New York City

NBC airs Iraqi video taken after ambush

Graphic video footage of a badly injured Jessica Lynch and Lori Piestewa, who may have died shortly afterward, was taken by Iraqi state television following the ambush of the soldiers’ Army convoy, NBC reported Tuesday night.

The video, aired on “NBC Nightly News,” shows the two Army privates at the hospital where they were taken following the March 23 ambush of the 507th Maintenance Co.

The tape was never aired in Iraq, NBC reported.

Piestewa, her face swollen and bruised and her head bandaged, is shown as someone positions her feet, and then her head, for the camera shot. Her lip is shown curling back in an apparent grimace.

Lynch, 20, of Palestine, W.Va., is also shown bandaged, her lip cut. Neither appears awake or alert.

Iraqi doctors have previously said the women were brought to a private clinic following the ambush, and that Piestewa, a 23-year-old mother of two from Tuba City, Ariz., died half an hour later of severe head injuries.

Lynch was rescued by U.S. forces April 1, while five other soldiers, including Pfc. Patrick Miller of Kansas, were found about two weeks later elsewhere in Iraq. But 11 of their colleagues died during and after the ambush in Nasiriyah.

Washington, D.C.

U.S. adds resident every 12 seconds

The U.S. population will be 292,287,454 on Jan. 1, up 1 percent over the year, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.

The new total is an increase of 2,816,586 from the same date in 2003.

The Bureau said that as of January the United States will be recording a birth every 8 seconds, a death every 13 seconds and adding an immigrant every 25 seconds. The result is an increase of one person every 12 seconds, the agency said.

Washington, D.C.

Soldiers’ families to receive plane tickets

“Operation Hero Miles” is giving 680 free plane tickets to families of wounded troops. Since November, the program has also been providing free plane tickets home for soldiers on leave from Iraq and Afghanistan, using donated frequent flier miles.

“Any physician or doctor would tell you by having your family close by when you’re going through the healing process — and some of these injuries are pretty severe — that it works better and it helps the healing,” Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, D-Md., said in announcing the program’s expansion.

The tickets will be distributed through the Fisher House Foundation, a nonprofit organization that opens its 32 homes across the country to military families. It will make donations based on high-cost transportation, distance and severity of injury, foundation officials said.

London

Royal dog Dotty cleared of mauling queen’s corgi

The prime suspect in a royal whodunit has been cleared.

Princess Anne’s bull terrier Dotty didn’t fatally maul a corgi belonging to Queen Elizabeth II shortly before Christmas, Buckingham Palace said Tuesday. Instead, the palace pointed the blame at one of Anne’s other terriers, Florence.

Media reports had identified Dotty, a dog with a violent past, as the culprit after Pharos the corgi was attacked at the royal family’s Sandringham estate early last week. The corgi was badly injured and had to be put down.

The incident prompted widespread speculation that Princess Anne would have to destroy Dotty, who attacked two children in a park in 2002, landing her owner with a $880 fine. But the terrier’s future appeared brighter after Buckingham Palace announced she was no longer a suspect.

“We understand that it was Florence,” a spokesman for the royal household said. “We are confirming that it wasn’t Dotty.”