Nation/World briefs
FEMA under fire again for Rita effort
HOUSTON -- Saying they were caught off-guard by the number of people in need, FEMA officials closed a relief center early on Wednesday after some of the hundreds of hurricane victims in line began fainting in triple-digit heat.
The midday closing of the Houston disaster relief center came as officials in areas hit hardest by Hurricane Rita criticized FEMA's response to the storm, with one calling for a commission to examine the emergency response.
Rep. Tom DeLay calls indictment 'baseless'
WASHINGTON -- A Texas grand jury on Wednesday indicted Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates on charges of conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, forcing the House majority leader to temporarily relinquish his post.
A defiant DeLay insisted he was innocent and called the prosecutor a "partisan fanatic."
"I have done nothing wrong. ... I am innocent," DeLay told a Capitol Hill news conference during which he criticized the Texas prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, repeatedly. DeLay said the charges amounted to "one of the weakest and most baseless indictments in American history."
No. 2 al-Qaida official killed in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. and Iraqi authorities said this week that their forces had killed the No. 2 official in the al-Qaida in Iraq organization in a weekend raid in Baghdad, claiming to have struck a "painful blow" to the country's most feared insurgent group.
Abdullah Abu Azzam led al-Qaida's operations in Baghdad, planning a brutal wave of suicide bombings that killed hundreds of people, officials said.
About 698 people have been killed since April 1 in suicide attacks in Baghdad.
Abu Azzam was the top deputy to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
He was also on a list of Iraq's 29 most-wanted insurgents issued by the U.S. military in February and had a bounty of $50,000 on his head.
Migrants increase amid tighter border security
WASHINGTON -- Illegal immigrants are increasing despite tighter border security and now outnumber foreigners moving to the United States legally.
Total immigrants to the U.S. declined after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, partly because of increased security measures, the Pew Hispanic Center reported Tuesday.
The 2001 recession also was a likely factor, reducing jobs available in the United States.
Immigration both legal and illegal topped 1.5 million people in 1999 and 2000, according to the report. The number of people entering the United States then plummeted to 1.1 million people by 2003, the same level as in 1992.
Iraq's first female suicide bomber kills 6
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A woman disguised in a man's robes and headdress slipped into a line of army recruits Wednesday and detonated explosives strapped to her body, killing at least six recruits and wounding 35 - the first known suicide attack by a woman in Iraq's insurgency since the beginning of the war.
The attack in Tal Afar near the Syrian border appeared aimed at showing that militants could still strike in a town where U.S. and Iraqi offensives drove out insurgents only two weeks ago.
A female suicide bomber may have been chosen because she could get through checkpoints -- at which women are rarely searched -- then don her disguise to join the line of men, Iraqi officials said.
From wire reports. E-mail news@thesantaclara.com.