NEWS
IN A FEW
State:
•
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
pumped up a crowd of about 5,000 travel
and tour operators on Wednesday, urging
them and their clients to visit California
and reap the state’s ‘‘visual
feast’’ of attractions.
•
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Ten counties that use
thousands of touch-screen voting machines
will be able to use them this fall but only
if they provide alternative paper ballots
in each precinct, a state advisory committee
recommended Wednesday.
•
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The California Supreme
Court announced Wednesday it will hold oral
arguments May 25 on the question of whether
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had the
authority to issue same-sex marriage licenses.
•
NEWPORT BEACH (AP) -- A recreational diver
forgotten at sea by a boat crew drifted
five hours in the ocean and prayed ‘‘God,
I don’t want to die’’
before a teenager aboard a century-old tall
ship spotted him and fellow Boy Scouts pulled
him aboard.
•
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- California businesses
-- and the state Legislature -- could be
fined millions under a labor law that took
effect in January, Republican lawmakers
warned Wednesday as they called for the
law to be repealed.
•
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The California National
Guard is standing down Friday from the Golden
Gate Bridge, where guards wearing camouflage
and carrying assault weapons have been patrolling
since Sept. 11, 2001.
•
PASADENA (AP) -- NASA’s Spirit rover
completed Wednesday its longest drive yet
on Mars while traveling the ‘‘express
route’’ to a cluster of hills
that scientists hope the robot will reach
by mid-June.
•
HESPERIA, Calif. (AP) -- Two freight trains
collided early Wednesday near Hesperia,
leaving parts of two train cars dangling
precariously over a cliff.
•
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- State officials have
filed a petition with the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission challenging that agency’s
assertion that it alone has the power to
decide whether and where to build the state’s
liquefied natural gas terminals.
•
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- An appeals court has
upheld a lower court ruling preventing County-USC
Medical Center from cutting 100 hospital
beds and other care for disabled persons
in anticipation of a budget shortfall.
National:
•
PHOENIX (AP) -- A crackdown on migrant smuggling
has forced some smugglers to avoid Phoenix
and instead move into other communities
that in the past didn’t serve as stopover
points for illegal immigrants, an immigration
official said Wednesday.
•
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- The Bush administration
will appeal a World Trade Organization ruling
that Canada does not illegally subsidize
Canadian wheat exports to the world market.
•
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A southern Nevada woman
was sentenced Wednesday to 7 to 20 years
in prison after admitting she strangled
an Ohio man and buried him in her back yard.
•
GARDNERVILLE, Nev. (AP) -- The U.S. Bureau
of Land Management is closing 2,340 acres
of public land in the Pine Nut Range to
motorized off-road vehicles in an effort
to protect ancient vertebrate fossils.
•
TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- A truck driver already
convicted in an El Cajon, Calif., killing
pleaded guilty Wednesday to first-degree
murder in the 1975 slaying of a Tulsa junior
college student.
International:
•
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- At least 16 children
were killed and 34 injured Wednesday when
a large backhoe tumbled down a steep bank
and landed on top of a school bus traveling
along a Bogota highway, officials said.
•
PATTANI, Thailand (AP) -- A heap of bodies
in a bullet-scarred mosque attested to a
sharp and sudden upsurge of separatist violence
Wednesday in Thailand’s Muslim south.
While the prime minister said the issues
were strictly local, some tied the clashes
to the country’s support for the war
in Iraq.
•
MADRID, Spain (AP) -- A Moroccan fugitive
sought in connection with the March 11 train
bombings in Madrid was indicted Wednesday
on charges of helping to plan the Sept.
11 attacks in the United States -- the first
suspect linked to both attacks.
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