NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — Two police officers were gunned down Wednesday while on their way to work, bringing to five the number of authorities that have been slain in this violent border city in four days.

Ricardo Uvalle Escobedo and Jose de Jesus Morin Salinas were killed by unidentified assailants in separate incidents while en route from their homes to the Nuevo Laredo police station, said investigator Oscar Sepulveda.

Numerous spent Kalashnikov rifle shells were found near the vehicles of both officers, who were killed in different parts of the city, Sepulveda said.

The shootings came just hours after two men with machine guns opened fire with more than 50 rounds Tuesday night, killing a pair of police officers not far from city hall.

Cmdr. Daniel Juarez and Inspector Carlos Manuel Alvarez were riding in an unmarked car in an area between the municipal building and a crowded federal consumer protection office when they were ambushed, Sepulveda said.

Juarez was killed instantly, while Alvarez died about an hour later at a hospital.

The back-to-back slayings brought to 13 the number of police officers killed since January in Nuevo Laredo, home to 330,000 across the border from Laredo, Texas.

On Sunday night, Jose Noel Vives, a police agent for Tamaulipas state, which includes Nuevo Laredo, was shot 15 times and killed as he left his financee's house.

Authorities say two of Mexico's most powerful drug gangs are waging a bloody battle for control of key cocaine and marijuana smuggling routes into the United States. The conflict has unleashed a wave of violence.

President Vicente Fox has sent in the army and federal agents to restore order, but the violence has continued. Officials also ordered all members of the municipal police force off the streets for drug tests and background checks.

Juarez and Alvarez were returning from city hall, where members of the police force have gathered many days, awaiting reinstatement for patrol duties.

As of Wednesday, no one had been detained in any of the last three attacks.

'Star Trek's' Doohan dies, family will send remains to space

LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Doohan, who played the engineer on the original cult "Star Trek" TV series and movies and inspired the catch phrase "Beam me up, Scotty," left behind one final wish — to return to space.

Doohan, 85, told relatives before his death Wednesday that he wanted his ashes blasted into space where he will join the late "Star Trek" series creator Gene Roddenberry, whose remains were launched six years after his death in 1991.

"He'll be there with his buddy, which is wonderful," Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said.

Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. at his Redmond, Wash., home with his wife of 31 years, Wende, at his side, Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, he said.

Houston-based Space Services Inc., which specializes in space memorials, plans to send a few grams of Doohan's ashes, along with 125 others, aboard a rocket later this year. The remains, which will be sealed in aluminum capsules, will be in orbit until they burn up upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.

The Canadian-born Doohan was enjoying a busy career as a character actor when he auditioned for a role as an engineer in a new space adventure on NBC in 1966. A master of dialects from his early years in radio, he tried seven different accents.

"The producers asked me which one I preferred," Doohan recalled 30 years later. "I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding. So I told them, `If this character is going to be an engineer, you'd better make him a Scotsman."'

The series, which starred William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as the enigmatic Mr. Spock aboard the Starship Enterprise, attracted an enthusiastic following of science fiction fans but not enough ratings power. NBC canceled it after three seasons.

"A long and storied career is over. I knew Jim when he started out in Canada and I knew him in his last years in America, so we go way back. My condolences go out to his family," Shatner said.

When the series ended in 1969, Doohan found himself typecast as the canny engineer with a burr in his voice. In 1973, he complained to his dentist, who advised him: "Jimmy, you're going to be Scotty long after you're dead. If I were you, I'd go with the flow."

"I took his advice," Doohan said, "and since then everything's been just lovely."

"Star Trek" continued in syndicated TV both in the United States and abroad, and its following grew larger and more dedicated. In his later years, Doohan attended 40 "Trekkie" gatherings around the country and lectured at colleges.

The huge success of George Lucas' "Star Wars" in 1977 prompted Paramount Pictures, which had produced "Star Trek" for TV, to plan a movie based on the series. The studio brought back the TV cast and hired director Robert Wise. "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was successful enough to spawn five sequels.

The powerfully built Doohan, a veteran of D-Day in Normandy, spoke frankly in 1998 about his employer, Paramount, and his TV commander:

"I started out in the series at basic minimum— plus 10 percent for my agent. That was added a little bit in the second year. When we finally got to our third year, Paramount told us we'd get second-year pay! That's how much they loved us."

He accused Shatner of hogging the camera, adding: "I like Capt. Kirk, but I sure don't like Bill. He's so insecure that all he can think about is himself."

Shatner was on hand when Doohan received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in August 2004 and it appeared the men had mended fences. The star was part of a two-day fan farewell tribute to Doohan, who was retiring from public life after being diagnosed with Alzeimer's several months earlier.

James Montgomery Doohan was born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia, the youngest of four children of William Doohan, a pharmacist, veterinarian and dentist, and his wife Sarah. As he wrote in his autobiography, "Beam Me Up, Scotty," his father was a drunk who made life miserable for his wife and children.

At 19, James escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in the artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. "The sea was rough," he recalled. "We were more afraid of drowning than the Germans."

The Canadians crossed a minefield laid for tanks; the soldiers weren't heavy enough to detonate the bombs. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he usually managed to hide the missing finger on the screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. The chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.

After the war, Doohan on a whim enrolled in a drama class in Toronto. He showed promise and won a two-year scholarship to New York's famed Neighborhood Playhouse, where fellow students included Leslie Nielsen, Tony Randall and Richard Boone.

His commanding presence and booming voice brought him work as a character actor in films and television, both in Canada and the United States.

Oddly, his only other TV series besides "Star Trek" was another space adventure, "Space Command," in 1953.

Doohan's first marriage to Judy Doohan produced four children. He had two children by his second marriage to Anita Yagel. Both marriages ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Wende Braunberger, and their children were Eric, Thomas and Sarah, who was born in 2000, when Doohan was 80.

In a 1998 interview, Doohan was asked if he ever got tired of hearing the line "Beam me up, Scotty."

"I'm not tired of it at all," he replied. "Good gracious, it's been said to me for just about 31 years. It's been said to me at 70 miles an hour across four lanes on the freeway. I hear it from just about everybody. It's been fun."

Relentless heat in Phoenix kills 13; most victims homeless

PHOENIX (AP) — A record heat wave has led to the deaths of 13 people, most of them homeless, leaving officials scrambling to provide water and shelter to the city's transient population.

For the first time in years, homeless shelters opened their doors during the day to offer respite from the blistering sun, which has delivered above-average temperatures every day since June 29. Police began passing out thousands of water bottles donated by grocery stores, and city officials set up tents for shade downtown.

"I don't know why I'm not burnt to pieces," said Chris Cruse, 48, after taking refuge in a shelter.

Eleven of the victims were homeless, and the other two were elderly women, including one whose home cooling system was not on, police said Wednesday.

In all of last year, the state Department of Health Services documented 34 heat-related deaths among Arizona residents. The number of illegal immigrants killed by heat-related illnesses while trying to cross the desert are counted separately.

The first deaths were reported Saturday. By Wednesday, the forecast still called for a high of 108 degrees. Even during the coolest part of the day, the mercury has failed to descend lower than 89 degrees.

David Waing, a former truck driver who's been living on the streets of Phoenix for the past year, said he's been staying close to water by sleeping near one of the city's irrigation canals.

"In the mornings, about 9 or 10 o'clock, when it starts getting really hot, we just jump in and take a swim," he said. "The nights aren't much better. When the wind does blow, it feels like a blast furnace."

Both he and Cruse spent Wednesday at the Phoenix Rescue Mission watching movies in the shelter's chapel, which was opened Monday to anyone needing a break from the heat.

The shelter was also turning on hoses so transients could wet their clothes and had ordered 300 neckerchiefs that can be dipped in water and tied around the neck, said Bob Reed, a shelter manager.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said his office was seeking federal emergency help, even though government assistance is typically offered only for extreme cold weather, not blistering heat.

"Fair is fair. There are too many individuals dying of heat here," Gordon said.

Maricopa County, including Phoenix and its suburbs, has a homeless population between 10,000 and 12,000 people, said Gloria Hurtado, the city's human service director.

Hurricane Emily weakens, threatens northern Mexico with flooding

SAN FERNANDO, Mexico (AP) — Hurricane Emily blasted northeast Mexico with powerful winds and rains Wednesday, demolishing homes, triggering floods and forcing evacuations on both sides of the Mexican-U.S. border.

The week-old hurricane packing winds of 125 mph came ashore before dawn near San Fernando, about 75 miles south of the border, and spread destruction even as it steadily weakened to tropical storm strength by late in the day.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries, but thousands of residents and tourists were ordered to evacuate homes and hotels along the Gulf of Mexico. In southern Texas, about 4,000 people fled to 14 shelters.

The storm was closing in on Monterrey, the country's third-largest city, and officials there set up shelters to prepare for flash flooding.

Wednesday night, Emily had winds of 70 mph and was expected to slow to a tropical depression by Wednesday night, forecasters said.

Near San Fernando, one of the hardest-hit areas was the fishing village of Carbonera, where many of those who had been evacuated returned to find their homes destroyed. Lakes caused by flood waters were everywhere.

"The hurricane finished us," said Javier Hernandez Galvin, a 45-year-old fisherman who, because of a shortage of clothing, was barefoot, wearing only pink shorts and an old blue T-shirt.

Galvin said his home survived the storm, but a shed where he stored his fishing equipment and boat had been reduced to scraps of wood.

Eugenio Hernandez, governor of Tamaulipas state, which includes San Fernando, said officials were still accessing damage. He said some people fled their homes Wednesday night because of a rain-swollen river.

Emily's landfall Wednesday marked the second time in three days the storm hit Mexico. Last weekend, Emily drenched the south coast of Jamaica, killing four people and washing away at least three homes.

Officials in Mexico's Tamaulipas state, which borders Texas, said 18,000 people had been evacuated Tuesday from 20 seaside communities — including nearly everyone from the beachside community of Carbonera, a fishing hamlet that appeared to have taken a direct hit from the storm. Many small communities apparently were cut off by the storm.

Carbonera was considered too unsafe for even emergency officials to remain behind, but at least 10 people waited out Emily without leaving town.

"I stayed to guard the little I had," said 55-year-old Cornelio San Martin, who said he sent the rest of his family to a shelter in San Fernando, but complained that officials there gave them nothing to eat.

Another who refused to leave was Jose Mario Lara, a 52-year-old fisherman who stayed with his family in a tin-roofed house.

He said Emily was slightly less frightening than when Hurricane Gilbert tore through the area in 1988, which caused 300 deaths in Mexico and the Caribbean.

"Because of Gilbert people did not resist" the evacuation orders, said City Councilor Laurencio Garcia.

Also Wednesday, Mexico's state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Mexico, or Pemex, prepared to reinstall more than 16,000 workers who had been evacuated from offshore oil installations in the northern Gulf of Mexico as Hurricane Emily swept toward the U.S.-Mexico border.

Although the storm halted production temporarily, it didn't appear to have caused any major damage in the southern Gulf.

On the Net:

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

Authorities take DNA samples from youths in case of missing U.S. teen in Aruba

ORANJESTAD, Aruba (AP) — Authorities have taken DNA samples from a jailed Dutch youth and two of his friends as investigators turn their focus to physical evidence in the case of a missing Alabama teenager, defense attorneys said Wednesday.

The samples were taken Tuesday, a day after investigators said they would conduct DNA tests on blond hair attached to duct tape that was found along Aruba's northeastern coast, in a possible break to the six-week-old disappearance of Natalee Holloway.

Joran van der Sloot, 17, was taken to a hospital and submitted a saliva sample for the genetic testing sought by prosecutors, his attorney Richie Kock said.

Two Surinamese brothers, Satish Kalpoe, 18, and Deepak Kalpoe, 21, who were detained earlier in the case but released, also submitted saliva samples the same day, said Ruud Offringa, an attorney for the older brother.

Authorities told defense attorneys the DNA would be compared to material found by investigators but did not disclose what would be used in the comparison, Offringa and Kock said.

Van der Sloot and the brothers were the last people known to have seen Holloway before she vanished May 30. They have not been charged and all three maintain their innocence.

The three were arrested June 9, but a judge ordered the Kalpoe brothers released July 4 for lack of evidence. The judge ordered van der Sloot to remain in custody until Sept. 4, when prosecutors must present arguments again if they want to prolong the detention.

The saliva specimens will be sent to the Netherlands, and it could take a week or two for the findings to be disclosed, Offringa said. The test to determine if the hair came from Holloway also will take place in the Netherlands.

Aruba, a Dutch protectorate, doesn't have a lab to conduct the genetic testing.

A spokesman for the Aruban government, Ruben Trapenberg, declined to comment Wednesday on the investigation and the prosecutor could not be reached.

The FBI, which has been advising in the investigation, has said it would conduct separate genetic testing on the hair.

A park ranger found the duct tape while collecting trash Sunday on the opposite side of the island from where the 18-year-old honors student was last seen in public.

Holloway disappeared on the last day of a vacation with 124 classmates to celebrate their high school graduation. Extensive searches by Dutch marines, Aruban police, and some 2,000 volunteers have found no trace of her.

A volunteer search organization from Dickinson, Texas, that pulled its team from the island on Sunday said it planned to dispatch three people to the Caribbean island on July 28 with ground-penetrating radar.

Brain-dead woman's fetus past most critical developmental period

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A brain-dead pregnant woman on life support has reached the milestone in her pregnancy where doctors believe the baby could realistically survive outside the womb, giving her family renewed hope about the devastating ordeal.

Susan Torres, 26, lost consciousness from a stroke May 7 after aggressive melanoma spread to her brain. Her husband, Jason Torres, said doctors told him his wife's brain functions had stopped.

Her fetus recently passed the 24th week of development — the earliest point at which doctors felt the baby would have a reasonable chance to survive, her brother-in-law said.

"The situation is pretty stable," said Justin Torres, who is serving as the family's spokesman. "Susan, we have said from the beginning, is the toughest person in that ICU room."

He said the family is "as certain within the limits of sonogram technology" that the baby is a girl. "Cecilia" was one possible name the couple had discussed, Justin Torres said.

A Web site was set up to help raise money for the family's mounting medical bills, and they have now received about $400,000 in donations, Torres said. Jason Torres quit his job as a printing salesman to be by his wife's side and the family must pay tens of thousands of dollars each week that insurance does not cover, the family says.

Donations have poured in from around the world: Germany, Britain, Ireland, Japan — even a check with no note from a soldier in Iraq. On Monday, the family received a hand-knit baby blanket from a woman in Pennsylvania who was on a tight income but wanted to do something to help.

Jason Torres spends every night sleeping in a reclining chair next to his wife's bed at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, about 100 miles north of Richmond. The hospital has declined to comment on the case.

The couple's 2-year-old son, Peter, is staying with grandparents. He has not seen his mother, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, since her collapse.

If possible, the doctors hope to hold off on delivering the child until 32 weeks' gestation, Justin Torres said. A full-term pregnancy is about 40 weeks.

The melanoma has spread to her lymph nodes and taken over her vital organs, but they continue to function. There is a chance the cancer could spread to the placenta, but so far it has been spared, Justin Torres said. Extra precautions, including limiting the number of visitors, have recently been taken to help her avoid infections.

Doctors have held off on giving the family a prognosis because the situation is so rare, said Torres, who believes his sister-in-law will likely hang on for a few more weeks.

Since 1979, there have been at least a dozen similar cases published in English medical literature, said Dr. Winston Campbell, director of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Center, which conducted research on the topic.

Aside from the tubes and machines she is hooked up to, the tall and athletic Torres looks remarkably well, her brother-in-law said.

"She would have wanted us to fight for this baby — there's no doubt in our minds," Justin Torres said.

The family received an unexpected sliver of joy on June 21, when Jason Torres felt his child kick for the first time.

"It was a very, very nice reminder of what this is all about, and very heartening to us to know that we're making progress and that we're getting closer and closer," the brother-in-law said. "That was a very good day for everyone."

On the Net:

Susan Torres Fund: http://www.susantorresfund.org/

Acropolis facelifts near completion; scaffolding to come down on three ancient monuments

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — For years, tourists to the Acropolis have been frustrated to find ancient monuments shrouded in scaffolding, thanks to a long and painstaking restoration project.

Now, an end is in sight: Greek cultural officials said Wednesday that work on the Parthenon, the Athena Nike temple and the massive Propylaea gate — treasures built in the mid-fifth century B.C. at the height of Athenian glory — should be finished by the end of next year.

"These three works will be finished at the end of 2006," said architect Haralambos Bouras, a senior project official. "All three were vitally necessary, and failure to carry them out could have resulted in severe damage to the monuments."

Still, more scaffolding could go up at the Parthenon — the biggest crowd-puller — as projects on the Acropolis hill are expected to continue until 2020.

The multimillion-dollar restoration started 30 years ago, but the complexity of the work and funding snags caused considerable delays, with scaffolding embarrassing authorities during the 2004 Athens Olympics.

So far, the ancient marble structures have survived wars, fires and earthquakes, not to mention decades of modern pollution. Botched restoration efforts in the 1930s used iron clamps that rusted over the years, causing the marble to crack and break.

Work on the Athena Nike temple, an elegant Ionic structure at the entrance to the citadel, started in 1998. The whole building had to be taken down to its foundations.

According to Maria Ioannidou, who is supervising work on all three buildings, the ongoing effort is "the biggest restoration project currently under way in the world." The total estimated price tag is $84.4 million.

So far, nearly 1,000 blocks of stone have been removed from the three monuments and 1,100 parts have been assembled from ancient fragments. Restorers used marble from Mount Pendeli, north of Athens, whose ancient quarries provided the original building material. More than half of the blocks have now been treated and put back.

"We treat each piece like an individual work of art," Bouras said.

Only one of the four major Acropolis monuments, the Erechtheion temple, has been fully restored. In addition to the Parthenon, further repairs are needed to Propylaea and the wall surrounding the citadel.

Afterward, the hilltop will be landscaped with hundreds of tons of earth.

Sister recounts Elizabeth Smart's abduction

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Fearful the man would come back and take her too, Mary Katherine Smart quietly remained in bed for two hours until she got up the courage to tell her parents that her sister had been kidnapped.

"I thought, you know, be quiet, because if he hears you, he might take you, too, and you're the only person who has seen this and you have to tell them," she told Diane Sawyer in a recent interview for "ABC News/Primetime."

Her story of the June 2002 kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart is scheduled to air Thursday night on a show about five children who took heroic measures in horrible situations.

Mary Katherine was 9 when she witnessed her 14-year-old sister's abduction from their bedroom in an upscale neighborhood of Salt Lake City.

Nine months later, after widespread publicity and pleas from the family, Elizabeth was found walking in a suburb with Brian David Mitchell, a self-proclaimed street preacher who went by the name Immanuel. He had allegedly taken her as a second wife.

The night of the abduction, Mary Katherine remembers being "sort of awake."

"I saw this guy in my room, and I'm like, 'Who is he?"'

She said the man walked to Elizabeth. "He tapped her, and she's like, 'What is it?' And I guess she thought it was me."

Now 13, Mary Katherine says she doesn't know how Elizabeth remained calm as the man took her away. She says she didn't recognize the alleged abductor, and when she finally crawled out of bed to find her parents, all she could say was, "Dad, Elizabeth's gone."

It wasn't until several months later that Mary Katherine connected the alleged abductor with a homeless man who had once done work at the Smarts' home, a man who went by the name Immanuel.

"I was thinking, like, who has been to the house? And who was, like, suspicious?" she said. "And the name 'Immanuel' came into my head."

Mitchell is charged with kidnapping and other state counts and is awaiting a judge's decision on whether he is mentally competent to stand trial. His wife, Wanda Barzee, who had been with Mitchell and Elizabeth, was found incompetent to stand trial and is being treated at a state hospital. She has filed for divorce.

Mary Katherine says she rarely thinks about the abduction now. Her hope for Elizabeth: "To be happy."

Michael Jackson misses federal court hearing in civil lawsuit

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Neither Michael Jackson nor his attorney showed up Wednesday for a hearing in a civil case that accuses the pop star of sexual assaulting an 18-year-old during the 1984 World's Fair.

U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon scheduled an Aug. 17 hearing in which Jackson must show why he should not be held in civil contempt or have a default judgment entered against him.

Wednesday's hearing was supposed to be procedural for Jackson to show he had legal representation.

Jackson family spokesman Brian Oxman couldn't explain why Jackson wasn't represented at the hearing but said it would be taken care of.

"I will take care of this matter and make sure it is handled in an appropriate way — the order from the court today and the lawsuit," Oxman said.

He said the allegations against Jackson are false and said the lawsuit is another trying to take advantage of the singer's wealth and celebrity.

Joseph T. Bartucci Jr. claims in the lawsuit that he was lured into Jackson's limousine, then held against his will and sexually assaulted during a drive to California and back.

Bartucci was 18 at the time and claims he repressed the memories until 2003, when he saw media coverage of a child molestation trial at which Jackson was acquitted. The suit asks for an unspecified amount of money to compensate for alleged emotional and physical damage.

Jackson hired a team of local attorneys after Bartucci filed suit in November, but they withdrew from the case in April and have sued Jackson for $50,000 in legal fees.

Convicted Arizona serial killer sentenced to death; five women strangled in camper

PHOENIX (AP) — A man was sentenced to death for luring five women to a camper, strangling them during sex and dumping their bodies around a neighborhood.

Cory Morris was sentenced Tuesday in Maricopa County Superior Court, said Bill FitzGerald, a spokesman for prosecutors. He had been convicted July 11 of five counts of first-degree murder in the killings in 2002 and 2003.

Morris, 27, sat quietly as the verdicts were read. His defense attorney, James Logan, described him as naive and argued that there was no evidence of premeditation.

The women — Barbara Codman, Shanteria Davis, Jade Velazquez, Sherri Noah and Julie Castillo — were in their 30s or 40s and had drug or alcohol problems. One was a friend of Morris; several were prostitutes.

The women were killed in a camper behind a house owned by Morris' aunt, and their bodies were dumped in nearby alleys or on sidewalks. The women were allegedly killed for Morris' sexual gratification.

Morris contended the deaths were accidental.

Relatives had let Morris, a part-time karaoke disc jockey, sleep in the camper until he could get a stable job. A break in the case came when Morris' uncle went to check on a foul odor coming from the camper and discovered a body.

Morris was a suspect in the death of a sixth woman, Janice Irvin, but he was never charged.