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MiamiHerald.com HOTEL COPIES: A copy of The Miami Herald will be delivered to your room. A credit of US$0.25 will be posted to your account if delivery is declined. INTERNATIONAL EDITION MONDAY, MAY 2, 2011 108TH YEAR I ©2011 THE MIAMI HERALD NATO strikes criticized over death of Gadhafi’s family JOHN PAUL II, THE BLESSED MCT Pope Benedict XVI beatified Pope John Paul II before a gathering of some 1.5 million faithful in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Sunday. n St. Peter’s jammed for John Paul II beatification, 6A Miami Herald Wire Services BENGHAZI, Libya — NATO’s campaign of airstrikes against Lib- ya came under the most intense criticism yet on Sunday, with Rus- sian officials accusing the alliance of using “disproportionate” force in civilian areas a day after a strike on central Tripoli was reported to have killed a son and three grand- children of Moammar Gadhafi. NATO officials have firmly de- nied that they were trying to hit Gadhafi specifically in the attack, which Libyan government spokes- man Moussa Ibrahim said killed Gadhafi’s sixth son, Seif al Arab Gadhafi, and three grandchildren. Gadhafi and his wife were in the residence at the time of the strike but both survived the bombing, Ibrahim said on state television. Although NATO commanders insisted they had struck a legiti- mate military target Saturday and had not, and would not, specifically target Gadhafi, the Libyan govern- ment accused NATO of mounting an assassination attempt illegal un- der international law. On Sunday, the Russian foreign ministry and a lawmaker close to the Kremlin sounded those themes as well, di- rectly challenging the aims of the NATO mission. In a statement, the Russian For- eign Ministry accused NATO of exceeding the mandate of a U.N. resolution allowing it to maintain a no-fly zone over Libya and to pro- tect civilians. The attack, it said, “arouses serious doubts about co- alition members’ statement that the TURN TO LIBYA, 2A • INDEX THE AMERICAS..........4A OPINION .......................7A LIVING ...........................8A COMICS & PUZZLES ..6B OBAMA MOCKS TRUMP AT ANNUAL DINNER, 5A GERMAN TERROR ARRESTS DISRUPT WIDER INQUIRY, 3A HEAT WINS GAME 1 AGAINST CELTICS, 99-90, SPORTS FRONT LATIN AMERICA WITNESSES A SURGE IN CAR SALES, BUSINESS FRONT Drug cartels wind up with military arsenals BY TIM JOHNSON McClatchy News Service WASHINGTON — Crime groups in cahoots with venal army officers are looting military arse- nals in Central America, giving them powerful weapons that allow them to outgun police and chal- lenge the region’s regular armies. The weapons run the gamut from assault rifles to anti-tank missiles, some of which the Unit- ed States supplied during regional conflicts more than two decades ago. The slippage from military armories occurs regularly. The feared Mexican organized crime group known as Los Zetas has stolen weapons from military depots in Guatemala three times in recent years, Guatemala’s Deputy Security Minister Mario Castaneda told an anti-narcotics conference in early April in Cancun, Mexico. In February, U.S. prosecutors unsealed a five-count indictment against a retired army captain from El Salvador for allegedly selling or offering C-4 plastic explosives, as- sault rifles, grenades and blasting caps to undercover agents. U.S. diplomatic cables ob- tained by WikiLeaks and passed to McClatchy Newspapers show that U.S. envoys have repeatedly voiced concern over lax controls on military weapons depots in Guatemala and Honduras. One cable from June 2009 car- ries a simple message line: “Rogue elements of Guatemalan military selling weapons to narcos.” The cable was sent after a nar- cotics raid on a warehouse south of Guatemala City on April 24, 2009, when agents clashed with “a number of heavily armed Zetas”, leaving five agents dead. Inside the warehouse, the unit found 11 ma- chine guns, a light antitank weap- on, 563 rocket-propelled grenades, 32 hand grenades, eight landmin- es and abundant ammunition in TURN TO CARTELS, 2A • n Hidden arsenal found in Ciudad Juarez, 4A Unsavory alliances mar costly Afghanistan project BY ALISSA J. RUBIN AND JAMES RISEN New York Times Service GARDEZ, Afghanistan — When construction crews faced attacks while working on a major U.S.- financed highway here in south- eastern Afghanistan, Western con- tractors turned to a powerful local figure named simply Arafat, who was suspected to have links to Af- ghanistan’s insurgents. Subcontractors, flush with U.S. money, paid Arafat at least $1 mil- lion a year to keep them safe, ac- cording to people involved in the project and Arafat himself. The money paid to Arafat bought neither security nor the highway that U.S. officials have long envisioned as a vital route to tie remote border areas to the Af- ghan government. Instead, it added to the staggering cost of the road, known as the Gardez-Khost High- way, one of the most expensive and troubled transportation projects in Afghanistan. The 64-mile highway, which has yet to be completed, has cost about $121 million so far, with the final price tag expected to reach $176 million — or about $2.8 million a mile — according to U.S. officials. Security alone has cost $43.5 mil- lion so far, USAID officials said. The vast expenses and unsavory alliances surrounding the highway have become a parable of the cor- ruption and mismanagement that turns so many well-intended devel- opment efforts in Afghanistan into sinkholes for the money of U.S. taxpayers, even nine years into the war. The road is one of the most ex- pensive construction projects per mile undertaken by USAID, which has built or rehabilitated hundreds of miles of Afghan highways and has faced delays and cost overruns TURN TO AFGHANISTAN, 2A • King James Bible still popular at age 400 BY ROBERT BARR Associated Press LONDON — Every Sunday, the majestic cadences of the King James Bible resound in Her Maj- esty’s Chapel Royal in London, in scattered parish churches in Britain and in countless chapels, halls and congregations around the world. You may also hear it in a pub or on a street — “the skin of my teeth,” “the root of the matter,” and “turned the world upside down” — or listening to the lyr- ics of Handel’s Messiah. Still a best-seller, the King James Bible is being celebrated on its 400th anniversary as a re- ligious and literary landmark and formative linguistic and cultural influence on the English-speaking world. You do not have to be a believ- er to appreciate it. When Britain’s most famous atheist, the evolu- tionary biologist Richard Dawk- ins, read a chapter from the Book of Ruth for a YouTube Bible proj- ect, he said, “It is important that religion should not be allowed to hijack this cultural resource.” The celebrations may be tem- pered by a sense of loss: the decline of churches, a lack of awareness of the King James Bible’s legacy. Yet that legacy has more than fulfilled the goal set by its translators. “Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought from the begin- ning, that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one . . . but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one,” the translators said in a preface to the first edition. Says British academic Gordon Campbell: “Other translations may engage the mind, but the King James Version is the Bible of the heart.” James VI of Scotland, who also became King James I of England in 1603, took a keen in- terest in religion. TURN TO BIBLE, 2A • Storm victims find lost items on Facebook BY AMY HARMON New York Times Service The tornado that killed Em- ily Washburn’s grandfather this week also destroyed his Missis- sippi home, leaving his family with nothing to remember him by — until a picture of him hold- ing the dog he loved surfaced on Facebook, posted by a woman who found it in her office parking lot, 175 miles away in Tennessee. Like hundreds of others find- ing keepsakes that fell from the sky and posting photographs of them on a surreal Facebook lost and found, the woman included her e-mail address, and Washburn wrote immediately: “That man is my granddaddy. It would mean a lot to me to have that picture.” Created by Patty Bullion, 37, of Lester, Ala., a page on the so- cial networking site has so far re- united dozens of storm survivors with their prized — and in some cases, only — possessions: a high school diploma that landed in a Lester front yard was traced to its owner in Tupelo, Miss., for example. A woman who lost her home in the tiny town of Phil Campbell, Ala., claimed her homemade quilt found in Athens, Ala., nearly 50 miles away. But the page is also turning social networking software de- signed to help friends stay in touch into an unexpected meet- ing ground for strangers. Along with the photographs of found items are the comments of well- wishers and homespun detectives speculating as to the identities of their owners. TURN TO STORMS, 2A • n Government’s response wins praise, 5A MAURICIO LIMA/NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE The Gardez-Khost Highway is one of the most expensive construction projects undertaken by USAID in Afghanistan. LEFTERIS PITARAKIS/AP A woman reads a copy of the King James bible in the London Library.
