Hole in fuselage forces emergency landing

CHARLESTON, W.Va., July 14 (UPI) -- A football-sized hole in the fuselage forced a Southwest Airlines jet to make an emergency landing in Charleston, W.Va., officials said.

No injuries were reported aboard Flight 2294, which was traveling from Nashville to Baltimore Monday with 126 passengers and five crew members, CNN reported Tuesday.

The hole caused the cabin to depressurize suddenly, prompting the jet's oxygen masks to deploy, an airline spokeswoman said. The hole was in the middle of the cabin near the top.

What caused the damage hasn't been determined, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Holly Baker said. Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the matter.

"There is no responsible way to speculate as to a cause at this point," Southwest Airlines said in a statement. "We have safety procedures in place, and they were followed in this instance to get all passengers and crew safely on the ground. Reports we have are that our passengers were calm and that our pilots and flight attendants did a great job getting the aircraft on the ground safely."

Panel to begin quizzing Sotomayor

WASHINGTON, July 14 (UPI) -- Judge Sonia Sotomayor's 17 years of opinions and commentary offer a Senate panel the basis to determine her bone fides for a U.S. Supreme Court appointment.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday were to begin their questioning of Sotomayor, the second day of what is expected to be a week-long hearing on her nomination to the nation's top court.

On Monday, senators from both parties staked out their positions in Sotomayor's confirmation process, with Democrats' opening remarks focusing on her judicial record and Republicans' comments honing in on remarks she made when not in her judicial robes.

Hecklers interrupted Monday's proceedings three times, with Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont admonishing protesters as they were escorted from the chamber by Capitol police.

One woman cuffed by officers was Norma McCorvey -- better known as Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case -- who yelled to the panel about overturning the divisive decision as she exited, The Washington Post reported. In 1971, McCorvey was poor and pregnant from being raped, she said. Since the 1973 ruling she said she has had a change of belief and became and an anti-abortion activist.

McCorvey, 61, was one of four people arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

Sotomayor's position on abortion isn't publicly known.

Iran executes 13 convicted terrorists

ZAHEDAN, Iran, July 14 (UPI) -- Thirteen people convicted of involvement with a 2006 attack on civilians were executed in jail by Iranian authorities Tuesday, officials said.

Hojjatoleslam Ebrahim Hamidi, general director of Sistan and Balouchestan's provincial Judiciary Office, told Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency that the alleged members of the Jundullah terrorist group had been executed in jail, rather than in a park in the provincial capital of Zahedan as was first planned.

"Their verdict was carried out in jail based on the latest decisions," Hamidi said.

A 14th death row inmate, Abdulhamid Rigi, the brother of the group's alleged ringleader Abdolmalek Rigi, will be executed by the end of this week, the news agency reported.

The judiciary office said the 14 were "convicted of warring against God, being corrupt on Earth, killing innocent people and taking hostages while carrying firearms during the terrorist attack in Tasooki and Darzin in Bam."

On March 25, 2006, armed men shut down the Bam-Kerman highway in the southeastern part of the country and fired on passing cars, the government-funded Press TV reported. Twenty-two civilians were killed and six were wounded and Jundullah claimed responsibility.

Two Marines killed in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 14 (UPI) -- Two U.S. Marines were killed in southern Afghanistan and a civilian helicopter went down in Helmand province, officials said.

Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said the two Marines were killed Monday but released no other details about their deaths, CNN reported.

A NATO representative and local police, meanwhile, said Tuesday there were no immediate reports of casualties in the helicopter crash, but CNN reported a Taliban spokesman said the militants shot down an aircraft and killed 37 foreign soldiers. CNN said such claims by the Taliban frequently turn out to be exaggerated or false.

The incidents came as nearly 4,000 U.S., NATO and Afghan troops were sweeping through Helmand province to clear the one-time Taliban stronghold of militants, joining an earlier push by British forces.

Two Somali-Americans face terror charges

MINNEAPOLIS, July 14 (UPI) -- Two Somali-American men living in Minneapolis are facing terrorism charges for allegedly returning home to fight with Islamic militants, documents indicate.

An indictment unsealed Monday in Minnesota charged Salah Osman Ahmed and Abdifatah Yusuf Isse with providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to "kill, kidnap, maim and injure" in Somalia from September 2007 to December 2008, The St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press reported.

Officials said Ahmed had been a fugitive but was captured recently and appeared before a federal judge Monday, while Isse was arrested in February and has been held since then, his attorney, Paul Engh of Minneapolis, told the newspaper.

The dates of the charges against the two men correspond to a period when about 20 young Somali-American men abruptly disappeared from the Twin Cities. U.S. officials are investigating if they were recruited by radicals of the al-Shabaab movement to take part in the al-Qaida-backed group's efforts to overthrow the interim government in Mogadishu.

Two other Minneapolis men suspected of fighting with al-Shabaab were shot to death this week in battles in the Somali capital, friends and relatives told the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune. They included Zakaria Maruf, 30, and Jamal Sheikh Bana, 20.

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