Lebanon

Court convicts 32 in attacks on Western businesses

A Lebanese military court convicted 32 people Saturday of bombing American and British businesses, and imposed sentences ranging from three months to life imprisonment.

Three of the defendants were acquitted of plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy and assassinate the U.S. ambassador.

Five people were wounded in the bombings in Beirut and the northern city of Tripoli. The attacks, which began last year and continued until April, damaged outlets of McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and KFC, among others.

The attacks were seen as part of a wave of anti-American sentiment in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and a perception that the United States favors Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.

Rome

Police raid suspected hideout of Red Brigades terrorists

Italian police raided an alleged hideout of the radical leftist Red Brigades terrorist group Saturday, seizing a cache of explosives weeks after arresting nine people linked to the organization.

Authorities believe the basement of a building near Rome’s Termini train station was used by group members already in custody, the ANSA news agency said.

Police found some 220 pounds of explosives along with detonators, computer disks and documents, including a flier claiming responsibility for a 2002 killing, ANSA said.

Washington, D.C.

Charges filed against pilot suspected of intoxication

A veteran Virgin Atlantic Airways pilot was in a Virginia jail Saturday facing a charge that he showed up drunk to fly a plane of almost 400 passengers to London.

The airline said Richard George Harwell, 55, an American living in England, had a spotless record during 14 years as a Virgin pilot.

“He was suspended with immediate effect pending an internal investigation,” said John Riordan, a Virgin Atlantic spokesman.

Police at Washington Dulles International Airport in suburban Virginia seized Harwell aboard Virgin Atlantic Flight 22 on Friday night after being summoned by the Transportation Security Administration, whose screeners had detected alcohol on Harwell’s breath, said Tara Hamilton, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

Los Angeles

Labor talks end as markets reject grocery workers’ offer

Ten weeks into a labor strike that has hit more than 800 Southern California grocery stores, talks between the supermarkets’ operators and workers union came to an abrupt end after resuming for just one day.

Negotiators for the supermarkets rejected the union’s latest offer late Friday. No new talks were scheduled, but there was some movement in the dispute.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union, whose members struck Safeway’s Vons and Pavilions stores on Oct. 11 and were immediately locked out of Ralphs and Albertsons stores, said Friday it would pull its pickets from the stores’ distribution centers.