her studies in watershed management, according to The New York Times.

She had written a proposal urging the Virginia Tech cafeteria to begin recycling waste as compost rather than throwing it into a landfill, the Times reported.

Pryde lost her life in the advanced hydrology class of a professor she considered a role model, G.V. Loganathan, according to the paper.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/people/p/julia_pryde/index.html

Mary Karen Read

Friends remembered Read, a 19-year-old freshman from Annandale, Va., for her smile and her caring nature. Read was a fan of marching band and French.

“She was really caring, never had bad intentions for anybody, she put everybody else before herself,” friends told FOX News on Tuesday.

Video: Friends Remember Mary Read

Read was born in South Korea into an Air Force family and lived in Texas and California before settling in the northern Virginia suburb of Annandale.

She considered a handful of colleges, including nearby George Mason University, before choosing Virginia Tech. It was a popular destination among her Annandale High School classmates, according to her aunt, Karen Kuppinger.

She had yet to declare a major.

“I think she wanted to try to spread her wings,” said Kuppinger, of Rochester, N.Y.

Kuppinger said her niece had struggled adjusting to Tech’s sprawling 2,600-acre campus. But she had recently begun making friends and looking into joining a sorority.

Click here for Mary Read’s Web page.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/18/
virginiatechshooting/main2698493.shtml

Reema Joseph Samaha

Samaha, 18, a freshman from Centreville, Va., was described as fun and energetic, and a dancer.

“She was in theater. She was just real upbeat. Always had a lot of energy. Always a great person to be around. She’d always make you laugh,” said friend Matthew Dockins, 19, a freshman civil engineering major.

He said he and Samaha, a Lebanese American, were among about 50 graduates from Westfield High School who came to Virginia Tech, and she was a popular student.

“Everybody knew who she was,” Dockins said.

Westfield is the same high school that gunman Cho Seung-Hui graduated from, but it wasn’t clear whether he and Samaha knew each other.

http://chronicle.com/news/profiles/
2092/rema-samaha

Waleed Mohammed Shaalan

Shaalan, 32, came to Virginia Tech last year from Zagazig, northern Egypt, to be a doctoral student in civil engineering, according to The New York Times. His wife and son were back home in Egypt, another student, Shered Fadek, told the paper.

Shaalan was involved in the university’s Muslim Student Association, and took part in many of the organization’s activities in the community, the Times reported. He was hard-working and friendly. He was studying in Norris Hall when he was killed.

“He was a nice guy,” Fadek told the Times. “He was really focused on studying, but he was also really easy to talk to.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/18/
virginiatechshooting/main2701146.shtml

Leslie Geraldine Sherman

Sherman, 20, of Springfield, Va., was a sophomore in history and international studies, according to her grandmother, Gerry Adams. She was also an honor roll student.

She enjoyed history, foreign languages, running and making people laugh, according to The New York Times.

“She was just amazing,” sophomore Deepika R. Chadive, 19, told the Times.

Chadive and Sherman were both students at West Springfield High School, where they played basketball together, the Times reported.

“Not only was she very good, she was very spirited,” Chadive told the paper. “She was always very enthusiastic. Even if we were down 50 points, she would always give us a pat on the back.”

Sherman didn’t have “anything bad to say about anyone,” Chadive told the Times. “She was always joking around and smiling. She was always trying to make people smile.”

Sherman wanted to be a historian one day. She was killed in French class.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/
timestopics/people/s/leslie_sherman_/index.html

Maxine Shelly Turner

Turner, 22, was a senior majoring in chemical engineering from Vienna, Va., according to her father, Paul Turner. She described life as “awesome,” The Roanoke Times reported.

Turner was a member of Alpha Omega Epsilon, an engineering sorority, according to The New York Times.

She also acted as a public relations manager for the university’s Tae Kwon Do club, volunteered at an animal shelter and wanted to take up dog breeding as a hobby some day, the newspaper reported.

Click here for Maxine Turner’s Web page.

Nicole Regina White

White, 20, of Smithfield, Va., was a strawberry blonde junior majoring in international studies, according to a family statement released by the Suffolk, Va., Police Department.

She loved animals, and enjoyed taking care of them, The New York Times reported.

White was an honor student and a summer lifeguard who grew up in the eastern Virginia town of Smithfield, according to the Times. The two great loves of her life were animals and religion. She hailed from a very religious family.

During high school, she took care of horses as a volunteer at various stables and barns, according to her former Smithfield High School classmate Chance Hellmann, who spoke to The Daily Press of Hampton Roads.

She was killed in the German class on the second floor of Norris Hall where the greatest number of massacre victims were killed.

That high school observed a moment of silence in White’s memory Tuesday at the start of Virginia Tech’s 2 p.m. convocation ceremony, the Times reported.

http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=123082&ran=126192

We proudly thank the Fox News Channel.
The Associated Press also contributed to this report.Related:
Unwitting Korean Victims of Virginia Tech Tragedy

Unwitting Korean Victims of Virginia Tech Tragedy

By John E. Carey
The Washington Times
Saturday, April 21, 2007

Cho Seung-Hui, a Virginia Tech senior and South Korean national, was identified publicly Tuesday as the murderer in the multiple homicide Virginia Tech tragedy.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims killed and wounded plus the ten of thousands of living victims at Virginia Tech, at Blacksburg, among the families and extended families and the greater world of people impacted by such a terrible tragedy.

But there are three other victims many of us probably have not considered: the parents and sister of Cho Seung-Hui and the members of the greater Korean American community.

Police arrived at the Centreville home of the parents of Cho Seung-Hui after dark on Monday night. The parents were informed that their son was the key suspect in the Virginia Tech shootings. The police had warrants to permit a search of the parents’ home. Neighbors reported seeing “flashes like lightening” from within the home as police photographers apparently took pictures inside the house.

Police identified the suspect’s father as Cho Seong-tae, 61. He and his wife, Cho Seung-Hui’s mother, own and operate a small dry cleaning and laundry in northern Virginia.

Having learned that their son was the prime suspect in the murder of so many people at Virginia Tech, the Korean American parents of Cho Seung-Hui were terrified, in shock, and ashamed all at the same time. We have learned, though a source that asked for anonymity, that as soon as the police left the residence, Cho Seong-tae and his wife, began to make preparations to go into hiding at the Republic of Korea (South Korea) embassy in Washington D.C.

Several people in the Korean American community in the Washington D.C. area told us the Cho’s and their daughter are having several fears and feelings. They are shocked, amazed and ashamed. They have lost face.Asians often see themselves as part of a vast group dynamic. The family, the village, the church or other community unit is primary.

The key cultural concept that Americans often forget, misunderstand or flat have never heard of is the Asian concept of “face.” Many Americans do know that “loss of face” means a loss of self-image or pride. But that is only the Junior High School level of understanding.

Asians believe in losing face in terms of dishonoring the family, the group, the country or the culture. Cho Seong-tae and his wife, we are told, believe that their son has so dishonored the family that the damage to them is irreparable. They are discussing the future possibilities of returning to South Korea or moving to some other place like Canada.

Cho Seong-tae and his wife and perhaps their daughter feel so badly that they in a very real sense are victims of the Virginia Tech tragedy too.

Han, a Korean American that also owns and operates a small laundry business, told us that the Chos are most definitely feeling shame, pain and dishonor – no matter that the parents were not even in Blacksburg. She said they probably feel that their business in Virginia and perhaps in the United States is now ruined.

Yung, also a Korean American woman who runs a laundry, echoed this belief. “I was shocked to hear that a Korean American was involved in the shooting. Our community is very inter-related and we all know one another. Every Korean American is feeling some shame and loss of face.”

Korean Americans are renown for their hard work, devotion to family and church going ways. One Korean American man told me he had lived in the United States 20 years and never taken a vacation. He worked six days a week all twenty years.

To show the depth of sorrow within the Korean American community and in South Korea itself, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun held a special meeting with aides Wednesday to discuss the shooting. His office has issued two statements of condolence about the mass killings.

Less than 24 hours after it was publicly known that a Korean American apparently committed these heinous crimes, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said, “I and my fellow citizens can only feel shock and a wrenching of our hearts.”

He continued, “I hope US society can get over such immense sadness and find a sense of composure as soon as possible.”About 100,000 South Koreans study in the United States, making them the largest foreign student group in the country.

The United States also has a big ethnic-Korean community.

Every American should understand and appreciate the the deep distress, sorrow, sympathy and shame felt among Korean American community and in South Korea itself. Many of these people are unwitting victims themselves.

John E. Carey is former president of International Defense Consultants, Inc. and a frequent contributor to the Washington Times.

http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/04/19/the-campus-security-question/

http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/04/19/open-letter-to-hokies-of-virginia-tech/

http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/parents-demand-firing-of-virginia-tech-president-police-chief-over-poor-handling-of-mass-shooting/

http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/vt-shooter-sent-manifesto-to-nbc-news/

http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/virginia-tech-woefully-unprepared-for-an-emergency/

http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/how-do-we-cope/

http://www.nowpublic.com/heads_must_roll_at_virginia_tech