Around the Nation

Voter arrested for political costume

GAINESVILLE, Ga. — A man wearing a John Kerry T-shirt and a President Bush mask at an election office was charged with disorderly conduct for breaking a law that bans campaigning outside polling places, police said.

Kevin Dodds also was charged with the seldom-invoked crime of wearing a mask. A Georgia law aimed at the Ku Klux Klan makes it illegal to wear masks except on “holidays and special occasions.”

A police report said Mr. Dodds stood outside screaming, sometimes using foul language, and refused requests to take off his mask. When Mr. Dodds, 35, was arrested, he “reeked of alcohol,” police Sgt. Chris Robinson said.

State law prohibits campaigning within 150 feet of a polling site. Signs outside polling places explain the law, which even bans voters from wearing stickers promoting a candidate.

Saturn’s moon still ’alien’ to scientists

LOS ANGELES — Scientists say the Cassini spacecraft is sending back evidence that Saturn’s planet-size moon Titan has some familiar features, but that it remains one of the strangest worlds.

“In this short time we are beginning to see a few things that we recognize, but most of what we see is very alien,” Laurence Soderblom, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said Friday.

Cassini reached Saturn this summer on a $3.3 billion international mission to study the planet’s system for four years.

Unlike the airless moons and space rocks that NASA can photograph with startling clarity, Titan, hundreds of millions of miles from Earth, has long stymied scientists because its surface is shrouded by a thick atmosphere of nitrogen and methane.

Police say man killed wife, three relatives

MARSHVILLE, N.C. — A man who was charged this month with raping and kidnapping his estranged wife went house to house and fatally shot her and three family members before killing himself, authorities said.

The body of David Edward Wyzanowski, 37, and his wife, Michelle, 31, were found inside a burning house Thursday after a passer-by saw smoke coming from the home, Union County Sheriff Eddie Cathey said. A 22-caliber rifle was found with the bodies.

Several hours later, investigators went to a mobile home 10 miles away where the relatives lived and found the bodies of three men.

The sheriff said authorities are not searching for a suspect.

“We’re looking at it that he (Wyzanowski) is the basis for all of this,” he said.

The Wyzanowskis were separated, and she had been living with her father. Mrs. Wyzanowski had charged her husband Oct. 12 with rape and kidnapping, but he was released on $50,000 bond, Sheriff Cathey said.

Child’s Hitler costume causes stir

MIAMI — A Miami Beach boy caused a stir when he showed up for his school’s Halloween parade dressed as Adolf Hitler, the Miami Herald reported yesterday.

“Wildly inappropriate,” said lawyer David Edelstein, who reportedly alerted the Anti-Defamation League after seeing the youngster wearing a uniform, swastika patches, a mustache and a name tag that said “A. Hitler.”

The ADL’s southern area director, Art Teitelbaum, told the daily it was “grossly insensitive on the part of any adult who was involved in selecting this costume for an innocent child. Nothing justifies the trivialization of the memories of the Holocaust and the evil of Adolf Hitler.”

The school said the fourth-grader was eventually removed from the parade “for safety reasons.”