LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY “Where are the president’s spending cuts?” House Speaker John Boehner, speaking on the House floor Article, 1ANYC police suspect man lured to death
NEW YORK - Police said Tuesday that the victim of an ambush on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk may have been lured there.
The slaying of a 31-yearold visitor from Los Angeles “certainly appears to have been planned,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters.
On the basis of security footage, New York Police Department detectives suspect that Brandon Lincoln Woodard was lured into the Monday afternoon ambush shortly after he checked out of a nearby hotel, Kelly said.
The killer had arrived at least 30 minutes before the shooting occurred. The man, who appears to be bald and have a beard, could be seen exiting the passenger side of a parked Lincoln sedan and pacing as he waited, police said.
After Woodard got there, he checked his phone, and walked back and forth as if looking for an address, police said. When the gunman approached, Woodard appeared to look back at him for a second. He looked away again after “showing no sign of recognition,” Kelly said.
After the shooting, the gunman slipped into the same Lincoln sedan and was driven away.
2 held on terror counts in Alabama
MOBILE, Ala. - Two Alabama men who federal investigators say wanted to wage violent jihad overseas have been arrested in Georgia on terrorism charges, authorities said Tuesday.
Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair and Randy “Rasheed” Wilson, both 25 and from Mobile, were named in terrorism charges filed Monday, according to Kenyen R. Brown, the U.S.
attorney for the Southern District of Alabama.
Prosecutors said Abukhdair was arrested at a bus terminal in Augusta, Ga., and Wilson was stopped in Atlanta while attempting to board a flight for the first leg of a trip to Morocco.
A sworn statement from an FBI agent said Wilson is a close friend and former roommate of Alabama native Omar Hammami, who was recently added to the list of the FBI’s most-wanted terror suspects.
Trade Center spire parts float in to NY
NEW YORK - The crowning spire of the World Trade Center’s tallest building arrived in New York on Tuesday - in giant steel pieces on a barge that floated in past the Statue of Liberty.
“It signifies that we’re back, we’re better than ever, and it shows the resilience of not just New York, but also people in general,” said Steven Plate, the director of post-9/11 construction at the Lower Manhattan trade center.
He spoke aboard a boat that followed the barge tugged into New York Harbor from New Jersey’s Port Newark.
For the nine parts of the spire too heavy to be driven in, Tuesday marked the end of a 1,500-nautical-mile journey that started in Canada on Nov. 16.
A plant outside Montreal helped produce a total of 18 pieces to be erected atop One World Trade Center, rising into the Manhattan sky by spring to complete the 1,776-foot high-rise. The heaviest piece of spire weighs nearly 70 tons.
The remaining nine pieces of the 408-foot, $20 million spire were being trucked in from Canada and South Plainfield, N.J., the location of another plant in the co-production.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 12/12/2012