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• BAGHDAD (AP) -- The wave of attacks by al-Qaida-led Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis this year, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense.
• They generally insist they'll do it legally, under the banner of the security forces. But Iraq's young democracy is still struggling, nearly two years after U.S. troops withdrew, and the specter of armed Shiite and Sunni camps revives memories of the sectarian fighting that took the country to the brink of civil war in the mid-2000s.
• Since April, bombings and shootings have killed more than 5,500 people. Averaging at least two a week, they target outdoor markets, cafes, bus stations, mosques and pilgrimages in Shiite areas.
• Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who will meet with President Barack Obama on Friday, says he wants American help in quelling the violence.
• Departing for Washington, he appealed for quicker delivery of offensive weapons such as helicopters that Baghdad says it needs.
• ___

• BANDUNG, Indonesia (AP) -- Chimoy flicks a lighter and draws a long drag until her cheeks collapse on the skinny Dunhill Mild, exhaling a column of smoke.
• Her no-nonsense, tough-girl attitude projects the confidence of a woman in her 30s, yet she's only 17. Colorful angel and butterfly tattoos cover her skin, and she wears a black T-shirt emblazoned with a huge skull.
• Chimoy -- by her own account and those of other girls and social workers -- is a pimp.
• She got into the business when she was 14. A boyfriend's sister asked her to sell herself for sex, but she recruited a friend for the job instead. Then she established a pimping operation that grew to include a car, a house and some 30 working girls earning her up to $3,000 a month -- a small fortune in a poor country.
• "The money was too strong to resist," she says. "I was really proud to make money on my own."
• ___

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