Iraq's Most Wanted Ordered Bombings

• Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted insurgent, ordered the recent wave of car bombings that killed more than 400 people in Iraq, a senior U.S. military official said Wednesday. Al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, made the request to increase the number of car bombings to a group of insurgents who met in Syria last month, said the official, who cited various intelligence sources. Full story
  
  
• A hand grenade found in the crowd as U.S. President George W. Bush spoke in Tblisi, Georgia last week was live and could have exploded, U.S. and Georgian officials have said. In the hours after the incident, Georgia officials insisted the device was an inert, Soviet-era training grenade that posed no threat to Bush or his audience. Full story
  
  
• British Member of Parliament George Galloway was returning to the UK Wednesday confident he won a fiery showdown with U.S. senators who have accused him of profiting from the U.N.'s defunct oil-for-food program in Iraq. Galloway said he was "absolutely" convinced he had been vindicated from allegations that he received vouchers for 20 million barrels of oil from Saddam Hussein's regime. Full story
  
  
• Beijing has rejected U.S. criticism that its currency policy has turned China into a "manipulative trade partner" and that the yuan should quickly be reevaluated. Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai said Wednesday that those charges, made by the U.S. Treasury Department a day earlier, were unfounded. Full story
  
  
• Foreign diplomats and journalists have been taken to the Uzbek city of Andijan to assess the death toll from the country's recent spate of violence. The number of deaths have differed widely since unrest hit the former Soviet state last week, and foreign envoys and journalists have been kept out of the Central Asian nation since then. Full story
  
  
• Federal agents arrested notorious Cuban exile leader Luis Posada Carriles near Miami Tuesday afternoon. He is reported to have been planning to leave the country. Posada was legendary among south Florida's Cuban exile community for his plots to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Full story
  
  
• Investigators have no leads in a triple slaying at a home in Idaho and are searching for two children who lived there, authorities said Tuesday. The killings have shocked the quaint community of Coeur d'Alene and prompted massive searches for 9-year-old Dylan and 8-year-old Shasta Groene. An Amber Alert was issued earlier Tuesday for the two youngsters. Full story
  
  
• Toyota Motor Corp. has said it will recall about 880,000 sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and pickups worldwide, mostly in the United States, to fix a defect in the front suspension that could hamper steering. Covered in the recall, aimed at fixing front-suspension ball joints that could wear faster than they should, are the Tacoma and Tundra pickup trucks and Sequoia, Landcruiser Prado and 4Runner/Hilux Surf SUVs built between May 2001 and December 2003. Full story
  
  
• Hispanics in California are celebrating after a high school dropout who went back to school and turned his life around was elected mayor of the second-biggest city in the United States. City councilor Antonio Villaraigosa will become the first Hispanic mayor of Los Angeles since 1872 after defeating incumbent James Hahn in municipal elections Tuesday. Full story
  
  
• For the second time in four days, a ferry has capsized in waters off Bangladesh, leaving dozens of people missing and feared dead. A storm accompanied by high winds and heavy rain struck the double-deck ML Raipura Tuesday as it carried about 250 people along the Padma River about 40 kilometres from Dhaka. Full story

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.