Smuggling Egypt

Describing the case as an example of greed rather than "cloak-and-dagger espionage," a judge in Sacramento sentenced a former rocket scientist and an accomplice to prison for attempting to export restricted rocket material to Egypt. U.S. District Judge Raul Ramirez ordered Abdelkader Helmy, 41, who once worked for Aerojet Solid Propulsion Co., to serve 46 months in a minimum-security prison and fined him $358,690.

A decade ago, Shyima Hall was smuggled into the United States as a 10-year-old slave, forced to cook and clean inside the home of a wealthy Irvine family and, at night, sleep on a squalid mattress in a windowless garage. On Thursday, the Egyptian-born 22-year-old stood before a federal judge in Montebello with nearly 900 others and was sworn in as naturalized U.S. citizen. The ceremony capped a hard-scrabble journey that began with Hall's rescue, wound through the foster care system and ended with her living on her own, working, and with ambitions to become a federal agent.

Israeli warplanes on Saturday bombed tunnels beneath the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, killing two Palestinian men, after militants fired mortar rounds into Israel from the coastal territory, according to the Israeli military and Palestinian medical workers. The men were the first fatalities in the conflict between the militant group Hamas and Israel in nearly two months.

Israeli warplanes on Saturday bombed tunnels beneath the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, killing two Palestinian men, after militants fired mortar rounds into Israel from the coastal territory, according to the Israeli military and Palestinian medical workers. The men were the first fatalities in the conflict between the militant group Hamas and Israel in nearly two months.

A decade ago, Shyima Hall was smuggled into the United States as a 10-year-old slave, forced to cook and clean inside the home of a wealthy Irvine family and, at night, sleep on a squalid mattress in a windowless garage. On Thursday, the Egyptian-born 22-year-old stood before a federal judge in Montebello with nearly 900 others and was sworn in as naturalized U.S. citizen. The ceremony capped a hard-scrabble journey that began with Hall's rescue, wound through the foster care system and ended with her living on her own, working, and with ambitions to become a federal agent.

After five months of fighting in the Gaza Strip, Israeli and Palestinian leaders moved Sunday to shore up a cease-fire that both sides had sought as relief from a politically costly conflict that has left more than 300 people dead. The truce was holding Sunday -- after Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza overnight -- despite a ragged start. At least seven rockets fired from Gaza landed in Israel after the accord took effect at 6 a.m. By 10:15 a.m.

Twelve drug dealers on Thursday were sentenced to death for smuggling into Egypt and distributing 10 tons of hashish and 858 pounds of opium, the Middle East News Agency reported.

President Bush said Thursday that he wanted to lock in the outlines of a Palestinian state before he left office, even as Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, said the road was "paved with obstacles." With less than nine months to achieve his goal, Bush is holding a flurry of diplomatic meetings, including a session with Abbas in the Oval Office on Thursday, seeking to pressure Israel, the Palestinians and their Arab allies.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wrangled Sunday for more than two hours over differences that have blocked a resumption of substantive peace talks, but they achieved little more than a pledge to keep meeting regularly.

Defiant red graffiti on the white outdoor wall evoked the sounds of war. "The roar of the lions against the roar of the Jewish helicopters," it said in rhyming Arabic, extolling the Hamas fighters who had stood up to Israel. But the dominant sound Friday in Gaza City's Asqula district was the growl of motorcycle engines, a sign that life in the Gaza Strip, battered and bloodied by a 22-day Israeli assault, is edging back to normal.

Describing the case as an example of greed rather than "cloak-and-dagger espionage," a judge in Sacramento sentenced a former rocket scientist and an accomplice to prison for attempting to export restricted rocket material to Egypt. U.S. District Judge Raul Ramirez ordered Abdelkader Helmy, 41, who once worked for Aerojet Solid Propulsion Co., to serve 46 months in a minimum-security prison and fined him $358,690.

Leaders of the ruling Hamas party called Wednesday for renewed attacks inside Israel after Israeli artillery shells tore into a residential neighborhood here, killing 18 civilians, including five women and eight children. Angry demonstrations erupted across the Gaza Strip after the killings, the highest civilian death toll on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in more than three years. Thousands of Palestinians burned tires and demanded revenge, chanting "Death to Israel!

If U.S. troops go to war against Iraq, the deadliest weapon unleashed on them by Saddam Hussein's forces could be stamped "Made in America." Over the objections of its own engineers, Honeywell Inc. provided agents for Iraq with technology for developing fuel-air explosives, devices 10 times more powerful than conventional weapons and considered by some experts to be "a poor man's nuclear weapons."