SEC puts hold on short selling

NEW YORK, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced an immediate ban on short selling for 799 financial stocks Friday to stabilize stock prices.

The ban, put together in tandem with a short-selling ban in Britain, is in effect for 10 days, but could be extended to 30, the SEC said.

Short selling is a method of profiting on declining stocks. As such, analysts fear it may have contributed to the fall of Wall Street institution Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and American International Group Inc.

In short selling, traders borrow shares and sell them, betting on a price decline. If the price does go down, traders can buy stocks at a lower price then they had already sold them. If the stock price goes up, however, traders stand to take a loss.

"The commission is committed to using every weapon in its arsenal to combat market manipulation that threatens investors and capital markets," SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said in a statement.

By short-circuiting short selling, the SEC hopes to "restore equilibrium to markets," Cox said.

A similar moratorium announced by the Financial Services Authority in Britain is in effect until Jan. 16, 2009.

N. Korea restoring nuclear reactor

PYONGYANG, North Korea, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- North Korea's Foreign Ministry said the country is restoring its nuclear reactor and isn't concerned about being listed as a terrorism-supporting country.

North Korea "suspended the disablement of its nuclear facilities and work has been underway to restore its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon to their original state since some time ago," a ministry spokesman said in an interview with the North's official news agency, Yonhap reported.

The steps in restarting the main plutonium-producing reactor was a "countermeasure against the action taken by the (United States) to indefinitely put on hold the effectuation of the measure for delisting (North Korea) as a state sponsor of terrorism," the spokesman was reported as saying.

"Now that the U.S.'s true colors are brought to light," the spokesman said, "the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) neither wishes to be delisted as a 'state sponsor of terrorism' nor expects such a thing to happen."

North Korea began disabling its nuclear facilities in November and provided a list of nuclear programs in June as part of a nuclear disarmament agreement. U.S. President George Bush promised to remove the country from the terrorism list as part of a package of political and economic incentives, but the Bush administration said it would do so after North Korea agrees to verification protocols.

American among dead in embassy blast

SANAA, Yemen, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- The number of people killed in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen rose to 17 when a Yemeni civilian died of his injuries, security officials said.

The U.S. State Department confirmed that an 18-year-old woman from New York was among the victims of Wednesday's blast, The Washington Post reported.

The dead included six Yemeni security forces, five civilians and six assailants.

The State Department said U.S. security and law enforcement officials were working with the Yemeni government in the investigation, the Post reported. The attackers used vehicle bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons in the assault but didn't breach the walls of the compound in Sanaa.

The U.S. victim was identified as Susan Elbaneh, a Yemeni American who married Abdul Jaleel less than a month ago, the Los Angeles Times reported. She was in Yemen help her husband get the approval needed to come to the United States, her relatives in Lackawanna, N.Y., said. The couple apparently were waiting to enter the embassy when the attack began.

Elbaneh was a cousin Jaber Elbaneh, on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorism suspects, the Times said. Jaber Elbaneh is accused of being a member of the so-called Lackawanna Six, a group that went to Afghanistan in 2001 to train in al-Qaida camps.

Two federal officials confirmed that the investigation is focusing on al-Qaida cells they believe have a connection to Jaber Elbaneh, the Times said.

"I'm sure that she was there by accident," a federal official told the Times. "She's not a bad guy."

Two militants killed in New Delhi shooting

NEW DELHI, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Two suspected militants were killed Friday in a gun battle with police in New Delhi, where a series of bombings last week killed 24 people, police said.

Two policemen were injured in the shooting in Jamia Nagar near the upscale southern part of the Indian capital, local television channels reported.

The incident comes in the wake of recent bombings in several Indian cities, the latest being in New Delhi last week. A group calling itself Indian Mujahedin had claimed responsibility for the blasts, vowing to do more damage.

The Friday gun battle, which lasted more than one hour, began after police rushed to a house where the militants were holed up, the Press Trust of India, quoting a police official.

One of those killed was identified only as Atiq, wanted in the serial blasts both in New Delhi and in the western city of Ahmedabad earlier.

Police said a third suspected militant was arrested and two others escaped.

The PTI report said police were tipped off by Abu Basher, the prime suspect in the Ahmedabad blasts now in custody, who identified the four-story house near a mosque as the location where he and the alleged Delhi serial blast mastermind Mohammed Sibhan Qureshi had taken shelter in July.

The Times of India quoted police sources as saying the five involved in the Friday shooting were members of Indian Mujahedin.

Power failure trips up supercollider

GENEVA, Switzerland, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- A power failure shut down the powerful Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator earlier this week, scientists at the Swiss facility said.

A power interruption in the transformer affected the European Center for Particle Physics' refrigeration plant, meaning protons couldn't be beamed around the facility, Swissinfo.com reported Friday.

The collider ring must be minus 456.34 degrees F to allow protons to travel at more than 99.99 percent of the speed of light, scientists said.

Officials at the facility said the problem has been corrected and the refrigeration chamber was being cooled. They couldn't say when the beaming would resume, Swissinfo.com said.

The experiment seeks to recreate conditions one-trillionth of a second after the Big Bang to help scientists understand how the universe formed. The underground machine spans the Swiss-French border.

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