LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec (AP) — Firefighters' attempts to search for some 40 people still missing after a runaway oil tanker train exploded over the weekend, killing at least five people, were hindered by hazardous conditions Monday, officials said.

Quebec provincial police Sgt. Benoit Richard said Monday morning there was no searching overnight because the situation remained too dangerous.

He said only a small part of the devastated scene has been searched as firefighters made sure all flames were out.

Many of those missing were believed to have been drinking at a popular downtown drinking establishment when the explosions occurred and rescuers were still not able to reach the bar, Richard said.

"Hopefully we'll be able to open up more areas for searching during the day," he said.

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Canadian Prime Minister Harper, right, surveys the scene Sunday, July 7, 2013, in Lac Megantic, Queb …

Firefighters on Monday were focusing their efforts on two oil-filled cars dousing them with water and foam in an attempt to keep them from overheating and exploding.

All but one of the train's 73 tanker cars were carrying oil when they somehow came loose early Saturday morning, sped downhill nearly seven miles (11 kilometers) into the town of Lac-Megantic, near the Maine border, and derailed, with at least five of the cars exploding.

About a third of the community of 6,000 was forced from of their homes by the explosion and flames.

The growing number of trains transporting crude oil in Canada and the United States had raised concerns of a major disaster, and this derailment was sure to add to the debate over a proposed oil pipeline running across the U.S. that Canada says it badly needs.

"This is an unbelievable disaster," said Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who toured the town Sunday and compared it to a war zone. "This is an enormous area, 30 buildings just completely destroyed, for all intents and purposes incinerated. There isn't a family that is not affected by this."

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The downtown core lays in ruins as fire fighters continue to water smoldering rubble Sunday, July 7, …

Anne-Julie Huot, 27, said at least five friends and about 20 acquaintances remained unaccounted for.

"I have a friend who was smoking outside the bar when it happened, and she barely got away, so we can guess what happened to the people inside," Huot said. "It's like a nightmare."

A coroner's spokeswoman said it may not be possible to recover some of the bodies because of the intensity of the blasts. Spokeswoman Geneviève Guilbault said the bodies are so badly burned that identifying them could take a long time. She said none of the five bodies that have been found so far have been identified and two have been sent to Montreal for further analysis. All of the autopsies will be conducted in Montreal because there is no laboratory in town.

For the second day in a row, she urged families of the missing to come forward with details that could help them identify the bodies, such as tattoos, dental records, or objects that would contain the DNA of the deceased.

The train's oil was being transported from North Dakota's Bakken oil region to a refinery in New Brunswick. Because of limited pipeline capacity in the Bakken region and in Canada, oil producers are increasingly using railroads to transport oil to refineries.

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Fire fighters continue to water smoldering rubble Sunday, July 7, 2013 in Lac Megantic, Quebec. A ru …

The Canadian Railway Association recently estimated that as many as 140,000 carloads of crude oil will be shipped on Canada's tracks this year — up from 500 carloads in 2009. The Quebec disaster is the fourth freight train accident in Canada under investigation involving crude oil shipments since the beginning of the year.

Harper has called railroad transit "far more environmentally challenging" while trying to persuade the Obama administration to approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Greenpeace Canada said Sunday that federal safety regulations haven't kept up with the enormous growth in the shipment of oil by rail.

Officials with the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway said that despite the disaster, they feel transporting oil by rail is safe.

"No matter what mode of transportation you are going to have incidents. That's been proven. This is an unfortunate incident," said Joe McGonigle, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway's vice president of marketing.

He said the company believes the train's brakes were the cause. "The train was parked, it was tied up. The brakes were secured. Somehow it got loose," he said.

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Burnt buildings are seen following a train derailment causing explosions of railway cars carrying cr …

McGonigle said there was no reason to suspect any criminal or terror-related activity.

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Associated Press writer Rob Gillies and Charmaine Noronha contributed from Toronto.

In this Tuesday, June 28, 2011 file photo, U.S. Navy Vice Adm. William McRaven, center, nominated by Obama to lead Special Operations Command, JSOC’s parent organization, listens to Marine Lt. Gen. John Allen, right, testify during their confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. McRaven was nominated to lead the Special Operations Command just a month before he oversaw the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. He has ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public. At left is Gen. James D. Thurman. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's top special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.

The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon's inspector general, set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps also the Freedom of Information Act.

An acknowledgement by Adm. William McRaven of his actions was quietly removed from the final version of an inspector general's report published weeks ago. A spokesman for the admiral declined to comment. The CIA, noting that the bin Laden mission was overseen by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta before he became defense secretary, said that the SEALs were effectively assigned to work temporarily for the CIA, which has presidential authority to conduct covert operations.

"Documents related to the raid were handled in a manner consistent with the fact that the operation was conducted under the direction of the CIA director," agency spokesman Preston Golson said in an emailed statement. "Records of a CIA operation such as the (bin Laden) raid, which were created during the conduct of the operation by persons acting under the authority of the CIA Director, are CIA records."

Golson said it is "absolutely false" that records were moved to the CIA to avoid the legal requirements of the Freedom of Information Act.

The records transfer was part of an effort by McRaven to protect the names of the personnel involved in the raid, according to the inspector general's draft report.

But secretly moving the records allowed the Pentagon to tell The Associated Press that it couldn't find any documents inside the Defense Department that AP had requested more than two years ago, and could represent a new strategy for the U.S. government to shield even its most sensitive activities from public scrutiny.

"Welcome to the shell game in place of open government," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private research institute at George Washington University. "Guess which shell the records are under. If you guess the right shell, we might show them to you. It's ridiculous."

McRaven's directive sent the only copies of the military's records about its daring raid to the CIA, which has special authority to prevent the release of "operational files" in ways that can't effectively be challenged in federal court. The Defense Department can prevent the release of its own military files, too, citing risks to national security. But that can be contested in court, and a judge can compel the Pentagon to turn over non-sensitive portions of records.

Under federal rules, transferring government records from one executive agency to another must be approved in writing by the National Archives and Records Administration. There are limited circumstances when prior approval is not required, such as when the records are moved between two components of the same executive department. The CIA and Special Operations Command are not part of the same department.

The Archives was not aware of any request from the U.S. Special Operations Command to transfer its records to the CIA, spokeswoman Miriam Kleiman said. She said it was the Archives' understanding that the military records belonged to the CIA, so transferring them wouldn't have required permission under U.S. rules.

Special Operations Command also is required to comply with rules established by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that dictate how long records must be retained. Its July 2012 manual requires that records about military operations and planning are to be considered permanent and after 25 years, following a declassification review, transferred to the Archives.

Also, the Federal Records Act would not permit agencies "to purge records just on a whim," said Dan Metcalfe, who oversaw the U.S. government's compliance with the Freedom of Information Act as former director of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy. "I don't think there's an exception allowing an agency to say, 'Well, we didn't destroy it. We just deleted it here after transmitting it over there.' High-level officials ought to know better."

It was not immediately clear exactly which Defense Department records were purged and transferred, when it happened or under what authority, if any, they were sent to the CIA. No government agencies the AP contacted would discuss details of the transfer. The timing may be significant: The Freedom of Information Act generally applies to records under an agency's control when a request for them is received. The AP asked for files about the mission in more than 20 separate requests, mostly submitted in May 2011 — several were sent a day after Obama announced that the world's most wanted terrorist had been killed in a firefight. Obama has pledged to make his administration the most transparent in U.S. history.

The AP asked the Defense Department and CIA separately for files that included copies of the death certificate and autopsy report for bin Laden as well as the results of tests to identify the body. While the Pentagon said it could not locate the files, the CIA, with its special power to prevent the release of records, has never responded. The CIA also has not responded to a separate request for other records, including documents identifying and describing the forces and supplies required to execute the assault on bin Laden's compound.

The CIA did tell the AP it could not locate any emails from or to Panetta and two other top agency officials discussing the bin Laden mission.

McRaven's unusual order would have remained secret had it not been mentioned in a single sentence on the final page in the inspector general's draft report that examined whether the Obama administration gave special access to Hollywood executives planning a film, "Zero Dark Thirty," about the raid. The draft report was obtained and posted online last month by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington.

McRaven, who oversaw the bin Laden raid, expressed concerns in the report about possible disclosure of the identities of the SEALs. The Pentagon "provided the operators and their families an inordinate level of security," the report said. McRaven also directed that the names and photographs associated with the raid not be released.

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FILE - In this May 6, 2011, file photo President Barack Obama talks with U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Will …

"This effort included purging the combatant command's systems of all records related to the operation and providing these records to another government agency," according to the draft report. The sentence was dropped from the report's final version.

Since the raid, one of the SEALs published a book about the raid under a pseudonym but was subsequently identified by his actual name. And earlier this year the SEAL credited with shooting bin Laden granted a tell-all, anonymous interview with Esquire about the raid and the challenges of his retiring from the military after 16 years without a pension.

Current and former Defense Department officials knowledgeable about McRaven's directive and the inspector general's report told AP the description of the order in the draft report was accurate. The reference to "another government agency" was code for the CIA, they said. These individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter by name.

There is no indication the inspector general's office or anyone else in the U.S. government is investigating the legality of transferring the military records. Bridget Serchak, a spokeswoman for the inspector general, would not explain why the reference was left out of the final report and what, if any, actions the office might be taking.

"Our general statement is that any draft is pre-decisional and that drafts go through many reviews before the final version, including editing or changing language," Serchak wrote in an email.

The unexplained decision to remove the reference to the purge and transfer of the records "smells of bad faith," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "How should one understand that? That adds insult to injury. It essentially covers up the action."

McRaven oversaw the raid while serving as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, the secretive outfit in charge of SEAL Team Six and the military's other specialized counterterrorism units. McRaven was nominated by Obama to lead Special Operations Command, JSOC's parent organization, a month before the raid on bin Laden's compound. He replaced Adm. Eric Olson as the command's top officer in August 2011.

Ken McGraw, a spokesman for Special Operations Command, referred questions to the inspector general's office.

The refusal to make available authoritative or contemporaneous records about the bin Laden mission means that the only official accounts of the mission come from U.S. officials who have described details of the raid in speeches, interviews and television appearances. In the days after bin Laden's death, the White House provided conflicting versions of events, falsely saying bin Laden was armed and even firing at the SEALs, misidentifying which of bin Laden's sons was killed and incorrectly saying bin Laden's wife died in the shootout. Obama's press secretary attributed the errors to the "fog of combat."

A U.S. judge and a federal appeals court previously sided with the CIA in a lawsuit over publishing more than 50 "post-mortem" photos and video recordings of bin Laden's corpse. In the case, brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, the CIA did not say the images were operational files to keep them secret. It argued successfully that the photos and videos must be withheld from the public to avoid inciting violence against Americans overseas and compromising secret systems and techniques used by the CIA and the military.

The Defense Department told the AP in March 2012 it could not locate any photographs or video taken during the raid or showing bin Laden's body. It also said it could not find any images of bin Laden's body on the USS Carl Vinson, the aircraft carrier from which he was buried at sea. The Pentagon also said it could not find any death certificate, autopsy report or results of DNA identification tests for bin Laden, or any pre-raid materials discussing how the government planned to dispose of bin Laden's body if he were killed. It said it searched files at the Pentagon, Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and the Navy command in San Diego that controls the Carl Vinson.

The Pentagon also refused to confirm or deny the existence of helicopter maintenance logs and reports about the performance of military gear used in the raid. One of the stealth helicopters that carried the SEALs in Pakistan crashed during the mission and its wreckage was left behind.

The Defense Department also told the AP in February 2012 that it could not find any emails about the bin Laden mission or his "Geronimo" code name that were sent or received in the year before the raid by McRaven. The department did not say they had been moved to the CIA. It also said it could not find any emails from other senior officers who would have been involved in the mission's planning. It found only three such emails written by or sent to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and these consisted of 12 pages sent to Gates summarizing news reports after the raid.

The Defense Department in November 2012 released copies of 10 emails totaling 31 pages found in the Carl Vinson's computer systems. The messages were heavily censored and described how bin Laden's body was prepared for burial.

These records were not among those purged and then moved to the CIA. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James Gregory said the messages from the Carl Vinson "were not relating to the mission itself and were the property of the Navy."

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AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.

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Follow Richard Lardner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rplardner

Jul 8, 2013

By Todd Starnes

An American evangelist said he was arrested and interrogated about his Christian faith after he was caught on a London sidewalk preaching that homosexuality is a sin.

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Tony Miano, a retired deputy sheriff and former chaplain with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Dept., was charged with “using homophobic speech that could cause people anxiety, distress, alarm or insult.”

Miano had been preaching on a London street corner during the Wimbledon Tennis Championships with a ministry group called Sports Fan Outreach International.

British police prepare to arrest American Evangelist Tony Miano.

He was preaching about immoral living – and cited homosexuality as an example of lifestyle choices that are contrary to biblical teaching.

“I never used any gay slurs,” he said. “You would never hear me using slang or discriminatory language against homosexuals or any other group. That would be contrary to my faith.”

At some point, the evangelist quoted I Thessalonians 4:1-2 – a passage of scripture that mentions sexual immorality.

“I talked about women addicted to romance novels, men addicted to pornography, people with lustful thoughts, heterosexual fornication and homosexuality,” Miano told Fox News. “When I mentioned that the Bible was clear that homosexuality is a sin, a lady walked by and she glared at me and hurled the f-bomb.”

Miano said the woman came back a short time later and began to videotape his sidewalk sermon. Then, she called the police.

“They were concerned about homophobic speech,” he said. “But I told them I don’t fear homosexuals. The language I used was not homophobic, as I was not promoting fear or hatred of homosexuals.”

Miano said he did not limit his remarks to homosexual acts.

“I did not speak solely about homosexuality as a form of sexual immorality but also about any kind of sex outside marriage between one man and one woman, as well as lustful thoughts,” he said. “All of these are considered mainstream Christian positions and have been taught and believed by Christians for thousands of years.”

Police took the retired deputy sheriff to a nearby jail where he was fingerprinted. Officers also took a sample of his DNA and then he was interrogated.

“It was very distressing to be arrested and interrogated for openly expressing my deeply held Christian beliefs,” he said.

According to a transcript of the interrogation provided to Fox News, the officers asked if he really believed homosexuality is a sin. He was also asked whether he would help a homosexual who requested a favor.

• READ A TRANSCRIPT OF THE POLICE INTERROGATION. CLICK HERE

“I was made to feel that my thoughts could be held against me,” he said. “The detective also asked me if I thought I was 100 percent right in what I had done. I said yes.”

Miano said he would gladly offer assistance to a homosexual.

“The Christian faith is dictated by the two greatest commandments – to love the Lord your God and to love your neighbor,” he said. “As such, I am compelled to love all people. Had a gay come up and asked me for something to eat, I would have fed him.”

But what troubled Miano is the idea that a hypothetical situation could have been used against him in court.

“I was actually going to be tried for how I thought,” he said.

In an ironic twist, the officers made arrangements to provide the evangelist with a Bible to read in jail – the same book that led to his arrest.

“The same book I read from in public which resulted in my arrest, was now the same book the police were giving to provide me comfort,” he said.

Miano, who is a member of the Evangelical Free Church, has been open-air preaching for eight years. He said this is the first time he’s been arrested.

“It was a rather surreal experience,” the retired deputy sheriff said. “I’ve conducted many interrogations but I’ve never been the subject of one.”

Miano spent about seven hours in jail before he was released without explanation and without an apology.

Now back home in Southern California, Miano said he fears that what happened in Great Britain could soon happen in the United States.

“I believe that’s what our government is going to eventually do here,” he said. “I believe homosexuals or others who are sensitive to their point of view will be visiting churches to listen to what preachers say from the pulpit. And I believe that pastors will be arrested in their pulpits for teaching what the Bible says about homosexuality and other sins.”

Andrea Williams, the chief executive of the British Christian Legal Centre echoed those concerns.

“It’s clear that there is already a clamp down on freedom of speech where people publicly express mainstream Christian views on sexual ethics,” he said.

Watch the sermon that got the evangelist arrested. Police arrive at approximately the 25:40 mark:

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People stand at the site of an explosion in Ekrema neighborhood in Homs city July 8, 2013, in this handout photograph released by Syria's national news agency SANA. REUTERS/SANA/Handout via Reuters

By Oliver Holmes

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian troops fought with rebels in Homs on Monday in a battle seen as crucial to the government's attempts to drive a wedge between opposition-held areas and establish links between the capital and President Bashar al-Assad's coastal strongholds.

Assad's forces have been on the offensive in the central Syrian city for ten days, hitting rebel-held neighborhoods with air strikes, mortar bombs and tanks.

Rebels control much of northern Syria but have been on the back foot against Assad's army further south since it retook Qusair last month, a town near the border with Lebanon, where victory marked a change in the government's fortunes.

Homs, 140 km (90 miles) north of Damascus, lies at a strategic crossing linking the capital with army bases in coastal regions controlled by Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that has dominated majority Sunni Syria since the 1960s.

Assad is trying to cement control of this belt of territory, in a move that could drive a wedge between rebel-held areas in the north and south of the country.

At a time when the army has made gains on the battlefield, Syrian state media announced that new leaders had been appointed in the ruling Baath Party in a reshuffle that will be seen as an attempt by Assad to put a new face on the political organization that has dominated Syrian politics for more than four decades.

"The Baath party must develop to strengthen a culture of dialogue ... and deepen interaction with citizens to overcome the negative effect of the crisis," Assad was quoted as saying by state media.

In Istanbul, the newly elected head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition told Reuters that the rebels' military position was weak and proposed a truce for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on Tuesday, to stop fighting in Homs.

There was no sign that the government in Damascus, with its forces now grinding out advances following setbacks earlier in the war, was ready to accept such a ceasefire.

"HUMANITARIAN DISASTER"

"We are staring at a real humanitarian disaster in Homs," said Ahmad Jarba, who was elected at an opposition conference on Saturday.

He said he expected advanced weapons supplied by Saudi Arabia, the main opposition backer, to reach rebel fighters soon and strengthen their position on the ground.

The Syrian National Coalition, a largely exile group, has little influence on rebel units in Syria. That could change if it succeeds in facilitating the supply of sophisticated weapons to the opposition, whose fighters say they need shoulder-launched missiles to take on Assad's air force.

Coalition members told Reuters on Monday that provisional prime minister Ghassan Hitto had withdrawn from his position after being unable to form a government. Leadership meetings will recommence in two weeks, they said.

Syria's two-year revolt began as peaceful protests but, under a fierce security force crackdown, degenerated into civil war. The conflict has killed more than 100,000 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, says.

Clashes and bombardment were reported by activists in nearly every province on Monday, from the outskirts of the capital in the south to the northwestern farming province of Idlib to the eastern desert city of Deir al-Zor.

The United States and Sunni Gulf countries say they are backing the opposition but Assad has made significant gains in recent months with military and financial support from Russia and Shi'ite Iran.

Fighters from Lebanon's Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah have also played a significant role in helping Assad recapture border towns from Sunni rebels.

CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT

The Syrian state news agency SANA quoted a military source as saying that the army had killed "terrorists" - a word it uses for insurgents - in several areas of Homs on Monday, including the Old City district of Bab Hood and some satellite towns around the country's third largest city.

The Observatory said that Bab Hood and the al-Safsafa district were being hit with heavy artillery, mortar bombs and tank fire, resulting in several injuries.

"Violent clashes took place on Monday morning between rebels and army forces," the Observatory said in an email. It did not give casualty figures, which are hard to confirm due to media and security restrictions.

The Observatory said that the army had retaken around a fifth of al-Khalidiya, a northern district that links the outskirts of the city with the center.

It said that five people were killed and more than 30 people wounded in a car bomb in an Alawite district of Homs on Monday. State media blamed rebel fighters and said that there were injuries resulting from two car bombs.

A local physician working in Homs with displaced families said she had heard constant bombardment over the past few days.

"What can we say? We've gotten so used to it we don't even want to think about it. God protects us," she said over the phone on condition of anonymity from the central neighborhood on Inshaat.

Video uploaded by an activist group in Homs showed smoke billowing from damaged buildings and the near-constant echo of gunfire and explosions ringing through the narrow streets.

The 13th-century Khalid ibn al-Walid mosque, a prominent central landmark, could be seen in the footage. Like many of Syria's historical treasures, the mosque, with its silver-colored domes, has been badly damaged.

The United Nations has expressed alarm at conditions in Homs, Syria's third largest city, saying last week that between 2,500 and 4,000 civilians were trapped there amid shortages of food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel.

Homs city was the epicenter of protests at the start of the revolt and the armed insurgency. Many districts have fallen in and out of government control during the past two years.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut and Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Istanbul; Editing by Giles Elgood)