***BIZ DUPLICATION ALERT: PLEASE NOTE U.S. BLACKLIST AND CHRYSLER BRIEFS. CHECK YOUR LINEUPS***
INDIA
American woman raped in tourist area
An 30-year-old American woman was apparently gang-raped by three men in the tourist area of Manali in India’s mountainous northern state of Himachal Pradesh early Tuesday, officials said. Police said the victim was staying at a guesthouse with friends and left about 10 p.m. Monday to meet a friend at a village about four miles away. Unable to find a taxi or tuk-tuk on her return, she hitchhiked and was picked up by a truck with the three men inside. Police said no arrests have been made in the attack. A medical exam confirmed the attack and an investigation was under way.
MICHIGAN
Automaker refuses U.S. recall request
Chrysler is refusing to recall about 2.7 million Jeeps the government says are at risk of a fuel tank fire in a rear-end collision. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent Chrysler a letter asking that the company voluntarily recall Jeep Grand Cherokees from 1993 through 2004 and Jeep Libertys from 2002 through 2007. Chrysler Group LLC, which is majority-owned by Italy’s Fiat SpA, said in a statement Tuesday that the Jeeps are safe and it “does not intend to recall the vehicles.” Such a refusal by an auto company is rare. NHTSA can order a recall but needs a court order to enforce it.
NEW MEXICO
Studio seeks bad Atari games
A New Mexico city commission will allow a Canadian studio to search a landfill where old, terrible Atari games are rumored to be buried. Alamogordo commissioners decided last week to allow Fuel Industries to search the landfill. One sought-after cartridge, the E.T. video game, is thought to be among the worst video games of all time. Atari paid Steven Spielberg tens of millions of dollars to license the wildly popular 1982 movie’s name, and the dud of a game caused the troubled company’s worth to sink even further. The game has developed a cult following. It is believed that nine semi-trucks dumped the E.T. game and other Atari toys in the landfill in 1983.
MEXICO
Group calls disappearances a crisis
The number of unsolved disappearances in Mexico constitutes a national scandal and a human rights crisis, Amnesty International said Tuesday, citing what it called a systematic failure by police and prosecutors to investigate thousands of cases that have piled up since 2006. Rupert Knox, Amnesty’s Mexico investigator, said police routinely assume that the missing were caught up in Mexico’s drug cartel conflicts. The federal government says about 26,000 people have been reported missing since the government launched an offensive against drug cartels in late 2006.
LIBYA
NATO team going to Libya
NATO is sending a team of experts to Libya to assess how the alliance can provide security assistance, notably military training, to help the turbulent North African nation combat Islamist militants claiming allegiance to al-Qaida and other threats. The NATO secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said that a team of experts would visit Libya “as soon as possible” and report back by the end of June. He said that providing security assistance “would be a fitting way to continue our cooperation with Libya after we successfully took action to protect the Libyan people two years ago.”
MARYLAND
Obama visits wounded at military hospital
President Barack Obama visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., on Tuesday to meet with service members undergoing treatment. The president visited for nearly two hours and met with 21 wounded service members — 13 in the Army, six in the Marines, one in the Navy and one in the Air Force. The White House did not release their names or other details about the president’s visit.
WASHINGTON
U.S. blacklists companies in Iran dispute
The United States on Tuesday blacklisted what it described as a global network of front companies controlled by Iran’s top leaders, accusing them of hiding assets and generating billions of dollars worth of revenue to help Tehran evade Western sanctions over its disputed nuclear program. The action, taken by the Treasury Department, which identified 37 companies, was one of the broadest in the American-led effort to isolate and pressure Iran economically. It was the fourth time in a week that the Obama administration had escalated sanctions on Iran and the first time it had accused the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, of personally directing an effort to bypass them.
About the Author
