Spain

New intelligence unveiled in train attack

Intelligence reports examined Tuesday by lawmakers investigating Madrid’s train bombings indicated that police found evidence pointing to Islamic militants hours earlier than they had announced, members of the panel said.

The closed-door session marked the start of the second week of Parliament’s inquiry into the March 11 attack that killed 190 people.

Some documents from the intelligence center offer new information on the first big break in the case — a van containing detonators and Quranic verses, and found near the rail station where the four bombed trains originated or passed through, said Emilio Olabarria, a panel member representing the Basque Nationalist Party.

But Olabarria suggested the evidence was detected right away in a preliminary search of the van at the spot where it was found, just a few hours after the attacks.

London

Blair’s Iraq woes continue with report

Prime Minister Tony Blair, facing the prospect of another potentially critical report on Britain’s participation in the war in Iraq, insisted Tuesday he made the right decision and denied it was based on bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.

The question was whether the report, to be released today, would blame an overall intelligence failure, or hold Blair accountable.

Asked by reporters whether he had been misled by bad intelligence, Blair replied: “I don’t accept that at all.” The world, he said, was “better, safer, more secure” with Saddam Hussein out of power.

Blair received the report Tuesday and told reporters he wouldn’t comment on it until it was made public.

Austria

Bishop under fire for seminary scandal

Austria’s Roman Catholic Church is scrambling to contain a widening sex scandal after it emerged that police had seized what one magazine described as tens of thousands of pornographic photographs from a local seminary.

The photos, found on seminary computers, allegedly depict child pornography and seminary priests engaged in sexual acts with students.

Local media have published photos showing the seminary director and his deputy kissing and fondling seminarians. Both men have since resigned.

The church has announced an internal investigation at the seminary, which is in the diocese of St. Poelten.

Outrage over the scandal continued to build in this largely Roman Catholic country as Bishop Kurt Krenn, chief of the St. Poelten diocese, dismissed the published photos of seminarians and instructors kissing and caressing as “boys’ foolishness.”

Berlin

Marine’s debriefing nearly complete

The debriefing of a U.S. Marine who dropped from sight in Iraq is almost complete, and he could return to the United States as soon as today, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, who surfaced in Lebanon after he was feared kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents, was flown to Germany last week and admitted to the U.S. military’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.

Since then, the 24-year-old Marine has been debriefed by intelligence specialists, psychologists, physicians and a Muslim chaplain, while also working on getting back in shape, said hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw on Tuesday.