Obama awards 6 Purple Hearts

The White House says President Barack Obama awarded six Purple Hearts to service members on Wednesday.

The commander in chief met with 22 service members during a midday visit to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., just outside Washington. Twenty-one of the military personnel served in Afghanistan; the other served in Iraq.

Obama also visited with medical center staff and families of the wounded.

Such visits by the president are closed to media coverage.

Suit claims FBI violates Muslims' rights at mosque

Plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the FBI say they have become paranoid that the agency is following them and monitoring their phone calls after an informant was ordered to target Muslims for surveillance when he infiltrated California mosques.

Ali Malik said Wednesday that his wife has recurring dreams that he will be snatched by the FBI, and the couple fears their phones are bugged.

Malik is one of three plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Southern California and the Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The lawsuit alleges that ex-FBI informant Craig Monteilh (mon-TAY') violated Muslims' constitutional rights by conducting "indiscriminate surveillance" because of their religion.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller says the agency does not target religious groups or individuals based on their religion.

Zimbabwe activists charged with treason

Dozens of political activists and union members rounded up in Zimbabwe last week faced a possible death sentence as prosecutors Wednesday accused them of plotting an Egyptian-style uprising against longtime President Robert Mugabe.

The 46 defendants have been charged with treason, prosecutor Edmore Nyazamba told a packed courtroom. They were arrested Saturday after authorities said they were caught watching footage of the protests that led to the ouster of Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia in January and of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak two weeks ago.

"On 16 February they held a meeting and the purpose of the meeting was to org anise, strategize and implement the removal of a constitutional government of Zimbabwe by unconstitutional means, the Tunisian-Egyptian way," Nyazamba said.

"In their speeches, the accused highlighted that there was a long serving dictator/authoritarian leader, general hunger, poverty, unemployment and capitalist tendencies where wealth is enjoyed by a few individuals while the general populace is suffering."

On Wednesday, the activists' lawyer said he would oppose the charge against his clients, who were ordered to remain in custody overnight.

"There is no basis for placing them on remand," the attorney, Alec Muchadehama, argued.

Mugabe, who turned 87 on Monday, has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. Like Mubarak and Ben Ali, he has been accused of rigging elections and instituting repressive laws to tighten his grip on power.

The arrests may be an indication authorities are worried that the winds of change sweeping across north Africa may inspire Zimbabweans to rise up. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, which is in a troubled unity government with Mugabe's ZANU-PF, has called the arrests "an abuse of state machinery by ZANU-PF to suppress the people's views."

Mugabe's policies over the past 10 years have been blamed for plunging the once-prosperous country into an unprecedented economic crisis. Mugabe has called for an election this year, but his political rival and leader of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, has threatened to boycott the poll if a referendum on a new constitution is not held.

Reports: Libyan aircraft crashes after troops refuse bombing orders

Even as Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi called on the military to crack down on anti-government protesters, reports came in Wednesday that a military aircraft had crashed because the crew refused to carry out bombing orders.

An opposition figure told CNN the pilot had been ordered to bomb oil fields southwest of Benghazi but refused and instead ejected from the plane.

The Libyan newspaper Quryna reported that two people were on board, and that both -- the pilot and co-pilot -- parachuted out, allowing the plane to crash into an uninhabited area west of Ajdabiya, 160 kilometers (100 miles) southwest of Benghazi. The newspaper cited military sources.

Quryna itself is a sign of the changes sweeping through Libya. When protests began last week, it carried regime propaganda. But it later reported on the protests and casualty figures.

CNN could not confirm reports for many areas in Libya. The Libyan government maintains tight control on communications and has not responded to repeated requests from CNN for access to the country. CNN has interviewed numerous witnesses by phone.

A Libyan Arab Airlines plane was denied permission to land in Malta on Wednesday, Maltese government sources said. Permission was denied for "clearance reasons," because officials did not know who was on board, the sources said.

Meanwhile, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Wednesday that the death toll in Libya may be as high as 1,000, a representative for the Italian Foreign Ministry said.

The head of the largest trauma hospital in Benghazi told CNN on Wednesday that 202 people have been confirmed dead in the city since protests began last week. The opposition now controls Benghazi, as it does much of eastern Libya.

On Wednesday, the ninth day of protests, Gadhafi faced more defections from within his regime and new international pressure to halt military actions against demonstrators.

Mystery surrounded the whereabouts of one prominent defector. Abdul Fattah Younis al Abidi, the country's interior minister, told CNN Wednesday that he had resigned two days earlier after hearing that 300 unarmed civilians had been killed in Benghazi. He accused Gadhafi of planning to attack civilians on a wide scale and predicted that protesters will achieve victory in "days or hours."

Hours after al Abidi said he resigned, the Libyan government announced Wednesday that he was kidnapped. State media reported that "gangs" had abducted him in Benghazi. Witnesses told CNN they saw al Abidi on Sunday and Monday in Benghazi, where he was siding with the protesters.

The United States is considering a range of tools to pressure Libya to end the violence and respect the rights of its people, U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Wednesday. "That certainly includes sanctions that could be imposed either bilaterally or multilaterally," Crowley said.

Peru and Botswana both announced they were breaking diplomatic ties with Libya. Peruvian President Alan Garcia said his country suspended diplomatic relations after condemning "the repression unleashed by Gadhafi."

Botswana's foreign affairs ministry said in a statement, "In light of the massive and disproportionate force visited upon peaceful protesters by the Libyan security forces, the government of Botswana summoned the Libyan Representative in Gaborone and expressed its revulsion at the Libyan government's response to peaceful protesters and called for restraint in dealing with the situation."

Court: Family can sue Mazda over seat belt death

The Supreme Court will let Mazda be sued in California courts in case involving a woman who died while wearing a seat belt across her lap in her family's minivan.

The high court in a unanimous judgment Wednesday agreed to let the lawsuit go forward, despite complaints from the car company that federal regulators gave it an option on whether to install lap belts or lap-and-shoulder belts in the middle seats in the back of the van.

Thanh Williamson's family wants to sue Mazda Motor of America Inc. because it made its 1993 Mazda MPV minivan with only lap seat belts in the middle seat of the van's second row. Williamson, who was from Utah, died in a 2002 accident; her family says her body jackknifed around the lap belt causing fatal internal injuries.

Federal regulations require lap-and-shoulder belts for the front seats and the rear outer seats but give companies an option on the rear middle or aisle seats. The Williamsons want a court to say that Mazda was negligent for not putting the lap-and-shoulder belts on the inner seats on its own.

But Mazda said it is immune from lawsuits because the federal government in 1989 gave it a choice of installing either lap or lap-and-shoulder seat belts in the middle rear seat. A lawsuit forcing them to use lap-and-shoulder belts, the company said, would invalidate the choice being offered by the regulation.