Kuwaitis

Over a thousand Kuwaitis risked imprisonment demonstrating for free elections and democratic reforms in an effort to tell the world that Kuwait is not yet free. But at the same time, our own Republican congressmen, Bob Lagomarsino and Elton Gallegly, played host to the Kuwaiti ambassador, promoting business opportunities with the racist, sexist, repressive ruling al Sabah family ("Kuwait Asks Assistance in Rebuilding," June 15). I hope when these two men are up for reelection, people remember that, given a choice between standing for the principles of democracy and freedom or making a buck, these congressmen sold out. CONNIE HIGHBERG, Thousand Oaks

A Kuwait-based company that is the principal food supplier to the U.S. military in Iraq has been indicted on charges that it defrauded the U.S. government in a series of alleged schemes that, by one account, have cost American taxpayers more than $1 billion. The six-count criminal indictment was unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta against the company, Public Warehousing Co., or PWC, which in 2006 changed its name to Agility. Among other things, the complaint accuses the company of filing false invoices, failing to pass discounts along to the federal government, and asking vendors to decrease the amount of products in their packages "for no reason other than to charge the United States more for the same amount of product."

Michael Ross of The Times' Washington Bureau is a member of the Pentagon press pool currently in Saudi Arabia. This report was written for the pool, whose members are not allowed to disclose their exact location. Iraqi occupation forces in Kuwait have closed mosques and sealed the border with Saudi Arabia in response to continuing hit-and-run attacks by Kuwaiti resistance cells, according to refugees arriving here.

Kuwaiti authorities said they have arrested an Al Qaeda-linked group allegedly planning to attack a U.S. military base in the small, oil-rich state. The Interior Ministry said in a brief statement that state security detained a "terrorist network" of six Kuwaitis who gave "detailed confessions" about plans to attack Camp Arifjan, the main U.S. base in the country, as well as the headquarters of Kuwait's security agency, in addition to other facilities it did not name.

Emergency truck convoys are supplying food, water and medicine to this war-weary capital, but relief officials said restoring electricity will take 10 days or more. Retreating Iraqi troops damaged fuel cells at three of four plants that generate electricity and cut long sections from power lines across the country, a senior U.S. Army official told reporters Tuesday. "Transmission of power--that's the showstopper," said the official, who heads a 2,700-member U.S.

Kuwaiti women, capitalizing on pressure for democracy and sexual equality, gained access this week to the most exclusive men's club in the emirate--the diwaniya . The diwaniya , an old Kuwaiti tradition, is a regular gathering in the house of a distinguished man in almost every neighborhood. Mohammed Kaddiri, a pro-democracy opposition figure, said that a diwaniya held at his house Wednesday was the first in the history of Kuwait to include women.

Lines stretched behind cash machines and gasoline stations Saturday as thousands of Iraqi troops massed across the border in a buildup like that presaging the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. But there were few other signs of anxiety after the Cabinet called on Kuwaitis to refrain from hoarding food and water. Traffic at the border with Saudi Arabia was reported normal, and no significant increase in flight reservations was reported.

Waving and cheering, and bedraggled but safe, 1,181 Kuwaitis who had been abducted as hostages by Iraqi troops were bused on Friday from Iraq's border to their homes in Kuwait city. About 80 of the newly freed Kuwaitis started walking back from this heavily bombed border town as a protest against what they called inadequate care by Kuwait's government. Buses later picked them up, too.

The Central Intelligence Agency is helping to organize and train Kuwaiti resistance fighters at bases in Saudi Arabia in an effort to harass the estimated 150,000 Iraqi troops now occupying Kuwait, U.S. officials said Thursday. And, largely or entirely independent of the CIA's still-embryonic efforts, Kuwaitis still inside the occupied country continue to resist the Iraqi forces with hit-and-run attacks, numerous reports from Kuwait indicate.

As a cessation of hostilities concluded Kuwait's seven-month ordeal of occupation, government officials here moved swiftly Thursday to control sporadic outbreaks of urban violence in a city where basic, day-to-day government has become another casualty of war. Two guards at the Palestine Liberation Organization embassy were shot by angry Kuwaitis, and gunfire rang out from a school and near a police station in a heavily Palestinian neighborhood of the Kuwaiti capital.

Investors in Kuwait found a solution Thursday to tumbling share prices: Get a court to shut down the stock market. A judge in the oil-rich Persian Gulf kingdom, acting on a lawsuit brought by individual investors, ordered the country's stock market closed to protect small investors from further declines in their portfolios. Stock markets in the Middle East have tumbled along with others around the globe as oil prices have plunged and the financial contagion sparked by the U.S.

Edfred L. Shannon Jr., the longtime former chief executive of the oil-drilling firm Santa Fe International who made headlines in the 1980s when he brokered the sale of his company to a petroleum firm owned by the Kuwaiti government, died Sunday at his home in Whittier. He was 82. A statement from his family said that he had recently been hospitalized in Whittier but had returned home a few days before his death. The exact cause was not reported.

Sheik Saad Al Abdullah Al Sabah, 78, a former Kuwaiti emir who ruled the small oil-rich kingdom for nine days in 2006 before being removed because of ill health, died Tuesday in Kuwait City, state television reported. As crown prince, Saad automatically became ruler when his distant cousin and then emir, Sheik Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah, died Jan. 15, 2006. But it became increasingly clear that Saad's poor health would not allow him to carry out his new responsibilities. His health started deteriorating after he suffered colon bleeding in 1997.

Kuwaiti conglomerate Mohamed Abdulmohsin Al Kharafi & Sons said Wednesday that it had a 6.7% stake in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. M.A. Al Kharafi, which is run by Nasser Al Kharafi, owns 4.13 million of Krispy Kreme's common shares, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Krispy Kreme has been struggling to restore its financial health after a decline in doughnut sales, an earnings restatement and an SEC investigation into its accounting.

Parliament ousted Kuwait's ailing emir, Sheik Saad al Abdullah al Sabah, on Tuesday, and the Cabinet named Prime Minister Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah to take over temporarily. The appointment was widely expected and approval of the move is anticipated in parliament, where the newly named leader has broad support. He needs only a simple majority vote, which is expected early next week. The prime minister is a half brother of longtime ruler Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, who died Jan. 15.

Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, the emir of Kuwait and one of the United States' closest Mideast allies, was buried in an unmarked grave Sunday in a ceremony attended by thousands of weeping citizens. The crown prince, Sheik Saad al Abdullah al Sabah -- in his mid-70s and ailing himself -- assumed the throne. But he was expected to leave control of day-to-day government affairs to the prime minister, and no major policy shifts were expected.

Hundreds of women squatted in the dust here late Friday, their jet-black chadors almost invisible in the dark of a damp and cloudy night. But at a time of expected joy--the release of their husbands and sons from nearly eight months in Iraqi military prisons--their anger was white hot. "We've been running from corner to corner since early morning," complained Zainab Balushi. "Here, there is not one official to meet them. . . . What is the sin of these soldiers?"

A Kuwaiti businessman said Saturday that he saw Iraqi soldiers summarily execute eight men accused of resistance activities in occupied Kuwait. The eight were "murdered by Iraqi soldiers who shot them with pistols," said the businessman, who spoke by a satellite telephone link--a rarity in this region since the Aug. 2 takeover of Kuwait by Iraq's forces. "Each victim was killed with one bullet in the head and another in the heart," he said, adding that the killings occurred Sept. 21.