WASHINGTON, D.C.

Sept. 11 commission sets Rice hearing for April 8

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice will go before the federal panel reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks next Thursday to rebut criticism that the Bush administration failed to grasp the gravity of the terrorism threat before the hijackings.

She’ll be the only witness during a 2 1/2-hour public hearing focusing on what Clinton administration officials told the Bush White House about al-Qaida and what the new administration did with the information.

“We really want to find out about the transition, what they learned, and what changes in policy the Bush administration decided and what focus there was on terrorism,” commission chairman Thomas Kean said in an interview.

Uzbekistan

Bomber kills one, injures self; government blames al-Qaida

A woman detonated a bomb Thursday in central Uzbekistan, killing one person and critically injuring herself, and the government for the first time said al-Qaida was behind this week’s attacks that left at least 44 dead, mostly alleged militants.

Ilya Pyagay, the Interior Ministry’s deputy anti-terrorism chief, told The Associated Press that those behind the unrest, including some fugitives, were followers of the strict Wahhabi strain of Islam believed to have inspired Osama bin Laden.

“These are Wahhabis who belong to one of the branches of the international al-Qaida terror group,” he said.

The Uzbek government often uses the Wahhabi label to tar anyone who worships outside state-run mosques, and Western diplomats and human rights activists say official repression could be to blame for the violence.

Ohio

Highway shootings suspect could face the death penalty

The man arrested in the deadly string of highway shootings that terrorized Ohio drivers for months was indicted Thursday on a murder charge that could bring the death penalty.

Charles A. McCoy Jr., 28, also was charged with numerous other offenses, including attempted murder and vandalism, in half the 24 shootings.

The murder charge covers the only death in the case, that of 62-year-old Gail Knisley, who was being driven by a friend to a doctor’s appointment and shopping trip when a bullet pierced the driver’s door and killed her Nov. 25. No one else was ever hit.

Other cases covered by the charges include an Oct. 19 shooting at a tractor-trailer on Interstate 270, a Nov. 11 shooting into an elementary school, and two shootings within minutes of each other Feb. 8 from an Interstate 71 overpass.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Bush signs bill making it a crime to harm a fetus

Accompanied by grieving families, President Bush on Thursday signed into law new protections for the unborn that for the first time make it a separate federal crime to harm a fetus during an assault on the mother.

“If the crime is murder and the unborn child’s life ends, justice demands a full accounting under the law,” Bush said before signing the measure, a major priority for many of the president’s most loyal political supporters. “The suffering of two victims can never equal only one offense.”

Abortion-rights proponents, meanwhile, called the measure an assault on reproductive freedom because it represents the first recognition of federal legal rights for an embryo or fetus as a person separate from the woman.