Around the Nation

MISSOURI

Schools give childrenbackpacks with food

ST. JOSEPH — For poor students who eat most of their meals at school through government-subsidized breakfast and lunch programs, weekends and holidays can mean going hungry.

So the St. Joseph School District, with the help of the local arm of America’s Second Harvest, has started sending home backpacks filled with canned fruit, cereal bars and other single-serving foods.

Called Backpack Buddies, the St. Joseph program served about 40 students when it started in January 2003 and since has grown to serve 140 students.

NORTH CAROLINA

Man in stolen vehiclereportedly hits pedestrians

FUQUAY-VARINA — Driving two stolen vehicles across three counties, a man apparently went out of his way to run down five pedestrians, killing one and injuring another critically, police said.

The thief drove from Fayetteville to the Raleigh area, apparently deliberately running down pedestrians, according to Fayetteville police.

The first victim was hit minutes after the van was stolen, Fayetteville police said. David McCaskill, who is in his 70s, was hospitalized for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.

At least two other persons also had been struck by the van.

Associated Press

This smashed pickup truck is one of two stolen vehicles driven across three counties and used to hit at least five pedestrians yesterday in North Carolina.

Associated Press

Mimi Ho was loaded down with food-filled backpacks courtesy of Noyes Elementary School in St. Joseph, Mo.

ARIZONA

Newspaper orderedto give inmate’s letter

PHOENIX — A judge ordered the Arizona Republic newspaper to surrender a handwritten letter from an inmate awaiting trial on charges stemming from January’s standoff at a state prison.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office subpoenaed the letter in February, saying it was tantamount to a confession and was crucial evidence in prisoner Ricky Wassenaar’s upcoming trial. An attorney for the newspaper argued during a hearing last week that the letter revealed little information that was not already available from other sources.

In a ruling released late Monday, Judge Warren Granville ordered the newspaper to hand over the letter by April 30.

CALIFORNIA

Scientologists win $500,000 lawsuit

SAN FRANCISCO — A California judge has ordered a former member and longtime critic of the Church of Scientology to pay it $500,000 for breach of contract.

Superior Court Judge Lynn Duryee issued the order against Scientology defector Gerald Armstrong, the San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday.

The group had sought $10 million from Mr. Armstrong, who joined in 1969, left in 1981 and later became a prominent critic.

Mr. Armstrong was sued by the group in 1984 for supposedly stealing thousands of pages of private papers that shed light on the movement’s founder, the late L. Ron Hubbard.

FLORIDA

Killer taunts family of teenage victim

WEST PALM BEACH — Before Octavious Wade was escorted out of a downtown courtroom Tuesday, he sent one last message to the family of the 17-year-old he killed with a gunshot to the face.

Wade blew them two kisses.

The boy’s stepfather lunged toward Wade as deputies rushed the convicted murderer out of the courtroom.

Wade, 21, had just concluded a plea bargain when the courtroom exchange occurred, escaping the death penalty for first-degree murder by pleading guilty to second-degree murder and robbery charges in exchange for a 40-year prison term.

Arrested Feb. 26, 2001, in connection with a store holdup, Wade confessed to killing Aaron Lauter, 17. Wade told police he and an accomplice robbed and killed the high school senior after arranging to sell the teenager a pound of marijuana.

HAWAII

Commuter donuts jam inter-island flights

HONOLULU — Apparently doughnuts can clog more than just your arteries. Hawaii residents love Krispy Kreme doughnuts so much that they often stock up at a new store in Maui before boarding inter-island flights back home, overloading airline luggage bins along the way.

“The locals bring so many boxes of doughnuts on board that we can’t always fit them on our flights. Some people will put five or six boxes in an overhead bin,” Hawaiian Airlines President Mark Dunkerley said.

The state’s first Krispy Kreme store opened Jan. 27 in Maui, less than a mile from Kahului Airport.

Doughnut shops are sprinkled liberally across the Hawaiian islands. But the novelty of a major chain, combined with the widespread custom of “omiage,” a Japanese word that refers to the custom of bringing gifts home to family and friends, have given rise to the commuter doughnut.

MICHIGAN

Loudspeakers sought for call to prayer

HAMTRAMCK — A request by Muslims to allow mosques to use loudspeakers for the call to prayer has prompted a backlash among some of their mostly white, Christian neighbors.

They are circulating a petition opposing the request by the Al-Islah Islamic Center for a change in the city noise ordinance. The Muslim call to prayer occurs five times a day between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Muslim speakers said they often hear church bells as early as 6 a.m. They said the call to prayer would be less noisy.

MISSISSIPPI

Wife holds out hope in Iraq abduction

MACON — Kellie Hamill said yesterday that her family is struggling with the silence that has followed the capture of her civilian husband in Iraq, maintaining their courage through prayer and the support of others.

Thomas Hamill, 43, a fuel-tanker driver for Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, was abducted Friday when gunmen attacked his convoy of fuel trucks.

Mrs. Hamill said she had not seen her husband’s picture since the weekend, when the Arabic news network Al Jazeera aired tapes of the former dairy farmer. In the segment, Mr. Hamill’s captors threatened to kill him unless U.S. troops ended their assault on the city of Fallujah.

A deadline imposed by his abductors came and went Sunday with no word of his fate.

MONTANA

Teen sentenced for attempted murder

GREAT FALLS — A teenager who wrote about wanting to do “horrible things” was sentenced to 50 years in prison for trying to kill a woman by driving onto a sidewalk to hit her with his sport utility vehicle.

District Judge Kenneth Neill sentenced Daniel Robbins to 80 years, with 30 years suspended, for attempted murder. Robbins pleaded guilty in February.

Police say Robbins, now 17, told investigators he tried to kill Patty Emanuel, 40, while she was jogging May 27 because he wanted to have sex with her corpse.

NEW JERSEY

Township to vote on geese feeding

WAYNE — The Wayne Township Council is scheduled to vote next month on an ordinance outlawing geese feeding anywhere in the community, including private lakes.

The proposed ordinance, if adopted, would fine violators from $5 to $50 for bird feeding. A second offense would raise the fine to $10 to $100. After that, the fine would range from $15 to $500.

Large numbers of geese, and the noise and droppings that come with them, have become a growing problem in New Jersey communities in recent years.

NEBRASKA

Senator forgets his patriotic tie

LINCOLN — State Sen. Floyd Vrtiska understood when lawmakers forgot about his plan to wear patriotic scarves and ties on the same day.

He forgot, too.

The Nebraska Nurses Association distributed the ties and scarves to lawmakers earlier this year, Mr. Vrtiska said.

He asked his colleagues to wear them Tuesday to show their patriotism. At least 10 senators remembered, but Mr. Vrtiska had to borrow an extra American flag tie from another senator.

NEW MEXICO

Governors tout energy efficiency

ALBUQUERQUE — The Western Governor’s Association opened its energy conference yesterday with a call to increase both U.S. energy efficiency and the use of renewable power.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, signed a letter to the conference participants calling for development of 30,000 megawatts of clean energy by 2105, and a 20 percent boost in each state’s overall energy efficiency by 2020.

Mr. Richardson, the host governor of the Albuquerque conference, also announced a project to manufacture solar panels in the Taos area that eventually would produce electricity for sale to the local electric co-op.

The project will create about 30 jobs in the northern New Mexico mountain community.

NEW YORK

Trump reality show a big success

NEW YORK — They might dread hearing their bosses utter the words, but 20 million Americans a week have been transfixed by Donald Trump’s reality show in which the real estate tycoon discards eager job applicants with a terse “You’re fired.”

With these simple words, Mr. Trump has made his NBC show, “The Apprentice,” one of the most successful TV programs in the United States.

In the live finale today, the billionaire playboy will fire one last applicant and offer the winner a $250,000-a-year job in an empire that includes real estate, casinos and hotels.

NORTH DAKOTA

Elderly offer neighborly help

ROBINSON — Despite the challenges the elderly face in rural towns across the nation, there is no overlooking the value of neighbor helping neighbor.

Seniors are relying more on each other to keep living at home, and they are getting help to tap into a wide range of programs for the day-to-day assistance they need to avoid moving to nursing homes.

In Robinson, that includes taking turns as chauffeurs to get friends to the senior center for meals or gathering them for a bus trip to Bismarck, about an hour away, for a doctor’s appointment.

Networks of family and friends lend so much unpaid help to the elderly or disabled that losing their services “would break the Medicaid and Medicare system very quickly,” said Cherry Schmidt, a regional administrator for the state’s aging services program.

OHIO

Hot dog replica will crown restaurant

ALLIANCE — An entrepreneur has won his wiener war with city hall.

A judge granted Walton “Wally” Armour permission to erect a 30-foot replica of a hot dog atop his new restaurant.

City officials had tried to halt the plans, saying it would lead to more and could make the city look like the Las Vegas strip.

The Alliance Board of Zoning Appeals granted Armour a variance allowing him to skirt an ordinance against rooftop advertising. Law Director Andrew Zumbar argued that the ordinance should not be bypassed, but the judge said the city could not challenge its appeals board.

PENNSYLVANIA

Mentally ill suffer ’injustice’

PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania is committing a “gross injustice” by keeping hundreds of mentally ill people in state psychiatric hospitals when they could get better treatment in less restrictive settings, such as group homes, a federal appeals court says.

The state Department of Public Welfare needs a plan to discharge patients more quickly once they are well enough to be treated in a community setting, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday in a class-action lawsuit.

The panel did not order the state to take any action, but sent the case back to a lower court, saying the state should be required to explain what steps it is taking to deinstitutionalize people who do not need 24-hour hospital care.

TEXAS

Police seek young mother’s killer

HOUSTON — Police are searching for two men who fatally shot a woman as she arrived to pick up her child from a baby sitter in southwest Houston early yesterday, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The woman, whose name has not been released, had returned to her baby sitter’s apartment just after 1 a.m., officials said.

Two men confronted the woman in the apartment complex’s parking lot and shot her, police said. Members of the woman’s family arrived later to pick up her child.

WISCONSIN

Hundreds bid farewell to GI

WEST BERLIN — Hundreds of mourners attended a memorial service yesterday honoring 20-year-old Michelle Witmer, a National Guard specialist killed in an ambush in Baghdad just weeks before her unit was due to return home.

In many respects, Spc. Witmer — one of dozens of U.S. soldiers killed in an upsurge of violence in Iraq — was typical of the thousands of rookies serving there. She followed her sister into the National Guard, partly to help pay her way through college.

But her family situation — she had both an older sister and a twin sister on active duty in Baghdad at the time of her death — has kept her story in the national spotlight, underlining the human cost of the conflict.