WICHITA, Kan. —  Dr. George Tiller, who remained one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher.

The gunman fled, but a 51-year-old suspect was arrested some 170 miles away in suburban Kansas City three hours after the shooting, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said.

Long a focus of national anti-abortion groups, including a summer-long protest in 1991, Tiller was shot in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, Stolz said. Tiller’s attorney, Dan Monnat, said Tiller’s wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time.

Johnson County sheriff’s spokesman Tom Erickson said Scott Roeder was the man whose car was stopped on Interstate 35 on Sunday, about three hours after the shooting of George Tiller.

Earlier in the day, Wichita police said the suspect was a 51-year-old man from Merriam, Kan., but they refused to identify him by name.

Roeder has not been charged in the slaying, but he was expected to be taken to Wichita for questioning.

The slaying of the 67-year-old doctor is “an unspeakable tragedy,” his widow, four children and 10 grandchildren said in statement. “This is particularly heart-wrenching because George was shot down in his house of worship, a place of peace.”

The family said its loss “is also a loss for the city of Wichita and women across America. George dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality health care despite frequent threats and violence.”

Tiller’s Women’s Health Care Services clinic is one of just three in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy. The clinic was heavily fortified and Tiller often traveled with a bodyguard, but Stolz said there was no indication of security at the church Sunday.

Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri said it was working with law enforcement to secure its facilities Sunday even after the suspect was in custody.

A protester shot Tiller in both arms in 1993, and his clinic was bombed in 1985. More recently, Monnat said Tiller had asked federal prosecutors to step up investigations of vandalism and other threats against the clinic out of fear that the incidents were increasing and that Tiller’s safety was in jeopardy. Stolz, however, said police knew of no threats connected to the shooting.

In early May, Tiller had asked the FBI to investigate vandalism at his clinic, including cut wires to surveillance cameras and damage to the roof that sent rainwater pouring into the building.

Anti-abortion groups denounced the shooting and stressed that they support only nonviolent protest. The movement’s leaders fear the killing could create a backlash just as they are scrutinizing U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, whose views on abortion rights are not publicly known.

“We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down,” Troy Newman, Operation Rescue’s president, said in a statement. “Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning.”

In 1991, the Summer of Mercy protests organized by Operation Rescue drew thousands of anti-abortion activists to this city for demonstrations marked by civil disobedience and mass arrests.

Tiller began providing abortion services in 1973. He acknowledged abortion was as socially divisive as slavery or prohibition but said the issue was about giving women a choice when dealing with technology that can diagnose severe fetal abnormalities before a baby is born.

Nancy Keenan, president of abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, issued a statement praising Tiller’s commitment.

“Dr. Tiller’s murder will send a chill down the spines of the brave and courageous providers and other professionals who are part of reproductive-health centers that serve women across this country. We want them to know that they have our support as they move forward in providing these essential services in the aftermath of the shocking news from Wichita,” Keenan said.

After the 1991 protests, Tiller kept mostly to his heavily guarded clinic, although in 1997 he opened it to three tours by state lawmakers and the media.

The clinic is fortified with bulletproof glass, and Tiller hired a private security team to protect the facility. Once outside the clinic, Tiller was routinely accompanied by a bodyguard.

At a recent trial, he told jurors that he and his family have suffered years of harassment and threats and that he knew he was a target of anti-abortion protesters.

Federal marshals protected Tiller during the 1991 Summer of Mercy protests, and he was protected again between 1994 and 1998 after another abortion provider was assassinated and federal authorities reported finding Tiller’s name on an assassination list.

Tiller remained prominent in the news, in part because of an investigation begun by former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, an abortion opponent.

Prosecutors had alleged that Tiller had gotten second opinions from a doctor who was essentially an employee of his, not independent as state law requires. A jury in March acquitted Tiller of all 19 misdemeanor counts.

“I am stunned by this lawless and violent act, which must be condemned and should be met with the full force of law,” Kline said in a written statement. “We join in lifting prayer that God’s grace and presence rest with Dr. Tiller’s family and friends.”

Abortion opponents also questioned then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ ties to Tiller before the Senate confirmed her this year as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary. Tiller donated thousands of dollars to Sebelius over the years.

GLENSHAW, Pa. —  An FBI agent was shot and killed Wednesday while serving a warrant at a home near Pittsburgh.

The agent was shot at around 6 a.m. in Indiana Township, about 10 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, said FBI Special Agent William Crowley, a spokesman for the agency in western Pennsylvania.

The agent’s name was not immediately released. It’s also unclear who shot the agent and whether anyone had been arrested for the shooting. Neither federal nor county officials would confirm reports that a suspect was in custody.

Crowley would not say what the warrant was for. A roundup of drug suspects was happening in the greater Pittsburgh area and federal drug and FBI agents were at the scene, but Crowley wouldn’t comment on whether the shooting was related to the roundup.

At the federal courthouse in Pittsburgh, federal public defenders were in a courtroom Wednesday morning waiting the arrival of some 35 people who were arrested in the drug sweep. Indictments in the case were sealed, but they were expected to be unsealed once the defendants appeared in court.

The shooting happened at a cream-colored house that backs up to fields and woods. A child’s basketball net and play fort could be seen in the backyard. Authorities remained on the scene Thursday morning, blocking the street to the public. Several police cars, including unmarked cars, lined the street.

Emergency dispatchers had initially said the victim was a police officer shot in a home invasion.

The last FBI special agent killed in the line of duty was Barry Lee Bush, who was accidentally shot and killed by a fellow agent outside a bank on April 5, 2007, in Readington, N.J., according to the FBI. Bush, 52, of Forks Township, Pa., and other agents were in pursuit of three bank robbers who were armed but did not fire their weapons, authorities said.

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Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers speaks out on the criticism Barack Obama fielded during the presidential campaign for his ties to the 1960s radical.

Bill Ayers, the Sixties radical whose ties to Barack Obama dogged the president-elect during the presidential campaign, accused his critics on Friday of trying to “exploit the politics of fear” by encouraging others to dig into their relationship.

FILE: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn walk with their son in New York in 1982. (AP Photo)

The co-founder of the Weather Underground, which carried out bombings at the Pentagon and the Capitol, also defended his violent past, repeating a line he has said before: “I don’t think we did enough.”

Ayers used the interview, his first since the election, to downplay his relationship with Obama. Ayers said there is “no dark, hidden secret.”

“It’s not at all true that [Obama] sought me out to listen to my radical ideas, or that I sought him out,” Ayers told ABC News’ “Good Morning America.”

“The truth is we came together in Chicago in the civic community around issues of school improvement, around issues of fighting for the rights of poor neighborhoods to have jobs and housing and so on, and that’s the full extent of our relationship.”

Ayers and Obama served on a Chicago school reform group and a foundation board, and Ayers hosted a meet-and-greet for Obama more than a decade ago. During the campaign, Republicans suggested their relationship ran deeper than that. John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, said in the run-up to Election Day that Obama was “palling around with terrorists.”

Ayers, who kept a low profile during the campaign — unlike Obama’s controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. — dismissed such charges on Friday.

“This idea that we need to know more, like there’s some dark, hidden secret, some secret link — it’s just a myth. And it’s a myth thrown up by people who want to kind of exploit the politics of fear,” he said.

Ayers, now an education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said he doesn’t believe that “guilt-by-association should be any part of our politics.”

But Ayers says in a new afterword to his memoir that he and Obama were neighbors and “family friends.”

Ayers’ reflections appear in a new paperback release of his 2001 memoir, “Fugitive Days.” The Associated Press obtained a copy of the new afterword Thursday.

“In 2008 there was a lot of chatter on the blogosphere about my relationship with Barack Obama: we had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fundraiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign,” Ayers writes.

Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt declined comment on Ayers’ new writings. Obama has denounced Ayers’ violent past and has said Ayers was never involved in his presidential campaign.

Ayers lives a few blocks from Obama on Chicago’s South Side with his wife, former fellow radical Bernardine Dohrn. Now a law professor at Northwestern University, Dohrn was a fugitive for years with her husband until they surrendered in 1980. Charges against Ayers were dropped because of government misconduct, which included FBI break-ins, wiretaps and opening of mail.

Ayers writes that Obama’s enemies saw their connections as a chance to “deepen a dishonest narrative about him.”

“That he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist, a sympathizer with extremism,” Ayers writes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The New York senator and former first lady is being considered for secretary of state by President-elect Barack Obama, sources say.

CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama has met with his former rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and is considering her as a possible candidate for secretary of state, Democratic officials said.

Clinton was rumored to be a contender for the job last week, but the talk died down as party activists questioned whether she was best-suited to be the top U.S. diplomat in an Obama administration. The talk resumed Thursday, a day after Obama named several former aides to President Bill Clinton to help run his transition effort.

A Democratic official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said the two met Thursday afternoon in Obama’s Chicago office.

Clinton’s motorcade — she receives Secret Service protection as a former first lady — was seen leaving the office complex shortly before Obama left for the day. Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines would say only “Senator Clinton had no public schedule yesterday,” and referred questions to the Obama transition team, which said it had no comment.

Clinton pushed Obama hard during the campaign, and was rumored to be a possible pick for vice-president after she lost the nomination to the young Illinois senator. Obama instead chose veteran Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate, prompting speculation that that, among other reasons, he didn’t want to be saddled with Clinton’s restless husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton was cool toward Obama following the bruising nomination battle between Obama and his wife. However, any lingering animosity was put aside when both Clintons gave rousing endorsements of Obama at the Democratic National Convention in August, and later campaigned for him.

Since then, Obama has surrounded himself with several former staffers of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Some of them are pushing Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Other senators, including Democrat John Kerry of Massachusetts and Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, also are thought to be under consideration.

The two Democratic officials who spoke Thursday did so on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering Obama and his staff.

In his first two weeks as president-elect, Obama has struck a bipartisan tone. He paired a Republican and a Democrat to meet with foreign leaders this weekend on his behalf in Washington, for example, and on Friday his transition office announced Obama would meet with vanquished Republican rival John McCain on Monday.

The meeting will be the first since Obama, the Democratic Illinois senator, beat McCain, an Arizona senator, by an Electoral College landslide in the Nov. 4 election.

“It’s well known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government, and will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality,” Obama spokesman Stephanie Cutter said in announcing the meeting.

Cutter also said the two will be joined at Obama’s Chicago transition office by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a McCain confidant, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat whom Obama has chosen to be his White House chief of staff.

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Shariah-compliant banking, sometimes called Islamic banking, is growing in popularity in the Western and Islamic worlds. But critics say American interest in the system at a time of economic crisis is opening the door to increased Islamic influence in the American banking system. Worse yet, some fear the banks may be helping to finance international terrorism.

In Shariah-compliant banking, lenders may not charge interest and investors cannot make money from forbidden industries like gambling, alcohol, pork and pornography. Selling debt, devising derivatives and short selling are also prohibited, and investments must be closely tied to actual assets.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones Islamic Index tracks Shariah-compliant companies and funds, and funds have sprung up like the Amana Mutual Funds Trust and the Azzad Asset Management.

American investment funds, like those offered by TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab, can invest in Shariah-compliant companies, and those companies can offer investments in American companies. Top holdings in the Azzad Ethical Midcap Fund, for example, include Western Digital Corp., Southwest Electric Co. and Apple Computer, Inc.

But allowing Shariah-compliant finance in the U.S. is green-lighting a seditious system that supports jihad, said Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.

“If you understand what Shariah is, you understand that it is a pretty awful system. Not something that you’d want insinuated in your society and becoming a major feature of your economic system,” Gaffney said.

“Shariah (Islamic law as dictated by the Koran) governs all aspects of life, from the personal practice of the faith to how you relate to your family to how you relate to your business partners, to your community … all the way up to how the world is run, and it is all one seamless program. You can’t say ‘I’ll take the personal pietistic practice … and skip the beheading and the flogging and the stoning and the global theocracy,’” he said.

Punishments for some crimes under Shariah law include amputation and stoning to death. On Tuesday it was revealed that a 53-year-old Egyptian doctor had been sentenced under Shariah law in Saudi Arabia to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes for allegedly getting a Saudi princess in his care addicted to drugs.

But despite Islamic banking’s association with Shariah’s harsh practices, the U.S. government is taking an interest in it.

On Oct. 25, while on an official visit to Saudi Arabia, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert M. Kimmitt told reporters that the U.S. was interested in learning more about Islamic finance, and the Treasury Department held an “Islamic Finance 101″ course in Washington on Nov. 6 to educate government officials on its ins and outs.

Islamic banking and investment products sprang up beginning in the 1970s when the Middle East experienced its first oil boom, and have been growing in popularity as oil prices soared in the past few years.

Yet it’s unclear who is investing in Shariah-compliant mutual funds and other investments, Gaffney said. “An awful lot of them seem to be petrodollar-rich potentates and companies and royal families.”

Nicholas Kaiser, fund manager at Amana Mutual Funds Trust in Bellingham, Wash., said that his company’s Shariah-compliant mutual fund products are no different from any other religious funds and that the company carefully screens its investors.

“Our shareholders are American. We don’t take money from non-Americans because of money-laundering laws. We have to know our shareholders and be sure they aren’t engaged in nefarious activities. We screen and check and verify every shareholder,” Kaiser said.

He disagrees with Gaffney’s assertion that Islamic funds are a threat to the American way of life.

“We simply take people’s money, invest it and give it back to them when they want it. We don’t try and convert the country. We don’t have any religious position. We aren’t evangelical. We aren’t zealots. We’re money managers,” Kaiser said. “I happen to be Episcopalian.”

Azzad Asset Management declined to be interviewed for this story.

Estimates put the Islamic banking industry in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And while it’s a small portion of the global finance industry, the Islamic sector is growing — by more than 30 percent in 2007.

A board of Shariah scholars determines which investments are compliant.

As Shariah law forbids charging interest, Shariah-compliant mortgages, like those offered by Devon Bank in Chicago and Guidance Residential, which operates in 23 states, are attracting pious Muslim buyers.

In one type of Shariah-compliant mortgage the bank buys a home and then either leases or re-sells it to the purchaser in monthly installments — interest-free, but at a higher price.

The bank’s profit and the buyer’s payments wind up being similiar to what they would be if the bank charged interest, said Ibrahim Warde, adjunct professor of international business at Tufts University.

“In the Koran there’s a verse saying that making money from trade is good and making money from money lending is not, so basically whenever transactions are structured, they are sales transactions,” he said.

Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy, said that whether they’re sound investments or not, conforming to Shariah shouldn’t be American policy.

“We should not allow Islamic banking to continue and definitely not to flourish in this country,” Ehrenfeld said.

“Muslims in the United States who want to conduct their business according to Islamic banks can do it with mortgages … but to allow Islamic banking as a rule to operate — it’s our money and we shouldn’t be abiding by Islamic laws. Period. I don’t want to have any kind of association with any laws that dictate wife-beating in Saudi Arabia,” she said.

Ehrenfeld said that the practice of “zakat” — giving alms to the poor — while innocent on the surface can in fact be used to promote terrorism and the spread of radical Islam.

She said that that the money the Shariah banks give to charities goes to build madrassas and mosques and spread radical Islam and anti-American sentiment.

“They also send money to Hamas. They also send money to Al Qaeda,” she said. “This is a huge Pandora’s box. We don’t know what the hell is going on with their charities … even if nobody will say openly that they’re giving money to terrorism.”

In June, the Kuwait-based charity Revivial of Islamic Heritage Society was designated by the U.S. Treasury for providing money and material support to Al Qaeda, its affilitates and to acts of terrorism.

“It is illegal for anyone in the United States to provide funds to charities that have been designated by the Treasury Department as supporters of terrorism under Executive Order 13224. If the Treasury Department has information that anyone in the United States were engaged in such activity, we would take appropriate action,” said Treasury spokesman Andrew DeSouza.

Warde, however, said that there is no reason to think that all Islamic financial institutions have terrorist ties.

“There are some people who equate all things Islamic to terrorism,” he said. “Some people look at the world that way. We’ve seen that during the presidential campaign with the insinuations that Obama was a Muslim, therefore a terrorist. I don’t think we should give much credence to that.”

He said critics are not being fair to the system.

“People who don’t like Islam and who are afraid of Islam would obviously not like the notion of Islamic finance. I’m not sure that those who hold this view necessarily know much about it, but it’s some kind of visceral view that some people hold,” Warde said.

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