CHARDON, Ohio - Though she's only a 6-pound Chihuahua-rat terrier mix who looks like she belongs in Paris Hilton's purse, Midge has the will, skill and nose of a 100-pound German shepherd.

The newest recruit for the Geauga County Sheriff Department's K-9 unit could very well be the nation's smallest drug-sniffing pooch.

"Good girl," Sheriff Dan McClelland says, praising the 7-month-old, tail-wagging puppy, during a recent training exercise.

McClelland began training Midge for drug-detecting duties when she was just 3 months old, after reading about departments being sued by suspects whose cars or homes were damaged by larger dogs.

Like many police departments, Geauga County has had German shepherds and Labrador retrievers for years. In fact, visitors often ask, "Is the big dog out?" - referring to 125-pound Brutus, says Lt. Tom McCaffrey, Brutus' handler.

Still, Brutus' intimidating, deep-pitched bark disappears when Midge - her name is short for midget - playfully wrestles with him in the grass outside the old jail. That's where the dogs participate in narcotics training, where Midge watches the bigger dog maneuver through cabinets, heating vents and other spaces in search of marijuana.

Police dogs must pass a test in which they successfully search for drugs in several places to get state certification. Then they can officially become K-9s and conduct legal searches. McClelland hopes Midge will receive her working papers when she is about a year old.

McClelland's idea of using smaller dogs was reinforced when he returned from vacationing in Canada and saw U.S. Customs officials using beagles to sniff luggage.

The sheriff seems to be part of a trend, as others are training smaller dogs for police uses.

Dogs called Belgian Malinois have earned spots on departments in Pennsylvania, Michigan, South Carolina and Ohio after training by Dave Blosser, owner of the private Tri-State Canine Services in Warren, Ohio. The breed can be as small as 40 pounds, and Blosser compares the dogs favorably to larger breeds.

"Size wise, endurance wise they last longer," he says.

And there are other advantages to smaller dogs, says Bob Eden, whose Eden Consulting Group trains police dogs and handlers. "Smaller pups can get into smaller and tighter spaces in order to carry out their searches," Eden says.

On the other hand, dogs that are too small may not be able to get around certain obstacles - and there could be a credibility problem, Eden says.

"A Jack Russell terrier may make an extremely capable narcotics detection dog," he says, "yet some agencies would shy away from using such a breed simply because the dog doesn't have the same respect level from the public as a Lab or shepherd might."

As for a Chihuahua-rat terrier like Midge working as a K-9, well, the president of the North American Police Work Dog Association, H.D. Bennett, says he's never heard of a police dog so small it nearly fits in an outstretched palm.

That's not stopping McClelland, who bought Midge from a co-worker's relative and takes her everywhere with him - she even has a pair of goggles for rides on the sheriff's motorcycle. On a recent day, she was curled in his lap, sporting a black "sheriff" vest over her brown-spotted white fur.

The sheriff says he knew instantly Midge would be good for his police experiment in Geauga County, whose picturesque rolling farm land and old-fashioned town squares are home to about 90,000 people east of Cleveland.

"She is very calm. She is not yappy. She likes people a lot, really loves kids," he says as he strokes the dog.

Midge has helped boost the department's relationship with the community. The tiny dog was grand marshal for a Memorial Day parade, wearing an American flag scarf while perched atop a motorcycle.

She has been a hit in the county jail, where McClelland takes her to visit well-behaved inmates. Wearing flip-flops, some of the prisoners giggle when Midge licks their toes. Others cuddle her close as they talk with the sheriff about missing their own dogs at home.

On visits to school classrooms, Midge gets passed among tiny hands. And McClelland offers a lesson:

"I tell the kids, 'Even when you're small, if you take a stand you can make a difference."'

On the Net:

http://www.sheriff.geauga.oh.us/

http://www.policek9.com/

Heat wave reaches Northeast; New York dims its lights

NEW YORK (AP) - Blistering heat settled over the eastern half of the nation Tuesday, sending man and beast in desperate search of relief: An air-conditioned subway car in New York City. A plunge into the Atlantic Ocean in New Jersey. And cold showers for suffering livestock in Ohio.

The same heat wave that was blamed for as many as 164 deaths in California brought a fifth straight day of oppressive weather to Chicago and promised at least three days of brow-mopping temperatures in the New York metropolitan area.

Residents on Chicago's South Side were evacuated from buildings by the hundreds, one day after the power went out to 20,000 customers. Illinois officials blamed three deaths on the heat. The blistering temperatures also scorched Conyers, Ga., where a high school football player died one day after collapsing at practice.

"I am pretty much dying," said Grace Hartmann, a New York University student. "I'm from California, where it's not this hot and not humid. To be honest, I can't believe it's going to be hotter" on Wednesday.

By midafternoon, the temperature in Chicago was 100, Baltimore reached 99 and Washington hit 97, though the humidity made it feel like 107. In New York's Central Park, it was 95; the record for the date was 100, set in 1933. The National Weather Service said the mercury could reach 104 on Wednesday, and Thursday could be bad, too.

"This is a very dangerous heat wave," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "It's more than just uncomfortable. It can seriously threaten your life."

With a disastrous 10-day power outage in Queens still fresh in memory, the city adopted energy conservation measures. Thermostats in city offices were set at 78, and large municipal installations such as the Rikers Island jail used backup generators.

The giant Pepsi-Cola sign on the Brooklyn waterfront was to be dimmed, as were the lights illuminating the George Washington Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge and other spans.

Ohio farmers used fans and cold showers to keep their cattle cool. Even with those efforts, the animals produced about 10 pounds less milk per day because of the heat, said farmer Clark Emmons of Fayette, Ohio.

Colonial Downs, a horse track in New Kent County, Va., canceled racing because of the 100-degree heat. But gamblers still could take refuge in the air-conditioned simulcasting area, where they could watch and bet on races taking place elsewhere.

Joe Calandro, a mechanic in New Haven, Conn., worked on an Oldsmobile with an electrical problem. Despite ceiling fans and wide-open garage doors, there was little escape from the heat.

"A hot day like this, a car that comes in that's been running all day, it's like sticking your head in a furnace," Calandro said.

In New Jersey, soaring temperatures were suspected in a huge fish kill at a Piscataway lake, and beachgoers were on the sand and in the water before most people had arrived at work.

Diana Tredennick of East Brunswick, N.J., slathered herself with sunscreen before 8:30 a.m. "I'll be in the water a lot," promised Tredennick, who brought along a cooler filled with ice and water.

Some people had no choice but to muddle through the day at work. Lee Spivey, 42, stood on a street near ground zero, directing tourist traffic and moving construction trucks through lower Manhattan.

"You just deal with it," he said. "This is not the hottest day, but tomorrow might be."

Associated Press Writers Matt Apuzzo in Connecticut, Geoff Mulvihill and Wayne Parry in New Jersey, Pat Milton and Amy Westfeldt in New York City, Zinie Chen Sampson in Virginia, John Seewer in Ohio and Don Babwin in Illinois contributed to this report.

On the Net:

Cooling Centers: www.nyc.gov/html/oem/html/hazards/heat-cooling.shtml

Widespread flooding hits El Paso, Texas, prompting evacuations

EL PASO, Texas (AP) - A third day of heavy rain caused widespread flooding around El Paso on Tuesday, swamping mountainside homes, forcing evacuations and closing major roads.

Emergency crews juggled an onslaught of distress calls, but there were no immediate reports of any serious injuries.

"We're doing OK at the moment," said police spokesman Javier Sambrano.

Fire officials said they were worried about boulders and other debris falling from rocky cliffs around several El Paso neighborhoods.

Rosa Reyes was given five minutes to evacuate with her 6-year-old daughter and a neighboring family after a rock wall behind her home collapsed. The tumbling wall punched a hole in the side of a house.

"The material things can be replaced," she said. "It sure didn't feel like five minutes."

A small apartment complex on a hill above Reyes' home was in danger of collapsing and had to be evacuated, said fire Capt. Keith Burch.

The parched region had less than an inch of rain in the first six months of the year. But it may have gotten as much as 6 inches since Sunday, the National Weather Service said. Forecasters expect the rain to continue through at least Wednesday morning.

Volunteer fire departments around the county helped residents sandbag their homes.

Skeletal remains found in New Orleans home flooded by Katrina

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Eleven months after Hurricane Katrina, firefighters found skeletal remains in a dilapidated home filled with debris and jumbled furniture.

Firefighters broke through a back door blocked by rubble on Monday to get into the home in eastern New Orleans, said John Gagliano, chief coroner's investigator. With the help of a search dog, they found the bones under a pile of debris in a bedroom.

The discovery was made after a man reported that he believed his mother was still in her house. DNA tests will be used to identify the remains.

The death toll from Katrina in Louisiana is 1,577, including 281 who died in other states shortly after the storm.

Firefighters search homes when they get specific information from families who are still missing loved ones. Because homes have shifted and collapsed, special equipment is often needed to get into buildings.

Chinese county kills 50,000 dogs in campaign against rabies

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - China slaughtered 50,000 dogs in a government-ordered crackdown after three people died of rabies, sparking unusually pointed criticism in state media Tuesday and an outcry from animal rights activists.

Health experts said the brutal policy pointed to deep weaknesses in the health care infrastructure in China, where only 3 percent of dogs are vaccinated against rabies and more than 2,000 people die of the disease each year.

The five-day slaughter in Mouding county in Yunnan province in southwestern China ended Sunday and spared only military guard dogs and police canine units, state media reported.

Dogs being walked were seized from their owners and beaten to death on the spot, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported. Led by the county police chief, killing teams entered villages at night creating noise to get dogs barking, then beat the animals to death, the reports said.

Owners were offered 63 cents per animal to kill their own dogs before the teams were sent in, they said.

The killings were widely discussed on the Internet, with both legal scholars and animal rights activists criticizing them as crude and cold-blooded. The World Health Organization said more emphasis needed to be placed on rabies prevention.

The official newspaper Legal Daily blasted the killings as an "extraordinarily crude, cold-blooded and lazy way for the government to deal with epidemic disease."

"Wiping out the dogs shows these government officials didn't do their jobs right in protecting people from rabies in the first place," the newspaper, published by the central government's Politics and Law Committee, said in an editorial in its online edition.

In an editorial, the official Xinhua News Agency said the killings wouldn't have been necessary if the local government had been more attentive, but called the slaughter "the only way out of a bad situation."

"If they'd discovered this earlier, they could have vaccinated the dogs and … controlled the outbreak," the editorial said.

The killings prompted calls for a boycott of Chinese products from the activist group People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

"We are urging everyone to actively boycott - not a word we use lightly - anything from China given the bludgeoning killing of thousands of dogs," PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said.

She said the group had canceled all orders of merchandise it sells that are made in China. Will Wright, at PETA's European office in London, said the orders were worth about $300,000.

"We believe other groups will join us in expressing outrage over the blatant cruelty to animals the world is witnessing," Wright said.

Mouding County officials defended the slaughter in a region where about 360 of the 200,000 residents suffered dog bites this year, with three people reportedly dying of rabies, including a 4-year-old girl.

"With the aim to keep this horrible disease from people, we decided to kill the dogs," Li Haibo, a spokesman for the county government, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Calls to county government offices went unanswered Tuesday. Located in mountains about 1,240 miles southwest of Shanghai, Mouding is famed for its Buddhist shrines.

Unlike in the West, where dogs have long been cherished as companions or helpmates, dogs have rarely had an easy time in China. Dog meat is eaten throughout the country, revered as a tonic in winter and a restorer of virility in men.

Following the communist seizure of power in 1949, dog ownership was condemned as a bourgeois affectation and canines were hunted as pests. Attitudes have softened in recent years, although urban Chinese are still subject to strict rules on the size of their pets and must pay steep registration fees.

About 70 percent of rural households now keep dogs, according to the Chinese Center of Disease Control and Prevention, and increased rates of dog ownership have been tied to a surge in the number of rabies cases in recent years. It said there were 2,651 reported deaths from the disease in 2004, the last year for which data was available.

Access to rabies treatment is also highly limited, especially in the countryside, said Dr. Francette Dusan, a World Health Organization expert.

Effective rabies control requires coordinated efforts between human health, animal health and municipal agencies and authorities, Dusan said.

"This has not been pursued adequately to date in China, with most control efforts consisting of purely reactive dog culls," she said.

NYC police recruit charged with plotting to have girlfriend killed

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) - A New York City police recruit pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he plotted to have his ex-girlfriend killed for $3,000 because she didn't want to get married, prosecutors said.

Authorities said they nabbed Kabeer Din, 22, when he met with an undercover officer posing as a hired killer, discussed a plan to kill the woman and handed over his credit card, New York Police Department chief spokesman Paul Browne said Monday.

Din was arraigned Tuesday on a charge of second-degree conspiracy to commit murder. Suffolk District Judge Joseph Santorelli set bail at $150,000 cash, or $1.5 million bond.

Din, a recruit or probationary officer, was suspended without pay, Browne said. He previously was a police officer in Baltimore, Browne said.

"He got outstanding recommendations," Browne said. "Nothing untoward surfaced" in checks.

On Friday, an unidentified source told the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau that Din was "looking for someone to kill his girlfriend," Browne said. Din was ready to marry but the 24-year-old woman didn't want to tie the knot, Browne said.

Later that day, New York City police recorded a call in which the source told Din he knew someone who could carry out the scheme, Browne said.

On Monday, Din met with the source and an undercover Suffolk County police officer in Holtsville, on Long Island, Browne said.

Din gave the man he thought was an assassin a photograph of the woman, $200 in cash and his credit card, Browne said.

Man accused of shining laser pointer at NYC police helicopter

NEW YORK (AP) - A 19-year-old man was arrested after authorities said he shined a laser pointer at a police helicopter.

The bright green laser beamed into the cockpit late Monday night, temporarily blinding the officers, said Melissa Klein, an NYPD spokeswoman.

Police arrested Anthony Pepe a short time later, and charged him with reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon, Klein said.

In December, a Paterson, N.J., man was charged with shining a laser pointer into the cockpit of a hovering news helicopter.

Pedro Vega, 36, was charged with a variety of offenses, including interference with transportation and assault, after authorities said he beamed the laser pointer into the cockpit of a WNBC television helicopter.

And in November, David W. Banach, 39, of Parsippany, N.J., who had flashed a laser pointer at a commercial airplane, pleaded guilty to violating a section of the USA Patriot Act involving interfering with pilots of a passenger aircraft.

The crew aboard the charter flight from Boca Raton, Fla., said the laser temporarily blinded two pilots, and they could not see their flight instruments.

Two men found safe in closed W.Va. mine after entering in search of scrap metal to sell

MAMMOTH, W.Va. (AP) - Two men who sneaked into a closed coal mine to search for scrap metal to sell were rescued after they became lost about 3,000 feet inside the mine, authorities said

Crews found Franklin Johnson, 44, and Glen Edelman, 35, Monday evening, a few hours after family members reported them missing. They were treated at a hospital and released.

The rescuers traced them by following the fumes from a fire the two had set after their flashlight failed as they hunkered down in the mine, authorities said. An expert said they were lucky they didn't set off an explosion or suffocate themselves.

The men, who were last seen Saturday, didn't have any food but there was water in the mine to drink, State Police Trooper 1st Class R.H. Green said.

Holly Johnson, 26, said her brother-in-law stopped by Saturday morning to borrow a flashlight and said he was going to the mine to look for scrap metal.

"We didn't think nothing of it," she said. "He's always looking for ways to get money, to pay the bills and eat."

Green said Johnson and Edelman managed to get into the mine by crawling through a hole in the ground that looked like "a groundhog hole." The rescuers had to use an excavator to enlarge the hole so they could enter the mine, he said.

The mine, which is owned by Massey Energy Inc., closed in 1993, and the entrance was barricaded to keep people out. Shane Harvey, a Massey lawyer, said rescue crews found tools and copper wiring in the mine and hoped the men would be charged with trespassing.

"It's very dangerous to break into a mine," he said. "They really risked their lives for very little."

Magicians from around the world compete for top title, Las Vegas deals

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - A German illusionist levitates a table covered with a purple cloth, as fellow magicians scrutinize his every move.

"Even though I know how it works, I just can't understand how it can work," mutters a rival. "That's magic for you."

Tables floating shoulder-high, cards sailing through the air, rabbits pulled out of hats: every old trick in the book and plenty of new ones are being conjured up as over 2,000 magicians from China to the Virgin Islands take part this week in the World Championship in Magic.

Stakes are high for the 156 top magicians competing in the main event for best illusionist stage show and sleight-of-hand routine: three top finishers are guaranteed contracts for lucrative shows in Las Vegas, Paris and Monaco.

"This is like the Olympics of magic," said John Connelly of Seymour, Conn. "If you win (the main event) you're made. You'll probably make a million dollars."

The championship, which started Monday and ends Saturday, is not open to the public - only to magicians registered for the event. It's held every three years in a different city; winners get a gold medal and a trophy but no cash prize.

Arthur Trace of Chicago is one of the hopefuls to become the next Lance Burton, the celebrated Las Vegas magician who won the event in 1982 when it was staged in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Trace, 26, said he worked four years to perfect the 10-minute routine he performed in the stage competition - a conceptual artist interacting with a painting while balls and cards keep appearing and disappearing in his hands.

"I am both an artist and an athlete," he said. "Magic is just like a painting. I use it to say what I want."

For most magicians here, the gathering is just a fun way to share trade secrets, learn new tricks and peddle their magical tools - the vast majority are not competing in the main event.

But the influx of magicians has suddenly turned Stockholm into a conjurers' capital: Visiting magicians are giving public shows, conducting workshops and performing street acts throughout the city all week.

In the hall, dozens of professionals have also set up booths to display their skills and products. This part of the event is open to the public, and it gives the layman a chance to discover the secrets of famous magic tricks.

Want to know how to shove a bottle cap through the bottom of a bottle? Rey Ben of Argentina is happy to explain it - and sell the device to pull it off.

Israeli Menny Lindenfeld illustrates how to tease a waitress by giving her a credit card with a small hole over the magnetic strip, and then making the hole wander across the card to a different spot. "It is great for talking to girls," he said.

While peddlers and performers have come from all over the world, many of their tricks are similar. Magic, it turns out, is much the same anywhere you go.

"It is all based on the same secret," said Dirk Losander, the German levitating illusionist. "It is like there are only seven notes (in music), but you can arrange them in different ways."

Or according to top Las Vegas magician Jeff McBride: "Magic is an international language … It transcends all the language and cultural barriers."