WASHINGTON

The United States soon will begin training officers of a Palestinian security service to better protect officials visiting the West Bank, the State Department said Sunday.

The training is part of a U.S. effort to bolster moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' government in the West Bank, formed after Hamas seized power in Gaza in mid-June.
 
The Bush administration has made clear that it sees the Palestinians' internal split as an opportunity to push for a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, using the West Bank as a model.

MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina

People in the United States are living in a world of pain and they are popping pills at an alarming rate to cope with it.

The amount of five major prescription painkillers sold at retail establishments rose 88 percent between 1997 and 2005, according to an Associated Press analysis of statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

More than 200,000 pounds (90,720 kilograms) of codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine were purchased at retail stores during the most recent year represented in the data. That total is enough to give more than 300 milligrams of painkillers to every person in the country.

Toby Sterling

EINDHOVEN, Netherlands

It was Aug. 17, 1982, and row upon row of palm-sized plates with a rainbow sheen began rolling off an assembly line near Hanover, Germany.

An engineering marvel at the time, today they are instantly recognizable as compact discs, a product that turns 25 years old today - and whose future is increasingly in doubt in an age of iPods and digital downloads.

Those first CDs contained Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony and would sound equally sharp if played today, said Holland's Royal Philips Electronics, which jointly developed the CD with Sony of Japan.

BERLIN

A German court said on Friday it would release a former member of Germany's Red Army Faction (RAF) convicted for the murder of a U.S. soldier and the deaths of another U.S. soldier and an American civilian in a bomb attack.

Eva Haule will be paroled on Tuesday, after serving her minimum sentence, with a five-year probation period, the court said in statement. The Frankfurt court had previously ruled that Haule would serve a minimum of 21 years in prison.

"The convicted person currently poses no threat to the general public," the statement said.

Haule was an RAF member from 1984 until her arrest two years later. She was convicted in 1994 for her part in the murder of a U.S. soldier and a 1985 bomb attack on the U.S. Rhein-Main Air Base in West Germany which killed another U.S. soldier and a female civilian.

Names and nationalities of known suicide bombers in Iraq

This list contains the names and countries of 139 suicide bombers in Iraq. The bombers came from the following countries: Saudi Arabia (53), Iraq (18), Italy (8), Syria (8), Kuwait (7), Jordan (4), Libya (3), Egypt (3), Tunisia (3), Turkey (3), Belgium (2), France (2), Spain (2), Yemen (3), Lebanon (1), Morocco (1), Britain (1), Bengal (1), Sudan (1) and Unknown (18).

(Source: Adapted from "Suicide Bombers in Iraq" by Mohammed M. Hafez)

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