Even if your Memorial Day is packed with a leisurely hike, a barbecue or other lazy day activities, it’s only right to take a moment to remember those who died so we could be free.

Our archives are full of touching tributes to a number of Tucsonans who were killed in uniform. Two of the most recent appear below.

Anyone brave and dedicated enough to give his or her life for our country deserves to be remembered – on Memorial Day and every day.

Roadside bomb kills Tucson High grad, by Sheryl Kornman

Tucson High School graduate Timothy Bowles, 24, was killed in Afghanistan on Sunday (March 15) after he volunteered to take the spot of a “comrade who was ill,” said his father, retired Air Force Master Sgt. Louis Bowles.

Bowles, an Air Force staff sergeant, was sent to Afghanistan in November, his father said.

It was his first tour in a war zone. He was a fire engine mechanic, the senior Bowles said.

“He volunteered to go on that mission that day to take the place of a comrade who was sick. I just learned that today (Monday),” he said.

Bowles and four other airmen were killed by a roadside bomb in Eastern Afghanistan, according to an Air Force release and an article Monday in The New York Times. The names and hometowns of the other victims were not immediately available.

Bowles was assigned to the 755th Air Expeditionary Group’s Nangarhar Provincial Reconstruction Team in Jalalabad, his father said. His home base was Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, Alaska.

Louis Bowles said his son was sent to Afghanistan at the same time his sister’s husband was sent to Iraq.

The senior Bowles said his son worked at the Tucson Medical Center cafeteria while taking classes at Pima Community College for a year after his 2002 graduation from Tucson High.

“He never said what he was studying.”

When Timothy enlisted in the Air Force, Bowles said he was “stunned” but “I was all for it.”

He said Louis confided in his mother, Lisa, that he was unhappy at times growing up, as his father left for one deployment after another.

He didn’t understand his father’s military career was what took him away from home.

“He didn’t comprehend why I had to leave. He thought, ‘Dad was mad at us,’ ” he said.

The elder Bowles served in the first Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, he said.

In addition to his parents, who now live in Glorietta, N.M., he is survived by his older sister, Heather Ketchmark, who lives at Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia.

Timothy Bowles would have completed six years in the Air Force on May 13, his father said.

Originally published in the Tucson Citizen March 17, 2009

Tucson GI killed in Afghanistan, by David L. Teibel

Master Sgt. David L. Hurt was raised in Tucson and killed Friday (Feb. 20) in Afghanistan.

Joshua Martin said he expects some 400 to 500 people to attend.

“He’s a local hero,” said Joshua Martin, a friend of Hurt and an Army veteran.

“It’s a sad thing, not just that he was a friend, but he was one of our servicemen, one of our heroes . . . it’s a tragedy,” Alexander McKenna said.

McKenna also was a boyhood friend of Hurt’s and is an ex-Marine.

“It saddens me. It deeply saddens me,” McKenna said.

But, Hurt, an Army veteran of 17 years’ service, knew, “you may die for what you believe in.”

Hurt was a Santa Rita High school graduate, who “loved being a soldier” and “was proud of his country,” said his mother, Bonnie Hurt.

The Department of Defense said Sunday that Hurt, 36, and a soldier from Illinois died from wounds caused by an improvised explosive device.

They were in a military vehicle Friday near Khordi in Oruzgan province when they were attacked.

Small-arms fire followed during the attack by enemy forces.

Bonnie Hurt said she talked to her son Wednesday, two days before his death.

A medic in her son’s unit had been killed the week before and Hurt and other soldiers in the unit were having a difficult time dealing with his death, Bonnie Hurt said.

“He was telling me they were taking the death of the medic hard and he was trying to keep his men occupied,” she said.

Her son always signed off telling his mother he loved her, and Wednesday was no exception.

“He said, ‘I’ve got to go, I love you,’ ” she recalled.

Hurt and the other soldier killed with him, Staff Sgt. Jeremy E. Bessa, 26, were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group in Fort Bragg, N.C.

Bessa died at the scene while Hurt died from his wounds after being evacuated to Kandahar Airfield for treatment, according to the Army.

Hurt, a native of Oak Park, Ill., moved to Tucson with his family at age 3, his 65-year-old mother said.

He enlisted in Tucson in November 1992, according to the Army.

Before that, his mother said, he had graduated from Santa Rita High, where he played football.

“He went in (to the Army) on Veterans Day,” she said.

She said he was proud to be in the elite Special Forces.

Hurt loved Tucson and “talked about it all the time,” his mother said.

After basic and advanced training, he was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., and later to the 20th Engineer Brigade.

He earned his Green Beret in May 2000 and was assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne).

Hurt lived in Grays Creek, N.C., before he left for Afghanistan in January on his fifth deployment.

His awards and decorations include the Bronze Star with two Oak Leaf Clusters, Meritorious Service Medal, the Joint Commendation Medal, Master Parachutist Badge, Pathfinder Badge, the Valorous Unit Award and the Joint Meritorious Unit Award, according to his Army biography.

He is survived by his wife, Kelly, daughter, Avery, and son, Wyatt, all of Grays Creek, N.C.; his mother, Bonnie Hurt and sister Deborah Hurt, both of Hope Mills, N.C.; and his father, Joe Hurt of Memphis, Tenn.

Originally published in the Tucson Citizen Feb. 24, 2009

Our Fallen

To read about other Tucson-area military personnel killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, go to tucsoncitizen.com/fallen

To read other stories about local casualties or about the impact of the war here, go to tucsoncitizen.com/warathome

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Do you know someone who should be remembered on Memorial Day for their service to our country?

Tucson Marines Kyle Heppler and Shelby Shields are engaged to be married, which will happen when he returns from his deployment.

Shelby Shields and Kyle Heppler are engaged to be married, but their engagement is a bit different than most.

Rather than picking out dinnerware patterns or cake designs, Shields, 19, is stationed in Japan while Heppler, 20, is being deployed for the third time in his military career. The first two deployments took him to Iraq. This time he’s going to Afghanistan.

Most newly engaged couples don’t have to wonder if the groom will be alive to see the wedding.

“I think the scariest moment in my whole career was when I got orders for another deployment, just a week after asking Shelby to marry me,” Marine Lance Cpl. Heppler wrote in an e-mail from North Carolina, where he was sent from Japan to await his deployment.

“I remember the exact moment Kyle told me he was being deployed again. We were walking to the PX and he stopped me on the side of the road and said, ‘I have some really bad news,’” Marine Lance Cpl. Shields wrote in an e-mail from Okinawa.

“I felt my heart drop into my stomach and all I could do was hug him and hold on for dear life because my legs felt like Jell-o and I thought if I let go I might fall.”

The couple figured since Heppler had already been to Iraq twice in his three years with the Marines, they could make plans without worrying about another deployment.

“But that’s the Marine Corps,” Shields wrote, not with malice but with simple truthfulness.

Besides, based on the way that they met, the two are pretty used to drama.

They met in 2001, when Heppler was Shields’ friend’s boyfriend.

“I know, bad,” Shields wrote. “But she introduced me to him and we didn’t talk again until the messy breakup.”

Shields even played “middle man” on the phone when the actual breakup was going down. She kept Heppler’s number. He kept hers.

“Very soon after we were talking on the phone every night and the rest is history,” she said.

Their mutual love for service got them both into the military. Sort of.

“I joined the Marines in order to give back to my country what it’s given me, become a master at the Marine Corps martial arts program and to see the world,” Heppler said.

Shields signed up, in part, because Heppler was already enlisted. And she couldn’t stand the thought of four years of college after high school.

“If you would have asked me three or four years ago if I ever saw myself in the military I would probably laugh at you,” Shields said. Her original career goal, decided at age 3, was to be dolphin trainer. She later became interested in design.

Neither regrets their decision to become a Marine, regardless of how many times Heppler may get sent to Iraq.

“Every time I go home I’m reminded of what a good decision the Marine Corps was for me,” Shields said. “I love my friends dearly but a bunch have dropped out of college or are close to it, or still have no idea what they want to do with their life and wasted all that money.”

Both miss Tucson, their family, their dogs. Both also look forward to the care packages sent from home.

Shields especially appreciates the packages from Tucson Area Marine Moms, of which her mother is a part.

Heppler has gotten a laugh from a do-it-yourself Brazilian waxing kit and a half-empty tube of toothpaste a Maryland fifth grader stole from his parents.

“His mother apparently told him that we can’t shave or brush our teeth very often,” Heppler said.

Even the dangerous deserts of Iraq have humorous moments.

“The funniest thing I’ve ever seen was in Iraq during a sandstorm,” Heppler wrote. “A Marine I knew was in a Port-O-Potty while it was happening. Wind gusts of near 100 mph blew the stall over while he was in it. It took us 30 minutes to get him out because we were laughing so hard.”

Please note: this story was written last week and never published due to circumstance beyond our control.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Shelby Shields in uniform.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Heppler

CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio — A central Ohio man who fired five gunshots at a tractor being used to mow a ditch along his property has pleaded guilty to felonious assault and could be sent to prison.

Pickaway County prosecutor Judy Wolford says Randall Turner entered the plea Friday. The 53-year-old Turner faces two to eight years in prison.

A tractor operator told sheriff’s deputies Aug. 4 he’d been confronted by an angry man with a handgun while he mowed the edge of Turner’s property in Ashville, 20 miles south of Columbus.

Turner says he fired the shots to disable the tractor. The operator wasn’t hurt, but a bullet ricocheted and grazed Turner’s forehead.

Turner sued the county in 2007, saying his property had been damaged by the mowing. The lawsuit was dismissed last week.

Sheeny wagon example, although not all horses are bright blue.

The sheeny man in his sheeny wagon used to be a staple in Polish communities of Michigan.

He would trek down the alleyways with his cart, pulled by a horse if he had the money, or pulled by himself if he did not.

The sheeny man would be glad to collect rags, scraps and odds and ends. Other accounts have him sharpening knives, scissors and tools.

I only know the sheeny man from my mom’s stern admonishments that our car would look like a sheeny wagon if my brother and I kept taping paper on the back windows to block out the sun.

“The sheeny man is going to get you,” was a threat often used, much like the threat of the boogie man is thrown about today.

One account of the sheeny man can be found at wowthathadtohurt.blogspot.com/2007/11/here-comes-sheeny-man.html

The blogger shares her story of how she would sneak things to the sheeny man when he regularly visited her grandmother’s house.

Sheeny men could be of any race, creed or age, although they tended to be older guys with tattered clothing.

I never heard of the word as a racial slur until it was pointed out by a few readers in my school bus commentary (www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/breakingnews/116722.php).

Upon further investigation, I found the word was, in fact, once a derogatory word used for Jews, although that was not the usage I intended.

The word sheeny is of unknown origin and had its heyday as a vulgar term around the turn of the 19th century.

It has since fallen from popularity as a slur, but is still remembered by those who recall the rag men in alleys of Hamtramck and Detroit.

More on the sheeny man: listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/MI-POLISH/2007-05/1178062727

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, left, accompanied by new Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Craig Fugate, gestures during a news conference at FEMA headquarters in Washington, Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — A long-delayed requirement for Americans traveling to Mexico or Canada to have a passport will take effect June 1 as promised with no further postponements, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday.

The Department of Homeland Security has handed out more than 6 million information sheets to people crossing the borders and has run TV ads reminding Americans that it will no longer be possible to cross the borders and re-enter the U.S. without a U.S. passport or special U.S. passport card.

Americans have become accustomed to crossing the borders by car or on foot without having to show anything more than a driver’s license.

“These are real borders, the law is the law, and this is not going to be postponed any more,” Napolitano said at a breakfast meeting with reporters.

The passport requirement, part of an anti-terrorism measure known as the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, had originally been scheduled to take effect last summer during the Bush administration. It was delayed largely by northern border lawmakers in Congress, who feared it would disrupt commerce and tourism between the U.S. and Canada.

Napolitano said federal border officials are ready to implement the new requirements, and she said she is confident the program will go well, without big backups at the borders.

“If you’d have asked me four months ago if we were ready, I’d have said I don’t know,” the former Arizona governor said. “But the department has done everything humanly possible to give this thing a smooth landing.”

Napolitano said she knows some Americans will be caught by surprise on June 1st, and some have procrastinated too long getting their passports.

“We’ll work with them at the border,” she said.

Under the new requirements, Americans must have a traditional U.S. passport book or a less-expensive passport card to re-enter the country by land or sea after traveling to Mexico, Canada, Bermuda or the Caribbean region.

Americans traveling by plane to and from those countries must have a passport book. A passport card will not be accepted.

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was created after Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, requiring all travelers to the U.S. to carry a passport as proof of citizenship.

———

On the Web

www.dhs.gov, Department of Homeland Security, search for “Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative”

Spoils from the Citizen's final edition sit in a recycling cart in the press room.

This is it. After 138 years, seven months and one day, this may be the last Tucson Citizen to be published.¶ At press time, our ultimate deadline, this was our last gasp – our final edition.¶ Efforts still

are underway to keep the Citizen alive. We’ll let you know if they succeed.

I think I speak for us all and those who came before us – when I say it has been an honor to be a part of the community, invited daily into your homes and given the opportunity to tell the news of Tucson.

It was a sad moment to learn the Citizen was worth more to its parent, Gannett Co. Inc., dead than alive.

Ouch.

Monetarily, I suppose that’s so. It costs more to produce, print and distribute this paper than we are contributing in revenue.

However, the Citizen does have worth that is being erased.

There’s the loss of the stories we covered that other news media did not. Also our very existence made our competitors work harder – and be better.

Newspapers don’t just close, they die.

And death is personal.

It is touching how many readers wrote about their attachment to the paper. More than one questioned, “What will I do without my Tucson Citizen?” Whether it was not knowing who Brenda Starr will date next, to the loss of Cal Thomas, to thanking our local columnists for making them think, to appreciating the reporters who dig for stories about our readers, their neighbors and their elected and unelected officials.

Many expressed profound worry about the staff and what we will do – a worry that is warranted.

The industry lost 12,000 jobs last year and this year is looking worse. We are the third major daily paper to shut down this year.

About 65 talented Citizen staffers are being shot into an economy that is losing rather than creating jobs. The newspaper industry is so distressed that few of us will be reporters, newspaper designers, editors or news photographers again.

It is a tragic loss of talent and enthusiasm.

Some people have expressed unalloyed glee that we are closing. Many of our critics didn’t want us to pursue one of our greatest responsibilities. Editors have repeated the mantra over the 138 years: Make sure you get the other side.

A newspaper will never be perfect – we are a work in progress all day every day. The paper is just the culmination of what we have done at a certain point in time.

Journalism is history written in a hurry. We were created to reflect the news of the day.

Consequently, every paper has errors – a factual error, flawed grammar, a name spelled incorrectly, a wrong phone number. We try, and I think succeed, in minimizing these mistakes. But in the rush of putting out what is essentially a book every day (for 50 cents, not $24.99) they happen.

We correct them and move on to the next book.

Our hard work exists for a day. The previous day’s work becomes cage liner and fish wrap and packing paper.

But the Internet has changed our business.

Stories exist in the ether, to be read days, months, years after they are published.

The Internet opened up a whole new world and a whole new set of readers – far beyond the boundaries of Pima County. Interactivity was quick and conversations about stories flourished online. Sometimes it was ugly.

We and our advertisers didn’t really know how to deal with the medium. Some day someone will figure it out, creating another revolution within the industry.

I’ve had fun. I’ve made mistakes – which were very public. I have done stories and tasks I didn’t want to do – closing the paper I’ve loved is one. I’ve talked with many people and let the world know their tales. I’ve had bosses who helped me along the way – harshly and gently. And I’ve met and worked with many terrific, weird and talented people.

I will never regret being part of this institution, being a part of the news we reported and working with the people here.

The Citizen helped shape Tucson’s past and future.

We’ve dedicated this edition – our final one – to us and those who have worked here before us by celebrating our work.

It’s been a great run. So long and thanks for the memories.

This Feb 18, 1969 file photo shows Dutch photographer Hugh Van Es in a Macao cafe. Van Es, a photojournalist who covered the Vietnam War and recorded the most famous image of the fall of Saigon in 1975 – a group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop, died Friday morning. He was 67.

HONG KONG – Hugh Van Es, a Dutch photojournalist who covered the Vietnam War and recorded the most famous image of the fall of Saigon in 1975 — a group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop — died Friday morning in Hong Kong, his wife said. He was 67 years old.

Van Es died in Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, where he had lived for more than 35 years. He suffered a brain hemorrhage last week and never regained consciousness, his wife Annie said. Hospital officials declined to comment.

Slender, tough-talking and always ready with a quip, Van Es was considered by colleagues to be fearless and resourceful. He remained a towering figure after the war in journalism circles in Asia, including his adopted home in Hong Kong.

“Obviously he will be always remembered as one of the great witnesses of one of the great dramas in the second half of the 20th century,” said Ernst Herb, president of Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondent Club.

“He really captured the spirit of foreign reporting. He was quite an inspiration,” Herb said.

He arrived in Hong Kong as a freelancer in 1967, joined the South China Morning Post as chief photographer, and got a chance the following year to go to Vietnam as a soundman for NBC News, which he took. After a brief stint, he joined The Associated Press photo staff in Saigon from 1969-72 and then covered the last three years of the war from 1972-75 for United Press International.

His photo of a wounded soldier with a tiny cross gleaming against his dark silhouette, taken 40 years ago this month, became the best-known picture from the May 1969 battle of Hamburger Hill.

And his shot of the helicopter escape from a Saigon rooftop on April 29, 1975 became a stunning metaphor for the desperate U.S. withdrawal and its overall policy failure in Vietnam.

As North Vietnamese forces neared the city, upwards of 1,000 Vietnamese joined American military and civilians fleeing the country, mostly by helicopters from the U.S. Embassy roof.

A few blocks distant, others climbed a ladder on the roof of an apartment building that housed CIA officials and families, hoping to escape aboard a helicopter owned by Air America, the CIA-run airline.

From his vantage point on a balcony at the UPI bureau several blocks away, Van Es recorded the scene with a 300-mm lens — the longest one he had.

It was clear, Van Es said later, that not all the approximately 30 people on the roof would be able to escape, and the UH-1 Huey took off overloaded with about a dozen.

The photo earned Van Es considerable fame, but in later years he told friends he spent a great deal of time explaining that it was not a photo of the embassy roof, as was widely assumed.

The image gained even greater iconic status after the musical Miss Saigon featured the final Americans evacuating from the city from the Embassy roof by helicopter. Van Es was upset about the play’s use of the image that he so famously captured, and believed he was ripped off. He had long considered legal action but decided against it.

Born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, Hubert Van Es learned English from hanging out as a kid with soldiers during World War II.

He said he decided to become a photographer after going to a photo exhibit at a local museum when he was 13 years old and seeing the work of legendary war photographer Robert Capa.

After graduating from college, he started working as a photographer in 1959 with the Nederlands Foto Persbureau in Amsterdam, but Asia became his home.

When the Vietnam war ended in 1975, van Es returned to Hong Kong where he freelanced for major American and European newspapers and magazines and shot still photos for many Hollywood movies on locations across Asia.

Van Es, who served as president of the Hong Kong FCC in the early 1980s, was often found holding court at the club, his firsthand accounts and opinions sought out by reporters new and old.

“His presence there is really memorable,” Herb said.

He covered the Moro rebellion in the Philippines and was among the horde of journalists who flew into Kabul to cover the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. CBS cameraman Derek Williams got through immigration but everyone else was stopped and held in the transit lounge.

“As they were then being shepherded back to the plane,” Williams recalled, “Hugh saw an open door to his left, and just made a break for it with only his camera bag. He ran through the terminal and jumped into a taxi to try to get to the Intercontinental Hotel.”

Afghan police arrested van Es, but the plane had taken off so they took him to the hotel. Williams said he and van Es spent three days in Kabul before being expelled. Van Es’ still photos, for Time magazine, were the first to capture Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan.

He and his wife, Annie, whom he met in Hong Kong, were married for 39 years. He is survived by Annie and a sister in Holland.

This is a May 19, 1969 file photo taken by then AP photographer Hugh Van Es showing a wounded U.S. paratrooper grimacing in pain while waiting for medical evacuation at base camp in the A Shau Valley near the Laos border in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea said Friday that it wants to meet with North Korea early next week to discuss a South Korean worker detained in the North and a joint industrial project that has been troubled by tensions between the sides.

It was unclear if the North would agree to the offer. Pyongyang did not accept an earlier proposal to discuss the industrial zone due to differences over whether the detained worker should be on the agenda.

The Unification Ministry said it sent a new proposal for a meeting next week. “We hope the North will accept our proposal,” ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said.

South Korea says the detained worker is its top priority in such talks, but the North says any meeting should focus only on its industrial zone in Kaesong where more than 100 South Korean companies run factories, according to Seoul officials.

North Korea detained the Seoul worker at the zone on March 30 for allegedly denouncing Pyongyang’s political system.

Relations between the two Koreas have significantly deteriorated since Seoul’s conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in February last year. Since then, reconciliation talks have been cut off and all key joint projects — except the factory park — have been suspended.

Pyongyang also has ratcheted up tension in its standoff with foreign governments over its nuclear programs. The regime has quit nuclear disarmament talks, expelled all inspectors and threatened to conduct nuclear and missile tests.

The two Koreas had their first government-level talks under Lee last month, but the meeting produced little progress, with the North refusing to free the detained worker while demanding that Seoul pay more for using North Korean workers and the land in Kaesong.

North Korea later proposed that a follow-up meeting be held earlier this week, but the South requested in a counterproposal that they meet on Friday. The North did not accept the proposal due to its opposition to Seoul’s demand that the issue of the detained worker should be on the agenda, officials said.

Last weekend, the North’s committee handling ties with the South said that the country would not even consider talking with South Korea, lashing out at Seoul for criticizing the isolated country’s human rights record.

North Korea has also been holding two American journalists since March 17. Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore’s San Francisco-based Current TV media venture, were detained while reporting on North Korean refugees living in China.

Pyongyang said Thursday that it will put the reporters on trial on June 4.

VIENNA – Roxana Saberi, the American journalist freed after about four months in an Iranian prison on spying charges left the country, flying to the Austrian capital with her parents and a friend early Friday.

After landing at the airport, Saberi said she planned to spend a few days in Vienna to recover from her ordeal.

“I came to Vienna because I heard it was a calm and relaxing place,” Saberi said. “I know you have many questions but I need some more time to think about what happened to me over the past couple of days.”

Her father, Reza Saberi, said they were staying with a friend in Austria.

Saberi, poised and smiling, thanked all those who supported her during her ordeal — including Austria’s ambassador to Iran and his family.

“Both journalists and non-journalists around the world, I’ve been hearing, supported me very much and it was very moving for me to hear this,” Saberi said.

Saberi, referring to several statements made about her case over the past few days, stressed she was the only one who knew what really happened.

“Nobody knows about it as well as I do and I will talk about it more in the future, I hope, but I am not prepared at this time,” she said.

The 32-year-old journalist, who grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and moved to Iran six years ago, was arrested in late January and was convicted of spying for the United States in a brief, closed-door trial that her Iranian-born father said lasted only 15 minutes.

She was freed on Monday and reunited with her parents, who had come to Iran to seek her release, after an appeals court reduced her sentence to a two-year suspended sentence.

The United States had said the charges against Saberi were baseless and repeatedly demanded her release. The case against her had become an obstacle to President Barack Obama’s attempts at dialogue with the top U.S. adversary in the Middle East.

At one point, Saberi held a hunger strike to protest her imprisonment, but she ended it after two weeks when her parents, visiting her in prison, asked her to stop because her health was weakening.

Saberi had worked as a freelance journalist for several organizations, including National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp.

After her arrest, Iranian authorities initially accused her of working without press credentials, but later leveled the far more serious charge of spying. Iran released few details about the allegations that she passed intelligence to the U.S.

KABUL – Insurgents attacked a prison in eastern Afghanistan before dawn Friday, sparking a gunbattle with guards during which one prisoner was killed and another escaped, police said.

Meanwhile, NATO forces said one of its service members was killed Thursday by a bomb strike in southern Afghanistan. The international force did not provide further details or the nationality of the victim, under its policy of waiting for national authorities to announce deaths.

Prisons, along with police stations and other government buildings, have been repeated sites of Taliban attacks as the extremist religious group has stepped up its battle against the Afghan authorities in the past three years.

The militants did not manage to break into the prison in eastern Laghman province on Friday, but a group of more than a dozen prisoners charged an interior gate, breaking through to the outer wall, said provincial Police Chief Gen. Abdul Karim.

One prisoner managed to get away by jumping over the wall, while police shot another one dead as he attempted to flee, Karim said. Both of the men had been imprisoned for criminal offenses and were not known to have Taliban connections, he said.

Police captured one of the attackers and wounded some others, he said. No police or guards were injured.

Last summer, Taliban fighters attacked the prison in southern Kandahar province in a multi-pronged assault that included a suicide truck bomb, a suicide bomber on foot and gunmen freeing the prisoners. About 870 prisoners escaped, including roughly 400 jailed insurgents. The government has since worked to improve security at prisons across the country.

This week, President Barack Obama put his stamp on the bloody eight-year conflict by replacing the general in charge of the effort and installing a new ambassador. The Obama administration hopes the leadership shake-up — along with an additional 21,000 troops deploying this summer — will help reverse the militants’ momentum.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – A top U.N. official headed to Sri Lanka on Friday on an urgent mission to safeguard civilians trapped by fighting as thousands of desperate war refugees escaped across the front lines into government territory.

Government officials say they have cornered the Tamil Tiger rebels in a tiny coastal strip and stand poised to end this island nation’s quarter-century civil war.

However, international concern has grown for tens of thousands of civilians under threat from the heavy artillery bombardments shaking the war zone, and the Red Cross warned of “an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe” for the hundreds of wounded trapped without treatment.

Nearly 4,000 civilians waded across a lagoon overnight and broke out of the war zone, while another thousand waited to flee, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said Friday. The rebels fired on those leaving, killing four and wounding 14 others, he said.

About 200,000 civilians have escaped the war zone in recent months and are being held in overwhelmed displacement camps.

The rebels have denied accusations they were holding the civilians as human shields and shooting at those trying to flee. Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred journalists and most aid workers from the conflict zone.

Hoping to end the bloodshed, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, to Sri Lanka for a second time to try to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion.

Nambiar is expected to meet with top government officials after he arrives Saturday and push for ways “to secure the safety of the 50,000 to 100,000 civilians remaining inside the combat zone,” U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that in light of the ongoing war, the United States had raised questions about Sri Lanka’s application for a $1.9 billion IMF loan that the government desperately needs.

“We think that it is not an appropriate time to consider that until there is a resolution,” she said in Washington.

The U.N. says 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded in the fighting from Jan. 20 until May 7, according to a U.N. document given to The Associated Press by a senior diplomat. Since then, doctors in the war zone say more than 1,000 civilians were killed in a week of heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces. Sri Lanka denies firing heavy weapons into the war zone.

On Thursday, doctors and health aides abandoned the only hospital in the war zone because of the intense shelling, according to a health official in the war zone who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

About 400 badly wounded patients remained inside in desperate need of treatment, along with more than 100 bodies waiting to be buried, the official said. The medical staff huddled in a nearby bunker and tried to ignore the cries of patients begging for help, he said.

A Red Cross ferry attempting to deliver desperately needed food aid and evacuate the wounded had to turn back for the third day Thursday because of the violence.

“Our staff are witnessing an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe,” Pierre Krahenbuhl, the International Committee of the Red Cross’ director of operations, said of the patients in the hospital.

The Red Cross said the trapped civilians inside the war zone were taking cover in bunkers they had dug in the ground and were finding it even more difficult to get scarce drinking water and food.

“We need security and unimpeded access now in order to save hundreds of lives,” he said in a statement from Geneva.

Astronauts narrowly avoided disaster Thursday during their first spacewalk to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, but the more treacherous tasks still await them.

Astronaut Andrew Feustel on Thursday successfully wrenched out a stubborn bolt that, if it had broken off, could have blocked installation of a $132 million camera on Hubble. The camera is one of astronomers’ highest priorities for this mission, the fifth and final visit to fix and modernize the Hubble.

There will be no weekend off for Feustel and the other six crewmembers of space shuttle Atlantis, which pulled up to the Hubble on Wednesday. In the next few days, they’ll undertake work so difficult that NASA is downplaying their chance of success.

“Today was a speed bump,” Hubble senior scientist David Leckrone said. “Two days from now is going to be the hold-your-breath day.”

What’s planned:

• On Saturday, Feustel and astronaut John Grunsfeld will attempt the first repair on a Hubble scientific instrument while in orbit. Fixing the Advanced Camera for Surveys requires them to remove tiny screws that they won’t be able to see – while wearing bulky space gloves.

“This will be a nail-biter all the way,” Grunsfeld said before Atlantis’ May 11 launch.

• On Sunday, astronauts Michael Massimino and Michael Good will try to mend another broken scientific instrument. To bring the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph back to life, they’ll have to undo more than 110 screws not much bigger than watch screws.

The telescope could be crippled if a single stray screw floats into it.

“I don’t know exactly how it’s going to turn out,” Massimino said before launch. “A lot of miracles have to occur.”

The scientific instruments on Hubble – unlike its standard components, such as the observatory’s batteries – were not designed to be fixed in orbit. So it’s extraordinarily difficult to access them. Hubble’s managers decided the two instruments are so scientifically valuable that it’s worth the risk to try to repair them.

If the astronauts pull off the repairs, Hubble will have five functional scientific instruments for the first time since 1993, but Hubble’s overseers are trying to tamp down expectations.

“On this mission, the final mission, we’re going for broke,” Leckrone said.

Thursday’s spacewalk was not expected to be challenging, but the astronauts encountered an unexpected obstacle as they tried to remove a scientific instrument known as Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

The camera has been a scientific workhorse, but it’s 15 years old, and its replacement will be 15 to 35 times more powerful. Astronomers are eager to start using the new camera.

Obama plan’s start slow; foreclosure alternatives added

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Thursday outlined an expansion of its housing rescue plan that will help homeowners who face foreclosure because they are ineligible for current assistance programs.

Officials also provided a report card of sorts on how the home-loan modification and refinancing efforts are going since the housing rescue plan was announced in February.

The expanded program includes:

• Foreclosure alternatives. Homeowners unable to qualify for a modification will see a more streamlined process for pursuing short sales and deeds-in-lieu of foreclosures, which transfer a home back to the lender. The goal is to help homeowners avoid a foreclosure that could lead to a severe hit on their credit scores.

A short sale occurs when a home is sold for less than the remaining mortgage, but lenders agree to consider the debt paid.

• Protections for homeowners whose home value has fallen. Under a $10 billion program, new incentives will be provided to lenders to help them make modifications in regions where home prices have had steep drops.

The Obama administration has said it expects up to 9 million homeowners to get help through mortgage refinancing and loan modifications.

But the complexity of the program has made for a slow start and done little to dampen foreclosures, which have risen as banks ended temporary moratoriums on foreclosures.

“It’s been slow. The foreclosure problem is not going away,” said Mark Zandi, with Moody’s Economy.com.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Two seasonal Yellowstone National Park concession workers have been fired after a live webcam caught them urinating into the Old Faithful geyser.

Park spokesman Al Nash says a 23-year-old man on Tuesday was fined $750 and placed on three years of unsupervised probation for urinating, being off trail in a restricted area and taking items from the area. The man also was banned from Yellowstone for two years.

The second employee’s case is pending.

The park’s dispatch center was called after someone watching a webcam on the geyser saw six employees leaving the trail and walking on Old Faithful on May 4.

The geyser was not erupting at the time.

Xanterra Parks & Resorts general manager Jim McCaleb says the former concession workers were hired at the Old Faithful Inn and that such incidents were rare.

PHOENIX – The oldest soldier to be killed in Iraq fought in Vietnam and decided to re-enlist at the age of 59 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the death of his wife, according to his brother.

Army Maj. Steven Hutchison, 60, was killed in Iraq on Sunday after a homemade bomb went off near his vehicle in Al Farr, according to the Department of Defense.

Richard Hutchison of Scottsdale told The Associated Press on Thursday that his older brother Steven wanted to re-enlist immediately after the 9/11 attacks, but that his wife, Candy, didn’t want him to.

But when Candy died of breast cancer, “a part of him died,” so he signed up again in July 2007, according to his brother and the Army.

“He was very devoted to the service and to his country,” Richard Hutchison said. “For somebody to go back into the military at 60 years old, obviously I didn’t want him to do it, but he had a mind of his own and that’s what he wanted to do. He’s been a soldier his whole life.”

He said his brother never explained why he wanted to re-enlist, but that “I’m guessing it had something to do with them coming into our country and killing our people.”

“He wanted to go back in,” he added. “He wanted to do his share.”

He said Steven Hutchison served in Afghanistan for a year after he re-enlisted and went to Iraq in October as a team leader of about a dozen soldiers who would train Iraqi soldiers how to fight. But, he said his brother’s mission changed and that he was working to secure Iraq’s southern border instead.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nathan Banks said Thursday that Hutchison was the oldest Army soldier killed in Iraq.

An Associated Press database of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that Hutchison is the oldest member of any service branch killed since the wars broke out.

Richard Hutchison said Steven was a great big brother and a best friend who was always looking out for him. “He took care of me,” he said.

“I was worried about him. I didn’t want him to go (to Iraq),” he said through tears, adding that he loved his brother “so much.”

He said Steven Hutchison worked as a college professor of psychology at a couple of California universities and then worked at a private health care corporation in Arizona before he retired a few years ago.

Records at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles show that Hutchison taught in the psychology department there on and off between 1988 and 1996. Hutchison’s résumé, provided by the school, shows he was a lecturer at California State University in Long Beach and taught at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

Hutchison was born in Cincinnati and raised in Long Beach, Calif. Steven and Richard have a half brother and half sister living in Michigan. Steven Hutchison married four times, and was married to Candy for 10 years before she died. He had no children.

Richard Hutchison said his brother will be buried next to Candy in Scottsdale, and that a funeral is tentatively planned for Tuesday.

Hutchison was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division at Ft. Riley, Kan.