Stanford Suicide or Not

Suicide finding too quick, Stanford student's father says

By Jessie Mangaliman, Lisa M. Krieger and Brandon Bailey
SAN DIEGO - Stanford doctoral student May Zhou was updating her résumé and on track to a brilliant career. So her grief-stricken family and friends say they are floored by the idea that she would take her own life. But one day after the body of the missing electrical engineering student was discovered in the trunk of her car, authorities were not backing away from their suggestion that Zhou, 23, may have committed suicide.

A two-hour autopsy conducted Friday identified ``no outward signs of foul play,'' according to police in Santa Rosa, where Zhou's car was found Thursday in a junior college parking lot. Authorities offered no further details, saying it could take a month to complete lab tests and make a final ruling on whether Zhou's death was suicide. And there was no explanation of how Zhou's car ended up 90 miles north of Stanford.

The news baffled the woman's father and classmates.

``No, no, no. No issues. She was strong,'' said her father, Yitong Zhou, who planned to help her revise her résumé the weekend she disappeared. ``If you're thinking about your résumé, why would you be thinking about suicide? I don't believe it. I don't believe it.''

Complaining that police seemed too quick to reach a conclusion about his daughter's death, Zhou said he had only recently learned that she conducted some online banking transactions shortly before she left her apartment Saturday. The transactions were ``unusual,'' he said, because of the amount. He declined to elaborate.

``I'm not saying it's foul play. What I'm saying is I want to keep an open mind,'' he said. Mengyao ``May'' Zhou was last seen by her roommate at Stanford on Saturday, before she left their graduate-student housing complex to run errands. The roommate, who has not made any public statements this week, reported Zhou missing to police after she had not come home by Sunday. Police said it appeared Zhou's car had been sitting in a parking lot at Santa Rosa Junior College for several days before it was found.

Zhou had missed class on the Thursday before she disappeared, said friend Chris Tsun Kit Ng. But when he saw her in class Tuesday, ``she seemed normal,'' he said. ``Everything seemed fine.''Yitong Zhou said he had been busy with work when his daughter called last week about modifying her résumé to apply for a summer internship, but they agreed to work on it over the weekend. His family's usual routine was to talk with her on Sunday evenings, after she had finished her studies, Yitong Zhou said. So on Sunday after 6 p.m., he dialed her cell phone, but got her voice mail.

``Usually, she calls right away,'' he said. ``I waited. Then I got a little bit worried because she's never done that before.''About 1:30 a.m. Monday, her father said, he got a call from Stanford police. ``They said, `Your daughter is missing,' '' he said. ``I didn't know what to think. She's not home and she's in the middle of the quarter at school.''Zhou said he tried her cell phone again. Again, his call went straight to voice mail.

He sent her e-mail: ``Where are you?''

``Nothing,'' he said.

As a second-year student in Stanford's electrical engineering doctoral program, Zhou had made it past the most stressful part of the program. She was at a point when many doctoral students feel they can relax a little -- although what creates anxiety varies among students, said Stanford graduate students and faculty.

``She was someone who was very organized, very upbeat, who could handle stress. She had friends,'' said Xiaoging Zhu, 27, a sixth-year graduate student who was Zhou's roommate last year. Zhou had been recruited to Stanford from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; In high school, her SAT scores had been perfect.

And she had already cleared one big hurdle: passing her qualifying exams. She did well and reportedly had been approached by several researchers interested in having her join their team. A second hurdle -- finding a research supervisor, who advises students -- was yet to come, but there was no rush. ``Finding a supervisor can be a source of stress,'' said Bruce A. Wooley, chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford. ``But May had no issues. She had time, and she was doing very well.''

Having secured three patents during her three summer internships at Qualcomm, ``she was the kind of student who could work independently -- progressing and then taking off,'' he said. Wooley said he knew of nothing that would have prompted suicide. ``There was nothing going on, academically, that would suggest a problem.''

Zhou's father, meanwhile, said he had many questions. ``There is nothing to indicate to me that my daughter would hurt herself,'' he said. ``And how, how did she get herself in the trunk of that car? It's a small trunk.'' The woman's parents and high school-age sister live in Sorrento Valley, a suburban neighborhood north of downtown San Diego. Yitong Zhou, an immigrant from China, declined to discuss his daughter's life in San Diego. But he seemed exhausted from the strain of his grief. ``I am so upset,'' he added. ``Last night I had no sleep. Nightmares.''

The family lives in a two-story sand-colored stucco house with a two-car garage and a wide driveway, on a blocklong cul-de-sac. The neighborhood is in an area dotted by high-tech companies. Qualcomm, where May Zhou worked, is two miles from the home she grew up in. School officials had identified Zhou as a promising student from the time she was in second grade, said La Jolla High School Principal Dana Shelburne. As one of the district's most academically talented kids, she had the right to choose which high school she attended. She chose La Jolla, 17 miles from home. The school has an ethnically diverse student body and a reputation for high academic standards.

Martin Teachworth, the school's science team coach, first met Zhou in ninth grade. She made a lasting impression. ``When I marked her work, I had to double-check myself to make sure I didn't get it wrong,'' Teachworth said. ``She seemed to have her act together. She would drive herself. She always knew what she wanted to do.''

Zhou attended some social functions with other students, but usually only those at school, Teachworth said, adding ``I can only imagine the pressure she was under, academically.'' But others rejected that notion.

``I do not think it related to academics,'' said Zhu, her former roommate.

``I don't believe it,'' said her father, ``because I'm a parent. I know her. I don't think this is what she would do.''


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Life in New Orleans turns tragic for Canadians

NEW ORLEANS — It was Helen who wanted to come back to New Orleans but Paul was worried.

After all, the couple's home had been deluged by five feet of water during hurricane Katrina and they would have to find a new place to stay. And everybody knew that the recovery of this long-troubled city was advancing in fits and starts. Toxic sludge lay over many neighbourhoods and crime was surging.

So to persuade him, from her parents' home in South Carolina, where the couple had fled from the hurricane, Helen Hill, a 36-year-old animator and filmmaker, began her postcard campaign aimed at persuading her husband and soulmate, family doctor Paul Gailiunas, who grew up in Edmonton and trained in medicine in Halifax, to move back to New Orleans.

“She had all of her friends [in New Orleans] write postcards [to her husband] with all the reasons why they should come back,” recalled Rene Broussard, director of the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center, where Ms. Hill showed her experimental films. “Paul was my doctor. So I wrote — to keep me alive,” said Mr. Broussard, a heavy-set 42-year old.

Filmmaker Helen Hill persuaded husband Paul Gailiunas, a doctor, to return to New Orleans with their son, Francis, after hurricane Katrina. Perhaps Dr. Gailiunas's reticence was well-founded. Early Thursday morning, Ms. Hill — who was born in the United States but took Canadian citizenship — was shot in the neck and killed in the entrance of their modest home on the edge of the French Quarter. Dr. Gailiunas was hit four times in the cheek and arm but was released from hospital yesterday. Their two-year-old son, Francis, was unhurt. He was reportedly found in the entrance of his house, protected by his injured father.

In a city that has become accustomed to tragedy and to an endless strings of crime — there have been a dozen homicides in the past two weeks — this latest outrage was just too much.
“I'm so aggravated and angry,” said Helen Gillet, an experimental cellist who gathered with about two dozen other friends of the couple outside their modest frame house in New Orleans's Faubourg Marigny neighbourhood late yesterday afternoon. “I'm outraged at what's going on in the community.” Dr. Gailiunas, who worked in a medical clinic for the poor run by the Daughters of Charity religious order, and Ms. Hill were part of the community of artists, poets and other creative types, refugees from the rest of the United States and elsewhere, who have been drawn to New Orleans because of its singular history and culture.

They all know that the city is bedevilled by crime, but what has happened since Katrina has shaken them to the core. There were 161 murders here last year — all in a city that has only about 220,000 people, half the number from before Katrina, giving it one of America's highest murder rates. If anybody thought they could make a difference, it was Ms. Hill and Dr. Gailiunas. The two met at Harvard as undergraduates and came to New Orleans when they graduated in 1992. According to friends and family, it's where their friendship blossomed into love. Ms. Hill went off to California to attend film school and Dr. Gailiunas returned to his father's alma mater, Dalhousie and studied medicine. Ms. Hill soon joined Dr. Gailiunas and the couple became mainstays of the city's artistic community.

But the lure of New Orleans was there and, in 2001, they moved here and bought a home.
“My sister was truly the best person I know. She was the sweetest, most compassionate, selfless person,” said Helen's brother, Jacob, a magazine publisher from New York, as he thanked friends and neighbours for coming and made a TV plea for witnesses to come forward in an effort to find the killer. “They came back to New Orleans because they wanted to be part of the reconstruction and they wanted to come to help,” Jacob continued.

Paul's brother, Adam, said his brother didn't move to the United States to escape Canadian medicare. Quite the opposite, he came to New Orleans because he wanted to work in a Third World environment and he felt his skills were needed. According to Adam, a musician from Portland, Ore., Dr. Gailiunas was released from hospital yesterday and is staying with his son and other members of his extended family, including his mother, who flew down from Vancouver. “He's in shock, in grief and disbelief like the rest of us,” Adam said.

“I've cried more in the past two days than I've cried in 20 years,” said Ms. Hill's step-father, Kevin Lewis, a professor of religious studies from South Carolina. The couple moved last year into a New Orleans apartment close to a renovated church called St. Cecilia's, where Dr. Gailiunas started work with a Roman Catholic organization that provides health care to the poor. Her self-sufficiency and artistic mindset were remembered yesterday by outraged friends, who said that the crime should be a call to action for the city. A rally is planned for Sunday and protesters intend to march on city hall. “They are wonderful people, two bright spots in New Orleans,” said Sheri Branch, who was taking care of Francis while Dr. Gailiunas was being treated in hospital.

“They gave us hope that people could live together.”
Ms. Hill's slaying was one of four homicides in New Orleans in less than a day. The burst of violence has added to the fears of locals, who say that crime was already a serious concern. Many argue that, while the number of murders last year was the lowest in 30 years, if adjusted for the reduced population after Katrina, it actually represents an increase.
A person posting online under the name Sophmom gives a sense of the level of fear some endure in the city. “I never stop watching the crime,” this person wrote. “Every morning when I arrive at work, I Mapquest the locations where someone was shot or found shot, fearfully.”

Some argue that the situation is bad enough to warrant National Guard troops, others say that the Department of Justice should take over the New Orleans Police Department. In many ways the couple showed their socially progressive mindset. During their first stint in New Orleans, Dr. Gailiunas and a partner opened Little Doctors Neighbourhood Clinic. They used a sliding-scale fee based on a patient's income. And Ms. Hill, after winning a local award with an animated memorial to her dying grandfather, created a film intended to encourage others by showing how easy it is to make movies.

Dr. Gailiunas is also the vocalist/guitarist for a band called The New Orleans Troublemakers. Using a style described by a local music critic as a cross between singing and rapping, his lyrics explore universal health care, flag burning and early anarchist Emma Goldman. They were both vegan, in Dr. Gailiunas's case since the first month of medical school, and moved in an artistic circle. They had a small role in a 2003 amateur documentary on the Atkins diet, appearing for several minutes in the film Fat as an counterbalance to the others, who were testing the famously carnivorous diet. Ms. Hill began making her own films while still a grade-schooler and received her masters of fine arts degree in experimental animation from the California Institute of the Arts in 1995.

Two years ago, she won a $35,000 fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation's program for media artists for her film The Florestine Collection. Courtney Egan, a teacher at the New Orleans Centre for Creative Arts in New Orleans, where Ms. Hill was a visiting artist, described her as a happy, exuberant person. “She was irrepressibly cheerful. She was always very enthusiastic. It was an infectious kind of enthusiasm. She would never speak a bad word about a soul.” Ms. Egan said the couple were kind-hearted. “They had the innocence of children in their sweet nature.”

With a report from Oliver Moore, Estanislao Oziewicz, Jill Mahoney and Associated Press

even from the grave...

Boy hangs himself 'like Saddam'
01/01/2007 22:43 - (SA)
Multan - A young boy who tried to copy hanging scenes from the execution video of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein died in central Pakistan, said police on Monday.

Mubashar Ali, 9, hanged himself, while re-enacting Hussein's hanging with the help of elder sister, 10, after tying a rope to a ceiling fan and his neck in his home in Rahim Yar Khan district on Sunday, said a local police official.The father of the deceased boy said that his children had been watching the video of Saddam Hussein's execution on television and attempted to imitate the hanging as other family members thought they were playing in another room."My wife and sister rushed to rescue Mubashar when children cried for help from the adjoining room, but he died due to hanging," said Alamgir Paracha, father of Mubashar.

Police said that the death was accidental and a case of parental negligence.
"It was an accident which happened due to carelessness of parents," said district police chief Sultan Ahmad. Images of the fallen Iraqi dictator with a strap around his neck, surrounded by executioners in balaclavas, were repeatedly telecast by Pakistani television channels at the weekend. Commentators and the media across Europe had expressed shock and unease on Sunday at graphic television pictures showing the last moments of Hussein just before his execution.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,9294,2-10-1462_2050341,00.html

till death do us part...

30,000? No. 100,000? No.
How Many Iraqis Have Died Since the US Invasion in 2003?
By ANDREW COCKBURN

President Bush's off-hand summation last month of the number of Iraqis who have so far died as a result of our invasion and occupation as "30,000, more or less" was quite certainly an under-estimate. The true number is probably hitting around 180,000 by now, with a possibility, as we shall see, that it has reached as high as half a million.

But even Bush's number was too much for his handlers to allow. Almost as soon as he finished speaking, they hastened to downplay the presidential figure as "unofficial", plucked by the commander in chief from "public estimates". Such calculations have been discouraged ever since the oafish General Tommy Franks infamously announced at the time of the invasion: "We don't do body counts". In December 2004, an effort by the Iraqi Ministry of Health to quantify ongoing mortality on the basis of emergency room admissions was halted by direct order of the occupying power.

In fact, the President may have been subconsciously quoting figures published by iraqbodycount.org, a British group that diligently tabulates published press reports of combat-related killings in Iraq. Due to IBC's policy of posting minimum and maximum figures, currently standing at 27787 and 31317, their numbers carry a misleading air of scientific precision. As the group itself readily concedes, the estimate must be incomplete, since it omits unreported deaths.

There is however another and more reliable method for estimating figures such as these: nationwide random sampling. No one doubts that, if the sample is truly random, and the consequent data correctly calculated, the sampled results reflect the national figures within the states accuracy. That, after all, is how market researchers assess public opinion on everything from politicians to breakfast cereals. Epidemiologists use it to chart the impact of epidemics. In 2000 an epidemiological team led by Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health used random sampling to calculate the death toll from combat and consequent disease and starvation in the ongoing Congolese civil war at 1.7 million. This figure prompted shocked headlines and immediate action by the UN Security Council. No one questioned the methodology.

In September 2004, Roberts led a similar team that researched death rates, using the same techniques, in Iraq before and after the 2003 invasion. Making "conservative assumptions" they concluded that "about 100,000 excess deaths" (in fact 98,000) among men, women, and children had occurred in just under eighteen months. Violent deaths alone had soared twentyfold. But, as in most wars, the bulk of the carnage was due to the indirect effects of the invasion, notably the breakdown of the Iraqi health system. Thus, though many commentators contrasted the iarqbodycount and Johns Hopkins figures, they are not comparable. The bodycounters were simply recording, or at least attempting to record, deaths from combat violence, while the medical specialists were attempting something far more complete, an accounting of the full death toll wrought by the devastation of the US invasion and occupation.

Unlike the respectful applause granted the Congolese study, this one, published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, generated a hail of abusive criticism. The general outrage may have been prompted by the unsettling possibility that Iraq's liberators had already killed a third as many Iraqis as the reported 300,000 murdered by Saddam Hussein in his decades of tyranny. Some of the attacks were self-evidently absurd. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman, for example, queried the survey because it "appeared to be based on an extrapolation technique rather than a detailed body count", as if Blair had never made a political decision based on a poll. Others chose to compare apples with oranges by mixing up nationwide Saddam-era government statistics with individual cluster survey results in order to cast doubt on the latter.

Some questioned whether the sample was distorted by unrepresentative hot spots such as Fallujah. In fact, the amazingly dedicated and courageous Iraqi doctors who actually gathered the data visited 33 "clusters" selected on an entirely random basis across the length and breadth of Iraq. In each of these clusters the teams conducted interviews in 30 households, again selected by rigorously random means. As it happened, Fallujah was one of the clusters thrown up by this process. Strictly speaking, the team should have included the data from that embattled city in their final result - random is random after all -- which would have given an overall post-invasion excess death figure of no less than 268,000. Nevertheless, erring on the side of caution, they eliminated Fallujah from their sample.

For such dedication to scholarly integrity, Roberts and his colleagues had to endure the flatulent ignorance of Michael E. O'Hanlon, sage of the Brookings Institute, who told the New York Times that the self-evidently deficient Iraqbodycount estimate was "certainly a more serious work than the Lancet report".

No point in the study attracted more confident assaults by ersatz statisticians than the study's passing mention of a 95 per cent "confidence interval" for the overall death toll of between 194,000 and 8,000. This did not mean, as asserted by commentators who ought to have known better, that the true figure lay anywhere between those numbers and that the 98,000 number was produced merely by splitting the difference. In fact, the 98,000 figure represents the best estimate drawn from the data. The high and low numbers represented the spread, known to statisticians as "the confidence interval", within which it is 95 per cent certain the true number will be found. Had the published study (which was intensively peer reviewed) cited the 80 per cent confidence interval also calculated by the team - a statistically respectable option -- then the spread would have been between 152,000 and 44,000.

Seeking further elucidation on the mathematical tools available to reveal the hidden miseries of today's Iraq, I turned to CounterPunch's consultant statistician, Pierre Sprey. He reviewed not only the Iraq study as published in the Lancet, but also the raw data collected in the household survey and kindly forwarded me by Dr. Roberts.

"I have the highest respect for the rigor of the sampling method used and the meticulous and courageous collection of the data. I'm certainly not criticizing in any way Robert's data or the importance of the results. But they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble had they discarded the straitjacket of Gaussian distribution in favor of a more practical statistical approach", says Sprey. "As with all such studies, the key question is that of 'scatter' i.e. the random spread in data between each cluster sampled. So cluster A might have a ratio of twice as many deaths after the invasion as before, while cluster B might experience only two thirds as many. The academically conventional approach is to assume that scatter follows the bell shaped curve, otherwise known as 'normal distribution,' popularized by Carl Gauss in the early 19th century. This is a formula dictating that the most frequent occurrence of data will be close to the mean, or center, and that frequency of occurrence will fall off smoothly and symmetrically as data scatters further and further from the mean - following the curve of a bell shaped mountain as you move from the center of the data.

"Generations of statisticians have had it beaten in to their skulls that any data that scatters does so according to the iron dictates of the bell shaped curve. The truth is that in no case has a sizable body of naturally occurring data ever been proven to follow the curve". (A $200,000 prize offered in the 1920s for anyone who could provide rigorous evidence of a natural occurrence of the curve remains unclaimed.)

"Slavish adherence to this formula obscures information of great value. The true shape of the data scatter almost invariably contains insights of great physical or, in this case medical importance. In particular it very frequently grossly exaggerates the true scatter of the data. Why? Simply because the mathematics of making the data fit the bell curve inexorably leads one to placing huge emphasis on isolated extreme 'outliers' of the data.

"For example if the average cluster had ten deaths and most clusters had 8 to 12 deaths, but some had 0 or 20, the Gaussian math would force you to weight the importance of those rare points like 0 or 20 (i.e. 'outliers') by the square of their distance from the center, or average. So a point at 20 would have a weight of 100 (20 minus 10 squared) while a point of 11 would have a weight of 1 (11 minus 10 squared.)

"This approach has inherently pernicious effects. Suppose for example one is studying survival rates of plant- destroying spider mites, and the sampled population happens to be a mix of a strain of very hardy mites and another strain that is quite vulnerable to pesticides. Fanatical Gaussians will immediately clamp the bell shaped curve onto the overall population of mites being studied, thereby wiping out any evidence that this group is in fact a mixture of two strains.

"The commonsensical amateur meanwhile would look at the scatter of the data and see very quickly that instead of a single "peak" in surviving mites, which would be the result if the data were processed by traditional Gaussian rules, there are instead two obvious peaks. He would promptly discern that he has two different strains mixed together on his plants, a conclusion of overwhelming importance for pesticide application". (Sprey once conducted such a statistical study at Cornell - a bad day for mites.)
So how to escape the Gaussian distortion?

"The answer lies in quite simple statistical techniques called 'distribution free' or 'non parametric' methods. These make the obviously more reasonable assumption that one hasn't the foggiest notion of what the distribution of the data should be, especially when considering data one hasn't seen -- before one is prepared to let the data define its own distribution, whatever that unusual shape may be, rather than forcing it into the bell curve. The relatively simple computational methods used in this approach basically treat each point as if it has the same weight as any other, with the happy result that outliers don't greatly exaggerate the scatter.

"So, applying that simple notion to the death rates before and after the US invasion of Iraq, we find that the confidence intervals around the estimated 100,000 "excess deaths" not only shrink considerably but also that the numbers move significantly higher. With a distribution-free approach, a 95 per cent confidence interval thereby becomes 53,000 to 279,000. (Recall that the Gaussian approach gave a 95 per cent confidence interval of 8,000 to 194,000.) With an 80 per cent confidence interval, the lower bound is 78,000 and the upper bound is 229,000. This shift to higher excess deaths occurs because the real, as opposed to the Gaussian, distribution of the data is heavily skewed to the high side of the distribution center".

Sprey's results make it clear that the most cautious estimate possible for the Iraqi excess deaths caused by the US invasion is far higher than the 8,000 figure imposed on the Johns Hopkins team by the fascist bell curve. (The eugenicists of the 1920s were much enamored of Gaussian methodology.) The upper bounds indicate a reasonable possibility of much higher excess deaths than the 194,000 excess deaths (95 per cent confidence) offered in the study published in the Lancet.

Of course the survey on which all these figures are based was conducted fifteen months ago. Assuming the rate of death has proceeded at the same pace since the study was carried out, Sprey calculates that deaths inflicted to date as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq could be, at best estimate, 183,000, with an upper 95 per cent confidence boundary of 511,000. Given the generally smug and heartless reaction accorded the initial Lancet study, no such updated figure is likely to resonate in public discourse, especially when it registers a dramatic increase. Though the figures quoted by Bush were without a shadow of a doubt a gross underestimate (he couldn't even be bothered to get the number of dead American troops right) 30,000 dead among the people we were allegedly coming to save is still an appalling notion. The possibility that we have actually helped kill as many as half a million people suggests a war crime of truly twentieth century proportions.

In some countries, denying the fact of mass murder is considered a felony offence, incurring harsh penalties. But then, it all depends on who is being murdered, and by whom.

Andrew Cockburn is the co-author, with Patrick Cockburn, of Out of the Ashes: the Resurrection of Saddam Hussein. http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew01092006.html

22 year old who marks 3,000 US deaths in Iraq

US Army Specialist Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Texas, was killed on December 28 in Baghdad (Family/AP)

The grieving father of the 3,000th American soldier killed in Iraq has paid tribute to his son, as President George W. Bush admitted that US military deaths are the result of "my decisions" and described them as "the most painful aspect of the presidency". Specialist Dustin Donica's unit was conducting counter-insurgency operations at Karmah, in Iraq's al-Anbar province, when he was fatally struck by small-arms fire from enemy forces, an Army spokesman said.

The death of the bright, popular 22-year-old soldier from Spring, Texas, takes the toll incurred by United States troops to the landmark 3,000 figure since the start of the invasion in March 2003. David Donica, Spc Donica's father, said he only learned that his son's death was the 3,000th for the American military in Iraq when he logged onto the internet shortly after becoming mystified by a growing pack of reporters who had come to the family's home. "We had no idea why we were getting, within an hour almost, eight or nine people at the door," he said yesterday. "That was a surprise to us because none of them mentioned why they were there. Perhaps, they were embarrassed. One guy was standing there shaking like a leaf."

Mr Donica added, in a written statement issued to the media, that he was proud of his son. "Dustin had a tremendous sense of duty, both to his family, and his country. He will be missed by his family, and all those that knew him," he said. The American public was given a glimpse of the young man behind the tragic statistic when it was revealed that Spc Donica kept a MySpace.com website. Known as "Double D" to his friends, he talked about his future plans, his likes and dislikes. "I like to play a lot of sports — soccer, basketball, racquetball and ultimate frisbee are my favorites," he wrote. The young soldier last logged on to the website the day after Christmas.

By last weekend, friends were filling Spc Donica's MySpace site with notes of condolence. "Always in my prayers brother, see you at the gates," read a message from Chris Donaton, who said he served with Spc Donica in Alaska. "It's just so shocking. You hear these [combat death] statistics but once you put a human face on it, it completely changes the way you feel," said Jon Baben, who was president of Spc Donica's 2002 high school class. "He was always so energetic and an unbreakable spirit." The death of the 3,000th American soldier in Iraq comes at a make-or-break time for the American-British operation there. Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, was executed on Saturday, leading supporters to vow to avenge his death, while Mr Bush told an end-of-year press conference that the growing US death toll, caused by an escalating insurgency in the country, distressed him and he accepted responsibility for it.

"The most painful aspect of the presidency is the fact that I know my decisions have caused young men and women to lose their lives," Mr Bush said, in one of his most candid confessions about the impact of the conflict on his credibility. In a special additional statement from his ranch in Crawford, Texas yesterday, Mr Bush wished the troops and all Americans a happy new year and added that the nation depended on the men and women in the armed services and was mindful of their dedication and sacrifice. "Last year, America continued its mission to fight and win the war on terror and promote liberty as an alternative to tyranny and despair," Mr Bush said. "In the new year, we will remain on the offensive against the enemies of freedom, advance the security of our country and work toward a free and unified Iraq. Defeating terrorists and extremists is the challenge of our time, and we will answer history's call with confidence and fight for liberty without wavering."

Asked about Spc Donica's death, and the 3,000 figure, the deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel, said yesterday that the President "will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain". "We will be fighting violent jihadists for peace and security of the civilised world for years to come. The brave men and women of the US military are fighting extremists in order to stop them from attacking on our soil again," Mr Stanzel said. Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy called the figure a "tragic milestone" and said the Government owed its troops "a new policy that is worthy of their heroism and brings them safely home".

In a sign of growing tensions in Iraq following Saddam's execution and danger of a further escalation, the former dictator's supporters vowed to take revenge for his hanging, as hundreds of Iraqis travelled to his burial site to pay tribute. While celebrations in Iraq's Shia neighbourhoods continued, Saddam loyalists, mostly from the Sunni community, vowed to take revenge. "I condemn the way he was executed and I consider it a crime," said 45-year-old Salam Hassan al-Nasseri, one of Saddam's clansmen. Despite a police blockade in Tikrit, gunmen took to the streets, carrying pictures of the former President, shooting into the air and demanding vengeance. There were further demonstrations in nearby Samarra, north of Baghdad, and Ramadi, west of the capital. Today, in a protest in Jordan attended by around 500 people, Saddam's daughter, Raghad, made a surprise appearance to denounce his execution.

It emerged yesterday that, although Saddam met his fate calmly, he had been taunted minutes before his death and had a frosty exchange with one of his guards, saying to the guard: "God damn you." A new video, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a website, showed Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away. Meanwhile, an American military nurse who cared for Saddam in jail revealed that the Iraqi despot saved bread crusts to feed birds and rarely complained to his captors. Master Sergeant Robert Ellis, 56, cared for the former leader from January 2004 until August 2005 at Camp Cropper, the compound near Baghdad where Saddam and other "high value detainees" were held.

Sgt Ellis, an operating theatre nurse in the St Louis, Missouri, suburb of St Charles, said he was ordered to do whatever was needed to keep Saddam, 69, alive. "He had very good coping skills," Sgt Ellis said, adding that Saddam shared with Ellis memories of happier times when his children were young. The former dictator described how he told the youngsters bedtime stories and gave his daughter half a Tums tablet when she had a stomach ache. When he was allowed short visits outside, Saddam would feed the birds crusts of bread saved from his meals. He also watered a dusty plot of weeds. "He said he was a farmer when he was young and he never forgot where he came from" Sgt Ellis said. When Sgt Ellis left his role to return to America because of a family bereavement, he claims Saddam hugged him. Saddam, who ruled Iraq from 1979 until he was ousted by the US-led coalition in the 2003 Gulf War, was sentenced to death last month for the killings of 148 Shia from the Iraqi village of Dujail in the 1980s and hanged on New Year's Eve.

Denver Broncos football player shot, killed

The news of the first morning of the new year:

• Darrent Williams is dead.

The second-year Denver cornerback was shot to death in a drive-by shooting outside a Denver nightclub this morning, just after 4 a.m. ET. A white Hummer limo with Williams and two companions in it was reportedly sprayed with bullets from a vehicle that pulled up next to it. Williams died from his wounds; the two others, a man and a woman, were wounded. I knew Williams. I met him last year when I was writing about impact rookies, exchanged phone numbers, and talked to him three or four times. Intense overachiever. "Nobody will out-work me,'' I remember him saying. A little-engine-that-could type at 5-foot-8 and about 165 pounds. Fearless. Such a sad and senseless thing. We know nothing more about the story right now, as of 10 a.m. ET.

And all I can think of, right or wrong, are the words of freshly minted commissioner Roger Goodell when we spoke near the start of the season. "I worry about guns and our players,'' he said. "We've really got to get a handle on why there's such a proliferation of gun violence around our players.'' Amen. Now, we know nothing about the story, and whether Williams had a gun or simply was the victim of senseless violence. But guns, money, athletes. It doesn't go away

WASHINGTON, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Denver Broncos football player Darrent Williams was killed in a drive-by shooting early on Monday and two people with him were injured, ABC television reported. Williams, 24, was riding in a limousine in downtown Denver after 2 a.m. (4 a.m. EST/0900 GMT) when shots fired from another vehicle hit him and a man and woman also riding in his car, ABC television reported. "It is a terrible tragedy," National Football League spokesman Greg Aiello told Reuters. "We don't know all the details yet, but we are reaching out to the Broncos to offer our support."
Denver Broncos spokesman Jim Saccomano told the station that police had telephoned the Broncos and told them that Williams had died. It was not known how badly the other two people were injured. The shooting occurred just hours after the Broncos were eliminated from the playoffs with a 26-23 overtime loss to the San Francisco 49ers. Williams was in his second season with the Broncos coming out of Oklahoma State University as a second round draft choice. The 5-foot-8 (1.7 metres), 188-pound (85.4-kg) cornerback started nine games in 2005, the most by a Denver rookie at that position since 1975. He had two interceptions in 2005 and four this season.