Miami: Cheney, oil company face lawsuit on accounting

A watchdog group said Tuesday it would file a shareholders lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney and his former employer, Halliburton Co., claiming they engaged in accounting fraud.

Cheney was chairman and chief executive of the oil field-services giant from 1995 to 2000. Halliburton announced on May 28 that it received notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission that the commission was looking into Halliburton’s accounting methods adopted in 1998 for reporting cost overruns on construction jobs.

The SEC has not filed any charges against Halliburton.

Algeria: Al-Qaida spokesman says group planning new attacks

In an interview published Tuesday, the spokesman for al-Qaida said the terrorist organization led by Osama bin Laden was thriving and planning new attacks on Americans. He called the U.S. campaign to dismantle the group a “Hollywood script.”

“Al-Qaida still maintains its military, security, economic and informational structures,” Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was quoted as saying in the Algerian daily El Youm.

There was no way to verify the authenticity of the quotes. But U.S. officials said two weeks ago that a recent audio recording by Abu Ghaith appeared to be legitimate.

The editor in chief of El Youm, an Arabic language daily, said the interview it published was conducted Sunday via two intermediaries.

New York City: Search for WTC victims’ remains to end next week

The long, painstaking effort to recover human remains from the World Trade Center debris will end next week when a Staten Island landfill site is closed, officials said Tuesday.

The death toll from the Sept. 11 attacks will stand at 2,813 unless there are new discoveries or revisions. City officials said they were considering a ceremony to mark the end of the work.

The Fresh Kills landfill has been the final stop for debris since Sept. 12, when trucks and barges began hauling rubble there to be sifted one last time for remains, personal property and criminal evidence. Some 1.62 million tons of material were examined.

Miami: Saddam Hussein’s stepson deported to New Zealand

Saddam Hussein’s stepson has been deported to New Zealand less than one week after immigration agents arrested him in Miami when he tried to attend a flight school without a proper visa.

Mohammed Nour al-Din Saffi, 36, left Monday night for Los Angeles, where he switched planes for the final leg overseas.

No criminal charges will be pursued against Saffi, said Rodney Germain, an Immigration and Naturalization Services spokesman in Miami.

Saffi got into trouble last week because he did not apply for a student visa to take flight training at Aeroservice Aviation Center, located near Miami International Airport.

This is the same school that Ziad Jarrah, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, trained at.