BUCHAREST, Romania - The family that owns a Transylvanian castle famous for its connections to the 15th century medieval ruler who inspired "Dracula" said Wednesday it wants to sell the fortress to local authorities for $78 million.

The local council said it was interested in buying Bran Castle, perched high on a rock and surrounded by snowcapped mountains in southern Transylvania. Dominic Habsburg, the owner, insisted his family had honorable intentions for wanting to sell the castle.

"We are trying to find the best way to preserve the castle in the interest of the family and the people of Bran," Habsburg said in a statement made available exclusively to The Associated Press.

The castle was returned to Habsburg, a New York architect, in May. It was confiscated by the Communists from Habsburg's mother, Princess Ileana, in 1948, the year the royals were forced to leave the country.

After the restitution, concerns were raised that the family could sell the castle to a hotel chain and that the site could end up being the centerpiece of a Dracula theme park that would blight the surrounding, pristine countryside some 105 miles north of Bucharest.

More than 400,000 visitors a year visit the castle - mainly because of its loose association with "Vlad the Impaler," the legendary prince whose cruelty inspired novelist Bram Stoker's creation, the vampire Count Dracula.

He punished wrongdoers or the lazy by impaling them on stakes, and once impaled all the elderly people in a community in an act of revenge following the killing of his father and brother.

Vlad did not own the castle, but is believed to have used it briefly during his incursions in Transylvania. He is also believed to have been imprisoned in the castle for two months in 1462 when he was captured by a rival Hungarian king.

Lia Trandafir, an attorney for Habsburg, said local authorities are interested in buying it. "They'd like to see it coming back to the community and they consider it a central pillar of tourism in Brasov county," she said.

Aristotel Cancescu, head of the local city council, is due to travel to Vienna, Austria, on Monday to open discussions about a bank loan. If he manages to secure one, it will need to be approved by local councilors.

Culture Minister Adrian Iorgulescu has criticized the planned purchase of the castle, saying it is worth only a fourth of Habsburg's asking price.

"I have nothing against the castle being bought by the city council if they are stupid enough to pay this money," he said.

Faced with the enormous expense of the castle's upkeep, Habsburg said he wanted to place the property in the hands of the local council with an eye toward ensuring its historic character is preserved.

"The family has the country and the people in their heart. We are grateful for the restitution as a moral act to amend injustice," the statement from Habsburg said.

But he added, "The way of life cannot be returned and the restitution has come with financial sacrifice. … We would like Castle Bran to remain a symbol of everything that is honorable and good in Romania."

In recent years, the castle - complete with glimpses of bats floating around its ramparts in the twilight - has attracted moviemakers as a backdrop for films about Dracula and other spooky themes.

On the Net:

http://www.brancastlemuseum.ro/

Italian film producer Carlo Ponti, husband of Sophia Loren, dies at age 94

ROME (AP) - Italian producer Carlo Ponti, who discovered a teenage Sophia Loren, launched her film career and later married her despite threats of bigamy charges and excommunication, has died in Geneva. He was 94.

Ponti died Tuesday night at a Geneva hospital, his family said Wednesday. He had been hospitalized about 10 days earlier for pulmonary complications, it said.

He produced more than 100 films, including "Doctor Zhivago," "The Firemen's Ball," and "The Great Day," which were nominated for Oscars. Other major films included "Blow-Up," "The Cassandra Crossing," "Zabriskie Point" and "The Squeeze."

In 1956, "La Strada," which he co-produced, won the Academy Award for best foreign film, as did "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" in 1964.

But it was his affair with the young ingenue Loren that captivated the public, rather than his work with top filmmakers such as Dino De Laurentiis, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Ustinov, David Lean and Roman Polanski.

"I have done everything for love of Sophia," he said in a newspaper interview shortly before his 90th birthday in 2002. "I have always believed in her."

Born near Milan in the small town of Magenta on Dec. 11, 1912, Ponti studied law and worked as a lawyer before moving into film production in the late 1930s.

He was married to his first wife, Giuliana, when he met Loren - then Sofia Lazzaro - about 1950. At the time she was only 15 - a quarter-century younger than Ponti.

They tried to keep their relationship a secret despite huge media interest, while Ponti's lawyers went to Mexico to obtain a divorce from his first wife.

Ponti and Loren were married by proxy in Mexico in 1957 - two male attorneys took their place and the happy couple only found out when the news was broken by society columnist Louella Parsons.

But they were unable to beat stringent Italian divorce laws and the wrath of the Roman Catholic church. Ponti was charged with bigamy.

"I was being threatened with excommunication, with the everlasting fire, and for what reason? I had fallen in love with a man whose own marriage had ended long before," Loren has said.

"I wanted to be his wife and have his children. We had done the best the law would allow to make it official, but they were calling us public sinners," she said. "We should have been taking a honeymoon, but all I remember is weeping for hours."

The couple first lived in exile and then, after the annulment of their Mexican marriage, in secret in Italy.

During this period, Ponti produced the film "La Ciociara" - known in English as "Two Women" - for which Loren won a best actress Oscar in 1962, and contributed significantly to the development of French New Wave cinema in his collaboration with Godard.

Ponti and Loren finally beat Italian law by becoming French citizens - the approval was signed personally by French President Georges Pompidou - and they married for a second time in Paris in 1966.

Despite many predictions that the marriage would founder over Ponti's affairs and the many dashing leading men who reportedly fell in love with Loren, the couple stayed together.

Ponti had several other brushes with the law.

He was briefly imprisoned in by the Fascist government in Italy during World War II for producing "Piccolo Mondo Antico," which was considered anti-German. An Italian court later gave Ponti a six-month suspended sentence for his 1973 film "Massacre in Rome," which claimed Pope Pius XII did nothing about the execution of Italian hostages by the Germans. The charges eventually were dropped on appeal.

Though Loren was better-known, Ponti amassed a fortune considerably greater than that of his wife - and again fell foul of the Italian authorities.

In 1979, a court in Rome convicted him in absentia of the illegal transfer of capital abroad and sentenced him to four years in prison and a $24 million fine.

Loren, along with film stars Ava Gardner and Richard Harris, were acquitted of conspiracy.

It took Ponti until the late 1980s to settle his legal problems and finally obtain the return of his art collection, which had been seized by authorities and given to Italian museums.

He also survived two kidnapping attempts in 1975.

Ponti discovered many of the great Italian leading ladies, including Gina Lollobrigida, and had affairs with several. "I don't like actors. I prefer women," he said at the time.

In recent years, the couple lived mostly in Switzerland, where they had several homes. Despite reports that he was seriously ill, Ponti attended the 1998 Venice Film Festival to accept a lifetime achievement award for his wife, who was kept away by illness.

Ponti had two sons with Loren - Carlo Jr., a celebrated conductor, and Edoardo, a film producer. He also had two children from his first marriage, Guendolina and Alexander.

No date was given for a funeral, but the family said it would be "strictly private."

Chef: De Niro is hands-off partner in restaurant chain

HONG KONG (AP) - Celebrity Japanese chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa said Wednesday that actor Robert De Niro, his partner in the upscale restaurant chain Nobu, is a hands-off partner.

"He likes to eat. He likes to drink. But he never stays in the kitchen," Matsuhisa said of De Niro at a press tasting.

Asked if De Niro makes culinary suggestions, Matsuhisa said De Niro doesn't. "He's a good partner. He understands my philosophies. He trusts me 100 percent about the food," he said.

Matsuhisa said De Niro focuses mostly on acting but occasionally gets together with him to discuss Nobu's business.

He said he hopes De Niro will attend the opening ceremony of the Hong Kong branch of Nobu in February.

Matsuhisa said the Hong Kong restaurant, the chain's 17th branch, will feature largely the same menu as Nobu restaurants elsewhere in the world, but that he may create new grilled abalone and shark's fin dishes, both popular delicacies in Hong Kong.

Nobu restaurants are also located in New York City, Milan, London and Tokyo.

New York state attorney general holds meeting on NYPD shooting with Sharpton, victim's fiancee

NEW YORK (AP) - The state attorney general met privately Wednesday with the Rev. Al Sharpton, the fiancee of a young man killed in a hail of 50 police bullets in November and a lawyer representing witnesses of the shooting.

Sharpton said he proposed a permanent special prosecutor to handle similar hot-button investigations, and he expressed concern about the pace of the probe.

"It seems to us to be taking a long time," Sharpton said at a news conference.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said he offered his condolences to the Bell family and vowed to monitor the investigation.

"Justice must be done, and we must learn from this tragedy," he said in a statement.

Sean Bell, 23, was killed and two of his friends wounded by police gunfire early on Nov. 23 as the three sat in their car after leaving Bell's bachelor party at a topless club.

Bell's fiancee, Nicole Paultre-Bell, and attorney Charlie King joined Sharpton for the half-hour meeting at Cuomo's lower Manhattan office.

Plainclothes detectives involved in the shooting had been staking out the club because of allegations of criminal activity. Police have said they believed someone in Bell's party was going to get a gun, but none of the men shot was armed.

The officers have been placed on leave pending the outcome of a grand jury investigation.

Also Wednesday, state officials levied a $7,000 fine against the club.

The fine against Kalua Cabaret was ordered by the State Liquor Authority because of a series of complaints in the months before Bell was killed. A decision against the club by an administrative judge cited the arrest of a bartender in March for carrying a stun gun. Two patrons were arrested for cocaine possession during the same raid.

Authorities also have accused the club's owner, Roger Duran, of allowing prostitution and of violating health and building codes.

Workers at the club said Duran was not there Wednesday evening. A telephone call to his attorney was not immediately returned.

Two U.S. citizens die in Lear jet crash in western Mexico

GUADALAJARA, Mexico (AP) - A U.S.-owned Lear 24 jet crashed and burst into flames early Wednesday in a hilly areas of the western Mexican state of Jalisco, killing its two American pilots. - The aircraft, which took off from Laredo, Texas, went down shortly after midnight Tuesday, just minutes before it was scheduled to land at a local airport, state police official Jesus Pina said.

The aircraft is owned by the Addison, Texas-based aviation company Ameristar Jet Charter, said the company's vice president of operations, Stacy Muth.

Muth did not immediately release the names of the captain and first officer, the only people aboard the jet, but said one was from the Dallas area, while the other was from Michigan.

Muth said the plane was hauling one piece of non-hazardous freight to Guadalajara, but she declined to identify the contents.

The jet fell in the hills of the community of Zapotlanejo, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) southeast of the Jalisco state capital, Guadalajara. Witnesses reported hearing a loud noise and seeing flames from a distance.

Nobody on the ground was hurt, and authorities had not determined the cause of the crash.

"The weather was good and the flight conditions were VFR, visual flight rules," Muth told The Associated Press. Ameristar Jet Charter, established in 1988, is cooperating with Mexican authorities in the investigation, she said.

In August 2001, two pilots were killed when a Lear 25 jet operated by Ameristar Jet Charter crashed during takeoff from Ithaca-Tompkins, N.Y., Regional Airport. --

On the Net:

http://www.ameristarjet.com

Turkish boy hangs himself; family says he was copying Saddam's execution

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - A 12-year-old died by hanging himself from the ceiling of his home, a hospital said Wednesday, and family members said the boy was copying Saddam Hussein's execution.

It was the second death of a youngster blamed on televised images of the deposed Iraqi dictator's Dec. 30 execution. 30. A 10-year-old boy in Houston died Sunday by hanging himself from a bunk bed after watching news reports of the execution.

A hospital official in the southeastern province of Mus said Alisen Akti was dead on arrival at a hospital. The boy died of asphyxiation after apparently hanging himself, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to journalists.

Radikal newspaper quoted the boy's father as saying that the youngster had been affected by television images of Saddam's execution.

"What kind of a problem could a 12-year-old have to want to kill himself?" Radikal quoted Esat Akti as saying.

"After watching Saddam's execution he was constantly asking 'How was Saddam killed?' and 'Did he suffer?"' Akti said. "These television images are responsible for my son's death."

The family could not be reached at their home in the village of Sutluce. No one was available at the paramilitary police headquarters, which is responsible for the area.

Teacher accused of allegedly inappropriate photos of boys found dead on 3rd day of trial

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - A suspended high school teacher on trial for allegedly photographing teenage boys in revealing clothing was found dead in a car at his house, authorities said Wednesday morning. - Police were sent to the home of Keith Snyder, 55, of Bethlehem, after he failed to appear in Northampton County Court for the third day of his trial.

Judge F.P. Kimberly McFadden told the jury Wednesday morning that Snyder was dead. She did not provide any other details.

County Coroner Zachary Lysek said he had not yet determined a cause of death.

Snyder was accused of taking pictures of boys in bikini briefs and other revealing clothing while they performed chores at his house. He was suspended from teaching at Southern Lehigh High School shortly after the charges were filed in 2005.

Several teenage boys who were Snyder's former students testified this week that Snyder paid them if they performed chores at his home while bare-chested or wearing skimpy bathing suits or wrestling singlets.

Snyder was charged with seven counts of corruption of minors and one count each of solicitation of a minor to pose nude and tampering with evidence.

A message on Snyder's answering machine said that he was "under the weather" Tuesday night and had a severe headache.

Divers find missing Kansas college student's car; female's body found nearby

ARKANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) - Authorities found a missing college student's car in a lake, hours after finding a female body, and friends said a man had been stalking members of the woman's dance team.

Police were not saying whether the body discovered Tuesday was that of 19-year-old Jodi Sanderholm. The body was taken to a Wichita forensic center for identification and autopsy, police said.

Authorities were preparing charges against "a known suspect" in custody on unrelated charges, police said in a news release.

Investigators also are following up on information "that another individual and/or individuals may have also been involved in" Sanderholm's disappearance, police said. The news release Wednesday did not elaborate.

Sanderholm's car was found at the bottom of the 84-acre Cowley State Fishing Lake in southeast Kansas. Divers spent Tuesday searching the lake about 15 miles east of Arkansas City, which is just north of the Oklahoma line about 46 miles south of Wichita.

At the Ark City Dance Studio, where Sanderholm worked and taught, fellow members of the Cowley College dance team said a man had been stalking several team members.

"It is just scary. It could have happened to any one of us," said Ashley Cochran, who graduated from high school with Sanderholm last year.

Cochran said the man had gone to the place where she worked.

Nearly 200 people held a prayer vigil Tuesday night outside the dance studio.

"This must be the darkest night in downtown that we have ever had," said the Rev. Mark Boxman, pastor at Redeemer Lutheran Church.

Police said Sanderholm's family did not want to speak to the media.

Alaska's remote Aleutian islands jiggled by moderate 5.4 magnitude earthquake

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A magnitude 5.4 earthquake shook Alaska's seismically active Aleutian Islands on Wednesday.

No damage was reported in the island chain, which extend southwestward from Alaska into the northern Pacific. The quake was centered 39 miles west of Unalaska and likely was felt along the state's western coast, the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center said.

On Tuesday, another moderate earthquake with a magnitude of about 5.7 jolted Southeast Alaska and was widely felt throughout the Panhandle. That tremor was centered 57 miles west of Haines, about 1,300 miles east of Unalaska.

On the Net:

Tsunami Warning Center: http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/

Wisconsin police say postman was drunk, incoherent, drove mail truck into oncoming traffic

WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) - A mail carrier had a blood-alcohol level nearly four times the legal limit when he was arrested for driving his delivery truck into oncoming traffic and crashing into a sign, police said.

Thomas Lahiff was incoherent Friday when he returned to the post office, where he was arrested about an hour after the crash, Police Capt. Mike Babe said. He said tests showed the 46-year-old's blood-alcohol level was 0.31 percent.

Lahiff now faces a drunken driving charge and was ticketed for hit-and-run causing property damage, Babe said. Police said Lahiff's postal truck had crossed into oncoming traffic, jumped a curb and hit a "no parking" sign. It happened about an hour before he returned to the post office, and it's not clear where he was in the meantime, Babe said.

Postal Service spokeswoman JoAnne Blackburn said Lahiff was involved in an accident and would not be delivering mail pending an investigation, but she would not elaborate.

Two mothers, their middle school-age daughters arrested after brawl outside R.I. school

WOONSOCKET, R.I. (AP) - Two mothers and their 13-year-old daughters were arrested after police say one woman drove her already suspended daughter to school to fight a teenage rival.

Ana Rivera, 44, and Maribel Santiago, 34, are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on a charge of simple assault in connection with Monday's fight. Their daughters and two other 13-year-old girls were charged with disorderly conduct and their cases were turned over to the Juvenile Detective Division.

Rivera allegedly drove her daughter to Woonsocket Middle School so she could fight Santiago's daughter.

Police reports say the girls began feuding two weeks ago and began fighting outside the school on Monday. At one point, the melee involved all four girls, both mothers and a teacher, according to police.

Authorities said a teacher tried to break up the fight and was hit by Santiago.

Santiago and Rivera were released on $1,000 bail Monday evening, but Detective Lt. Timothy Paul said the department intends to notify the state Department of Children, Youth and Families about Rivera's case.

Santiago, reached at home Wednesday, said she went to the school to pick up her daughter because of recent threats. She said she apologized to the school's principal and was only trying to protect her daughter. Her daughter was suspended from school for 10 days after the fight.

"I just wanted to make sure my daughter stayed out of trouble," Santiago said.

Rivera could not be reached for comment and it was unclear if she has an attorney.

Report: LAPD board won't punish officer who shot and killed car jacking suspect

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A police disciplinary board has determined that an officer was justified in fatally shooting a teenage car theft suspect in 2005, according to a published report.

The board decided in a closed-door meeting Monday not to punish Officer Steven Garcia, rejecting an earlier ruling by the civilian commission that Garcia violated department policy, the Los Angeles Times reported in Wednesday's editions.

Members of the internal three-person LAPD panel wouldn't explain their rationale for finding in Garcia's favor, citing a California Supreme Court ruling that police officer personnel records are not public records.

The shooting of 13-year-old Devin Brown on Feb. 6, 2005, occurred after the boy was spotted driving erratically and led officers on a chase. Brown eventually lost control of the car and slammed into a fence.

Brown's passenger fled, and Brown put the car in reverse and began backing up toward police, scraping the side of Garcia's cruiser. Garcia scrambled out of the way and fired 10 shots at the vehicle, seven of which hit Brown. The shooting inflamed tensions in South Los Angeles.

Medical examiner's report: Dead UT pledge's body contained anti-gay comments, obscene drawings

HOUSTON (AP) - The body of an 18-year-old fraternity pledge who died of alcohol poisoning was defaced with numerous anti-gay epithets and obscene drawings, according to a medical examiner's report.

Phanta "Jack" Phoummarath, a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, died after ingesting large amounts of alcohol at a pledge party at Lambda Phi Epsilon house in December 2005, authorities said. Phoumarrath's body was found the day after.

A grand jury indicted three members of the fraternity last month on hazing charges following a yearlong investigation into Phoummarath's death.

The Travis County medical examiner's office reported that partygoers used green and black markers to write "FAG," "I'm gay" and "I AM FAT" on Phoummarath's head, face, torso, legs and feet. Someone also added drawings depicting naked men and women and blackened his toenails.

"It was disgusting and despicable behavior," Houston attorney Randy Sorrels, who is representing Phoummarath's family, said Tuesday. "This would be the juvenile behavior you might see in junior high or high school, but not college."

Sorrels said Phoummarath was not gay. He said the drawings and epithets were a juvenile prank, and that it had not yet been determined how long before Phoumarrath's death the actions took place.

His family alleges in a lawsuit against the fraternity that pledges were pressured to drink at the party and that someone wrote vulgar graffiti on Phoummarath's body after he passed out. The medical examiner ruled that Phoummarath died of acute alcohol poisoning.

N.M. sisters who beat classmate during videotaped school bus ride sentenced to probation

FARMINGTON, N.M. (AP) - Two teenage sisters who beat a classmate during a school bus ride were sentenced Tuesday to a year of probation and 75 hours of community service. - As part of their punishment, Dezarae, 15, and Lucricia Gonzalez, 13, must also make a $100 donation to a victim's impact group.

They pleaded guilty last month to battery and disorderly conduct and could have faced up to two years in state custody.

The Oct. 3 beating of 14-year-old Mistee Neff was caught on a school bus surveillance camera. Police have said that the three girls had an ongoing dispute and that the day before the attack, the Gonzalez sisters accused Neff of making racial remarks about them. Neff had cuts and bruises from the attack but no serious injuries.

The sisters were suspended from Mesa Alta Junior High School and no longer attend the school, according to Emet Rudolfo, Dezarae's attorney.

Cover-your-deer legislation is D.O.A. in North Dakota

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - Troubled by the sight of bloody deer carcasses hanging off cars and pickup trucks on North Dakota's highways, state legislator Duane DeKrey proposed a law requiring hunters to throw a tarp over their kills. He might as well have painted a bull's-eye on his back.

The bill caused such an uproar that he withdrew it on Monday, just days later.

"Some of it was even a lot more vitriolic than I ever dreamed it would have been," said DeKrey, a Republican representative from a rural district in and around the town of Pettibone. "It was quite evident which way the bill was going."

This is, after all, a state of avid hunters, a place where the right to hunt is enshrined in the constitution. ("Hunting, trapping and fishing, and the taking of game and fish, are a valued part of our heritage and will be forever preserved for the people.") It is also a place where hunters proudly display their deer tied down to the roofs of their vehicles or thrown into the back of open pickups.

DeKrey, a hunter himself, is not squeamish about deer carcasses but said the sight makes hunters look bad and could hurt the sport.

"It's about keeping the testosterone lower when you're going down the highway and showing off your big buck," he said. "Some of it is a little over the top."

Some hunters agreed with him that it is poor manners to display dead animals while hauling them home. Mike Paulson, a hunter from a town called Hunter, said covering up "wouldn't hurt anything, and would probably keep some people happy."

But DeKrey said others called him a kook and laughed at him. Many bitterly complained that the state has no business telling them to cover up the carcasses.

Ralph Muecke, a hunter from Gladstone who stows his deer carcasses in the back of a pickup, pronounced the bill "the silliest piece of legislation I've seen yet."

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals found itself siding with the hardest of the hard-core hunters against DeKrey's bill.

"We encourage people, if they're going to kill defenseless animals, to parade the animal's carcass all over town, since uncovered bloody carcasses are more likely to wake people up to the cruelties of hunting," spokesman Bruce Friedrich said. "Clearly, covering up cruelty doesn't help animals at all."

In decades past, many states actually required hunters to leave their game exposed, as a way to fight poaching.

Steve Williams, president of the Wildlife Management Institute and a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the nationwide trend in the past couple of decades has been to promote the covering of dead animals, and not just to avoid offending others.

"It keeps it out of the weather, and you end up with better meat for the table," he said.

Since 2000, more than 100,000 deer a year have been killed in North Dakota, population 640,000. The number of licenses issued to hunt deer with guns climbed an all-time high in 2004 of nearly 144,000.

DeKrey said he has witnessed grisly highway scenes during deer season, including carcasses towed haphazardly in a trailer. "Two does were hanging over the top, and there was blood running down from both of them on the side of the trailer," he said. "I thought, 'What kind of image does that give us?"'

DeKrey said e-mails he received were equally divided, pro and con, and included a message from "a lady in Minot who said she was tired of her children being traumatized by going down the highway and seeing deer in various states of death."

Enormous mulch fire sparks rancor, confusion in small Texas town

HELOTES, Texas (AP) - The enormous mulch pile in this small town had drawn a few grumbles from neighbors before. But it was not until it caught fire on Christmas that the sparks really began to fly.

The volcano-like mountain of branches and wood chips for use in landscaping has been smoldering ever since, spreading smoke so thick that people in this community just outside San Antonio wake up some mornings in a fog, unable to see past their front doors.

The school system has offered to let some youngsters transfer out. And people with asthma and other breathing problems have been warned to move until the fire is snuffed out.

"Easier said than done," said 73-year-old Germaine Field, whose husband has a heart condition. "Can you imagine leaving your home and living in a hotel?"

The pile of mulch, which has been sitting in an open field for more than a decade, is about 400 feet long, 225 feet wide and 70 feet tall in the middle. It is now a vast, smoking landscape, with flames shooting up periodically from the blackened expanse, in what looks like a scene from the latest "Star Wars" movie.

For weeks, though, a feud prevented anything but a limited effort to put out the fire.

Mayor Jon Allan wanted the county or state to extinguish it. The county looked to the owner of the pile, H.L. Zumwalt Construction Inc. And no one was sure how to deal with all the potential health problems and the possibility of environmental damage if the fire were doused.

"It's taken tremendous effort to get movement on this," the mayor said.

The end may finally be in sight: The state hired a contractor for about $1.75 million to put out the blaze, and its crews arrived Tuesday to begin aggressively fighting the fire. But it is expected to take another two weeks to extinguish it.

Chemicals that might quickly douse the fire cannot be widely used for fear of contaminating the underground supply of drinking water, said Terry Clawson, a spokesman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

"You can't stress too much the environmental sensitivity issue," he said.

Investigators are still trying to figure out what started the fire. Zumwalt suspects arson.

Firefighters put water on the blaze when they first got the call on Christmas. And Zumwalt employees sprayed it down and moved unburned wood out of the way in what the company said was a seven-day-a-week operation. But until this week, no one in government had taken control of the firefighting.

"All the residents really care about is that someone is working to put the fire out," said the mayor of the town of 6,200, home of the honky tonk that helped give Willie Nelson his start. "You can put up with a lot if you know something is being done about it."

Students at an elementary school and a high school within a mile of the mulch fire have been given the option of transferring out, and children with respiratory problems are being kept inside.

"The teachers are good about singing and dancing with the kids, but you can only do so much of that" before they start getting restless, said Helotes Elementary School Principal Jeannine Keairnes.

British historian arrested for jaywalking in Atlanta ignored officer's orders, police say

ATLANTA (AP) - Police say a British historian was handcuffed, thrown to the ground and jailed because he refused to obey a uniformed officer's order to use a crosswalk and wouldn't show identification.

The historian says he had no idea the upset young man was a police officer.

"Where I'm from, you don't associate young gentlemen in bomber jackets with the police. But he was extremely upset I had questioned his bona fides," said the historian, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, a professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts and expert on colonial history.

Mayor Shirley Franklin has asked for an investigation to make sure procedures were followed.

Fernandez-Armesto, 56, was arrested Jan. 4 while in Atlanta for the American Historical Association's convention.

Officer Kevin Leonpacher said he was in uniform as he directed pedestrians to use crosswalks in front of the downtown Hilton Hotel.

He said Fernandez-Armesto shrugged him off, walked away and repeatedly refused to show an ID after the officer told him to stop and warned him he could be arrested, police said.

Other officers helped him handcuff the historian. According to Leonpacher's report, the professor said: "Well now I believe that you are the police."

Fernandez-Armesto said he suffered a gash on his forehead and a bruise on his wrist. He spent eight hours in custody, but the charges of jaywalking and disorderly conduct were dropped after he appeared in traffic court and said any arrest record could jeopardize his immigration status in the United States, police said.

On the Net:

http://ase.tufts.edu/history/faculty/Fernandez-Armesto.asp

Jury deliberations postponed on sentence for truck driver convicted in smuggling deaths

HOUSTON (AP) - A jury deliberating a sentence in the retrial of a truck driver facing possible execution for his role in the nation's deadliest human smuggling attempt will take a five-day break, a judge announced Wednesday. - Jurors worked for about eight hours Wednesday without agreeing on a sentence for Tyrone Williams in the 2003 smuggling attempt, in which 19 illegal immigrants died after being locked in his sweltering trailer for hours.

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal told attorneys that the jury decided to wait until Tuesday to resume deliberations because she was scheduled to be out of town Thursday and Friday, and also because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday.

Since Tuesday, the jury has deliberated for about 14 hours.

The jury is deciding whether to sentence Williams to death or life in prison without parole, or to let Rosenthal issue a sentence ranging from no incarceration to life in prison without parole.

Williams was convicted last month of 58 counts of conspiracy and harboring and transporting immigrants, including 20 counts that were eligible for the death penalty.

During the smuggling attempt from South Texas to Houston, more than 70 immigrants were packed inside Williams' airtight trailer. Williams abandoned the container when the immigrants began succumbing to the heat.

Defense attorney Craig Washington told the jury that Williams never meant for the immigrants to die. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Rodriguez said Williams deserves the death penalty because he refused to free the immigrants when he knew they were dying.

The trial was the second for Williams, a 35-year-old Jamaican citizen who lived in Schenectady, N.Y. An appeals court overturned a verdict against him in 2005 when a jury convicted him of 38 transporting counts but couldn't agree on his role in the smuggling attempt and deadlocked on the 20 other counts.

Owner of Rita evacuation bus that exploded, killing 23, gets 5 years' probation

McALLEN, Texas (AP) - The owner of the bus that exploded during the Hurricane Rita evacuation, killing 23 elderly evacuees, was sentenced Wednesday to five years of probation for mismanaging his fleet.

As part of his probation, a judge ruled, Global Limo Inc. owner James Maples can no longer work for any bus company. He will be confined for the first year - six months in a halfway house and six months at home.

Maples was acquitted Oct. 3 of the most serious charge of conspiring to falsify driver time logs so drivers could work longer than federal law allows. He was convicted of the two lesser allegations, of poorly managing his fleet and not requiring drivers to fill out vehicle inspection reports.

Global Limo was fined $100,000 and placed on probation for five years.

The sentences stemmed from a trial about management of the bus fleet and vehicle inspections and not the 2005 explosion. The maximum prison sentence he could have received was two years.

Maples declined to speak in court, with his attorney telling U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa that Maples faced pending litigation. He didn't speak to reporters outside court except to joke "to take good shots so I look good."

During the 1.5-hour hearing, Hinojosa scolded both sides, lecturing Maples that it was "no way to run a business to endanger the trust or endanger the individuals who are putting trust in a carrier." Hinojosa chided prosecutors for seeking two years in prison on two misdemeanor convictions.

The company was convicted of all three charges and faced a fine of as much as $500,000 on the conspiracy count and a $200,000 fine on each of the other two convictions.

The six-day trial stemmed from a federal investigation into the explosion, which occurred on a bus carrying Houston-area nursing home patients away from the approaching storm.

The investigation determined that poorly lubricated wheel bearings overheated in the right rear well, igniting a tire. The patients' oxygen tanks exploded as the flames engulfed the bus. Fourteen people survived.

Victims and their relatives reached an $11 million settlement in May with Global Limo and BusBank, the travel broker that hired it.

The trial was not about the explosion. Before the trial, the judge ruled that prosecutors failed in the indictment's charges to link allegations of poor maintenance to the bus explosion and said prosecutors couldn't address it before the jury.

Maples, who played for the NFL's Baltimore Colts in 1963, worked more than 20 years in the bus business, operating companies under several names. In the months since the trial, he has been working for a bus tour company owned by a friend and operating out of Global Limo's former office in Pharr.

Global Limo was shut down two weeks after the accident, and documents show a new name for the company and a new registered agent.

Mobile home owners in Florida town vote to sell to developer, could become millionaires

BRINY BREEZES, Fla. (AP) - Residents of this trailer-park town sitting on beachfront property have voted overwhelmingly to sell their community to a developer for more than $510 million, which could make most of them millionaires.

Some residents bought their homes for as little as $35,000.

The contract isn't official - and residents don't get any money - until 2009. If the sale goes through, nearly every owner will get more than $1 million.

About 80 percent of the town's shareholders who cast ballots approved the sale, while 17 percent opposed it, according to a statement Wednesday from the town's corporate office. More than 97 percent of shareholders voted.

The overwhelming support will help heal some rifts created by the proposed sale of the 488 mobile homes, said Gay Sideris, who has lived at the park with her husband since 2001.

"I don't think there is anyone that lives here that doesn't love Briny," said Sideris, who stands to get about $1.5 million for a $155,000 investment. "We're happy it went through because it will be good for us and our family, but we're sad we have to leave. Now we can just concentrate on the great two years we have left here."

Despite a potential windfall of more than $1 million on his two lots, 68-year-old Tom Byrne was downbeat as drove around the park Wednesday. He wore a "Save Briny. Vote No" button.

"I've lived here eight years. I'm surrounded by my friends. Why would I want to leave?" Byrne said. "I saved my whole life for a place like this."

The 43-acre property is a down-market relic of old Florida surrounded by multimillion-dollar homes and splashy high-rise condos. It is one of the last coastal trailer-park communities between Miami and Palm Beach.

State and local officials still must approve new zoning to accommodate the 900 condo units, a luxury hotel and marina proposed by the developer, Ocean Land Investments of Boca Raton.

Palm Beach County officials have raised concerns about adding a high-density development to South Florida's cluttered coastline. The community is in a hurricane evacuation zone and has few ways in or out.

"We think we can immediately allay any concerns they might have," said Logan Pierson, Ocean Land's vice president of acquisitions. "We are not going to build a concrete jungle on the barrier island. We live here."

The town began as a strawberry farm in the 1920s. A group of regular visitors bought the property in 1958, and it became a town in 1963. It is run as a corporation by a board of directors, and the residents own shares based on the size and location of their lot.

- Associated Press writer Phil Davis in Tampa contributed to this report.

On the Net:

Town of Briny Breezes: http://www.brinybreezes.com/

Ocean Land Investments: http://www.oceanland.com/

Owner of bus that exploded in Rita evacuation, killing 23, sentenced to 5 years probation

McALLEN, Texas (AP) - The owner of the bus that exploded and killed 23 people during the Hurricane Rita evacuation was sentenced Wednesday to five years of probation on charges of mismanaging his fleet. - A judge ruled that as part of his probation, Global Limo Inc. owner James Maples can no longer work for the company or any other bus company. He must spend the first year in a halfway house or home confinement.

Global Limo was fined $100,000 and placed on probation for five years.

The sentences stemmed from a trial about management of the bus fleet and vehicle inspections and not the 2005 explosion.

Maples was acquitted Oct. 3 of the most serious charge of conspiring to falsify driver time logs so drivers could work longer than federal law allows. He was convicted on two lesser allegations of poorly managing his fleet and not requiring drivers to fill out vehicle inspection reports.

Maples was spared the maximum sentence of two years in prison.

The dismantled company was convicted of all three charges and faced up to $500,000 fine on the conspiracy count and a $200,000 fine on each of the other two convictions.

New Orleans checkpoints produce 12 arrests in 1st early morning crackdown on crime

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - As foot patrols hit the streets Wednesday afternoon as part of a crime-fighting plan, officials announced that new traffic checkpoints produced several arrests.

Authorities made 12 arrests - including six on drug charges and one on a fugitive warrant - between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Wednesday, the police department said.

New Orleans counted nine homicides in the first eight days of the new year, prompting calls for a crackdown on violent crime and even suggestions of a curfew. Under pressure from business leaders, the city decided against a curfew but instituted other plans.

Those include putting more police officers on the street - pulling them from administrative and other desk jobs - and using 20 to 25 deputies from the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff's Office.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco met Wednesday behind closed doors in New Orleans with officials of the state police and the National Guard, which have been supplementing police patrols since June.

"We are certainly all concerned about the implications of this high crime rate, this violent crime rate happening in the city," Blanco said before the meeting. "It can have the impact of hurting our efforts toward recovery, toward economic recovery, in particular."

She said the plan unveiled by Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief Warren Riley was solid.

Meanwhile, in suburban Jefferson Parish, the sheriff said that high-tech equipment such as armored patrol vehicles, as well as additional patrols, have helped slow killings there.

"We have the money and we're going to spend it on the things that will help us fight this problem," Sheriff Harry Lee said Wednesday at a news conference in Gretna.

Jefferson Parish set a record for murders last year but has had only one since Jan. 1.

Two armored vehicles have been patrolling high-crime areas. And Lee has restarted a unit known for aggressive street sweeps that was disbanded in 2004 after allegations of steroid use and other offenses by its officers.

The new group has 16 officers, with 10 stationed in perennial high-crime areas. The officers work five nights a week on an overtime basis in these "hot spots," Lee said.

"The fact that we've only had one murder in 11 days is proof that what we're doing is working," Lee said.

Lee's office has benefited in increased tax revenue in Jefferson Parish, where most of the population of more than 440,000 has returned after Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans is believed to have less than half its pre-Katrina population of almost 455,000.

Ex-teacher imprisoned in Tenn. for sex with minor gets 2 more years for sending him photos

McMINNVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A former teacher serving an eight-year prison sentence for having sex with a 13-year-old student agreed Wednesday to serve two more years for sending him nude photos of herself.

Pamela Rogers pleaded guilty to two counts of solicitation of sexual exploitation of a minor. She admitted sending the photos, and investigators allege she also received photos and videos from the boy, now 15.

"She had become obsessed with him," her lawyer, Peter Strianse said. "I think she is over that."

Rogers, 29, was arrested in February 2005 and pleaded no contest to having sexual intercourse and oral sex with the student. A judge suspended most of her eight-year sentence on the condition that she not contact the student or his family or use the Internet.

Six months ago, Circuit Judge Bart Stanley ordered Rogers to serve the rest of the sentence after she sent the photos to the boy, and prosecutors brought the new charges. The new sentence was added to the first term for a 10-year total.

A clinical psychologist hired by Rogers' family testified in July that Rogers was a sex addict. Rogers was married when the relationship with the boy began but has divorced.

McMinnville, a town of about 13,000, is about 65 miles southeast of Nashville.

Hunter's fiancee says he killed Hmong immigrant in self-defense after argument, gunfire

WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) - A squirrel hunter fatally stabbed a Hmong immigrant in self-defense after the two argued, and the immigrant shot him in both hands, the fiancee of a man being questioned in the case told The Associated Press.

Authorities have released few details about the slaying of 30-year-old Cha Vang of Green Bay, pending formal charges in the case, but the fiancee of James Nichols said Tuesday that Nichols had acted in self-defense after being shot in the hands.

"There was a verbal confrontation first," Dacia James, 20, said in a telephone interview from her home in Marinette.

"Jim didn't intend to do this. He wasn't going out hunting for people. He was hunting for squirrels. He was defending himself," she said. "Jim is not racist at all. He has friends from every ethnic background he has ever come in contact with."

Vang's wife has said the victim spoke no English and could not have provoked an attack.

The stabbing followed an "accidental meeting" between Vang and Nichols at a public hunting area, according to Marinette County Sheriff Jim Kanikula. Nichols, 28, has not been charged in connection with the slaying, but was jailed early Saturday on a probation violation as a felon in possession of a firearm.

Nichols' fiancee said Nichols didn't immediately report the incident to police because he panicked and was frightened because he was on probation for burglary.

Marinette County District Attorney Brent DeBord said Wednesday he was still reviewing police reports and could not say when other charges might be filed.

"This is a very serious matter and needs to be handled correctly from the beginning," DeBord said.

Vang's death came a little more than two years after Hmong immigrant Chai Soua Vang, 38, of St. Paul, Minn., killed six white deer hunters and injured two others in northwestern Wisconsin. He claimed one of them fired in his direction after they shouted racial epithets. He is serving multiple life terms.

The two men are not related. Vang is a common name among the Hmong who have immigrated from Southeast Asia to the Midwest in large numbers since the end of the Vietnam War.

Even before the 2004 shootings, Hmong hunters claimed they had been harassed, and others complained that the Hmong hunted on private property without permission.

According to Nichols' finance, Nichols was hunting squirrels about 4:30 p.m. Friday when he heard someone come up to him.

"He turns around and tells the guy that he needs to go to a different spot, not necessarily that he needs to leave the area, but that he was molesting his hunt and scaring the squirrels away," she said. "Jim said the guy started talking in gibberish that he couldn't understand and then fired at him."

She said Nichols was hit in the right hand and a second shot hit the little finger on his left hand.

James said she doesn't know whether Nichols fired his gun at Vang but she was told there was a fight and Vang was stabbed with the knife Nichols uses to remove the tails from squirrels.

No one answered the phone at Vang's home in Green Bay late Tuesday afternoon.

Scorpion stings Vermont man on commercial plane flight from Chicago, and it isn't a first

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A scorpion stung David Sullivan on the back of his right leg, just below the knee, then continued up that leg and down the other, he believes, before getting him again in the shin.

It wasn't what he was expecting on a flight from Chicago to Vermont.

Sullivan, a 46-year-old builder from Stowe, was aboard the United Airlines flight on the second leg of his Jan. 3 trip home from San Francisco, where he and his wife Helena had been visiting their sons. He awoke from a nap shortly before landing and noticed something strange.

"My right leg felt like it was asleep, but that was isolated to one spot, and it felt like it was being jabbed with a sharp piece of plastic or something."

The second sting came after the plane had landed and the Sullivans were waiting for their bags at the luggage carousel. Sullivan rolled up his cuff to investigate, and the scorpion fell out.

"It felt like a shock, a tingly thing. Someone screamed, 'It's a scorpion,"' Sullivan recalled. Another passenger stepped on the two-inch arachnid, and someone suggested Sullivan seek medical help.

He scooped up the scorpion and headed to the hospital in Burlington. His wife stopped at the United counter and was told the plane they were on had flown from Houston to Chicago. The Sullivans surmised the scorpion boarded in Texas.

"The airlines tell you can't bring water or shampoo on a plane," Helena Sullivan said. But the scorpion did make it aboard, she said.

United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said the incident "is something that we will investigate and look into. We're very sorry for what happened. Our customer safety and security is our No. 1 priority." She said the airline would offer to reimburse Sullivan's medical expenses.

"We'll probably never know where the scorpion came from," she said. "People come through Chicago from all over the world."

Such incidents are not unheard of. An American Airlines flight was delayed for an hour in Toronto on Sunday after a passenger was stung by a scorpion that had made its way on board. Paramedics treated the man when the flight from Miami landed. The delay came when officials searched the aircraft to ensure no other critters had stowed away.

Scorpion stings are rarely fatal, except to babies or older people with health problems, said Dr. Stephen Leffler, director of emergency services at Burlington's Fletcher Allen Health Care hospital.

"We don't see many scorpion bites in Vermont," Leffler said.

For a healthy adult, a scorpion sting can mean numbness or shooting pain extending out from the sting, or flu-like symptoms, which Sullivan said he had the next day.

He said he hadn't seen the recent movie, "Snakes on a Plane," starring Samuel L. Jackson.

"I'm pretty selective about what I see," Sullivan said. "Maybe I have to see it now."

School bus hit by tractor-trailer and knocked into cornfield; 9 students, driver hurt

WERNERSVILLE, Pa. (AP) - A tractor-trailer collided with a school bus and a van early Wednesday, knocking the bus into a cornfield and injuring 10 people, school officials said. - Seven students on the bus were treated for broken bones and cuts, and two students who had been in the van were expected to be held in the hospital overnight, said Robert Urzillo, superintendent of the Conrad Weiser School District.

The bus driver was hospitalized with a broken pelvis.

The bus was stopped at a red light on Route 422 with 15 middle- and high school students aboard when it was hit shortly before 8 a.m., Urzillo said.

The circumstances of the crash were not entirely clear, but Urzillo said the eastbound tractor-trailer apparently to have first hit the front of a van, then the school bus.

Authorities had not decided Wednesday whether to cite the driver of the tractor-trailer and the accident remained under investigation, said Officer Gary Chwastiak, of the Lower Heidelberg Township Police Department.

Wernersville is about 5 miles west of Reading.

Masked robbers steal $4 million in rare coins in convention heist at luxury Florida hotel

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Robbers in surgical masks pulled off a $4 million coin heist at knifepoint outside a coin dealers convention, getting away with gold, silver and a rare 1843 set of currency once owned by President Tyler, authorities said. - It was the second time in two years that the Florida United Numismatists' annual coin show had been hit, and this year's loss was much larger.

On Saturday, a Minnesota coin dealer's employee was unloading an SUV outside a luxury hotel when a robber in a surgical mask and a hooded sweater grabbed him from behind and held a knife to his throat, witnesses and the victim told authorities. Two other masked men grabbed a suitcase from the SUV, according to authorities.

"It's a brazen happening. This kind of thing doesn't happen often at all, at knifepoint," said Robert Brueggeman, head of the Professional Numismatists Guild and owner of Positive Protection, which provided security at the convention.

Sheriff's Deputy Carlos Padilla said the coins were extremely rare, which could make it difficult for a thief to sell them. "I guess it makes you wonder if the people that committed this crime even knew what they were getting," Padilla said.

Last year, thieves stole about $450,000 worth of coins by breaking into cars, most of them while dealers ate in restaurants.

This year, the convention's organizers had increased security with more off-duty sheriff's deputies and a 24-hour secured room where dealers could store their coins, convention coordinator Cindy Wibker said. The four-day show attracted 1,750 dealers.

Mom of Scottish girl offers to drop custody battle with Pakistani father, lawyer says

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - The mother of a Scottish girl in the middle of a custody battle with her Pakistani father offered Wednesday to drop the demand if she is allowed regular contacts with the 12-year-old, a lawyer said.

Louise Campbell made the offer through her lawyer at a hearing in Pakistan's Supreme Court. She and her ex-husband had been battling for custody of Molly Campbell, also known as Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana.

The girl has been living with her father, Sajad Ahmed Rana, in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore since arriving there in August. Her mother has said the girl was taken to Pakistan without her permission.

The mother offered to drop her demand for full custody if she is allowed regular meetings and telephone and Internet contact with her child, said Naheeda Mahbood Elahi, a lawyer for the mother.

The court ordered both parents to file their proposals on the Scottish woman's offer, and adjourned until Jan. 17, said Elahi and Malik Mohammed Qayyum, a lawyer for the girl's father.

At a news conference Wednesday, the girl denied that she had been forced to go to Pakistan against her will, saying she has no desire to live with her mother.

"They say I have been abducted. This is not true. I am living with my father and I don't want to go to Britain," she said.

Asked whether she would meet with her mother if she came to Pakistan, the girl said, "I don't want to see her."

Before adjourning the case, Chief Judge Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry ruled that the girl be allowed to speak with her mother by telephone any time while the court considers the case.

The High Court in Lahore ruled in December that the girl should go back and live with her mother. The father had asked the Supreme Court to allow him to appeal the decision.

Rana and Campbell married in a Muslim ceremony in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1984. They had two sons and two daughters before divorcing in 2001. The three other siblings had been living with Rana in Pakistan when they joined by their 12-year-old sister in August.

The girl has repeatedly said she wants to live with her father, claiming she was unhappy with life on Lewis island in Scotland's Western Isles.

Heirs of Antarctic explorer Robert Scott make his last letter available to the public

LONDON (AP) - Knowing he was days from death on a tragic trek back from the South Pole in 1912, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott wrote to his wife that "we are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through." - However, he assured Kathleen Scott, he faced his end without regret. "How much better it has been than lounging in comfort at home," Scott wrote in the letter, recovered the year after he and his companions died of cold and starvation.

Scott's courage in facing his doom - following the bitter disappointment of losing the race to the South Pole - burnished his stature as a national hero, and was an inspiration to generations of British youth.

Now the British explorer's last letter to his wife, previously published only in part, will be among those displayed to the public in his own sprawling handwriting for the first time beginning Jan. 17 at the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University.

"As one who works as a scientist in the polar regions, particularly the last letter conveys the tremendous sense of isolation," said Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the institute founded in 1920 as a memorial to Scott.

"When you are working on large ice caps … you do feel an awfully long way from home, and that's with modern communications," said Dowdeswell, speaking by telephone Wednesday from Uruguay, where he was waiting to depart for the Antarctic.

Scott's private correspondence was recently donated to the institute by Philippa Scott, widow of the explorer's only child, Sir Peter Scott, who died in 1989.

"Make the boy interested in natural history if you can, it is better than games," Robert Scott wrote from Antarctica. His son, then 3, went on to graduate from Trinity College, Cambridge and have a distinguished career in ornithology.

The letter was found along with the explorer's body and his effects several months after his death, 11 miles from his supply camp. Kathleen Scott was on her way to New Zealand to await his return when she received confirmation of his death.

Scott was a giant of the great age of exploration, but his expedition was doubly jinxed. It lost to the Norwegian Roald Amundsen in the race to be first to the South Pole. Amundsen got there on Dec. 21, 1911; Scott arrived on Jan. 18.

"Great God! This is an awful place, and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority," Scott wrote in his journal.

The journal, published in 1913 as "Scott's Last Expedition" and still in print, included just a few snippets from his last letter to his wife.

The tale of Scott's last journey has inspired generations of youth. Dowdeswell said he vividly recalls the drawing in a children's book of Scott planting the Union Jack at the pole.

Before setting off on his last expedition, Scott was a national hero following his first foray into the Antarctic from 1902-1904. His account of that adventure, "The Voyage of Discovery," was a best-seller.

The last letter, which opens with the salutation "To my widow," is a testament to Scott's calm courage. He and two other men, Lt. Henry Bowers and Dr. Edward Wilson, clung to hopes of surviving. Petty Officer Edgar Evans already had died, and Capt. Lawrence Oates, suffering from severe frostbite, had set off into a blinding storm with his parting shot: "I am just going outside and may be some time."

At that point, Scott reckoned he was 20 miles from a depot where the expedition had stowed provisions - "but we have very little food or fuel."

His thoughts turned again toward home.

"Dearest … cherish no sentimental rubbish about remarriage - when the right man comes to help you in life you ought to be your happy self again. I hope I shall be a good memory; certainly the end is nothing for you to be ashamed of and I like to think that the boy will have a good start in parentage of which he may be proud.

"Dear it is not easy to write because of the cold - 70 degrees below zero and nothing but the shelter of our tent - you know I have loved you, you know my thoughts must have constantly dwelt on you and oh dear me you must know that quite the worst aspect of this situation is the thought that I shall not see you again."

"The inevitable must be faced."

Kathleen Scott remarried politician Edward Hilton Young in 1922 and became Baroness Kennet when he was ennobled in 1935. She died in 1947.

On the Net:

http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/

Report says gold mining pollutes huge tiger reserve in Myanmar

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Myanmar's military junta is allowing gold mines to pollute the world's largest wild tiger reserve and has promoted development that is destroying ethnic Kachin communities, a report released Wednesday alleged.

The Kachin Development Networking Group, a coalition of NGOs, also accused the government of doubling its military presence in the Hukaung Valley in northwestern Myanmar. The government signed a peace pact with the separatist Kachin Independence Organization in 1994.

As part of that expansion, the military has confiscated a third of the farmland and scores of public buildings in and around the main town of Danai, the group said.

"Local residents had high hopes that peace would foster economic development and improve living conditions," the report said. "However, under the junta's increased control, the rich resources of the (Hukaung) valley have turned out to be a curse."

A spokesman for the government did not respond to a request for comment.

The Hukaung Valley is home to the world's largest tiger reserve and contains as many as 150 tigers - or about a third of the country's entire population. It also has one of the largest wetlands in Asia and is home to wide variety of other animals including Asian elephants, clouded leopards and red pandas.

The government set up the reserve in 2001, with help and funding from the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society, to boost the numbers of tigers and other endangered animals in Myanmar, which was formerly known as Burma.

It tripled the size of the reserve in 2004 to 8,452 square miles. Unlike a protected national park, the reserve allows tens of thousand of people - including the Kachin, Naga and Lisu ethnic groups - to live and work within its boundaries.

While the government has been credited with reducing poaching in the reserve, the Kachin Development Networking Group says authorities have allowed gold mining to prosper since 2002 by selling off individual concessions to select businessmen who operate large-scale, mechanized operations.

The group said three gold mines are polluting the rivers that run through the valley with mercury and other chemicals, and the temporary camps for miners have led to an explosion of drug use, prostitution and HIV cases.

The report does not single out the WCS for blame but it does call for the "re-evaluation of environmental protection programs inside Burma to ensure that they are not simply green washing the regime's policies of militarization and rampant resource exploitation."

Alan Rabinowitz, who oversees the WCS' big cat program that includes the Myanmar reserve, acknowledged that gold mining is a problem and says he has repeatedly pressed the government to ban it with limited success.

But he says the problem has to be kept in perspective. The mines are located in a small part of the reserve and are not as much of a threat to the wildlife as hunting has been in the past or planned sugar cane and tapioca plantations are in the future.

"Putting sugar cane plantations in a reserve is like throwing candy in a daycare center," he said. "Elephants love sugar cane and what you will get is major wildlife conflicts."

Despite all these problems, Rabinowitz insisted the reserve would help ensure that the populations of tigers and elephants increase. Wildlife police have already cut down on poaching and the illegal sale of bush meat, Rabinowitz said, while authorities are considering zoning the valley to limit certain types of development.

"We're making progress. We're saving stuff," he said. "Does the reserve have lots of issues? Sure it does. But that is part of the dynamic of conservation on a large scale."

On the Net:

Wildlife Conservation Society: http://www.wcs.org/sw-home

Building collapse in northern India kills 10 construction workers

LUCKNOW, India (AP) - A four-story building under construction in a northern Indian city collapsed Wednesday, killing 10 workers and injuring at least 25, police said.

Soldiers helped remove concrete slabs and pulled out another 10 workers who were trapped under the debris of the building in Allahabad, in Uttar Pradesh state.

"The building, which was under construction, collapsed while the workers were laying the roof. At least 10 workers were killed, many of them instantly," said Manoj Singh, a senior police official.

The building was the extension of a shopping mall. City officials planned an investigation, Singh said.

Emirates vying to bring Louvre branch to Abu Dhabi

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Oil-rich Abu Dhabi hopes to further boost its standing in the arts world by opening a satellite branch of Paris' famed Louvre museum if talks with French authorities succeed, an official here says.

But the proposal is proving controversial in France, where some are decrying what they call a trend of museums for sale.

The new museum could be built by star architect Jean Nouvel, said the French newspaper Le Monde, joining a Guggenheim franchise to be built by Frank Gehry.

Abu Dhabi officials want the Louvre to be one of five prestigious art museum branches anchoring a $27 billion cultural district they are building on uninhabited Saadiyat Island, just off the city's Gulf-side corniche.

So far, only the Guggenheim has committed to the project. But representatives of Abu Dhabi's royal family are in talks with several other famous museums, said Bassem Terkawi, spokesman for Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development and Investment Company. He said his government-owned firm was leading the talks between French and Emirates officials.

The museum district venture is a hugely ambitious, even for this wealthy Gulf state. The construction price for the franchise of the New York-based Guggenheim museum has already doubled to $400 million since being announced in July. And the Emirates still needs to embark on the expensive task of buying art for its collection.

"Our direction is to position Abu Dhabi as the cultural capital of the region," Terkawi said. "We're trying to bring world-class cultural facilities that are not available in this part of the world."

"As for the Louvre, yes we are in discussions with them," he said.

Louvre director Henri Loyrette told Le Monde newspaper's Monday edition that loans from all civilizations and eras would be represented in the Abu Dhabi project. Other French museums would be asked to volunteer works for periods ranging from two months to two years, he said.

A French delegation visited Abu Dhabi in November to discuss the possibility of an Arab version of the Musee du Louvre, but Terkawi said talks remained in a "very early stage."

In Paris, protesters warned that French museums could be selling their souls by lending too many works to museums abroad and questioned whether the government is turning France's rich artistic heritage into a commercial brand.

"Museums are not for sale," stated an online petition signed by several prominent members of the French art scene.

Didier Rykner, who started a Web site that has collected 1,400 signatures against such projects. He fears the government is hijacking art to promote France's trade and diplomatic interests.

"I'm not sure the role of French museums is to develop tourism in Abu Dhabi," he said in a telephone interview.

Le Monde reported that France's museums could gain about $653 million for their expected role in Abu Dhabi.

The Gulf museum would bear the venerable Louvre name for a time, until it can build its own collection, said Loyrette, the museum's director.

Other institutions have already succumbed to Abu Dhabi's lucrative overtures. Paris' Sorbonne University opened a campus in the Emirates capital city this year, and France's INSEAD Business School has also announced plans for an education center in Abu Dhabi.

- Associated Press writer Angela Doland contributed to this report from Paris.

Report: Ontario hospital workers' safety not adequate in 2003 SARS crisis

TORONTO (AP) - Canadian health care workers were not adequately protected during Ontario's SARS crisis in 2003, a provincial inquiry said in a report released Tuesday.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome sickened 375 people and killed 44 of them - including two nurses and a doctor. Forty-five percent of the people who caught the SARS virus in Ontario hospitals were health care workers.

Hospitals failed to protect workers and the Ontario Ministry of Labor did not exercise its authority in the health care sector as it did in many other sectors, the report said.

Hospitals are as dangerous for workers as mines and factories, Justice Archie Campbell said in his report.

"(But) they lack the basic safety culture and workplace safety systems that have become expected and accepted for many years in Ontario mines and factories and in British Columbia's hospitals," said Campbell, who was appointed by the Ontario government to investigate the province's response to SARS.

Like Ontario, British Columbia had a SARS case arrive from Hong Kong in the early days of the global outbreak, before the infectious disease even had a name. But through a combination of good luck and advance outbreak planning, British Columbia managed an effective response and never experienced the explosive growth of cases that paralyzed the Toronto area.

Campbell said it was impossible to know whether the second wave of infections in May and June - known as SARS 2 - could have been prevented. But he said the devastating second phase could have been caught sooner.

Critics have suggested SARS 2 was the product of political interference, with municipal and provincial officials over-eager to close the book on SARS and proclaim that Toronto was disease free and again open for business.

Campbell said he found no evidence to support that claim.

The SARS scare cost the city some $1 billion in lost tourism.

Japan nuclear reactor resumes operation more than 2 years after fatal accident

TOKYO (AP) - A Japanese utility company said it restarted a nuclear reactor Wednesday for the first time since it was shut down after a fatal August 2004 accident, the nation's worst at a nuclear facility.

The No. 3 reactor at its Mihama Nuclear Power Plant was restarted and no trouble has been reported so far, said Ryuichi Suehiro, spokesman for Kansai Electric Power Co. which operates the plant.

The reactor had been shut down since August 2004, when a corroded pipe ruptured and sprayed plant workers with boiling water and steam. Five workers were killed and six others were injured, although no radiation was released.

The reactor is expected to start generating power on Thursday and reach full-scale commercial operation in early February after a final government inspection, the company has said in a statement.

Resource-poor Japan depends on nuclear power plants for a third of its energy needs and aims to raise that to nearly 40 percent by 2010.

But the Japanese public has grown increasingly wary of the nuclear power industry following a spate of safety problems, shutdowns and cover-ups, and utility companies face difficulty obtaining local support for new plant sites.

Mihama is about 200 miles west of Tokyo.

Piece of missing jetliner found in northwestern Indonesia

MAKASSAR, Indonesia (AP) - A fisherman found a piece of a jetliner missing for more than 10 days in northwestern Indonesia, the first hard evidence that the plane carrying 102 people crashed, a top search official said Thursday. - The piece of the Boeing 737's tail was recovered Wednesday from the Makassar Strait off Sulawesi Island, said Eddy Suyanto, the head of search and rescue operations.

Suyanto said the serial number on the tail piece matched the one given to the search and rescue teams by Boeing.

No survivors or bodies have been recovered, Suyanto said.

Early pollen warnings, green ski pistes as Europe's winter gets warmer

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Europe's unseasonably mild winter is nothing to sneeze at. Or maybe it is.

Experts warned Austrian allergy-sufferers on Wednesday that some species of trees are already flowering and about to release pollen - an annual phenomenon that's usually not a problem until well into spring.

In the Swiss and Austrian Alps, World Cup ski race organizers canceled training runs to avoid chewing up grassy pistes lean on snow and already damaged by rain and warm conditions.

Waiters in Vienna, where the mercury rose to 60 degrees - just edging out Rome's 59 degrees - put tables and chairs back out on the sidewalks. Bulgarians basked in the sun on balmy 62-degree Black Sea beaches.

Roses bloomed in eastern France. In the Netherlands, crocuses started sprouting and birds began nesting. And in Sweden, bears were finally hibernating - two months late - after the weather played havoc with their biological clocks.

With so much spring in the air, many Europeans wonder: Where's winter?

And more importantly, what's to blame: global warming, as many suspect, or just one of those extreme years that roll around every century or so?

"If people would just chat with their grandmothers, they'd probably hear that there have been Januarys before when they could sunbathe," said Helga Kromp-Kolb, an Austrian climate expert who doubts anything as sinister as global warming is the culprit.

Climate change "is a long-term development over decades and centuries," she said. "Individual events can never serve as proof."

In suburban southwest London, where the temperature was forecast to hit 55 by Saturday, trees in gardens have broken into pink blossoms, making some neighborhoods look more like April than January.

Britain has already experienced its mildest autumn in over 300 years, and 2006 was the country's warmest year on record. The winter, however, may be moderated by the lingering effects of El Nino, which in Britain can lead to cooler, drier weather, Meteorological Office spokesman Barry Gromett said.

In the United States, much of the Midwest and the East Coast are going through a remarkably warm winter as well, with temperatures running 10 and 20 degrees higher than normal in many places.

Underscoring how global warming remains a concern, the European Commission said Wednesday the EU must reduce greenhouse gases by at least 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent serious damage caused by climate change.

In the Serbian capital, Belgrade, Marija Vukajlovic was among scores of residents who complained of headaches and fatigue as the mercury reached 60 degrees.

"I don't like this. We shouldn't have such warm weather now," said Vukajlovic, 55. "It is just not normal."

But Suncica Krajcevic, 31, countered: "I love it. I know it's not the way it should be, but it's still great."

In Vienna, the national weather service said it would issue daily pollen warnings starting Friday after hazel and alder trees blossomed and were close to releasing choking clouds of dust. Norway's weather service also set up pollen registering gear - three months ahead of schedule.

The Dutch Royal Weather Service said volunteers reported seeing more than 240 different types of wild plants in bloom, and another 200-plus garden varieties, "thanks to the unusually gentle weather in December."

That trend continued this week, experts said, with Tuesday the warmest January day since at least 1901.

"Nature is also confused in many other countries," the weather service noted.

That's for sure: At Sweden's Kolmarden zoo, bears went into hibernation only this week when they usually begin their winter slumber by mid-November.

"They've been out wandering around, looking at the weather and searching for food," Mats Hoggreen, the park's zoological director, told Swedish radio.

But brown bears still weren't dozing in Bulgaria's mountains and zoos. They tried, "but in this warm and snowless weather they went out again, so we started giving them food," said Yulian Chukov, an attendant at the Belitza bear park.

In neighboring Romania, agriculture officials warned that rapeseed, barley and rye crops planted last autumn could be ruined because of weather stress and unusually low rainfall.

Ornithologists said that for the first time in 20 years, wild birds opted not to fly farther south because Romania's Danube River delta hasn't frozen over, and in Hungary, scientists said disease-bearing ticks could multiply out of control if it doesn't get chilly fast.

Even so, Europeans in northern climes exulted and enjoyed.

People in Prague, where temperatures reached 57 degrees, prowled the Czech capital in shorts and T-shirts. In Russia, where Muscovites have never seen such a snowless winter in recent memory, the state weather service said the protracted spell of unseasonably warm days was unprecedented for the European part of the country.

"There were no such winters under communism," the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets said in a tongue-in-cheek commentary. "People want to live well, like in Europe. At least the winter here is already like that in Europe."