2 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, January 30, 2002 NATION/WORLD Israeli troops raid West Bank village ARTAS, West Bank (AP) - Israeli troops backed by tanks raided this Palestinian village in the West Bank early yesterday, arresting three suspected militants. Six Palestinians were hurt in clashes, officials and witnesses said. The Israeli troops entered Artas, south of Beth- lehem, and arrested a senior figure in the militant Islamic Jihad movement, one of the groups that has carried out suicide bomb attacks in Israeli cities, the army said. The wounded Palestinians including four with bullet wounds, but their lives were not in danger, a Palestinian hospital official said. One was a pregnant woman hit in the leg while she was sleeping, but her unborn baby was unharmed, said Dr. Peter Qumri, director of the hospital in nearby Beit Jalla. The army said its soldiers opened fire when fired upon. Eight cars were crushed flat by the tanks and soldiers threw a grenade into one house, burning furniture and smashing all the windows in the room. The soldiers searched houses and ques- tioned residents, before withdrawing after about three hours, residents said. Yesterday afternoon, Israeli troops and tanks entered Palestinian territory in the central Gaza Strip, occupying the municipality building in the village of Abu Hajim, Palestinian witnesses and security sources said. It was not clear what prompted the Israeli action, and the military did not immediately comment. The army raid into the village of Artas came two days after a Palestinian woman blew her- self up in downtown Jerusalem, killing an elderly Israeli. Shortly afterward the Artas raid and a few miles away, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo on the southern edge of Jerusalem. Gilo is built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, and has come under frequent Palestinian fire during the.16 months of Mideast fighting. NEWS IN BRIEF, " + WASH INGTON_. Trading unaffected by Enron collapse While Enron's collapse has stunned investors, it has not damaged the nation's energy trading industry or energy supplies, a top federal regulator told a Senate hearing yesterday. Several senators questioned why on the day after Enron's bankruptcy, long- term energy prices - so-called forward prices traded electronically and largely in secret by Enron - fell by nearly a third in the western power markets. "That certainly raises questions about whether Enron was manipulating the West Coast market," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Such transactions are exempt from federal regulation and do not fall under normal commodity exchanges, so they are conducted largely in secret-making it virtually impossible to gauge whether actual manipulation occurred, witnesses told the senators. Because of Enron's prominence in electronic energy trading, it "had enormous ability to swing those forward (long-term) markets" and inflate prices, said Robert McCullough, an energy consultant whose clients include Northwest utilities. He said the "very clear implication" of the sudden price drop in long-term power prices in the West on Dec. 3, a day after the Enron bankruptcy, "is that Enron may have been using its market dominance to set forward prices." Dow drops 247, most in three months Investors showed a growing lack of faith in corporate America's accounting practices yesterday, sending the Dow Jones industrials tumbling nearly 250 points on worries that more companies might be vulnerable to bookkeeping scandals. Analysts said Wall Street, already jittery about the timing of an economic recov- ery, was concerned that companies including the conglomerate Tyco might suffer from the same type of balance-sheet irregularities that brought down Enron. Even stronger-than-expected consumer confidence numbers failed to stop the selling. The Dow closed down 247.51, or 2.5 percent, at 9,618.24. The selling snapped a four-day winning streak and brought the blue-chip index to levels not seen since mid-November. It was the biggest point drop in three months. The losses were even more significant in broader indicators. The Nasdaq com- posite index fell 50.93, or 2.6 percent, to 1,892.98. The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 32.42, or 2.9 percent, to 1,100.64. "On the heels of this Enron situation, people are very concerned about accounting practices," said Todd Clark, head of listed equity trading at Wells AP PHOTO An Israel border police officer monitors Jaffa street, site of this week's bombing attack, from the rooftop of a building. Afghans say U.S. captured loyal officials KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghan authorities said yesterday the U.S. military mistakenly seized a district police chief and other local leaders loyal to the new government and has now promised to free them. Afghan officials portray last week's raid by U.S. special forces as a mission gone awry in which at least 15 Afghans were killed and 27 taken prisoner. They say the police were collecting weapons from local militiamen. The Pentagon insists that special forces attacked a legitimate military target in the Jan. 23 raid on an ammunition dump that U.S. intelli- gence analysts believed al-Qaida or Taliban forces were using. One American soldier was wounded in orrection. he Office of International Programs ad in yesterday's edition was incorrect. Look for the correct ad on Friday. The 2002 Study Abroad r on October 2, 2002. the ankle in the raid north of Kanda- har. However, the spokesman for Kan- dahar Gov. Gul Agha said those cap- tured in the raid included the district police chief, his deputy and mem- bers of the district council - all loyal to the interim government of Prime Minister Hamid Karzai. Spokesman Yusuf Pashtun said the Kandahar administration has asked the Americans for clarifica- tion of the detainees' status and the reasons they are being held. Pashtun said the Americans promised they would begin releasing some of the detainees within the next few days. A spokesman for the U.S. military at Kandahar airport, Capt. Tony Rivers, declined com- ment. At the U.S. military's Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., spokesman Gunnery Sgt. Charles Portman said "we have no additional information" beyond what the Pentagon has said in recent days. Local Afghans say Taliban fight- ers were handing over weapons at the site and that some of the pro- government figures collecting the arms were killed in the U.S. raid. The raid occurred in Uruzgan province, where Karzai organized resistance to the Taliban before the Islamic militia collapsed last year following intense American bomb- ing and attacks by the U.S.-backed northern alliance. After meeting Monday with Presi- dent Bush in Washington, Karzai told The Associated Press that he has sent a delegation to investigate last week's raid. U.S. officials acknowledge the difficulties of obtaining reliable intelligence in Afghanistan, where local warlords with a tradition of shifting loyalties still wield power more than a month after Karzai's interim government was installed in the capital, Kabul. Also yesterday, Pakistan denied a report by CBS News that Osama bin Laden received kidney dialysis in a Pakistani military hospital the night before the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States. Bin Laden is the chief suspect in the attacks. Ypsilanti girls' disappearance may be connected to Longo PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A miss- ing Michigan girl who police think is in Oregon met Christian Longo, the man accused of killing his family and dump- ing them in the Pacific Ocean, over the Internet, the girl's stepmother said yes- terday. Kala Haller, 13, and her 16-year-old sister Elizabeth have been missing from their Ypsilanti home since Sept. 26, when they left their bedroom in the mid- dle of the night through an open win- dow and stole the family's car, said Donna Haller, the girls' stepmother. Longo, who owned a construction cleaning business in Ypsilanti, moved with his family to the Newport area about three months before the bodies of his wife and children were found in coastal inlets in Waldport, Ore. and Newport, Ore., between Dec. 19 and Dec. 27. Longo, 28, was arrested in Mexico earlier this month following an interna- tional manhunt. He is charged with seven counts of aggravated murder and is lodged in Lincoln County Jail. Kala Haller called an Oregon emer- gency dispatcher late Sunday, whisper- ing into a cell phone that she had been kidnapped, The Oregonian reported. Kala gaid she was speaking on an abductor's cell phone in a blue Honda parked in a McDonald's parking lot in east Portland. A police search of the area turned up no Honda, said Angela Blanchard, a spokeswoman for the Clackamas Coun- ty sheriff's office. MISS A DALY MASS MEETING? IT'S NEVER 100 LATE TO0 BECOME A PART OF THE STAFF. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BECOMING A REPORTER OR. PHOTOGRAPHER cALL 76-DAILY. [SING BEUK] Fargo Securities. AIHA BRA, Calif. Robber holds ba employees hostage A man demanding $50,000 and claiming to have a gun took nine employees hostage at a suburban Los Angeles bank yesterday, police said. All were released or escaped before the suspect surrendered.. The man had been negotiating his surrender when his last few hostages slipped out the front door or a bath- room window, Sgt. David Nater said. "He was on the phone, kind of looked around, and realized he had no hostages," Nater said. The other employees had been released earlier. The man, believed to be in his 30s, walked into the Cathay Bank branch. shortly before 9:30 a.m., told employ- ees he was armed and demanded the money, Nater said. No customers were inside. Bank employees gave him an undisclosed amount of money and triggered a silent alarm. LAGOS, Nigeria Nigerian resident declares disaster Nigeria's president declared a national disaster yesterday after a series of explosions at an army weapons depot in Lagos left at least 600 dead, most of them women and children who drowned in a canal while trying to run away. In a radio broadcast, President* Olusegun Obasanjo said "over 600 bodies had been recovered," including many from the Oke Afa canal in the northern Isolo neighborhood of this city of 12 million. He said the dead were mostly women, young people and children. "What happened in Lagos was a monumental tragedy," Obasanjo said, calling the deaths a "national disaster." Lagos Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu blamed the deaths on military negli- gence, radio stations said. The Vanguard newspaper of Lagos estimated that more than 2,000 people were killed. MIAMI President's niece arrested for fraud Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida's governor and niece of President Bush, was arrested early yesterday as she allegedly tried to buy an anti-anxiety drug with a fake prescription. After being detained at the drive-up window of a pharmacy in Tallahassee, Florida's capital, the 24-year-old woman, who appeared "very shaky" to police, was taken to jail for booking on a third-degree felony charge. She was released on $1,000 bond, Tallahassee police spokesman Scott Hunt said. In a terse statement later in the day, Gov. Jeb Bush and his wife tacitly admitted the second-oldest of their three children had developed a drug problem, and asked for public under- standing. "Columba and I are deeply saddened over an incident that occurred last night involving our daughter Noelle," the couple said. - Compiled from Daily wire reports. 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