New Jersey: Siblings found dead in apartment

A 5-year-old girl and her 8-year-old brother were found dead in their Irvington apartment Saturday, apparently of stab wounds, after their father left them in the care of their stepmother, police said.

The father of Aisha and Alstan Haque found their bodies when he returned home from work, police said. His wife, Sultana Haque, 30, was being sought for questioning.

Police in Irvington, about 15 miles west of New York City, said officers were summoned to the apartment by neighbors who reported a man shouting in a hallway. Officers arrived to find the father distraught in the apartment.

Los Angeles: Report: City may have helped Enron rig market

Newly released federal documents suggest that the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale helped Enron Corp. traders manipulate California’s energy market to drive up prices, a newspaper reported Saturday.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission documents show municipal utility managers even quizzed employees on a Fat Boy strategy — the nickname Enron gave a trading scheme to create the appearance of power shortages. Several wrote on a February 2000 test that it involved splitting profits or losses with Enron, the Los Angeles Times reported.

City officials have said that they agreed to share profits with Enron from the sale of surplus electricity produced by the city’s plant but that an investigation found no wrongdoing.

Pakistan: Militants deny charges in U.S. Consulate attack

Five suspected Islamic militants accused of orchestrating a devastating car bomb that killed 12 people outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi told a judge Saturday police extracted their confessions by torture.

Denying responsibility for the bombing, the defendants told the judge they were being used as “scapegoats” to ingratiate Pakistan with the U.S. government. If convicted, they could be sentenced to death.

“We never gave any voluntary statements of confession,” Mohammed Hanif said. “I was tortured, therefore this evidence should not be admissible.”

Hanif’s statement was endorsed by the other defendants: Mohammed Ashraf, Mohammed Irman, and Sharib and Mufti Zubair.

Russia: Chechen rebels kill six soldiers, two riot police

Chechen rebels killed six Russian soldiers and two riot police, officials said Saturday, only days after voters approved a Moscow-backed constitution that cemented the breakaway republic to the Russian Federation.

The Kremlin had advertised today’s referendum as the beginning of a peace process for Chechnya, which since 1994 has experienced two brutal wars pitting Russian forces against separatists and a period of de facto independence marked by lawlessness.