PHOENIX - A convicted sex offender attended at least two Arizona middle schools, sat through seventh-grade courses and turned in homework as he moved around the state pretending to be 12 years old, officials say.

Authorities in Yavapai County have accused Neil Havens Rodreick II, who is really 29, of assaulting a girl. They are not releasing details.

Rodreick was arrested last week after spending a day at the Mingus Springs Charter School in Chino Valley, about 90 miles northwest of Phoenix. School officials there called police after they checked what they called a phony birth certificate and other admissions documents.

He has been charged with misdemeanor assault, conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to commit forgery, failing to register as a sex offender, and possession of a forgery device. He remains in the Yavapai County jail.

The sheriff's office there said Rodreick conned two men he was living with and having sex with into believing he was a young boy. One of them, 61-year-old Lonnie Stiffler, called himself Rodreick's grandfather when he tried to enroll him at Mingus Springs as "Casey Price."

Officials at another school, in the Phoenix area, said they were reviewing their admissions policies to figure out how they could have let an adult sex offender mix with students for so long.

"Our first priority is to help our students and our families establish a sense of security on our campus," said Rhonda Cagle, spokeswoman for the Imagine School at Rosefield, a charter school for kindergartners through eighth-graders, that Rodreick attended sporadically from August to November.

Rodreick showed up Aug. 14 at the Imagine School, officials said. He came to class from time to time, attending about 50 days until November, when administrators kicked him out for poor attendance.

"He was quiet," Cagle said of Rodreick. "He turned in his homework. There were no discipline issues. He was never sent to the principal's office. By most accounts he was aloof and kept to himself."

On Wednesday, officials of the Imagine School gave parents letters saying locks had been added to security gates and the school was working on a task force to evaluate parents' suggestions on school safety.

Parent Tricia Provost said as she dropped off her 10-year-old son and 6- and 8-year-old daughters at the school Wednesday that she wasn't worried. "I have a feeling this school is going to become the safest school in the country," Provost said.

Police say Rodreick may also have tried to enroll in other Arizona schools.

Authorities say Stiffler and Robert James Snow, 43, met Rodreick online, thinking he was a preteen, took him from Oklahoma to Arizona and carried on a sexual relationship with him. They were arrested after authorities served a search warrant at their Chino Valley home Thursday along with Brian J. Nellis, 34, a friend who authorities say followed Rodreick from Oklahoma to Arizona.

The Yavapai County attorney's office said it charged all three, along with Rodreick, with conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit forgery. Nellis and Snow were also charged with failing to register as sex offenders.

Because Snow and Stiffler are accused of thinking they were having sex with a minor, they were charged with attempted child molestation and attempted sexual contact with a minor.

All four men remain in jail. Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk would not comment Tuesday, and county public defender's office did not return phone calls.

Nellis' older brother, Richard, told The Associated Press that Rodreick met Brian Nellis more than 10 years ago while the two men were at Army basic training.

In 1996, police in Chickasha, Okla., arrested Rodreick after a 6-year-old boy said Rodreick spoke about "bad nasty things," documents say. Rodreick was convicted in 1996 of lewd and indecent proposal to a minor and sentenced to prison.

A year later, Nellis was convicted of lewd molestation and was imprisoned for three years, Oklahoma records say.

Associated Press Writer Amanda Lee Myers contributed to this report.

Former bass player with Social Distortion is struck and killed by a truck

PLACENTIA, Calif. (AP) - Brent Liles, a former bassist for the 1980s punk rock group Social Distortion, was struck and killed by a truck while riding a bicycle, authorities said Wednesday. He was 43.

Liles was hit on Jan. 18. No immediate charges were brought against the driver.

Liles, who was from Fullerton, joined Social Distortion in 1981 and played bass on the band's "Mommy's Little Monster" recording two years later.

Fed up with turmoil inside the group, he and drummer Derek O'Brien quit the band during a New Year's Eve performance in 1983.

Liles went on to play with other punk groups such as Agent Orange.

Exhausted German scientists surrender after 3-year battle to make sloth move

JENA, Germany (AP) - To thine own sloth, be true.

For three years, scientists at the University of Jena tried to persuade Mats the sloth to cooperate in an experiment on animal movement.

But nothing they tried - not even the promise of cucumbers and spaghetti - could persuade the lethargic Mats to get up off the floor of his cage, climb a pole and climb back down.

So Wednesday, scientists at the university's Institute of Systematic Zoology and Evolutionary Biology said they had finally given up. It was, perhaps, a triumph of nature over nudging researchers.

"Mats obviously wanted absolutely nothing to do with furthering science," said Axel Burchardt, a university spokesman.

Mats' new home is the zoo in the northwestern city of Duisburg where, according to reports, he is very comfortable.

Washington state lawmaker proposes allowing man's best friend to be drinking buddy

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - If dog-loving lawmakers prevail, Fido could soon be sidling up to bar stools around Washington state.

Soggy dogs waiting outside a downtown Olympia pub inspired state Sen. Ken Jacobsen to propose a way to get them in from the cold and rain.

"There's all sorts of places you can bring animals now," said Jacobsen, who doesn't own a dog. "You can take dogs into hotels. My God, some people are carrying dogs in their purses. Why can't we have them in the bars?"

The Seattle Democrat's bill would allow bars and restaurants with liquor licenses to welcome dogs, as long as they accompany their owners and remain well-behaved and leashed. Establishments wouldn't be required to allow dogs, except for service animals.

Janna Goodwin with the National Conference of State Legislatures said she could not find any states that allowed dogs in bars, or any that were considering similar legislation.

A slightly different law that went into effect in Florida last summer allows restaurants, approved by local governments, to permit dogs to eat with their owners outside.

Health officials said the ban on pets in restaurants and bars is based on Food and Drug Administration regulations.

"Animals don't use the toilet and they shed and they sometimes drool, and those are potential issues with food," said Joe Graham, public health adviser for the Washington state Department of Health.

Lisa Owens would like the bill to pass so she could bring her 112-pound Rottweiler, Ida, with her when meeting friends at bars in Olympia.

"If people were asking me to go somewhere and I could bring my dog, I might be more likely to go," she said.

But Mike Duffy, walking along a pier with his German shorthaired pointer, Emma, said he didn't think it was a great idea.

"If you want to take your dog out, go for a walk," he said. "If you want to go to the bar, leave the dog outside or at home."

The Senate Labor, Commerce, Research and Development Committee scheduled a public hearing on Jacobsen's proposal for Jan. 30.

On the Net:

Legislature: http://www.leg.wa.gov

Governor: http://www.governor.wa.gov

Former sheriff's deputy in Mississippi arrested in 1964 killings of 2 black men

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A white former sheriff's deputy who was once thought to be dead was arrested on federal charges Wednesday in one of the last major unsolved crimes of the civil rights era - the 1964 killings of two black men who were beaten and dumped alive into the Mississippi River.

The break in the 43-year-old case was largely the result of the dogged efforts of the older brother of one of the victims, who vowed to bring the killers to justice.

James Ford Seale, a 71-year-old reputed Ku Klux Klansman from the town of Roxie, was charged with kidnapping hitchhikers Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19.

The victims' weighted, badly decomposed bodies were found by chance two months later in July 1964, during the search for three civil rights workers whose disappearance and deaths in Philadelphia, Miss., got far more attention from the media and the FBI.

Seale is expected to be arraigned on Thursday in Jackson.

A second man long suspected in the attack, church deacon and reputed KKK member Charles Marcus Edwards, now 72, was not charged. There was no immediate explanation from federal prosecutors. Nor did they say why Seale was not charged with murder.

The arrest marked the latest attempt by prosecutors in the South to close the books on crimes from the civil rights era that went unpunished. In recent years, authorities in Mississippi and Alabama have won convictions in the 1963 assassination of NAACP activist Medgar Evers; the 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing that killed four black girls; and the 1964 Philadelphia, Miss., slayings.

"I've been crying. First time I've cried in about 50 years," Moore's 63-year-old brother, Thomas, said after the arrest. "It's not going to bring his life back. But some way or another, I think he would be satisfied."

Dee's sister, Thelma Collins, told The Associated Press through grateful sobs: "I never thought I would live to see it, no sir, I never did. I always prayed that justice would be done - somehow, some way."

Seale and Edwards are suspected of kidnapping the two victims in a Klan crackdown prompted by rumors that black Muslims were planning an armed "insurrection" in rural Franklin County. Seale and Edwards were arrested at the time.

But, consumed by the search for the three missing civil rights workers, the FBI turned the case over to local authorities. And a justice of the peace promptly threw out all charges against Seale and Edwards.

In 2000, the Justice Department's civil rights unit reopened the case.

For years, Seale's family had told reporters that he had died. But in 2005, Thomas Moore and a Canadian documentary filmmaker, David Ridgen, found Seale, old and sick, living just a few miles down the road from where the kidnapping took places.

"If they hadn't brought it to my attention, I wouldn't have known to do anything," said U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, chief federal prosecutor in Jackson.

Thomas Moore said he always carried a burden of guilt over his younger brother's death.

"I walked around with an amount of shame," the Colorado Springs, Colo., man said. "I didn't know why, why it happened to us, that I wasn't there to do something - to do SOMETHING."

Former Gov. William Winter, who was co-chairman of President Clinton's racial reconciliation initiative, said the latest arrest - though done by federal rather than state authorities - shows that Mississippi "now is obviously seeking to make up for lost time in bringing people to justice."

"Mississippi is taking a look at those crimes that were committed in a different era when a different attitude prevailed," said Winter, who governor in the 1980s.

On May 2, 1964, Charles Moore and Dee were hitchhiking near an ice cream stand in the town of Meadville when Seale pulled over and offered them a ride, a Klan informant told the FBI. The Klan had heard rumors of black Muslim gunrunning in the area, and Seale believed the two were involved, authorities said.

According to FBI interrogators, Edwards admitted that he and Seale took the two men into the woods for a whipping. But Edwards said both men were alive when he left them.

An informant told the FBI that Seale's brother and another Klansman took the unconscious blacks to the river, lashed their bodies to a Jeep engine block and some old railroad tracks, and dumped them over the side of a boat. The other Klansmen and the informant have since died.

Searchers were combing the woods and swamps for James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner when the remains of Dee and Moore were discovered near Tallulah, La. The bodies of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were found in an earthen dam in Mississippi a short time later.

According to FBI documents from the 1960s, authorities confronted Seale and told him they knew he and others killed the hitchhikers, and "the Lord above knows you did it."

"Yes," Seale was quoted as replying, "but I'm not going to admit it. You are going to have to prove it."

The U.S. Justice Department reopened the case after The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson uncovered documents indicating that the beatings had occurred in the Homochitto National Forest, giving the FBI jurisdiction. But the case languished until Seale was located.

"I had other plans to confront him a long time ago - violently," Thomas Moore said.

Stomach flu sickened hundreds of passengers on Queen Elizabeth

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A highly contagious form of stomach flu sickened hundreds of passengers during a worldwide voyage on the famed Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise ship in what health officials called an unusually large outbreak.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 276 passengers and 28 crew members had come down with norovirus by the time the ship docked Wednesday in San Francisco for a regularly scheduled stop, though only four passengers remained sick.

The infections amounted to nearly 17 percent of the ship's 1,652 passengers, a particularly high percentage, said Jaret Ames, acting chief of the CDC's vessel sanitation program. By comparison, a norovirus outbreak last month aboard the world's largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas, infected 338 passengers out of 3823, or less than 9 percent.

The CDC boarded the QE2 on Friday in Acapulco, Mexico, to investigate the infections. The agency defines an outbreak as an illness that affects more than 3 percent of a ship's passengers.

Investigators determined the emergency sanitation measures put in place by the QE2's crew, from disinfecting casino chips to halting self-service at the ship's buffet, were containing the outbreak.

"This one was a good example where they had a lot of cases but they did gain control over the spread of infection," Ames said.

In rare cases, the elderly and young children can die from dehydration caused by norovirus symptoms. The infection, which ranks second only to the common cold in reported cases, usually clears up in two or three days with no lasting effects.

No passengers have canceled their tickets as a result of the outbreak, said Brian O'Connor, a spokesman for Cunard Line, the Valencia-based company that operates the QE2.

The ship departed Jan. 8 from New York on the first leg of its 106-day cruise around the world. It was to leave San Francisco for Honolulu on Wednesday night.

Man finds rocket while hunting

ST. GEORGE, Utah (AP) - Police briefly evacuated a neighborhood to take possession of a military-grade rocket that was discovered by a coyote hunter.

The man saw the rocket sticking out of the ground, dug it up and took it home Sunday. He called police when he realized it might not be safe to keep.

"It comes from a shoulder-fired weapon like a bazooka," St. George bomb-squad commander Jason Whipple said Tuesday. "It was an old piece of ordnance, from back in the '50s and '60s."

The area where the rocket was found was a former National Guard firing range, he said.

Authorities did not know if it was a live round.

"The part that would have told us that had been rusted over," Whipple said.

The 2.5-foot-long rocket was taken to a remote area of Washington County and destroyed.

Protester Sheehan drops lawsuit over bans near Bush ranch

WACO, Texas (AP) - California war protester Cindy Sheehan has dropped her lawsuit challenging county camping and parking bans near President Bush's Crawford ranch.

Fort Worth attorney David Broiles, who represents Sheehan's group, asked to withdraw the lawsuit because two war protesters are appealing their recent conviction in a related case.

"We will get a resolution faster" by addressing the county bans in that appeal, he said Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. of Waco approved Sheehan's request to drop the suit on Monday.

Last month a McLennan County jury convicted two protesters - one from Oklahoma, the other from Austin - on misdemeanor charges for obstructing a road near the president's ranch. They are appealing to Waco's 10th Court of Appeals.

Colo. ranchers still struggling to reach cattle stranded by snow

DENVER (AP) - A month after the first wave of devastating winter storms hit Colorado, some eastern Colorado ranchers still haven't been able to get feed to their cattle, state Agriculture Commissioner John Stulp said Wednesday.

State officials estimate that about 10,000 cattle died in the storms, although some agriculture groups think the toll could reach 15,000 once all the carcasses are found.

With calving season under way, the damage is expected to get worse, Stulp told lawmakers in a briefing.

"They're starting to calve now. We're expecting losses," Stulp said.

"It really has been a continuing disaster, about 30 days in longevity. The real loss is still buried in the snow," he said.

Compounding the deep snow is a shortage of hay, with prices doubling and even tripling - if ranchers can find any.

Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, estimated Colorado ranchers will spend $10 million to $20 million extra on feed this year and said the state must find a way to help struggling farmers and ranchers.

"It certainly isn't going to end tomorrow," she said.

Stulp said the state is still trying to get help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but it will only reimburse local governments and the state for rescue efforts, not losses suffered by farmers and ranchers.

Gov. Bill Ritter is also seeking a disaster declaration by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, which would make low-interest loans available to ranchers, farmers, feedlot owners and counties.

Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, said the state needs to set up an agricultural disaster fund to protect one of the state's biggest industries.

"It's not a handout. These do happen, and it will happen again," Gardner said.

Stulp said he hopes farmers and ranchers can survive until they can get financial aid.

"It may be a while in coming, but hopefully we can get them some reimbursement and keep them solvent," he said.

Navajo Code Talker dies at age 83

SHIPROCK, N.M. (AP) - Navajo Code Talker David Tsosie has died at age 83.

Tsosie died Saturday in Bloomfield, where he had lived for several years.

"I was really proud of him. He did some truly wonderful things," said a nephew, Charles Phillips of Shiprock.

Navajo Nation Council delegates paused for a moment of silence Wednesday during their winter session to honor Tsosie.

Tsosie had a Purple Heart from his World War II service. In June 1944, Tsosie was wounded during the battle of Saipan when flying shrapnel hit him in the leg.

Navajo Code Talkers used their native language to transmit military messages on enemy tactics, Japanese troop movements and other battlefield information in a code the Japanese never broke. According to the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., Code Talkers took part in every assault the Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945.

There were 29 original Code Talkers, but eventually several hundred Navajos served as Code Talkers during the war. Their role in the war was not declassified until 1968.

Tsosie had been prohibited from speaking Navajo at a Farmington boarding school where he lived for nine months of the year while he was growing up, but he learned the language at home and spoke it with friends.

The Code Talkers were honored with congressional medals in 2001 - gold for the original group; silver for the others. But Tsosie's medal was delayed until 2002. His role had to be confirmed firm because of a gap in military records.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman presented the belated silver medal to Tsosie in a ceremony that drew 300 people. Tsosie shared the stage with then-Navajo Nation president Kelsey Begaye and other dignitaries.

After his discharge from the military, he enrolled in Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo. When he graduated, he went to work for uranium mining company Kerr-McGee Corp., then for the state Department of Labor, said a nephew, Alfred Bennett of Bosque Farms.

As Tsosiee grew older, he was bothered by his old injury and haunted by combat flashbacks and returned to a traditional Navajo life of herding sheep.

"He'd tell me he'd be running up, killing people. … He would tell a lot of stories, he had some bad memories, a lot gruesome," Phillips said. "He had a lot of bad memories."

Hungary: World's first in-vitro rhino born at Budapest Zoo

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - Lulu and Easyboy were more like siblings than lovers, so Budapest Zoo officials resorted to in-vitro fertilization to get her pregnant.

Now, 16 months later, the world's first rhino conceived by artificial insemination has been born, zoo officials said Wednesday.

The unnamed female weighed in at 128 pounds when she was born Tuesday.

"The little one seemed active and vital. An hour after being born it stood up on its own legs," a zoo statement said.

The mother, 26-year-old Lulu, had failed to conceive naturally, even when put with a male rhino named Easyboy. A group of veterinarians from Germany, Austria and Hungary started in-vitro fertilization and she finally became pregnant in 2005.

"An in-vitro fertilization was necessary because the two rhinos had not shown any sexual interest in each other," the statement said. "The two have rather developed a friendship, more of a relationship between siblings."

Since mid-December, rhino caretakers have been monitoring Lulu's progress around the clock.

The proud mother has been protective of her newborn but hasn't nursed the baby. The zoo said she had also turned aggressive, but added that an initial refusal to feed was natural with inexperienced mother rhinos.

Until Lulu gets the hang of things, the baby rhino is being fed by zoo workers.

The baby rhino was carried for 16 months and 15 days, which is normal.

By early spring, the zoo's new addition will appear in public for the first time, zoo spokesman Zoltan Hanga said.

World's oldest person dies at age 115 at home in Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Emiliano Mercado del Toro was born when Puerto Rico was still a Spanish colony and trained as a soldier the year World War I ended.

On Wednesday, having spent just a month as the world's oldest person, he died at his home on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, his grandniece, Dolores Martinez told The Associated Press. He was 115.

"He died like a little angel," Martinez said.

Mercado del Toro never married and had no children.

In the seaside town of Isabela, he became a local celebrity after he was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for his longevity.

"We're all crying, but we knew this day would come," said town spokeswoman Rosa Luciano.

Mercado del Toro, who was born on Aug. 21, 1891, became the oldest known person in the world last month when 116-year-old Elizabeth "Lizzie" Bolden died in December in a nursing home in Tennessee.

A 114-year-old Connecticut woman, Emma Faust Tillman, is now believed to be the oldest living person. She was born Nov. 22, 1892.

Police search for fugitive who stole big rig in Tenn. to see dying mother

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A man who escaped from a prison van in South Carolina made his way more than 300 miles to Tennessee, where he stole a big rig in hopes of seeing his dying mother, police said.

Authorities searched Wednesday for Christopher Daniel Gay, who escaped Sunday night near Hardeeville, S.C., while a prison transport company was shuttling him from Georgetown, Texas, to Pell City, Ala.

"He was trying to get home to see his mom, that's what I believe," said Michael Douglas, police chief in Pleasant View, about 20 miles northwest of Nashville.

Gay's mother has terminal cancer, authorities said.

Gay was being chased by police Tuesday when he drove the truck full of Wal-Mart merchandise into a field just 50 yards away from the mobile home where his mother lives and hasn't been seen since.

Investigators do not believe Gay is armed, Douglas said.

Gay was arrested last month in Texas and was wanted in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee on various charges of escape and felony theft of trucks and other heavy equipment.