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On Friday an Afghan police officer shot at two journalists, killing German photographer Anja Niedringhaus and injuring Canadian reporter Cathy Gannon. The journalists were traveling with election workers in eastern Khost Province in a convoy that was protected by Afghan soldiers and police officers. Violence has surged in the weeks before Saturday’s presidential elections, and journalists have paid a high price. The militants have also increasingly been targeting Westerners.Last month, Swedish journalist Nils Horner was shot and killed while conducting interviews in Kabul. Then Sardar Ahmad, a reporter for Agence France Presse, was killed with his wife and two children in an attack on Kabul’s Serena Hotel. The officer is reported to have walked up to the car, yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ — God is Great — and opened fire on them in the back seat with his AK-47. He then surrendered to the other police and was arrested.Both women have spent years in Afghanistan covering the conflict and the people there and Niedringhaus has even earned a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Iraq War along with a small team of fellow AP photographers. Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his deep sadness over Niedringhaus’ death and the wounding of Gannon. After Friday’s attack, Gannon underwent surgery in Khost. The operation was described as successful and Gannon’s condition was said to be stable.
In Other News • South Korean experts say two small drones believed to have been flown across the border by the North were crude and decidedly low-tech but underscore a potential new threat that must be taken seriously. If these claims that the drones were from the North on military surveillance missions are true, they would be the first solid, public evidence that North Korea is using its drones to infiltrate South Korean airspace, including the skies over the capital Seoul and its surroundings. One of the drones crashed in Paju, a city near the border with North Korea, on March 24. The other crashed Monday on the island of Baengnyeong. Both were equipped with equipped with cameras available on the Internet for hundreds of dollars. • David Letterman said Thursday, in a surprise announcement that signaled not just his retirement but also a potential generational change in late-night television. • The U.S. economy added 192,000 jobs in March, according to government data released Friday morning, a concrete sign that the recovery remains on track despite a slowdown over the winter. The Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate held steady at 6.7 percent as about half a million people joined the labor force, and the broad-based expansion touched industries ranging from health care to construction. The strong showing is roughly on par with the pace of hiring during the second half of last year, before job creation plunged during an unusually brutal winter. Economists are still debating how much of the weakness was a temporary side effect of the weather. But Friday's data suggested the labor market has thawed with the spring.
