United Nations

Security Council freezes Liberian leader’s assets

The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution Friday to freeze the assets of Charles Taylor, the exiled Liberian leader and indicted war criminal.

The resolution requires all countries to freeze funds, financial assets “and economic resources owned or controlled directly or indirectly” by Taylor, his wife and son, as well as others on a U.N. sanctions committee list to be circulated to the 191 U.N. member states.

Taylor fled Aug. 11 into exile in Nigeria as rebels laid siege to the Liberian capital, Monrovia. He faces war crimes charges by a U.N.-backed tribunal for his role in a brutal insurgency in Sierra Leone, Liberia’s neighbor.

Taylor’s departure from Liberia cleared the way for a power-sharing deal between his government and the rebels after a war that claimed more than 150,000 lives.

Japan

Iwo Jima survivors reunite for anniversary

When Gordon Ward first hit the black-sand beach at Iwo Jima as a 23-year-old U.S. Marine, the air was alive with the crash of naval guns and buzz of bullets. The next day, he was on the beach again, this time with the bottom of his leg nearly blown off and a medic dead on top of him.

“The medic was trying to get me ready to be evacuated,” said Ward, now 80, of Kensington, Md. “But a shell blew him up before he could get me to safety.”

Fifty-nine years later, Ward and 24 other veterans returned here Friday for a memorial and reunion with three Japanese who also survived the battle for Iwo Jima — one of the bloodiest fights of World War II and a victory for Americans that came more than any other to symbolize the Pacific conflict.