Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 469

By Alison Vekshin and Ari Levy

Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Columbian Bank and Trust Co. of Topeka, Kansas, was closed by U.S. regulators, the nation's ninth bank to collapse this year amid bad real-estate loans and writedowns stemming from a drop in home prices.

The bank, with $752 million in assets and $622 million in total deposits, was shuttered by the Kansas state bank commissioner's office and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the FDIC said yesterday in a statement.

Citizens Bank and Trust will assume the failed bank's insured deposits. Columbian Bank's nine branches will open Aug. 25 as Citizens Bank and Trust offices, the FDIC said. Customers can access their accounts over the weekend by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards.

``There is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance coverage,'' the FDIC said.

The pace of bank closings is accelerating as financial firms have reported more than $500 billion in writedowns and credit losses since 2007. The FDIC's ``problem'' bank list grew by 18 percent in the first quarter from the fourth, to 90 banks with combined assets of $26.3 billion.

Prior to yesterday, the FDIC had closed 36 banks since October 2000, according to a list at fdic.gov. The U.S. shut 12 banks in 2002, the highest in the period, and 2005 and 2006 had no closures.

U.S. bank regulators closed Florida's First Priority Bank on Aug. 1; Reno-based First National Bank of Nevada, Newport Beach, California-based First Heritage Bank, and Pasadena-based IndyMac Bancorp Inc. in July; Staples, Minnesota-based First Integrity Bank and ANB Financial in Bentonville, Arkansas, in May; Hume Bank in Hume, Missouri, in March; and Douglass National Bank in Kansas City, Missouri, in January.

By Jason Straziuso and Rahim Faiez

Scores of Afghan civilians who had gathered in a small village for the memorial ceremony of a militia commander were killed when U.S. and Afghan soldiers launched an attack in the middle of the night, officials and villagers said Saturday.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the early Friday operation in western Afghanistan and said most of the dead were civilians. The U.S. coalition, however, said it believed only five civilians were among those killed and said that it would investigate the Afghan claims.

An Afghan human rights group that visited the site of the operation said Saturday that at least 78 people were killed. The Ministry of Interior has said 76 civilians died, including 50 children under the age of 15, though the Ministry of Defense said 25 militants and five civilians were killed.

Meanwhile, a school principal and police official said Afghan soldiers tried to hand out food and clothes Saturday in Azizabad — the village in Herat province where the operation took place. But villagers started throwing stones at the soldiers, who then fired on the villagers and wounded up to eight people.

An Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission researcher visited Azizabad in Herat province and found that 15 houses had been destroyed and others were damaged, said Ahmad Nader Nadery, the group's commissioner.

Nadery said the information was preliminary and the group would publish a final report. He did not provide a breakdown of how many were civilians or militants, and said 20 women were among the dead and that children also were killed.

Nadery confirmed reports from villagers that a memorial ceremony was being held for a deputy militia commander allied with the Afghan police named Timor Shah, who had died in a personal dispute several months ago. Because of the memorial, relatives and friends from outside Azizabad were staying overnight in village homes, he said.

An AP photographer who visited Azizabad on Saturday said he saw at least 20 graves, including some graves with multiple bodies in them. He said he saw around 20 houses that had been destroyed.

Originally the U.S. coalition said the battle killed 30 militants, including a wanted Taliban commander, but U.S. coalition spokeswoman Rumi Nielson-Green said Saturday that five civilians — two women and three children connected to the militants — were among the dead.

The U.S. said it would investigate.

"Obviously there's allegations and a disconnect here. The sooner we can get that cleared up and get it official, the better off we'll all be," said U.S. coalition spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry. "We had people on the ground."

The competing claims by the U.S. coalition and the two Afghan ministries were impossible to verify because of the remote and dangerous location of the battle site.

Complicating the matter, Afghan officials are known to exaggerate civilian death claims for political payback, to qualify for more compensation money from the U.S. or because of pressure from the Taliban.

Still, the U.S. has killed dozens of civilians in past strikes even though it first denied any civilians had been hit.

In early July, U.S. bombs killed 47 civilians walking to a wedding party in Nuristan province, according to the findings of a government commission.

The U.S. military originally said it believed only combatants had been killed, and suggested that reports of civilians deaths were based on propaganda from militants. The U.S. later acknowledged that there may have been civilian casualties but never gave a specific number.

Civilian deaths creates massive amounts of pressure on Karzai, and on Saturday the president said his government would soon announce "necessary measures" to prevent civilian casualties, but provided no details.

Ghulam Azrat, 50, the director of the middle school in Azizabad, said he collected 60 bodies Friday morning after the bombing.

"We put the bodies in the main mosque," he told The Associated Press by phone, sometimes pausing to collect himself in between tears. "Most of these dead bodies were children and women. It took all morning to collect them."

Azrat said villagers on Saturday threw stones at Afghan soldiers who tried to give food and clothes to them. He said the soldiers fired into the crowd and wounded eight people, including one child critically wounded.

"The people were very angry," he said. "They told the soldiers, 'We don't need your food, we don't need your clothes. We want our children. We want our relatives. Can you give it to us? You cannot, so go away.'"

A spokesman for Afghan police in western Afghanistan, Rauf Ahmadi, confirmed that the demonstration took place against the soldiers, who he said fired into the air. Ahmadi said two Afghans were wounded by the gunfire.

The early Friday operation was led by Afghan National Army commandos, with support from the coalition, Nielson-Green said.

It was launched after an intelligence report that a Taliban commander, Mullah Siddiq, was inside the compound presiding over a meeting of militants, Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said. Siddiq was one of those killed during the raid, Azimi said.

More than 3,500 people — mostly militants — have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to figures from Western and Afghan officials.

On Saturday, a roadside bomb killed 10 civilians as they rode in a small bus in southern Kandahar province, according to an Afghan police chief, Matiullah Khan. Roadside bombs are typically aimed at Afghan and NATO troops but often are triggered early and kill civilians.

By Megan Holland

A feud within the family of Gov. Sarah Palin spilled into the public Thursday with accusations she tried to get a state trooper fired and she then fired the trooper's boss because he wouldn't act on her request.

In an interview Thursday, Palin vigorously denied that her dismissal last week of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan had anything to do with her dislike of state trooper Mike Wooten, her sister's ex-husband.

"To allege that I, or any member of my family, requested, received or released confidential personnel information on an Alaska State Trooper, or directed disciplinary action be taken against any employee of the Department of Public Safety, is, quite simply, outrageous," Palin said in a statement also released Thursday.

Monegan on Thursday said he could not talk about whether the governor ever discussed Wooten, saying it was a personnel matter. "It's the law, and I took an oath." he said.

He says he still does not know, though, why he lost his job.

The governor continues to say she dismissed Monegan and replaced him with Kenai Police chief Chuck Kopp last week because she wants a new direction for the department.

The Wooten accusation came initially on the blog of former state Rep. Andrew Halcro, who ran against Palin in the 2006 gubernatorial race and who has been a staunch critic of her and her administration since.

Later in the day, a spokesman for the troopers' labor union, the Public Safety Employees Association, held a press conference saying Wooten has been unfairly targeted by the governor's family.

The spokesman, John Cyr, also released a several-inch-thick file of the troopers' own investigation into charges from Palin, her husband, Todd, and other members of her family that Wooten committed unethical and illegal acts, which they said included drunken driving and illegal hunting.

The charges were made in 2005, as Wooten and Palin's sister were divorcing and before Palin ran for governor. They concerned Wooten's behavior in the preceding years. The acrimony continues today.

For the most part, trooper investigators found that the accusations were unsubstantiated, but in at least two cases -- Wooten's illegally killing of a moose in 2003 and his Tasering of his 11-year-old stepson -- were confirmed. The troopers later disciplined him for them.

Cyr said he released the investigation file at Wooten's request. Wooten could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Wooten and Palin's younger sister, Molly McCann, initiated their divorce in 2005 and finalized it that same year. But their case remains open as they battle over the couple's two young children, child support and visitation rights.

Sarah and Todd Palin became involved after the couple separated.

Palin was protective of her sister, according to court documents.

The Palins, at the time, encouraged the press to look into Wooten's behavior. In August 2005, Sarah Palin wrote an e-mail to then-Col. Julia Grimes, who was head of the troopers, about Wooten, calling him, "a ticking timebomb," according to an e-mail Todd Palin forwarded to the Daily News around that time.

The state troopers launched an investigation in 2005. In the end, Wooten was reprimanded for the moose and Taser incidents. Regarding the Taser, Cyr said Wooten was teaching the child about what if feels like to be hit by the stun gun. The trooper was disciplined without pay for 10 days, which was eventually, under Monegan, reduced, Cyr said.

Cyr believes Wooten is a good cop who has been unfairly targeted by people in power.

Palin said that since she took office in December 2006, the only mention she has made of Wooten to anyone in the Public Safety Department was when she sat down with Monegan at the beginning of her term to discuss her security detail.

She told Monegan that Wooten had "threatened to kill my dad and bring me down."

She told Monegan allegations of unethical and illegal behavior. But, she said, she thought that was the end of it. "I don't believe my discussion went anywhere," she said on Thursday in a phone interview.

Palin said she never has asked for another trooper investigation.

When people ask her if Wooten is her brother-in-law, she said she embarrassingly answers yes, and tells them he is the father of her niece and nephew.

Todd Palin said that since his wife took office he contacted the troopers regarding Wooten only once, in April 2007.

He said Wooten was on worker's compensation for a back injury but Todd Palin saw him numerous times around Wasilla looking like he did not have a back injury -- jumping up and down at local games. Then Palin saw him 110 miles from Wasilla on a snowmobile, demonstrating what he thought was an abuse of his worker's comp. Palin took a photo and forwarded it to Wooten's boss.

On Thursday, the governor held little regard for the trooper. She and her husband said they do not believe Wooten has what it takes to be a state cop.

"Based on what I know of trooper Wooten and his threat to kill a person, saying they will 'eat an f'in bullet,' and you know he said this with a gun on his hip; knowing of his drinking in a patrol car, knowing of his illegally killing of the moose, knowing of his tasering I believe at that time his 11-year-old stepson; knowing of his verbal abuse of minors, my daughter. ... I would question any trooper driving a car where the logo is printed on the side of that car being 'integrity, (loyalty, and courage')."