Armed student takes hostages at Wisconsin high school

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin— A student with a loaded handgun took a class of 23 high school students and a teacher hostage on Monday in the town of Marinette, Wisconsin, and police were trying to talk him into surrendering, the police chief said.

An official of the country emergency management department said that five hostages, all students, had been released by the early evening.

Marinette Police Chief Jeff Skorik said earlier there were no injuries so far in the incident and negotiators were communicating with the teacher in the classroom by telephone.

“We are hoping to be able to eventually speak with the student and resolve this matter,” Skorik told reporters earlier.

He said the suspect, a male student, has not made his motive known nor made any demands. Investigators are meeting with the parents of the suspect.

School officials are reviewing a class roster with parents to determine exactly which students are in the classroom. Local health counselors are also with the parents.

Police were dispatched to the Marinette high school after a call at 3:48 p.m. local time, the official said.

At least 40 emergency personnel were on the scene and the school has been surrounded and the perimeter secured, he said.

Witnesses said there were numerous police cars and fire trucks on the scene and and the parking lot nearby was filled with people, many of them students.

The high school has about 800 students, according to its web site.

Marinette is about 50 miles north of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Reuters

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WikiLeaks documents expose diplomatic secrets, infuriate White House

WASHINGTON— The White House on Sunday condemned as “reckless and dangerous” the publication of classified State Department diplomatic cables that threaten to damage or strain U.S. relations with several foreign governments, including Canada and other major American allies.

The first batch of a promised 251,287 documents released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks detail sensitive information, ranging from Saudi requests for the United States to bomb Iran to alleged American spying on senior officials from the United Nations.

In what one newspaper called a“secret intelligence campaign,” a cable sent to the U.S. Embassy in Canada and 35 other countries specified frequent flyer numbers, Internet handles, credit card numbers and other biographical information that U.S. diplomats should gather.

The information was for the U.S. government’s “HUMINT” — human intelligence — directive on the United Nations.

Although there were several lists of countries included in the directive, ranging from China and Russia and other members of the UN security council, to hot spots Afghanistan and Somalia, Canada was not specified as a target in the July 31, 2009, cable from the U.S. State Department to its embassies.

In full damage-control mode Sunday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs lashed out at WikiLeaks release, said the leaks endanger the lives of U.S. diplomat and intelligence agents around the globe.

“These cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders, and when the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but those of our allies andfriends around the world,” Mr. Gibbs said.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon also condemned the release of sensitive information, including more than 2,400 diplomatic notes from U.S. officials in Canada.

“Irresponsible leaks like these are deplorable and do not serve anybody’s national interests. The perpetrators of these leaks may threaten our national security,” Mr. Cannon said in a statement.

The Obama administration has for months been nervously awaiting the release of private diplomatic cables that provide an unvarnished look at how Washington conducts its foreign policy— and how it views foreign governments and leaders.

Several news organizations that had been given early access to the U.S. diplomatic cables— including the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel — began publishing details early Sunday afternoon. WikiLeaks, which described the document dump as “Cablegate,” published 219 of an expected 251,287 documents that it said “will be released in stages over the next few months.”

A number of startling revelations quickly emerged:

• King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has urged the United States on several occasions to launch military strikes against Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities. One diplomatic cable reports Abdullah told U.S. Gen. David Petraeus in April 2008 that the U.S. needed to “cut off the head of the snake”by attacking Iran. The cable said the Saudi king had “frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program.”

• U.S. intelligence believes Iran has obtained advanced missiles from North Korea capable of striking Europe. A diplomatic cable dated Feb. 24, said “secret American intelligence assessments have concluded that Iran has obtained a cache of advanced missiles, based on a Russian design.” Iran obtained 19 of the North Korean missiles, an improved version of Russia’s R-27, from North Korea, the cable said, and was “taking pains to master the technology in an attempt to build a new generation of missiles.”

• The New York Times reported details of a tense standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel, plans to reunite the Korean Peninsula after the North’s eventual collapse, bazaar-like bargaining over the repatriation of Guantanamo Bay detainees and a Chinese government bid to hack into Google.

• The cables detailed fresh suspicions about Afghan corruption, Saudi donors financing al-Qaida, and the U.S. failure to prevent Syria from providing a massive stockpile of weapons to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon since 2006;

• Germany’s Der Spiegel said the U.S. had referred to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “Hitler” while President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was called a “naked emperor” in U.S. documents released by WikiLeaks; and

While the U.S. fumed, Canadians waited to see what the unprecedented document dump would reveal about American relations with this country.

The more than 2,400 cables from U.S. diplomats in Canada, included 1,948 from the American Embassy in Ottawa, according to the WikiLeaks documents summary published by the Guardian. The WikiLeaks site indicated 2,648 cables related to Canada.

None of the documents released Sunday originated in the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa. But one dispatch from the American Embassy in Kabul relates that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, tried in 2009 to convince Canadians in Kandahar to award him a security contract.

“Note: AWK is understood to have a stake in private security contracting, and has aggressively lobbied the Canadians to have his security services retained for the Dahla Dam refurbishment,” the cable says of Mr. Karzai, who has long been suspected of corruption and drug-trafficking.

More cables regarding Canada are expected to be rolled out in the coming days, including some that will reportedly refer to Canada’s “inferiority complex.”

The Obama administration stressed the candid information included in the cables is often“incomplete information” and does not necessarily represent official U.S. government policy.

“By its very nature, field reporting to Washington is candid and often incomplete information. It is not an expression of policy, nor does it always shape final policy decision,” Mr. Gibbs said after several news organizations began publishing details of the documents.

The White House’s condemnation followed a failed last-ditch attempt to convince the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, not to release the cables.

In a letter to Mr. Assange’s lawyer, U.S. State Department legal adviser Harold Koh warned publication of the documents would “place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals — from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security.”

A message posted on the WikiLeaks site said the cables document how the U.S. spies on its neighbours and“turns a blind eye” to corruption and human rights abuses around the world. WikiLeaks said 15,652 of the documents were listed as “secret,” another 101,748 as “confidential” and 133,887 as unclassified.

“This document release reveals the contradictions between the U.S. public persona and what it says behind closed doors — and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes,” the WikiLeaks messagesaid.

Other than from the embassy in Ottawa, cables from U.S. diplomats in Canada included 145 from Toronto, 136 from Halifax, 82 from Montreal, 52 from Quebec, 44 from Vancouver and 14 from Calgary.

The U.S. suspects an army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, as being the source of the massive leak. Manning was arrested last spring and has been charged with releasing classified material. In an online chat, Manning reportedly told a computer hacker he had downloaded some 260,000 State Department cables and sent them to WikiLeaks.

Both the New York Times and the Guardian said they planned to redact names of individuals who might be harmed if identified. The Guardian also said WikiLeaks had committed to doing the same.

- With files by MarkKennedy and Glenn Johnson, Postmedia News

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Travellers brace for pat-down slow downs

CHICAGO— U.S. travellers braced for more headaches than usual Wednesday as a grassroots protest against invasive airport screening threatened major delays and officials urged patience amid terror threats.

The online organizer of National Opt Out Day is urging holiday travellers to request full-body pat-downs rather than submit to what he calls a“naked body scanner” to “send a message to our lawmakers that we demand change.”

While only about 3% of U.S. passengers are subjected to secondary screening, the pat-downs take much longer than stepping into an x-ray scanner.

A mass decision to opt out could bring further delays for Thanksgiving travellers on one of the busiest travel days of the year at already packed airports.

Travellers considering taking a stand should consider the impact on people who“just want to get to their loved ones for the holidays,” said John Pistole, head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

“We will process people as quickly and as efficiently and securely as possible, but if large groups of people intentionally slow down that process I don’t think that can help but have a negative impact on people making their flights on time.”

The more intimate pat-downs and full body scanners were introduced in the wake of a string of foiled bomb plots against US-bound airliners.

Those include last month’s attempt to blow up cargo planes and the 2009 Christmas Day bomb plot that saw Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian, allegedly try to ignite plastic explosives concealed in his underwear as his plane approached Detroit.

Mr. Pistole said he was“sympathetic” toward those who find the screening to be overly invasive, but said the “current threat environment” makes pat-downs necessary.

The United States is“facing an enemy that is resourceful and innovative in the design, construct and use of non-metallic explosives -- bombs that can take out planes filled with hundreds of people,” Mr. Pistole told reporters.

Metal detectors and X-rays of bags, coats and shoes simply aren’t enough to prevent a more effective underwear bomber from getting on a plane, he warned.

The anticipated protest has received ample television airtime during a relatively quiet news cycle.

The national uproar gained traction last week after a cell phone video emerged of a disgruntled passenger telling a screener:“if you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested” went viral.

Videos of children being patted down -- including a video that failed to show it was a boy’s father and not TSA agents who had actually removed the child’s shirt -- and agents patting breasts and genitals fueled the fire.

In one of the most shocking stories, 61-year-old bladder cancer survivor Thomas Sawyer said a TSA pat-down broke his urostomy bag, leaving him covered in his own urine.

“I was so embarrassed and so petrified of going out into the airport and people seeing me and ‘smelling’ me,” Mr. Sawyer told ABC News.

Both the TSA and President Barack Obama’s administration have tried to respond to the backlash by reminding passengers about the importance of sufficient security.

“The president’s overarching view here is that we need to do everything that we can to keep the American people safe,” White House spokesman Bill Burton said Tuesday.

“These procedures are in place to take on... some of the folks who would do us harm, and they are constantly adapting and evolving.”

It is unclear how many people will be willing to opt for a public pat-down instead of the full body scanner whose images are monitored by an off-site screener.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that nearly two thirds of Americans support the scanning machines, putting greater emphasis on the government fight terror than focusing on personal privacy.

But half of those polled said they thought the intimate pat-down searches“go too far.”

The TSA said it has only received about 2,000 complaints from the more than 35 million passengers who have passed through security checkpoints since the new screening procedures were implemented.

Judging by some of the comments on a Facebook page set up by the US Travel Association, not everyone seems to mind.

“I just got a pat down. It felt awesome!” wrote Jonathan Carmona.

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U.S. ambassador warns Cannon of Wikileaks release

The U.S. Ambassador spoke with Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon this week regarding an impending release of classified diplomatic messages by WikiLeaks that could“create tensions” among American allies.

Foreign Affairs spokesmen Allain Cacchione confirmed Thursday that U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson telephoned Mr. Cannon to liaise with him about the document dump, and“that the Canadian Embassy in Washington is currently engaging with the U.S. Department of State on this matter.”

U.S. officials have said that WikiLeaks, an organization dedicated to releasing sensitive documents, is to make public their latest cache sometime within the next week.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the release is expected to include messages between U.S. posts around the world that“involve discussions that we had with government officials, with private citizens.

“We are gearing up for the worst-case scenario, that leaked cables will touch on a wide range of issues and countries,” Mr. Crowley told AFP.

The spokesman added that“we’ve known all along that WikiLeaks has in its possession State Department cables.”

“We are prepared if this upcoming tranche of documents includes State Department cables. We are in touch with our posts around the world. They have begun the process of informing governments that a release of documents is possible in the near future,” Mr. Crowley said.

“These revelations . . . are going to create tensions on our relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world,” he said.

WikiLeaks has not said what will be contained in its coming release, indicating only that it will be“seven times” the Iraq War logs in which it posted 400,000 secret documents.

A new posting would mark WikiLeaks’ third mass release of classified documents after it published 77,000 secret U.S. files on the Afghan conflict in July.

WikiLeaks’ announcement Monday came just days after Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for the website’s head, Australian national Julian Assange, wanted for questioning related to rape and sexual molestation accusations.

Postmedia News, with files from Mike Barber, Agence France-Presse

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Tories reject talk of leak

Unusual trading in the shares of a Vancouver-based mining company has attracted regulatory scrutiny and drawn the federal government into a discussion of potential leaks about a shuttered gold and copper project in the B.C. Interior.

The Conservatives brushed off the allegations Thursday that there may have been a leak ahead of the denial of a Taseko Mines Ltd. project earlier this month.

Government House Leader John Baird said his Liberal opponents— who alleged in the House of Commons that leaked information from the government may have benefited certain shareholders — are engaging in"pure speculation."

Unusual trading in Taseko stock occurred on Oct. 14, including a roughly one-third drop in the share price. On Nov. 2, then-environment minister Jim Prentice said Taseko's Prosperity Mine project could not be granted authorizations to proceed.

The British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) is now looking into the unusual trading ahead of the official announcement.

Baird said prior to the federal decision, there was a"publicly available" environmental assessment on the Prosperity project— released in July — that recommended Ottawa reject its development"because it would cause irreparable harm" to the environment.

"That document was available for quite some time," Baird said during Question Period.

He added there was also speculation leading up to the Nov. 2 ruling that the federal government would allow the project to go ahead."People can speculate all they want."

Baird declined to answer questions from Liberal MPs about whether the government is conducting its own internal investigation about the possibility of a leak, and if the RCMP had been called in to assist in the probe.

Initial media reports indicated that the unusual trading activity coincided with a cabinet meeting held on Oct. 14, at which Taseko's Prosperity project was reportedly discussed. However, Baird said that date fell during a week in which Parliament was not in session, due to the Thanksgiving long weekend; MPs were expected to be working in their constituencies.

The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada said Thursday while it is not investigating the possibility that alleged government leaks led to unusual trading in the shares of Taseko, it did pass the trading data from mid-October to the B.C. Securities Commission.

BCSC confirmed that it"is reviewing a referral made to it by the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) regarding the trading in the shares of Taseko Mines Limited." The provincial regulator declined further comment, saying it"does not comment on matters under review."

A CBC broadcast Wednesday evening had prompted a flurry of questions about Taseko and the halted mining project after suggesting a government leak may have been behind the sudden and unexpected trading fluctuations in Taseko stock.

After the steep Oct. 14 stock decline, when the volume of shares changing hands was much heavier than usual, the stock regained some ground when the company said there was nothing new to report. However, the share price plunged again a couple of weeks later when the government rejected the Prosperity Mine project.

Mark Holland, a Liberal member of Parliament and public safety critic, told reporters Thursday that government's efforts to brush off the possibility of a government leak were"pathetic."

"Something stinks here and it doesn't add up," Holland said."A stock doesn't drop nearly 40 per cent in a day, with 2.7-million shares traded in 40 seconds, for no reason. It is impossible to believe that a leak didn't occur.

"When it looks this suspicious, we expect a good deal more," he said.

Holland, on behalf of the Liberal Party, has sent a letter to the RCMP asking that it get involved in an investigation.

The former Liberal government ran into deep trouble in late 2005 when it was accused of letting details slip out about a pending decision that essentially ended the lucrative run of income trusts.

During a subsequent election campaign, the RCMP announced it would conduct a criminal investigation to determine whether anyone was given advance notice of the ruling. Ralph Goodale, the former Liberal finance minister and now deputy leader, was eventually exonerated and a Finance Department official was charged.

The unusual trading in Taseko shares was noticed by regulators the day it occurred, according to an IIROC spokesperson, who said officials followed procedure and contacted the company to check whether there was any new information that should be released to the marketplace in the interest of"timely disclosure."

In response to the call from IIROC, Taseko issued a news statement saying the firm was"unaware of any information that would cause the price of the company's stock to change materially." Subsequently, the trading data was sent to BCSC with"no judgment" attached, said Connie Craddock, the IIROC spokesperson.

"It's their responsibility and their jurisdiction" to determine whether there is an investigation, she said.

David Davidson, a mining analyst at Paradigm Capital Inc., said there should be little impact on the firm at the heart of the case, which has already suffered the loss of its mining project."The onus is on the government . . . to make sure there wasn't any leak," he said.

And if there is a case to be made for"restitution" for Taseko shareholders who lost money in the whipsaw stock market action, Davidson said it should not come from the company.

"(It's) certainly not the company's fault," the analyst said."They didn't do anything wrong."

The Conservative government ran into trouble earlier this week when it emerged that a staff member from a Conservative MP's office leaked documents linked to a pending House of Commons finance committee report— dealing with pre-budget advice — to Ottawa-based lobbyists.

Conservative MP Kelly Brock issued an apology to the Commons and her staff member has been let go.

pvieira(at)nationalpost.com

bshecter(at)nationalpost.com

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North Korea shells South in fiercest attack in decades

INCHEON— North Korea fired scores of artillery shells at a South Korean island on Tuesday, killing two soldiers, in one of the heaviest attacks on its neighbour since the Korean War ended in 1953.

The barrage— the South fired back and sent a fighter jet to the area — was close to a disputed maritime border on the west of the divided peninsula and the scene of deadly clashes in the past. South Korea was conducting military drills in the area at the time but said it had not been firing at the North.

The attack followed revelations at the weekend that Pyongyang is fast developing another source of material to make atomic bombs, and analysts said the North may again be pursuing a strategy of calculated provocations to wrest diplomatic and economic concessions from the international community.

It also follows moves by leader Kim Jong-il to make his youngest, but unproven, son his heir apparent, leading some analysts to suggest the bombardment might in part have been an attempt to burnish the ruling family’s image with the military.

“Houses and mountains are on fire and people are evacuating. You can’t see very well because of plumes of smoke,” a witness on the island told YTN Television during the shelling.

YTN said at least 200 North Korean shells hit Yeonpyeong, which lies off the west coast of the divided peninsula near a disputed maritime border. Most landed on a military base there.

Photographs from Yeonpyeong island, just 120 km west of Seoul, showed columns of smoke rising from buildings. Two soldiers were killed, and 17 wounded. Three civilians were also hurt.

News of the attack rattled global markets, already unsettled by Ireland’s debt woes and a shift to less risky assets.

Experts say North Korea’s Kim has for decades played a carefully calibrated game of provocation to squeeze concessions from the international community and impress his own military. The risk is that the leadership transition has upset this balance and that events spin out of control.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who has pursued a hard line with the North since taking office nearly three years ago, said attacking civilians was unforgiveable and any further aggression by Pyongyang would be severely punished.

But he made no suggestion the South would retaliate further, suggesting Seoul was taking a measured response to prevent things getting out of hand.

The North has a huge array of artillery pointed at Seoul that could decimate an urban area home to around 25 million people and cause major damage to its trillion-dollar economy.

The two Koreas are still technically at war— the Korean War ended only with a truce — and tension rose sharply early this year after Seoul accused the North of torpedoing one of its navy vessels, killing 46 sailors.

North Korea said its wealthy neighbour started the fight.

“Despite our repeated warnings, South Korea fired dozens of shells from 1 p.m. ... and we’ve taken strong military action immediately,” its KCNA news agency said in a brief statement.

South Korea said it had been conducting military drills in the area beforehand but had fired west, not north.

The White House condemned the attack, telling the North to halt its“belligerent action” and saying it was committed to defend the South.

The United States has about 28,000 troops in South Korea, their combined forces facing an estimated one million North Korean soldiers who make up one of the world’s biggest standing armies.

Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. envoy on North Korea who was in Beijing for talks, said all sides agreed restraint was needed.“We both share a view that such conflict is very undesirable, and I expressed to them the desire that restraint be exercised on all sides and I think we agree on that,” he told reporters.

China was careful to avoid taking sides, calling on both Koreas to“do more to contribute to peace.”

A French diplomatic source said the UN Security Council would call an emergency meeting in a day or two over North Korea, against which it has imposed heavy economic sanctions for previous nuclear and missile tests.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the escalation in tensions a“colossal danger.”

News of the exchange of fire sent the won tumbling in offshore markets with the 1-month won down about four percent at one stage in NDF trading. U.S. 10-year Treasury futures rose and the Japanese yen JPY fell.

The South Korean central bank, after an emergency meeting,

said it planned to cooperate with the government to take measures to stabilise markets if necessary. Many traders expect South Korea’s financial markets to fall further when trading opens on Wednesday.

But analysts said the attack was not likely to escalate into a more serious military confrontation and so any market losses would be temporary. Past provocations by Pyongyang have had only a very fleeting negative effect on South Korean markets.

“We believe the market correction this time will be very short-lived,’ said Young Chang, analyst at UBS in Seoul.

“Over several decades, North Korea has created similar geopolitical tensions in order to redirect their national interest to defence, which we believe helps the regime maintain power. North Korea’s interest is to maintain the regime and not to invade South Korea, in our view.”

Washington has branded the North a danger to the region and expressed concern Pyongyang would sell nuclear weapons technology to other states. It has said it was ready to return to negotiations with North Korea but wants to see more commitment to denuclearization beforehand.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Peking University. “Today’s news proves that North Korea, under unprovoked conditions, shot these South Korean islands. It’s reckless provocation. They want to make a big bang and force the negotiations back intotheir favour. It’s the oldest trick.”

The North depends heavily on China for economic and diplomatic support and Kim Jong-il has visited China twice this year, in part to gain backing for his succession plans.

Those ties have become a sore point with Washington after reports that North Korea appears to have made big steps towards enriching uranium, possibly using technology that passed through or even originated in China.

© Thomson Reuters 2010

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