Former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, the first woman prime minister of an Islamic nation, was assassinated in an attack at an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi. She was 54.

“She’s dead,” a Bhutto aide, Imran Hayat, said today as he sobbed in a telephone interview from Rawalpindi General Hospital. Rioting began as her supporters gathered outside the hospital.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Bhutto died in the blast or was shot by the bomber before he blew himself up, Bhutto spokesman Farhatullah Babar told state-run television. Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Cheema said earlier in a phone interview that she was killed in the bombing. At least 15 other people were also killed and more than 60 were injured, police said.

President Pervez Musharraf condemned the killing and appealed for calm in a statement broadcast on state television, after rioting broke out in cities across Pakistan. In Rawalpindi, where the army has its headquarters, shops were torched and Bhutto’s backers clashed with police. Unrest broke out in her hometown, Larkana, while in Lahore there were reports of gunfire from some parts of the city, Pakistan’s AAJ television reported.

“It was Benazir Bhutto that posed the main threat to pro- Musharraf parties,” Farzana Shaikh, Pakistan analyst at the London-based Chatham House foreign policy institute, said in a phone interview from Montpellier, France. “Long-term it raises very, very serious questions about the stability of Pakistan.”

October Attack

The opposition leader survived an assassination attempt on the night of her return to Pakistan in October after eight years in self-imposed exile. At least 136 people died when suicide bombers attacked her welcome procession on Oct. 19 in Karachi, where thousands of supporters had gathered to receive her.

Harvard and Oxford-educated Bhutto was born in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, and was the eldest of two sisters and two brothers. She is survived by her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, son Bilawal and two daughters, Bakhtawar and Aseefa.

Bhutto attributed her interest in politics to her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the prime minister overthrown by General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq in a 1977 military coup.

“She was, like her father, a deeply flawed leader,” Shaikh said. “But, she was one of the few popular leaders of Pakistan. She did street politics like no other. She was able to give people a certain sense of belonging.”

Zia ul-Haq went on to become president in 1978. The elder Bhutto, founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party, was hanged in 1979 after his conviction on charges of authorizing the murder of an opponent. Both Bhutto’s brothers were also murdered.

`It Chose Me’

“I didn’t choose this life, it chose me,” Bhutto wrote in the preface to the second edition of her autobiography, Daughter of the East, in April 2007. “Born in Pakistan, my life mirrors its turbulence, its tragedies and its triumphs. Pakistan is no ordinary country. And mine has been no ordinary life.”

Bhutto was imprisoned for five years, mostly in solitary confinement, just before her father’s execution. She later lived in London, returning to Pakistan in 1986. She was married to a man from a land-owning family of agriculturists in 1987.

“An arranged marriage was the price in personal choice I had to pay for the political path my life had taken,” she wrote in her autobiography. “My own parents had married for love and I had grown up believing the day would come when I would fall in love and marry a man of my own choosing.”

Zia ul-Haq’s dictatorship ended when he was killed in a plane crash in 1988. Her government was dismissed in 1990. She won a second term in 1993 and was dismissed once again on charges of corruption in 1996.

Managed Party

She lived in Dubai and London since 1999 after being charged in Pakistan with taking kickbacks on state contracts. She wasn’t convicted on the charges. While outside Pakistan, she spent time lecturing at universities and think-tanks around the world. She also remotely managed her party.

Zardari, Bhutto’s husband and a member of the senate, also spent over eight years in jail on 18 corruption cases. He was released in 2004 without any convictions.

Bhutto flew back to Pakistan after President Pervez Musharraf, 64, gave her amnesty on the corruption charges and agreed to give up control of the military by Nov. 15. In return, Bhutto didn’t object to him being re-elected president by parliament and he won another five-year term.

Vowed to Campaign

The former premier had said she would limit mass election rallies and campaign by telephone to avoid a repeat of the Oct. 19 terrorist attacks.

“We do not want to endanger our leadership unnecessarily, and we certainly don’t want to risk potential mass murder of my supporters,” Bhutto wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 23. “If we don’t campaign, the terrorists have won and democracy is set back further. If we do campaign, we risk violence. It is an extraordinary dilemma.”

The U.S. backed a partnership between Bhutto and Musharraf. President George W. Bush banked on the relationship to return stability to a nuclear-armed country that, according to U.S. intelligence reports and officials, is failing to combat a growing Islamist threat.

“Bhutto symbolizes everything that’s anathema to the extremists,” Lisa Curtis, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “They want a Taliban-like theocratic state in Pakistan and she stands for democracy, modernity and change.”

Bhutto’s moderate view of Islam and close contacts with the Bush administration made her a potential target for extremists in the world’s largest Muslim nation after Indonesia. Islamic militants had threatened to assassinate Bhutto on her return from exile.

`A Symbol’

“I know that I am a symbol of what the so-called Jihadists, Taliban and al-Qaeda, most fear,” she wrote. “I am a female political leader fighting to bring modernity, communication, education and technology to Pakistan.”

The twin bombings on her return to Pakistan in October also injured more than 500 people in the deadliest attacks since Musharraf took power in a coup in 1999.

Musharraf had been informed that three people may be behind the attempts to kill her, Bhutto told reporters on Oct. 22, without identifying them.

“We will not be intimidated,” she told reporters at her Karachi residence, Bilawal House. “Despite the heavy loss we incurred, we will continue.”

`Al-Qaeda’

Bhutto received a letter from “friends of al-Qaeda” on Oct. 23, threatening more suicide attacks, possibly using women bombers, her lawyer Farooq Naik said. Bhutto also said her houses in Karachi and Larkana in the southern province of Sindh were under threat.

Musharraf imposed emergency rule in Pakistan on Nov. 3 as the Supreme Court neared a decision on the legality of his re- election as head of state while also serving as army chief.

Bhutto called Musharraf’s decision to suspend the constitution and impose emergency a mini martial law and said it jeopardized her power-sharing talks with the army ruler.

A grieving family is blaming an insurance company for the death Thursday of a 17-year-old leukemia patient, who died hours after the company reversed course and agreed to pay for her to receive a liver transplant.

Nataline Sarkisyan was being treated at UCLA Medical Center, where she had been unresponsive in intensive care for about three weeks, her mother said.

“She had a 65% chance of survival if she had gotten the liver,” Hilda Sarkisyan said from her home this morning.

The Sarkisyans’ insurer, Philadelphia-based Cigna HealthCare, denied the transplant earlier this month.

Doctors at UCLA sent a letter Dec. 11 to Cigna emphasizing that Nataline was eligible for a transplant, Hilda Sarkisyan said. But Cigna refused to pay, citing a lack of medical evidence the procedure would help.

Hilda Sarkisyan said the company was trying to save money. “They just like to collect. They don’t want to deliver,” she said.

On Thursday, the family rallied supporters online and staged a protest at Cigna’s Glendale office with about 150 people, including many members of the local Armenian community and the California Nurses Assn., which had released statements supporting the family’s cause.

Later in the day, Cigna released a statement approving the transplant payment.

“Although it is outside the scope of the plan’s coverage, and despite the lack of medical evidence regarding the effectiveness of such treatment,” spokesman Wendell Potter wrote, “Cigna HealthCare has decided to make an exception in this rare and unusual case, and we will provide coverage should she proceed with the requested liver transplant. Our thoughts and payers are with Nataline and her family at this time.”

Nataline died about 6 p.m.

Cigna spokesmen did not respond to e-mail and telephone requests for comment this morning.

The family’s lawyer planned a news conference later today to discuss the situation.

Charles Idelson, spokesman for the Oakland-based California Nurses Assns., called Cigna’s handling of the Sarkisyan’s case “outrageous.”

“If Cigna could approve the transplant yesterday in response to hundreds of phone calls and people pounding on their door in Glendale, why couldn’t they have done it eight days earlier?” Idelson said this morning.

He said his group, which represents 75,000 nursing professionals, the majority in California, has recently rallied around a number of patients who have been denied care.

While it isn’t clear that Cigna could have saved Nataline by approving the transplant earlier, Idelson said, the insurer should have trusted her doctors.

“The transplant was recommended by the medical professionals at the bedside,” Idelson said. “They should have been listened to.”

A lone gunman opened fire early Sunday morning in a training center for Christian missionary youth, just outside Denver, Colorado, killing two and wounding two others. The gunman walked into Youth With a Mission, began shooting, and then ran away, according to Colorado police.A young man from Alaska and woman from Minnesota, both in their mid-20’s, were killed, and two men aged 22 and 23, were wounded. One of the injured men was in critical condition.

The shooting occurred around 12:30am Sunday morning at the Youth With a Mission center in Arvada, Colorado.

The names of the victims are currently being withheld until authorities have notified their families. A memorial service for the the two who were killed will likely be held on Tuesday or Wednesday, said a rep from Youth With a Mission.

The gunman is still at-large, and police are actively trying to find him. He is believed to be a white male, about 20 years old. He may be wearing glasses and a dark skull cap or beanie, and may have a beard or mustache

Police are using dogs in their search efforts, and are hoping that the fresh snow outside the building may help them track the suspect.

Youth With a Mission has more than 1,000 locations worldwide, and trains people to become missionaries. Approximately 50 people were inside the location at Arvada when the gunman opened fire.

An Orange County Superior Court judge today refused to dismiss a lawsuit by a Ladera Ranch family against the California Highway Patrol over grisly accident photos leaked onto the Internet.

The police agency has admitted responsibility for images that circulated worldwide of Nicole “Nikki” Catsouras, 18, killed Oct. 31, 2006 in a two-car crash on the 241 toll road near Lake Forest.

At a hearing in Santa Ana, Judge Stephen L. Perk said the CHP potentially could be held liable for the actions of its employees. No trial date has been set.

The hearing did not address two individuals named as defendants, Thomas O’Donnell and Aaron Reich. The lawsuit identifies them as CHP employees who played a role in causing images of the decapitated Nikki, still strapped into her father’s Porsche, to be posted on more than 2,500 web sites.

Lesli Catsouras, Nikki’s mother, said she is happy with the judge’s ruling but upset that the CHP continues to fight the lawsuit.

“They are doing everything they can to wiggle out of taking responsibility for this mess,” she said. “They have the authority and the resources to clean up this mess that they made, and yet they still have done nothing to help us.”

The CHP has a longstanding policy of not commenting on pending litigation.

Attorneys for O’Donnell and Reich, who specific roles in the alleged leak were not detailed in the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit follows the Catsouras family’s unsuccessful $20-million legal claim against the state. It details the anguish suffered by Nikki’s parents and three little sisters, including fake MySpace.com pages set up after her death and “spam” that popped up in the e-mail baskets of her parents, with attached photos of her corpse.

Accident photos are taken by police agencies but are meant only for investigative purposes. It is against CHP and state law to distribute them publicly.

Nikki was killed last Halloween when she took the keys to her father’s Porsche and sped away, just before she was scheduled to see a doctor. She had been at home and not feeling well.

The night before, her father, Christos, had taken away the keys to her car to discipline her.

Nikki had never driven the Porsche 911 before and was going about 100 miles per hour on the toll road when she clipped a car, sped out of control and slammed into an unmanned toll booth.

The driver of the other car was not seriously injured. Nikki had not been drinking and no drugs were found in her system.

Keith G. Bremer, an attorney for the Catsouras family, said he’s “comfortable” with Bremer’s ruling.

“The CHP is going to take potential responsibility for the acts and errors of its employees, and that’s what we want,” Bremer said. A settlement still remains a possibility, he added.

In his ruling, Bremer dismissed seven other causes of action in the complaint, including violation of federal civil rights, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy.

The single cause of action that remains in the lawsuit is “vicarious liability,” part of the government code section of state law.

Nikki’s parents have both stumbled across the ghastly images of their oldest daughter, but none of Nikki’s little sisters have seen the images, Lesli Catsouras said.

Danielle Catsouras, 16, is being home schooled after someone threatened to post pictures of Nikki in her locker at Tesoro High School in Las Flores, near Rancho Santa Margarita.

“She still doesn’t know who would want to hurt her,” Lesli Catsouras said.

A few days ago, Lesli Catsouras ran across a video on the Internet that at first appeared to be a tasteful memorial to her daughter.

Then an image of a decapitated Nikki popped up.

“I think we’re all learning that how the Internet works,” Lesli Catsouras said. “Once something is out there, it never can be taken back. The Internet is our modern-day Tree of Knowledge – for good and for evil.”