Philippines

American among three dead in possible suicide bombing

A nail-packed bomb killed an American Green Beret and two Filipinos on Wednesday outside a restaurant near a base in the southern Philippines.

Investigators swarmed over the devastated site today, looking into the possibility of a suicide attack.

The blast, from a bomb hidden on a motorcycle, wounded 25 people outside the restaurant, which is frequented by U.S. and Filipino soldiers, in the city of Zamboanga, officials said.

No one claimed responsibility for the blast. Suspicion fell on Muslim extremists like the Abu Sayyaf group and communist rebels who had threatened earlier in the day to attack police and military installations.

The Filipino driver of the motorcycle, who was killed, was suspected of bringing the bomb.

Jerusalem

Arafat calls on Bush to block attempts to move embassy

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat appealed Wednesday to one of his toughest critics President Bush to block a U.S. law that calls for moving the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to disputed Jerusalem.

“It is a catastrophe. We can’t stay silent,” Arafat said of the measure passed by the U.S. Congress.

Bush signed the bill into law, but views it as advisory rather than mandatory, and says he has no plans to move the embassy to Jerusalem, where Palestinians seek to establish a capital in the eastern part of the city.

Washington, D.C.

Companies settle charges of violating teen privacy

Two companies that collected personal information from more than 2 million high school students have agreed to settle federal charges that they broke privacy promises by selling the information to credit card companies and other marketers.

The Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday that National Research Center for College and University Admissions, based in Lee’s Summit, Mo., and American Student List, based in Mineola, N.Y., were banned from using any of the information collected for marketing purposes unrelated to education.

The Missouri company conducts student surveys and supplies the data to colleges and universities for recruitment and marketing, while the New York company supplies lists of names to companies for advertising that targets young people, the FTC said.