Assassination

In the white-knuckle thriller Vantage Point all eyes are on Salamanca, Spain, where leaders of the free world have convened for an antiterrorism summit. At high noon in Plaza Mayor, as U.S. President Ashton (William Hurt) strides to the podium to announce a signed treaty, he is felled by an assassin's bullet, frustrating the best efforts to curb terrorism. The ensuing chaos poses moral and mortal challenges for members of the president's security detail (Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox)

Influential Philippine legislators demanded yesterday that the nation's military and law enforcement agencies be revamped as a result of the weekend assassination of cabinet minister Jaime Ferrer. Police said yesterday that they had no new leads in the Sunday night assassination of Ferrer, an outspoken anti-communist who, as secretary of local government, was one of the most powerful members of President Corazon C. Aquino's cabinet. He was the latest victim in a string of unsolved killings of prominent Filipinos, including the 1983 assassination of Aquino's husband, Benigno.

I want to believe Hillary Clinton when she says that her recent comment about Robert F. Kennedy being assassinated in June was a reference to the long primary season rather than the ever-present danger that Barack Obama faces. The problem with Clinton is that she is often her own worst enemy. She issued a statement saying, "The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family, was in any way offensive.

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson yesterday apologized for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, after earlier saying his remarks had been misinterpreted. As Robertson's remarks further roiled political and religious waters, some evangelical leaders strongly rejected them as un-Christian, while others declined to criticize the comments. And the Rev. Ted Haggard, the leader of the nation's largest evangelical Christian group, said he was seeking a meeting with Chavez.

For nearly three decades, James Earl Ray has been a despised man - convicted of the murder of the most celebrated African-American leader ever, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But with Ray - now 68 and suffering from kidney and liver damage in a Nashville, Tenn., hospital hasn't long to live - and many black leaders and civil- rights activists in Philadelphia and across the nation are hoping Ray hangs on a bit longer. The reason? They believe Ray has something still to say about allegations that there was actually a conspiracy to assassinate King, who was killed by a sniper as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.

His name was Nathan Simms. His claim to history is summed up on his headstone in Bradford Cemetery in West Bradford. It reads: "Nathan Simms, 1851-1934. The slave boy who helped Booth escape the night of Lincoln's assassination, but told the Union soldiers the next day the direction Booth took, thus aiding in his capture. " The cemetery is not far from Simms' former home in Marshallton, where he lived in the early 1930s. The specifics of Simms' association with John Wilkes Booth have become a bit overblown in decades of storytelling.

When John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, he did more than just shatter the life of a great leader. He shattered the fabric of his own family. That is the premise of The Brothers Booth, a new play that premieres tonight at the Bristol Riverside Theater. Playwright W. Stuart McDowell has written about this American tragedy from the viewpoint of Edwin Booth, the nation's most acclaimed actor of the time, he said. John Wilkes Booth and his brothers Edwin and Junius were "one of the greatest theatrical families at the time," said McDowell.

As Philadelphia prepares for another demonstration over the shooting death in Florida of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Mayor Nutter on Sunday called the killing an "assassination. " Nutter also joined the increasing calls for the arrest of 28-year-old George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who fatally shot the unarmed Martin in February. Nutter delivered his comments on MSNBC a day before the one-month anniversary of the shooting, which will be marked Monday night with a candlelight vigil in LOVE Park, the latest in a series of demonstrations in various U.S. cities.

More than 25 years after the fact, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy still provides fertile ground for conspiracy theorists. Was Lee Harvey Oswald a Soviet agent? An assassin sent by Fidel Castro? A pawn of organized crime? A deluded personality acting on his own? Such questions may never be answered, but their validity is made strikingly clear in a documentary from White Star Video called Reasonable Doubt (51 minutes, $29.95). Produced by Chip Selby in 1988 (the 25th anniversary of the slaying)

Although he hasn't seen JFK, lame-duck Channel 3 anchor Steve Bell says director Oliver Stone's theory of a government conspiracy "is off the wall. " Bell was a 27-year-old anchor at WOW-TV in Omaha, Neb., in November 1963, when he flew to Dallas just hours after President Kennedy was assassinated. (Five years later, Bell, then working for ABC Radio, was a witness to the murder of Robert F. Kennedy.) "There's no evidence whatsoever of a conspiracy involving any branch of the U.S. government," says Bell, whose swan song is today.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The gunmen walked into an apartment building before dawn earlier this month in the quiet Damascus suburb of Jaramana, went to the fifth floor and knocked on the door. When the police commander opened up, the men shot him dead and left. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's opponents appear to be resorting increasingly to assassinations of loyalist military officers in an escalation of their campaign to bring down the regime. At least 10 senior officers, including several generals, have been gunned down in the last three months, many of them as they left their homes in the morning to head to their posts.

As Philadelphia prepares for another demonstration over the shooting death in Florida of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Mayor Nutter on Sunday called the killing an "assassination. " Nutter also joined the increasing calls for the arrest of 28-year-old George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who fatally shot the unarmed Martin in February. Nutter delivered his comments on MSNBC a day before the one-month anniversary of the shooting, which will be marked Monday night with a candlelight vigil in LOVE Park, the latest in a series of demonstrations in various U.S. cities.

As Philadelphia prepares for another demonstration over the shooting death in Florida of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Mayor Nutter on Sunday characterized the teenager's death as "an assassination. " Nutter also joined the increasing calls for the arrest of George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who fatally shot the unarmed Martin in February. Nutter's comments on MSNBC came one day before the one-month anniversary of the widely condemned shooting, which will be marked Monday night with a candlelight vigil in Love Park, the latest in a series of demonstrations that have been held in various U.S. cities.

BEIRUT - Gunmen assassinated an army general in Damascus Saturday in the first killing of a high ranking military officer in the Syrian capital since the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime began in March, the country's state-run news agency said. The attack could be a sign that armed members of the opposition, who have carried out attacks on the military elsewhere in the country, are trying to step up action in the tightly controlled capital, which has been relatively quiet compared to other cities.

Nigerian talks fail to end strike ABUJA, Nigeria - Nigeria's government and labor unions failed Saturday night to end a paralyzing nationwide strike over high gasoline costs, potentially sparking an oil production shutdown in a nation vital to U.S. oil supplies. Nigeria Labor Congress president Abdulwaheed Omar told journalists outside the presidential palace: "We have not reached a compromise. " He avoided answering direct questions about whether oil production would shut down in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation.

Accused White House shooter Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, charged with attempted assassination of President Obama, was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he is competent to stand trial. Magistrate Judge Alan Kay, during a hearing Monday in federal court in Washington, also ordered Ortega-Hernandez, 21, to remain in custody until a hearing Nov. 28. Ortega-Hernandez, shackled and dressed in a white T-shirt and burgundy pants, told Kay he had no money to hire an attorney.

BOISE, Idaho - An Idaho man accused of firing an assault rifle at the White House believed he was Jesus and thought President Obama was the Antichrist, according to court documents and those who knew him. At one point, he suggested to an acquaintance the president was planning to implant computer tracking chips into children. Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, 21, was charged Thursday with attempting to assassinate the president or his staff. He is accused of firing nine rounds at the White House last Friday night - one of them cracking a window of the first family's living quarters - when Obama and his wife, Michelle, were away.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan intelligence officials said Wednesday that they had broken up a cell that plotted to kill President Hamid Karzai, arresting six people in Kabul whom they claimed were affiliated with al-Qaida and the Haqqani militant group. Intelligence service spokesman Latifullah Mashal said that that the cell included one of Karzai's bodyguards, as well as a professor at Kabul university and three college students. Mashal described the cell as the "most sophisticated and educated group in Kabul," and said that it had assisted Pakistani militants sent to the Afghan capital to carry out terror attacks.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A police officer was sentenced to death Saturday for the assassination in January of a reform-minded governor, a crime that exposed the growing influence of Islamist extremism in Pakistani society. The conviction and sentence given Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri was not unexpected. He had confessed to shooting Punjab provincial Gov. Salman Taseer outside a cafe in Islamabad on Jan. 4, saying Taseer deserved to die because of his opposition to the country's controversial blasphemy law. Under the law, it is a crime to utter any derogatory remarks about or insult in any way the prophet Muhammad, the Quran, or Islam.

Carl Oglesby, 76, a leading activist in the 1960s who headed the campus organization Students for a Democratic Society and gave an influential and frequently quoted speech denouncing the Vietnam War and those who broke his "American heart," died Tuesday of lung cancer at his home in Montclair, N.J. Born in 1935 and an undergraduate at Kent State University, Mr. Oglesby was years older than other '60s student radicals he befriended. He was married, with three children, and was working for a defense contractor.