Groundbreaking election

Patil chosen as India’s first female president

NEW DELHI — India chose its first female president Saturday in an election hailed as a victory for women in a country where gender discrimination is deep-rooted and widespread.

Still, it’s not clear how much 72-year-old Pratibha Patil — a lawyer, congresswoman and former governor of the northern state of Rajasthan — can or will do in the mostly ceremonial post to improve the lives of her countrywomen.

Patil won 65.82 percent of the votes cast by national lawmakers and state legislators, said P.D.T. Achary, the secretary general of Parliament. She had the support of the governing Congress party and its political allies, and had been expected to win.

“It is a special moment for us women, and men of course, in our country because for the first time we have a woman being elected president of India,” said Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, who hand-picked Patil and was one of the first to congratulate her./AP

Presidential power

Bush reclaims presidential powers after colonoscopy

CAMP DAVID, Md. — Doctors removed five small growths from President Bush’s colon Saturday after he temporarily transferred the powers of his office to Vice President Dick Cheney under the rarely invoked 25th Amendment.

The polyps, extra tissue growing inside his large intestine, were found during a routine colon cancer scan performed at the Camp David presidential retreat.

“All were less than 1 centimeter (about four-tenths of an inch) and none appeared worrisome,” White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said. Outside medical experts agreed.

Bush invoked the presidential disability clause of the Constitution at 7:16 a.m. EDT. He transferred his authority to Cheney, who was at his home on the Chesapeake Bay in St. Michaels, Md., about 30 miles east of Washington.

Nothing occurred during the 2 hours and 5 minutes of the transfer that required Cheney to take official action, Stanzel said./AP

Iraq war

U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would face uncertainties

From crating up the bombs and bullets, to shrink-wrapping the helicopters, to counting up the endless tiers of port-a-potties, the pullout of U.S. combat forces from Iraq, when it inevitably comes, will rank as the longest-planned withdrawal ever.

Despite the years of preparation, the Pentagon’s painstaking planners just as inevitably will be challenged by the unknowables of a country at war, the vagaries of politics, the harshness of terrain and climate.

“Coming out of any theater of operations is tough,” says retired Lt. Gen. Gus Pagonis. But packing to go home from that distant desert presents special problems, as simple as finding the water to wash down your grungy gear, says this man who oversaw the homecoming from the last desert war, in 1991.

Air Force Col. Jeffrey Mintzlaff, who will be deeply involved in this one as what he calls a “synchronizer” of troop flights home, said “a lot of variables” complicate the picture.

“Is it a permissive environment? Hostile? Non-hostile? How much actually comes back?” asked Mintzlaff, chief contingency planner for the U.S. Transportation Command./AP

Terrorism arrests

Italian police hold

Moroccan imam, 2 aides

ROME — Italian police arrested three Moroccans on Saturday — an imam and two aides — accusing them of belonging to a militant cell that allegedly used a mosque in central Italy as a terror training camp.

The cell held courses on hand-to-hand combat and used propaganda films and documents downloaded from the Internet to teach students how to prepare poisons and explosives, pilot a Boeing 747 and send encrypted messages, anti-terrorism police in Rome said in a statement.

The mosque on the outskirts of Perugia, the Umbrian capital, also offered weapons training, as well as instructions on how to ambush, how to reach combat zones safely and how to send encrypted messages, police said.

Officers seized barrels of chemical substances, including acids, nitrates and ferrocyanide, found in the mosque’s cellar, police said, speculating that the chemicals could have been used for experiments in the terror training courses.

Police identified the imam as 41-year-old Korchi El Mostapha and his two aides as Mohamed El Jari, 47, and Driss Safika, 46. A fourth Moroccan was still being sought and was believed to be abroad.

The three men, arrested in Perugia, are accused of international terrorism, with the arrests coming after a two-year investigation. An additional 20 people who frequented Perugia’s Ponte Felcino mosque were being investigated for various charges, including violating Italy’s immigration laws, police said./AP