Forensic team prepares to exhume Houdini's body to determine whether he was poisoned

By: Associated Press | Friday, March 23, 2007 7:53 PM PDT ∞

NEW YORK -- Get ready for "CSI: Houdini." A team of forensic experts will pore over the exhumed remains of renowned escape artist Harry Houdini to determine whether he was murdered more than 80 years ago, the head of the investigative team said Friday.

"Everything will be thoroughly analyzed," promised James Starrs, dean of the disinterment dream team of pathologists, anthropologists, toxicologists and radiologists. "We'll examine his hairs, his fingernails, any bone fractures."

Legal paperwork necessary to dig up Houdini's body from a New York City cemetery will be filed Monday to get the process started, said Joseph Tacopina, an attorney representing Houdini's family. It could take months before the body is exhumed, although the process should move faster because the family and cemetery officials support the plan, he said.

Houdini died at age 52 on Halloween 1926, days after the athletic magician was repeatedly punched in the stomach by a college student testing the performer's abdominal muscles.

His death certificate listed him as a victim of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. No autopsy was performed, though, and rumors that he was murdered started almost immediately.

"The Secret Life of Houdini," a biography published last year, revisited the rumors and detailed the injection of "an experimental serum" into Houdini shortly before his death at Detroit's Grace Hospital.

The authors suggest the likeliest suspects were members of a group known as the Spiritualists. The magician devoted large portions of his stage show to exposing the group's fraudulent seances.

Houdini received an assortment of death threats from the Spiritualists over his final years.

In the Houdini biography, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman explore a November 1924 letter in which one of the movement's devotees, Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, said Houdini would "get his just desserts very exactly meted out ... I think there is a general payday coming soon."

The exhumation plan received support from Anna Thurlow, the great-granddaughter of "medium" Margery, whose husband Dr. Le Roi Crandon was one of the Spiritualist movement's biggest proponents and one of Houdini's enemies.

"At the very least, there was a group of people who wished Houdini harm," said Thurlow, who was forced to consider that her ancestors may have been murderers. "Whatever the answer is, it (exhumation) will resolve this mystery."

Starrs, who presided over the exhumations of gunslinger Jesse James and "Boston Strangler" Albert DeSalvo, said that if Houdini was poisoned with heavy metals -- arsenic or mercury, for example -- there should be evidence of that more than eight decades later.

"I wouldn't be involved if I simply thought this was bringing a rabbit out of a hat," he said.

Gabor's husband provides DNA sample in Anna Nicole case

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband provided a DNA sample Friday that he says he's "almost sure" will prove he is the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby.

Immediately after Frederic Von Anhalt gave his sample at the Identigene Lab his lawyer, Edward Lee, called on Smith's companion, Howard K. Stern, to do the same. Smith's lawyer, James Neavitt, did not immediately return a call for comment.

"I'm almost sure the baby's mine, almost sure," Von Anhalt, 59, said after having a cotton swab brushed along the inside of his mouth. He added he hopes to gain custody as soon as possible and raise the 6-month-old girl, Dannielynn.

"Oh yeah, if it's my baby, it belongs in my home," Von Anhalt said. "I'm going to take good care of it. I will be a good father."

He acknowledged that his 90-year-old wife was angry after he announced last month that he could be Dannielynn's father, but added that she has since forgiven him.

"If it's my daughter, it's my daughter and Zsa Zsa can't help but love her," said Von Anhalt, who uses the royal title prince, which he says was given to him by a German princess who adopted him.

Smith, 39, died Feb. 8 in a hotel room in Miami.

Von Anhalt, who says he carried on a decades-long affair with the former Playboy Playmate of the Year, is one of three men claiming to be her baby's father. The others are former boyfriend Larry Birkhead and Stern, who was Smith's companion at the time of her death and is listed on Dannielynn's birth certificate as her father.

Von Anhalt's attorney, Edward Lee, said Friday he would file a petition in the California courts sometime soon requesting that both Stern and Dannielynn undergo DNA testing. Earlier this week a Bahamian judge ordered such a test for Dannielynn.

Stern is living with Dannielynn in the Bahamas.

The baby, whose full name is Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, could inherit millions from the estate of Smith's late husband, J. Howard Marshall II. Smith had been fighting the Texas oil tycoon's family over his estimated $500 million fortune since his death in 1995.

Anna Nicole Smith's diaries auctioned for more than $500K; buyer plans to sell to media

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Anna Nicole Smith's private thoughts written in two diaries have been sold for more than $500,000 to a German businessman who planned to sell the information to media outlets, an auction house official said.

The late Playboy model's handwritten 1992 diary was sold for $282,500 and her 1994 diary went for $230,000 in an eBay auction Thursday, plus a 20 percent buyer's premium.

The buyer wished to remain anonymous, but planned to sell the information to various media outlets, then resell the diaries by the end of the year, said Thomas Riccio, a partner in Universal Rarities, the Corona, Calif.-based auction house that handled the sale.

The "soap opera value" of the dairies could be worth more than $1 million alone, including the rights to publish photos of the pages, Riccio said.

Smith was found dead on Feb. 8 in Hollywood, Fla. The cause of her death is under investigation.

Her 1992 diary consists of 26 entries from January to August while the 1994 one contains about 30 pages from January to July, Riccio said. The entries show a moody and complicated woman, Riccio said.

Among the entries was Smith discussing her husband, elderly Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, whom she married in 1994 and who died the next year.

"It was a okay day," she wrote of June 11, 1992. "I had lunch with Howard. Someone ran over my cat yesterday. I was real sad."

In a 1994 entry, she wrote about his illness. "My husbands very weak. Theres nothing I can do," she wrote. "I want each hour to comfort him with medicines and prayers."

The diaries were offered by a group of investors who bought them from a Los Angeles memorabilia shop owner, who bought them cheaply several years ago when Smith discarded them, Riccio said.

Police: Tornado strikes N.M. village, 3 hurt and about 2 dozen homes destroyed

LOGAN, N.M. (AP) -- A tornado destroyed roughly two dozen mobile homes and campers and injured at least three people Friday as it swept through a New Mexico village, state police said.

Three people were taken to a hospital in nearby Tucumcari, while others were treated at a local clinic, State Police Sgt. Andrew Tingwall said.

Their conditions were not immediately available.

Joe Alfieri of the National Weather Service in Albuquerque said a tornado touched down shortly after 3 p.m. Forecasters did not know how strong the twister was.

The most severe damage was reported on the south side of Logan, a village located near the New Mexico-Texas border, and several homes and businesses also sustained "cosmetic damage," Tingwall said.

Authorities planned to cut off utility service to aid rescue crews and help with cleanup efforts, but Tingwall didn't know when power will be restored.

Teen dies after hanging herself in school bathroom

HYRUM, Utah (AP) -- A 14-year-old girl who had talked about suicide died in a hospital a day after hanging herself in a school bathroom, school officials said.

A classmate had found Kailey Mathews unconscious in the bathroom at South Cache 8-9 Center on Wednesday. On Thursday, the students were notified of her death.

"Her friends would tell you that she had talked about" suicide, principal Teri Cutler said. "It's important to note that never were the discussions ignored. She was talked to. We tried to talk to her."

Cutler described the girl as a "very bright" student with "good friends and a lot of people who cared about her."

Rare Mormon books sell for $180,000 each

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A rare Book of Mormon and a hymnal each sold for $180,000 during an auction this week.

The purchase price for both items is believed by some Mormon scholars to be among the highest ever paid for historic documents associated with the early history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The hymnal had been expected to sell for less than $40,000 and the first edition Book of Mormon for less than $90,000, said Rebecca Weiss, a media relations representative for Swann Galleries in New York.

"You never know what will happen at auctions," Weiss said.

The books were sold to buyers bidding by phone, she said. The auction house doesn't identify bidders or buyers.

The first edition Book of Mormon was signed by early LDS Apostle Orson Pratt. An inscription by the book's original owner, Denison Root, indicates "the book was a gift from Hyrum Smith," brother of church founder Joseph Smith.

Mormons consider the Book of Mormon to be scripture on par with the Bible. Smith said he translated the book from gold plates delivered to him by an angel, and first editions of the book were printed in 1830.

The hymnal, titled "A Collection of Sacred Hymns, for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," was compiled by Smith's wife, Emma, and was published in Nauvoo, Ill., in 1841.

78-year-old man who allegedly struck wife in head with an ax will remain jailed in lieu of $1 million bail

FOUNTAIN VALLEY - A 78-year-old Fountain Valley man who allegedly struck his wife in the head with an ax while she prayed in the couple's living room will remain jailed in lieu of $1 million bail, a judge ruled Friday.

Abdel Herbawi appeared in a Westminster courtroom, but his arraignment on charges of attempted murder, torture, corporal injury upon a spouse, and aggravated assault was put off until next Thursday, said Farrah Emami of the Orange County District Attorney's Office.

Herbawi faces up to life in prison if convicted, Emami said.

Through an interpreter, he asked if he was going to be let out of jail Friday, KCAL9 reported.

Herbawi's wife, 68-year-old Widad Herbawi, was attacked about 6 a.m. Monday at their home in the 9000 block of Mallard Street. She ran to a neighbor's house with injuries to her head, body and hand, Fountain Valley police Sgt. Eric Orahood said.

A short time later, officers found her husband inside the couple's home with apparently self-inflicted wounds, the sergeant said.

She was taken to UCI Medical Center and he to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana.

Emami said Herbawi pushed his wife to the floor, hit her several times, severed her finger and fractured her skull.

Deputy District Attorney Dawn Vargas of the Family Protection Unit told KCAL9 that the couple had an argument Sunday night and she was attacked the next morning.

"She was hit in the back of the head the first time," Vargas said. "She fell forward and then she was stabbed multiple times in the back area and there was some sort of struggle there before she was able to get out of the house and get to a neighbor's house," Vargas said.

The neighbor earlier told KCAL she "heard a knock on the door really hard, then I see a woman, fully naked only with her underwear, bleeding from top to bottom."

Herbawi also was ordered to stay away from his wife for the next three years, Channel 9 reported.

---- North County Times wire services

New Jersey man gets life in prison for killing special ed teacher who taped the crime

TOMS RIVER, N.J. (AP) -- A man who carjacked and killed a special education teacher who secretly tape-recorded her conversation with him during the crime was sentenced Friday to life in prison.

Michael LaSane was convicted March 7 of the 1996 murder, kidnapping, carjacking and robbery of 45-year-old Kathleen Weinstein.

The case drew wide attention because Weinstein secretly recorded 46 minutes of conversation with her captor in her car. During much of the tape, she tried to persuade the man to let her go, and told him there were ways he could extricate himself from the situation.

LaSane denied that the voice on the tape was his.

Weinstein's husband, Paul Weinstein, fought for years to keep the tape from being played publicly, going as far as to have it copyrighted in an effort to keep media outlets from broadcasting it. The tape was played in court during the trial, but the judge prohibited copies from being made.

The Weinsteins' son was 6 at the time, and his father decided he never wanted his child to hear what his mother went through with her killer.

"He discarded my wife's body. He discarded my wife's possessions like they were pieces of trash," Weinstein said Friday. "He has had 11 years to say he's sorry. He will never do so. He is a blight on society. I do believe he would kill again if given a chance."

Superior Court Judge James M. Citta agreed, citing numerous aggravating factors that he said justified a life term. LaSane will be eligible for parole in 60 years.

"He was not distracted or deterred by the fact he had a human being with him, pleading for her life, as he was going through papers looking for the title to the car," said Citta, who repeatedly glared at LaSane during the lengthy sentencing hearing.

LaSane initially pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life with no parole for at least 30 years. But eight years later, an appeals court overturned the plea after it was revealed that LaSane's public defender had a sexual encounter with LaSane's mother.

Prosecutors said LaSane wanted Weinstein's 1995 Toyota Camry as a present for his 17th birthday. Her body was found in a wooded area, her hands and feet bound with duct tape. She was smothered with her own clothing, authorities said.

Sex offender arrested in case of NYC boy handcuffed to tree

NEW YORK (AP) -- Police on Friday arrested a convicted sex offender suspected of abducting a 13-year-old at knifepoint and sexually abusing him before leaving him undressed and handcuffed to a tree.

A tip led police to the 26-year-old man, whose photo was identified by the boy, said Lt. Robert Sprague. Investigators later found the boy's bracelet and his cell phone at the suspect's Staten Island house, he said. Charges were pending in the case.

The boy was heard screaming for help by a passer-by early Wednesday and was rescued by authorities. Police initially doubted the boy's story that a stranger had accosted him while on his way to the school bus because of conflicting details.

They investigated the possibility that he had met someone on the Internet and arranged a meeting, but on Thursday a woman called saying a man had admitted accosting the boy, authorities said.

Investigators said the man had a 1999 conviction for sodomy and endangering the welfare of a child.

Police said the suspect also was involved in the attempted abduction of a 14-year-old boy on Staten Island on March 5.

Big eating: Ohio Amish aim to break world buffet record set last year in Las Vegas

MILLERSBURG, Ohio (AP) -- According to record keepers, the world's biggest buffet happened in Las Vegas. The record may not stay there, though.

Restaurants, bakeries and family cooks in the Amish region of northeastern Ohio are uniting Saturday to challenge the mark of 510 buffet dishes served last year at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Organizers plan three two-hour sittings for 1,000 people each at $11 apiece at the Amish Flea Market. Proceeds will help feed the needy.

The nearly 600 promised dishes include Hungarian sauerkraut soup, corn casserole, garlic mashed potatoes and sweet potato souffle.

"We might not have glitz and glamour, but we know how to cook," said Kurt Kleidon, who is helping organize the event.

Photos of the spread and witness statements will be sent to Guinness World Records officials to seek the record, Kleidon said.

On the Net:

http://www.worldslargestbuffet.com

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com

23-year-old pilot seeks to be youngest, first black person, to circle globe alone

OPA-LOCKA, Fla. (AP) -- A 23-year-old aerospace student who built his plane from more than $300,000 in donated parts took off Friday hoping to become the youngest person and first black pilot to fly around the globe alone.

Barrington Irving plans to arrive back at Opa-locka Executive Airport on April 30 in his single-engine Lancair Columbia 400.

He had planned to fly last year, but a lack of funding delayed his $1 million project. He still needs about $20,000, but that didn't stop him from setting out.

"I want this completed before the year is over so kids can see that someone who started off with nothing set a goal and completed it," he said just before takeoff. "Even with the challenges, everything is starting to fall in place. It's just my time."

Irving was born in Jamaica and grew up in Miami. He said he saw little chance for success until he met a Jamaican-American pilot at his parents' Christian bookstore.

The pilot, Gary Robinson, took Irving to see a Boeing 777. The 15-year-old was mesmerized. He turned down college football scholarships to become a pilot.

Irving is now studying at Florida Memorial University; he has private and commercial pilot licenses. He also founded Experience Aviation, a Miami-based organization that encourages minority youths to pursue aviation careers.

He will make stops in Cleveland and Farmingdale, N.Y., before passing into Canada, then crossing the Atlantic, through Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

On the Net:

http://www.experienceaviation.org

Locksmith cracks open antique safe, discovers combination to lock and poem about Jesus

MONROE, Conn. (AP) -- The mystery what a locked antique safe found behind a historical society's furnace might hold had this town abuzz until a locksmith got it open. Its contents: the safe's long-lost combination.

"Like we need this now," Monroe Historical Society President Nancy Zorena joked after the 450-pound safe was unlocked Thursday.

The Victorian-era safe was discovered in an old building owned by the society. Its manufacturer was long out of business, and nothing was available to indicate who had owned the massive iron chest before the town donated it to the historical society decades ago.

The safe itself is worth about $300 -- likely more than its contents.

Along with the combination was a yellowed newspaper clipping, believed to be from the 1930s; an anonymously written poem; and four wooden tokens from Missouri that apparently were issued during the Great Depression and commemorated contributions to a fund for the needy and unemployed.

Police: Man arrested in beheading of Minn. girl's dog; grandmother says he was shunned admirer

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- A man suspected of cutting the head off a teenage girl's dog and leaving it at her front door in a gift-wrapped box was in jail Friday on suspicion of terrorist threats.

The 24-year-old man, who was not immediately charged, used to date Crystal Brown, the girl's grandmother said. Crystal, 17, immediately told police she suspected him because he expressed jealousy after she ended a relationship with him and dated someone else, her grandmother Shirley Brown said.

"I think I can sleep a lot better now," said Crystal, who found Valentine's Day candy and a garbage bag containing her pet's head in the box. "It will make me feel way safer. Now we can walk around the whole block."

Police said the man lived a few blocks from the home Crystal shares with her grandmother.

"He was a neighbor. He ate at my table. I've given him rides to work," Shirley Brown said. "I befriended this kid."

Crystal was devastated last month when Chevy, her 4-year-old Australian shepherd mix, went missing. Two weeks later, the gift box addressed to Crystal was found at her front door.

Janet Hafner, a spokeswoman for the Ramsey County attorney's office, said the man may be charged Friday. If so, he would make his first court appearance later in the day.

Crystal has a new puppy, named Diesel. Her grandmother said they are bonding after just a few short weeks.

"That dog's only 10 weeks old, and she's already got him sitting up and shaking hands," Shirley Brown said. "That's just Crystal -- she's always loved animals."

The case drew widespread media attention. The television show "America's Most Wanted" posted the case on its Web site, and donations pushed a $2,500 reward offered by the Humane Society of the United States to $20,000.

Dale Bartlett, the Humane Society's deputy manager for animal cruelty issues, said it's the most generous response the organization has ever seen to an award. He said the Browns could themselves be eligible for the award, since they apparently led police to the suspect.

"After what they've been through, I can't think of anyone I would rather see the award go to," Bartlett said. He said that determination will be made after a conviction in the case, with input from investigators who worked on the case.

Strangling of cricket coach still a mystery days later

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) -- Was it a disgruntled bookmaker? A crooked player who feared being exposed for match-fixing? A case of extreme fan rage?

Mystery swirled Friday around the slaying of the national coach of Pakistan, Bob Woolmer, a burly and avuncular 58-year-old Englishman who lived in South Africa and led South African cricketeers through one of the genteel game's worst scandals.

The international governing body of cricket said it would investigate whether match-fixing was a motive for the killing, which exposed the sinister side of cricket, a sport popular in Britain and its former colonies.

Woolmer was strangled Sunday in his hotel room, a day after his team was upset by Ireland. Police desperately sought leads, appealing for witnesses to come forward if they saw anything suspicious at the upscale Jamaica Pegasus Hotel where Woolmer and the Pakistani squad stayed and where he died.

Deputy Police Commissioner Mark Shields said police believed more than one person may have killed Woolmer in his 12th-floor hotel room Sunday. His team's humiliating defeat Saturday assured Pakistan's elimination from the Cricket World Cup.

After days of speculation that Woolmer may have died of natural causes or even committed suicide, Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas confirmed Thursday evening that the pathologist had declared the cause of death as "asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation."

Police said they were reviewing security cameras in and around the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel.

"With that many people in the hotel, it's no doubt that somebody saw something," Shields said.

John Issa, the hotel's chairman of the board of directors, told local radio that there are no records of anyone else entering Woolmer's room with a card key.

"The records show that no one entered because the keys are electronic and we would have seen this," he said.

On Friday, authorities obtained DNA samples from Pakistan team members to help eliminate potential suspects, Shields said. Late Thursday, the team traveled to Montego Bay, on the western side of the island, after being interviewed and fingerprinted by police.

Shields said the team would be allowed to leave the country as scheduled Saturday.

Separately, the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption unit will investigate whether match-fixing had a role in Woolmer's death, council chief executive Malcolm Speed said.

"Our people from the anti-corruption and security unit will cooperate with the Jamaica police, they're working with them already," Speed told Britain's Sky TV. "If there is a link we want to know about it and we will deal with it."

Woolmer was South Africa's coach in the 1990s when the team's captain, Hansie Cronje, admitted taking money to fix matches and was banned from cricket for life. Woolmer was never implicated.

His family said it was unaware of any death threats against him or any involvement in match-fixing.

"To the best of the family's knowledge, there is absolutely nothing to suggest Bob was involved in match-fixing," his agent, Michael Cohen, said Friday, reading a statement outside the Woolmer family home near Cape Town, South Africa. He was flanked by Woolmer's widow, Gill, and their sons, Dale and Russell.

The coach was last seen going to his room Saturday night after the Pakistan team, normally a world powerhouse, was upset by underdog Ireland in the first round of the World Cup.

He was found by a maid the next day, laying half out of his bathroom and dressed in boxer shorts. One witness reporting seeing blood and vomit splattered in the room, but another said he saw vomit only in the toilet. Police have not released details about the crime scene.

"Because Bob was a large man, it would have taken some significant force to subdue him, but of course at this stage we do not know how many people were in the room," Shields told reporters. "It could be one or more people involved in this murder."

Whoever killed the affable coach gained access to his room without forcing the door open and attacked Woolmer without people in neighboring rooms noticing anything amiss. Access to guest floors is restricted at the hotel -- a card key is required to operate the elevators.

"We have some theories of what may have happened, but it's too early to go public with them," Shields said Friday on Jamaican radio.

Former Pakistan fast bowler Sarfraz Nawaz has claimed that Woolmer, a former player for England, was killed because he was writing a book that would expose illegal gambling in cricket.

But Woolmer's family denied that.

"Contrary to reports, we can confirm there is nothing in any book Bob has written that would explain this situation and there were no threats received," the family statement said.

Pakistan team spokesman Pervez Jamil Mir said Woolmer was upset that galleys of his book had disappeared.

"Bob told me the proofs had been misplaced and he was very disturbed." Mir said. "I don't know what was in the book but that was his only copy at the time."

"Cute Knut," Berlin Zoo's polar bear cub, delights crowds in first public appearance

By: - BERLIN (AP) -- With a sniff and a stumble, Berlin Zoo's irresistibly cuddly baby polar bear made his public debut Friday, delighting hundreds of excited children who packed around the pen's railings.

"We want Knut! We want Knut!" chanted a group of third graders who came to see the zoo's star, dubbed "cute Knut" by the German media.

Ambling cautiously over the uneven, grassy ground, Knut clambered over a log and sniffed curiously at the legs of his handler, Thomas Doerflein.

"I'm so happy to be able to see him today," said Leila Klamann, 9, whose class was visiting the zoo. "And he's so cute!"

Some children climbed nearby playground towers for a better view.

Born at the zoo on Dec. 5, the cub has already famous through his video podcast and TV series. Star photographer Annie Leibovitz also came to take his portrait for an environmental campaign.

Poking his nose into a stream, the 15-week-old cub appeared interested in exploring the pen Friday, but returned frequently to Doerflein, who has raised him by hand since his mother rejected him and his brother shortly after their birth. The other cub later died.

"He looks even better and sweeter than he does on TV," said Julian Fuerster, 10. "And more cuddly."

The fate of the nearly 19-pound bear stirred a media flap when an animal activist insisted the cub would have been better off dead than raised by humans. The zoo flatly rejected the idea.

"If you see the little bear, you'll see it's stupid to say something like that," said Ragnar Kuehne, a zoo curator.

The general public will be able to see Knut beginning Saturday, when he is scheduled to make similar, brief appearances with his handler.

On the Net:

Berlin Zoo: http://www.zoo-berlin.de

Japanese ship returns home with 508 whales

TOKYO (AP) -- A Japanese whaling ship returned to port from Antarctica Friday with a catch of 508 whales, despite having its annual hunt cut short by a deadly fire.

The Nisshin Maru's hunt had triggered a high-seas showdown with environmental groups even before the fire, and Greenpeace issued a fresh condemnation of Japan's whaling program, calling for the damaged ship to be retired.

Tokyo says its whaling provides crucial data for the International Whaling Commission on populations and feeding habits of whales in Antarctic seas.

The hunts are allowed by the commission, but environmental groups have long condemned the hunts as a pretext for keeping alive commercial whaling, which was banned in 1986.

The Nisshin Maru, with the word "RESEARCH" emblazoned just above the waterline, slipped into port flanked by about 10 patrol boats for security.

Journalists were being barred from the Tokyo wharf where the processing ship docked with its crew of 149. Japan's fisheries agency said it was investigating last month's fire and would hold a news conference next week.

The hunt off Antarctica had been scheduled to continue through the end of March. It was the first time in 20 years that Japan had to abort a whaling mission.

The six-vessel fleet managed to kill 508 whales out of a target of 860. The meat will be sold for human consumption.

Infuriated by the whaling, protesters aboard a ship operated by the environmental group Sea Shepherd had launched smoke canisters, tossed containers filled with chemicals and dropped ropes and nets to entangle the Japanese ships' propellors, Japanese video showed.

The protests have not been linked to the fire, which sent the ship drifting powerless for 10 days, raising concerns about potential oil and chemical spills.

The Nisshin Maru is the second ship in the whaling fleet to come home. Three more spotter ships are scheduled to return Saturday and the final vessel is to come home Sunday.