Civilians

Nearly a dozen civilian supervisors in the Police Department's radio room will remain in their jobs while the city appeals a state ruling that uniformed supervisors were unfairly replaced by the civilians last October. The creation of supervisory positions for civilians in the radio room was done at the behest of the blue-collar municipal union, but the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board ruled July 1 that the city should have bargained with the police union even before making the transfers.

Rebel soldiers who staged this month's coup attempt against the government of President Corazon C. Aquino received extensive financial and logistical support from civilians, Defense Secretary Fidel V. Ramos said yesterday. Ramos did not name any of those civilians, but he added that military authorities were investigating the possibility that those loyal to former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, who died in September, had helped underwrite the unsuccessful rebellion, the most dangerous of the six that Aquino has faced.

I'VE READ the Daily News over the last few months and noticed an abundance of people wanting harsher penalties for anyone who assaults or shoots a cop. I have no problem with that. A police officer is in a position of authority and should be respected. But I must ask: Is a cop's life more important than that of any other citizen of Philadelphia? Where is the outrage when everyday citizens are shot or assaulted? No one asks how the police get the information needed when one of their own is attacked, it's just assumed to be good police work, no matter how they get it. Here's an idea: If a person can get a lengthy amount of jail time for assaulting a cop, why don't cops get a harsher penalty for abusing their power?

As military analysts see it, yesterday's car bombing of a downtown Baghdad hotel is the latest in a surge of attacks on "soft targets" - poorly protected civilians - in the shadowy war to disrupt Iraq's march toward pro-U.S. democracy. Iraqi officials and officials of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority are bracing for even more carnage around the first anniversary - tomorrow in the United States, Saturday in Iraq - of the start of the war to topple Saddam Hussein. The idea, as some U.S. and Iraqi officials see it, is to wreak enough havoc to scare off the foreigners whose capital and engagement are key to Iraq's opening up to the West after decades of isolation.

GAZAHIYA, Libya - A 22-year-old student balanced an unloaded grenade launcher on his shoulder, grunted loudly in place of an explosion as he pulled the trigger, then handed the weapon to the next man. The military drill on the lawn of a clinic in a remote village in government-controlled western Libya was part of what Moammar Gadhafi's regime has tried to portray as a large-scale arming and training of the home front. Reporters on a government tour were also taken to a school where two teenage boys fired Kalashnikov rifles in the air. The scenes appeared to have been hastily arranged.

In his recent endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for president, retired Gen. Colin Powell, a former secretary of state and chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered a view of American foreign policy that has received little notice. "We have to do a lot more with respect to poverty alleviation and helping the needy people of the world," Powell said, "because when you help the poorest in the world, you start to move them up an economic and social ladder, and they're not going to be moving toward violence or terrorism of the kind that we worry about.

It's a bright, sunny day here in Texas. Not a cloud in the sky. I step outside to relish the perfect weather. "They'll be having an exciting time in Cape Canaveral," I tell myself. My phone rings. I hurry inside. My secretary, calling from my office, says with obvious excitement: "Have you been watching television?" "I've been working. " "The space shuttle just blew up in Florida. " Long pause. "On the launch pad?" "Offshore. One minute into flight. " Gasp.

WASHINGTON - It cost nearly $2 billion over the last two years to send hundreds of extra U.S. civilians to Afghanistan to help with development projects, the economy, and training Afghan government officials, a report said Thursday. Sending just one employee to Afghanistan for one year, excluding infrastructure and security needed to support that person, costs the government between $410,000 and $570,000, according to the joint report by the offices of the State Department inspector general and the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

Graciela Galiana stared in horror as a Salvadoran soldier pressed his knife to the throat of a young man whose hands were tied behind his back. The soldier yanked the blade, and the young man crumpled to the ground. "We saw him do this," she said nervously, drawing a finger across her throat. "Then his body fell to the ground. . . . I saw that. I saw it. " The young man was one of nine people who died in Santa Ana's La Union barrio on Nov. 12. Graciela, 26, said leftist guerrillas had escaped the area and the soldiers took revenge on the civilians.

In his March 7 commentary, "Keep state cops policing in labs," former FBI agent Gerald Richards criticized the Rendell administration's plan to put civilians into 68 positions now held by enlisted members of the Pennsylvania State Police. Perhaps Richards doesn't know that the idea of "civilianizing" those jobs did not originate with this administration or the state police. In 1996, the General Assembly's Legislative Budget and Finance Committee reported that nearly 500 state troopers were assigned to jobs that could be performed by civilians.

KHAR, Pakistan - A teenager blew himself up near a Pakistani market close to the Afghan border Friday, killing 20 people, officials said. The suicide bombing came a day after the U.S. released letters seized from Osama bin Laden's compound that criticized Pakistani militants for killing too many civilians. Five of the dead in the blast in the northwestern Bajur tribal area were local members of the security forces, including one who had received an award for bravery in fighting Islamist militants, government administrator Abdul Haseeb said.

CAIRO - Egypt's ruling generals repeated their pledge Thursday to transfer power to a civilian government within two months, a day after deadly clashes stoked by political tensions brought fresh accusations that the military was trying to create chaos so it could cling to power. At the same time, the ruling military council warned protesters that deadly force would be used against them if they approached the Ministry of Defense. At least 11 people were killed in clashes that broke out Wednesday when apparent supporters of the military rulers attacked a mostly Islamist crowd staging a sit-in outside the Ministry of Defense in Cairo to call for an end to the generals' rule.

WASHINGTON - The first female secretary of state, a former astronaut, and a musical pioneer are among this year's recipients of the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. President Obama will award the medals at the White House later this spring. Among this year's recipients are former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, the first woman to hold the nation's top diplomatic post; John Glenn, the third American in space and the first American to orbit the Earth; and legendary musician Bob Dylan.

Israel detains pro-Palestinians JERUSALEM - Israel detained dozens of international activists as they landed at its main airport on Sunday, preventing them from entering the country to participate in a planned solidarity mission with Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel said the activists, part of an umbrella group called "Welcome to Palestine," were provocateurs who posed a security threat. Organizers said the event, meant to draw attention to travel restrictions on Palestinians, was nonviolent.

SANAA, Yemen - An al-Qaeda attack on a Yemeni army post in the south set off clashes that left 64 people dead Monday and prompted local civilians to take up arms alongside the military to beat back the militants, said army officials and residents. The dawn attack was the latest in a series of bloody battles in recent months that mark an escalation in al-Qaeda's efforts to expand its control around a swath of land it seized last year. The group took advantage of the country's political turmoil to overrun cities and towns in southern Yemen.

WASHINGTON - U.S. investigators believe the U.S. soldier accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians split the slaughter into two episodes, returning to his base after the first attack and later slipping away to kill again, two American officials said Saturday. This scenario seems to support the U.S. government's assertion - contested by some Afghans - that the killings were done by one person, since they would have been perpetrated over a longer period of time than assumed when Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was detained March 11 outside his base in southern Afghanistan.

KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder, a capital offense that could lead to the death penalty in the massacre of Afghan civilians, the U.S. military said. Bales, 38, is accused of walking off a U.S. military base with his 9mm pistol and an M-4 rifle fitted with a grenade launcher before dawn on March 11, killing nine Afghan children and eight adults, and burning some of the bodies. It was the worst allegation of civilian killings by an American, and it has severely strained U.S.-Afghan ties at a critical time in the decade-old war. It's unclear what prompted the killings, but the case has drawn new attention to the debate over mental-health care for the troops, who have had record suicide rates and high incidences of post-traumatic stress and brain injuries during repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

THE U.S. SOLDIER accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians last weekend had twice been injured during tours in Iraq and was reluctant to leave on his fourth deployment, a Seattle lawyer said yesterday. "He wasn't thrilled about going on another deployment," said the lawyer, John Henry Browne. "He was told he wasn't going back, and then he was told he was going. " Browne, a well-known Seattle defense attorney who once represented serial killer Ted Bundy, said he has been asked to represent the soldier, a 38-year-old staff sergeant from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma.

BALANDI, AFGHANISTAN - Moving from house to house, a U.S. Army sergeant opened fire yesterday on Afghan villagers as they slept, killing 16 people - mostly women and children - in an attack that reignited fury at the U.S. presence following a wave of deadly protests over Americans burning Qurans. The attack threatened the deepest breach yet in U.S.-Afghan relations, raising questions both in Washington and Kabul about why American troops are still fighting in Afghanistan after 10 years of conflict and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

By James Carroll 'I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies. " President Obama sent this message to Afghan President Hamid Karzai last week in the thick of mass protests after U.S. personnel burned copies of the Quran. NATO commander Gen. John R. Allen had earlier offered "sincere apologies ... to the noble people of Afghanistan," but the demonstrations raged on. Members of Afghanistan's parliament called for jihad against Western forces, at least two coalition soldiers were shot dead, and multiple civilians were killed in the violence that accompanied the protests.