ATLANTA - Federal officials have made a "record-breaking seizure" of crystal methamphetamine buried in the back yard of a rural home that they say was used by a Mexican-based drug ring.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents found 187.5 pounds of suspected meth and about 90 pounds of suspected cocaine during a search last week, said DEA special agent Sherri Strange said Monday.

She called it the third largest meth seizure in the U.S. this year, with an estimated street value of $25 million to $50 million.

Agents charged four men - two of them residents of Mexico - with possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and cocaine. All four were captured during the raid at the home in Buford, 33 miles northeast of Atlanta.

Officials said the operation was part of a Mexican drug ring that distributes large quantities of meth and cocaine from Mexico by moving it through California and Texas to points throughout the U.S.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Thomas said the seizure "underscores the increasing significance that Atlanta plays in the world of drug trafficking."

JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect agrees to be sent to Colorado

LOS ANGELES (AP) - John Mark Karr agreed Tuesday to be sent to Colorado to face charges in the long-unsolved murder of 6-year-old beauty pageant princess JonBenet Ramsey.

Handcuffed to a chain around the waist of his orange jail jumpsuit, Karr quietly affirmed his decision to waive an extradition hearing in a brief appearance before a judge in the city where he has been jailed following his return from Thailand.

The 41-year-old school teacher slowly closed his eyes when Superior Court Judge Luis Lavin revealed the charges in a sealed probable-cause arrest warrant issued Aug. 15 in Boulder County, Colo.: first-degree murder after deliberation, felony murder, first-degree kidnapping, second-degree kidnapping, and sexual assault on a child.

Although his public defender and a former defense attorney described Karr as eager to go, it was unclear how soon the Boulder County Sheriff's Department would pick him up. Los Angeles County jail officials said they had not been contacted about a transfer and officials in Boulder said they wouldn't discuss any details.

JonBenet's father found her body in the basement of her Boulder home on Dec. 26, 1996. Last week Karr was named a suspect. He told reporters in Thailand before he voluntarily flew to Los Angeles on Sunday that he was present when she died and that it was an accident.

Jamie Harmon, an attorney who represented Karr when he was charged in 2001 with possessing child pornography in Northern California and described herself as an adviser now, downplayed his comments to reporters about being with the girl when she died.

"A confession is a legal term … and the statements taken from Mr. Karr are primarily sound bites," Harmon said outside court. "We have no idea what the context of the comments may be."

She also said Karr was injured by aggressive camera crews in Thailand and has three bruised ribs and bruises on his body.

Harmon said she and another attorney, Patience Van Zandt, would be advising Karr "in some capacity" but that she would not be accompanying him to Colorado.

"He wants to go now," Harmon said. "Mr. Karr has been portrayed by the media as of late as being mentally unstable, attention-seeking, unwell, mentally unwell. And he is none of those things. He is anxious to have an opportunity to address the allegations against him, to be portrayed in a more accurate and complete way."

The attorney said Karr was "not subject to ready categorization or easy answers."

"You've heard the expression, `He marches to the beat of a different drummer?' John Karr marches to the beat of a different drummer," Harmon said.

She described him as intelligent and unusual.

"He is a different sort of person than most of us walking around on the face of the planet, and that differentness has been construed in the media as wrong or somehow unbalanced," she said. "And I don't find that to be true at all. I found him to be very engaging, very bright, very articulate and very, very much appropriate in his emotional response to what is going on."

Deputy Public Defender Haydeh Takasugi, who represented Karr on Tuesday, said Karr was concerned about having to wear the jail attire to court rather than civilian clothes.

"It's going to taint any potential jury pool out there," Takasugi said. "He was upset at that."

Meanwhile, Lara Knutson, Karr's former wife, told Boulder authorities on Monday that she and Karr were either at their home in Alabama or at his parents' house in Atlanta around Christmas 1996, according to Knutson's attorney, Michael Rains.

"But if you are to say to her, 'Are you absolutely certain?' she would say, 'No,"' Rains said. "She has not said to the authorities that her memory is infallible."

Still, Rains said the former wife found no photos of Karr that she believed were taken during Christmas festivities in 1996.

"She's continuing to look for other stuff," Rains said.

Rains, however, believes his client's recollection.

"I would be surprised if she was mistaken," Rains said.

Associated Press Writers Jocelyn Gecker and Christina Almeida in Los Angeles and David Kravets in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Mexican fishermen sang, danced, prayed as they drifted for months in Pacific

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Three Mexican fishermen said they sang ballads, danced and played air guitar as they drifted for months in an open boat across the wide Pacific, surviving on raw fish caught with jury-rigged engine cables and drinking rainwater.

They read the Bible aloud, prayed - and tossed overboard the bodies of two dead companions they said starved to death. The government said Tuesday it would investigate the deaths and other aspects of the survivors' account.

Several days after being rescued by an Asian fishing boat, the men seemed to be in remarkably good health Tuesday as they shyly appeared before Mexican television cameras in the Marshall Islands, 5,500 miles from their home on Mexico's Pacific coast.

Their ordeal began, they said, on Oct. 28, 2005, in their hometown of San Blas, when they set out with the boat's owner and another man on a shark-fishing expedition they expected to last a few days. Mother Nature had other plans.

A cold front swept in and a strong wind dragged the boat out to sea, they said. As the men struggled to turn toward islands they could see in the distance, they ran out of gas. They prayed to drift back to Mexico before their food and water ran out.

Instead, the prevailing currents apparently pushed their 27-foot boat all the way across the Pacific. With no shelter onboard, the men protected themselves from the sun with blankets and set about doing what they knew best: fishing. They crafted lines from cables and hooks from springs in the boat's motor.

"We straightened them and made hooks," survivor Lucio Rendon said in an interview Tuesday with the Televisa network. "There were times when we caught four, five fish, and at times nothing."

Rendon, Jesus Vidana, and Salvador Ordonez said they ate the fish raw - as they did the seabirds that occasionally flew by. But the boat's owner, whom the survivors knew only as Juan from Mazatlan, and a fourth employee refused to eat the catch.

"Juan didn't eat and he began vomiting blood," Vidana told Televisa. "The man was kind of delicate. It grossed him out eating something raw."

One died in January and the other in February, the survivors said.

President Vicente Fox's spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, told reporters Tuesday that "without a doubt there has to be an investigation."

"The presidency accepts as fact that they had this experience of practically nine months adrift, but a series of circumstances have to be explained, such as how the two other fishermen aboard the boat disappeared."

A woman who answered the telephone at the Marshall Islands' Embassy in Washington said the government had not commented on the case.

The fishermen said they were saddened when their companions died, and waited three days before throwing Juan overboard.

"For Senor Juan we said seven Our Fathers and seven Hail Marys, then threw him into the ocean," Vidana told Televisa. "The same with the other one. We prayed and tossed him overboard."

Mexican news media have cast doubt on the men's account of their nine-month odyssey, suggesting they might be drug smugglers who made up the story to avoid prosecution. There are no records of their departure, and some relatives initially said they had been gone for only three months.

"There are stories going around that you were shipping cocaine," Televisa anchor Carlos Loret de Mola told the men via satellite.

"Well, no, that isn't true," Rendon said.

The survivors also denied they ate their dead companions.

The fishermen said they know their tale is far-fetched - but insisted it's true. They also said they never doubted they would live to tell it.

"We made plans about what we were going to do when we hit land again," Vidana said. "We always had the hope of reaching land. Always."

Vidana cheered his companions by singing romantic ballads, playing air guitar and dancing, "so we would not be so sad about what had happened to our companions," Ordonez said. "The three of us also chatted. At moments one read the Bible - me or Lucio." Against all odds, the men stayed healthy.

"We never had a headache or a stomach ache," Ordonez told Televisa. "The raw food didn't hurt us. We drank rainwater."

On Aug. 9, their dreams came true. A Taiwanese fishing crew spied the men, pulled them aboard and fed them their first hot meal in months.

In Mexico, the fisherman became instant folk heroes. In their hometown, family and friends couldn't believe they were alive and began preparing huge celebrations for their return. Vidana reportedly has a 4-month-old daughter he has never met awaiting him.

"We should follow the example of these three fishermen, making prayer the source of our strength," the Roman Catholic Mexican Council of Bishops said in a statement.

The men landed Monday in Majuro on the Marshall Islands, where doctors confirmed they were well enough to go home and Mexican diplomats offered to help.

As for the boat, the three were unanimous:

"We don't even want to see it," Rendon told the newspaper Reforma. "We were in it a long time. We don't want it. It can stay where it is."

Outer bands of tropical depression reaching Cape Verde islands; could become storm Debby

MIAMI (AP) - The outer bands of a tropical depression produced rain squalls in the southern Cape Verde islands in the far eastern Atlantic as it passed the nation on Tuesday, forecasters said.

At 11 a.m. EDT, the depression was centered 140 miles southwest of the southernmost Cape Verde islands and was moving toward the west-northwest at about 17 mph.

The storm's maximum sustained wind speed was near 35 mph, 4 mph below the threshold for a tropical storm and well below hurricane strength of 74 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

However, it was expected to become a tropical storm by Wednesday and would take the name Debby.

Forecasters said the system was expected to turn northwestward and long-range forecasts show the storm nearing Bermuda in about a week. It was still too early to tell if it would hit land, senior hurricane specialist James Franklin said.

The government of Cape Verde, 350 miles off the African coast, discontinued a tropical storm warning as the system passed.

There have been three named storms of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season.

On the Net:

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

Authorities say man in Mideast extorted nude images of Michigan teenage girl

ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. (AP) - Charges have been filed against a man accused of persuading a teen to send him a nude photograph by threatening to ruin her parents' credit rating and saying he would come from the Middle East to have sex with her.

Babar Majid Chaudhry, a citizen of Pakistan who lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was arrested Thursday in Fort Wayne, Ind., where he was visiting with relatives, the Oakland County sheriff's department said Monday.

The Rochester Hills girl told investigators that a man contacted her online in March, when she was 15, producing financial information about her parents and threatening to destroy their credit rating if she didn't send him a nude photograph of herself.

After she sent the photograph, the sheriff's department said, the man told her he planned to come to the United States to have sex with her, The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press reported. The girl then went to police.

The sheriff's department said Chaudhry was in Pakistan in March and in Dubai in May.

Authorities said Chaudhry denied forcing the girl to take photos of herself.

He is charged in Michigan with extortion, engaging in sexually abusive activity against a child, using a computer to commit a crime and communicating with another to commit a crime.

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said information found on Chaudhry's computer suggests others also may have been targeted.

Tourist dies, dozens hospitalized as fire rages in northern Greece

KRIOPIGI, Greece (AP) - A wildfire raging in northern Greece has killed at least one person and forced several thousand to flee hotels, holiday homes and campsites, authorities said Tuesday.

A 41-year-old German man drowned after experiencing heart problems while trying to board boats taking tourists who were stranded on beaches on the Halkidiki peninsula, state coroner Matthaios Tsoukas said.

At least 50 people - mostly Greeks - were hospitalized with breathing problems, and several people were being treated for burns.

Officials said they are investigating whether arson was the cause of the blaze.

"The damage in Halkidiki was great and the circumstances very difficult," Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos said. "We express our regret for the death of the German tourist."

Halkidiki governor Argyris Lafazanis said many tourists were being bused back to their hotels Tuesday after the fire receded from several resorts.

Up to 1,000 British tourists fled the fire that tore through the resorts of Polychrono, Hanioti, Kriopigi and Pefkochori. Several hundred Germans, some 100 people from Scandinavian countries and about 100 Austrians also were involved in the evacuation.

Romanian authorities said about 1,000 of their nationals were in Halkidiki but it was not clear how many were affected by the fire.

Giorgos Kalatzis, minister for the administrative regions of Macedonia and Thrace, said conditions had improved Tuesday. "The firefighters are doing a good job," Kalatzis said.

The blaze destroyed about 12,000 acres of forest, more than 50 homes and dozens of cars, and left charred carcasses of farm animals strewn across blackened hillsides. Authorities declared a state of emergency late Monday.

Ten water-bombing planes and helicopters assisted more than 300 firefighters and soldiers, amid temperatures reaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Georgia inmate dies after failed courthouse escape attempt that left deputy wounded

JEFFERSON, Ga. (AP) - An inmate died at a hospital early Tuesday after a failed escape attempt in which he grabbed a deputy's gun and wounded him and was then gunned down as he drove away in a police van.

Deputy Kimsey Gray was transporting four prisoners in chains and leg irons from the Jackson County Courthouse when one of them grabbed a gun and shot him, authorities said.

The inmate sped away, with the injured deputy with him in the van, but got only about 100 yards before he was shot by two other deputies, Sheriff Stan Evans said.

The inmate, Timothy Lemar Jones, was taken to Athens Regional Medical Center. He died early Tuesday morning, said hospital spokeswoman Elaine Cook.

Gray, a 14-year veteran, suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen, left arm and right leg and was in stable condition Tuesday at Grady Hospital in Atlanta, authorities said.

The sheriff said Jones, 28, was arrested in Jefferson last week and charged with armed robbery.

Evans said the deputy had followed policy that requires that inmates be transported with belly chains and leg irons and be accompanied by an officer.

He said that among other things, investigators were trying to determine whether the other prisoners had a role in the escape attempt.

Television reports showed the van crashed into a chain-link fence along a lane leading to the courthouse, with three bullet holes in the windshield.

Jefferson is about 60 miles northeast of Atlanta.

It was the third courthouse shooting in Georgia in less than 18 months.

In March 2005, a judge, court reporter and sheriff's deputy were killed at the Fulton County Courthouse in downtown Atlanta. Brian Nichols, who was on trial for rape at the time, is charged. And in August 2005, a man wounded a police chief, a deputy and a paramedic outside the Stewart County Courthouse in Lumpkin. The gunman, Marcus Dalton, was killed three hours later in a gunbattle nearby.

Crews in Northwest face new wildfires started by lightning, some residents evacuated

DAYTON, Wash. (AP) - Nursing home residents were evacuated because of smoke from a nearby wildfire, one of several started by lightning from thunderstorms that rolled across the Northwest.

Firefighters also faced new fires in parts of Idaho and Oregon.

More than 75 firefighters were assigned Tuesday to the blaze outside Dayton, which had raced across 2,500 acres - nearly 4 square miles - of trees, brush and wheat fields since being ignited late Monday, said Ted Paterson, information officer for the Columbia County Emergency Operations Center.

South of Dayton, in eastern Washington, about 80 residents along the Touchet River were urged to evacuate, and 35 residents of a nursing home were evacuated because of concern about the smoke, Paterson said.

No structures had burned, and no injuries were reported.

The Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Portland, Ore., positioned fire crews throughout Washington and Oregon as a precaution because of dry, windy weather moving in behind Monday's storms, said Vladimir Steblina, spokesman for the Okanogan and Wenatchee national forests.

"Everybody is kind of waiting on pins and needles to see what happens," he said.

The largest group of fires in Washington had blackened more than 180 square miles of forest between the north-central towns of Winthrop and Conconully since being started by lightning in July. Firefighters said it was 40 percent contained Tuesday.

Residents of Winthrop and Conconully had been told to be prepared for possible evacuation.

Among the new fires in central and eastern Oregon, one was threatening the small town of Fields. Authorities said it was burning aggressively, but residents remained in their homes Tuesday morning.

Firefighting resources in Oregon are stretched thin.

"For us, that means we won't be receiving much outside help and will have to do the best we can with what we have," said firefighters' spokesman Jonathan Manski. "In some cases, that may mean leaving a fire unstaffed for a day or so."

Lightning started a dozen new fires late Monday in Idaho's Boise National Forest, including a 300-acre blaze that prompted evacuation of a nearby public hot springs and campground, authorities reported Tuesday. Meanwhile, a fire eight miles west of Silver City that was started by lightning Monday grew to 10,000 acres.

Elsewhere, crews in West Texas were still trying to contain a wildfire that had blackened about 7,500 acres since starting Friday. It was about 50 percent contained in rugged terrain some 85 miles west of Fort Worth.

The fire was believed to have been started by sparks from a truck riding on a wheel rim after a tire blowout.

"Everything is just so crispy dry right now, you have a spark and there you go," said Texas Forest Service spokeswoman Laura Polant.

Tourist bus overturns in Egypt's Sinai, killing 11

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - A bus carrying tourists overturned in the Sinai peninsula Tuesday killing 11 people, most of them Israeli Arabs, and injuring more than 30, police and hospital officials said.

The accident happened in the town of al-Saada, about 240 miles southeast of Cairo, between the resort cities of Nuweiba and Taba in the Sinai, police said. The injured were taken to a hospital in Nuweiba, police said.

The bus was one of four traveling in a convoy, said Danny Miran of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, speaking on Israel's Channel 10 TV.

An Egyptian police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said 10 Israeli Arabs and an Egyptian working for the tour company were killed.

South Sinai Gov. Gen. Mohammed Hani Metwalli said 10 tourists were killed and 35 wounded, with 10 in critical condition.

Egypt has a history of serious bus and car crashes on its roads, which are often poorly maintained or without stringent traffic regulations.

The Sinai is a popular destination for Israeli tourists despite a series of terrorist attacks there since 2004.

Prosecutors give closing arguments in Dyleski murder trial

MARTINEZ, Calif. (AP) - Prosecutors in the Scott Dyleski murder trial began their closing arguments Tuesday, after the defense rested its case without calling the teenage suspect to the stand.

Dyleski, 17, formally waived his constitutional right to testify on his own behalf Monday, as friends told jurors that he was a kind, caring person who they never saw act violently.

Dyleski has pleaded not guilty to the Oct. 15 bludgeoning death of neighbor Pamela Vitale, wife of prominent defense attorney Daniel Horowitz. Prosecutors believe he killed the 52-year-old Vitale in connection with a credit card fraud scheme he and a friend were running in hopes of setting up a pot-growing operation.

Dyleski is being tried as an adult and could face life in prison if convicted.

Most of the defense witnesses were called to counter the prosecution's image of the Lafayette teenager as dark, brooding and fascinated with the macabre.

Amarintha Kochmann Gray, whose younger sister and mother had testified on behalf of Dyleski last week, told jurors Monday that Dyleski had joked about harvesting body parts after watching a cartoon episode about the subject.

Deputy Public Defender Ellen Leonida asked Gray whether Dyleski or his friends ever had plans to harvest organs.

"No," Gray said.

"Was it in jest?" Leonida asked.

"Yes," she replied. "If he was talking about it, he would always be joking."

Kameryn Summers, 18, who played on the Ultimate Frisbee team with Dyleski at Acalanes High School in Lafayette, said the defendant never spoke about hurting people.

"He never once said anything like wanting to harm someone," Summers said.

Conservative activists try to curtail hotels' pervasive in-room porn

NEW YORK (AP) - Pornographic movies now seem nearly as pervasive in America's hotel rooms as tiny shampoo bottles, and the lodging industry shows little concern as conservative activists rev up a protest campaign aimed at triggering a federal crackdown.

A coalition of 13 conservative groups - including the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America - took out full-page ads in some editions of USA Today earlier this month urging the Justice Department and FBI to investigate whether some of the pay-per-view movies widely available in hotels violate federal and state obscenity laws.

The coalition also is trying to draw attention to CleanHotels.com, a directory of hotels and motels nationwide that pledge to exclude adult offerings from their in-room entertainment service.

Though porn is now cheaply and readily accessible on the Internet, and through many other outlets, the activists chose to target the hotel industry in part because of the well-known brands of corporations that cater to family vacationers as well as business travelers.

"These are places that you take your family - these are respectable institutions," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "Anything that brings porn into the mainstream is a concern. It just desensitizes people."

Precise statistics on in-room adult entertainment are hard to come by. By some estimates, adult movies are available in roughly 40 percent of the nation's hotels, representing more than 1.5 million rooms. Industry analysts suggest that these adult offerings generate 60 to 80 percent of total in-room entertainment revenue - several hundred million dollars a year.

The recent newspaper ad mentioned no hotel companies by name because of legal concerns, but it did target the two major suppliers of in-room adult movies - South Dakota-based LodgeNet and Denver-based OnCommand, a subsidiary of Liberty Media Corp. The ad accused both companies of distributing hardcore pornography to their hotel clients, and it provided a link to a list of X-rated movie titles.

Spokesmen for OnCommand and Liberty Media declined to comment on the ad, and LodgeNet's spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment. However, top spokespeople for two of the biggest hotel chains, Hilton and Marriott, defended the policies that make adult movies widely available at their affiliated hotels.

Both Kathy Shepard of Hilton and Roger Conner of Marriott said the bulk of their hotels are operated by franchise-holders who make their own decisions about in-room programming. They made clear, however, that their companies consider adult movies to be an acceptable option because they can be ignored or blocked out by guests not wishing to view them.

"Really ultraconservative groups try to target the hotels in their zest to eliminate porn," Shepard said. "In their zest to have their personal morals prevail, they're eliminating choice for others."

Conner said none of the programing offered by Marriott is illegal, and he depicted adult movies as a standard part of today's hotel business.

"In-room movies are a revenue stream," he said. "This is a business matter."

The leader of the campaign against in-room porn is Phil Burress, a self-described former porn addict who heads the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values.

Burress and his allies have had some success regionally, pressuring about 15 Ohio and Kentucky hotels to stop offering adult movies. But he says a nationwide pressure campaign would be difficult because nearly all the big hotel chains have similar policies - porn is available at some but not all of their affiliates.

Though unable to cite specific cases, Burress contended that the availability of in-room porn is making hotels more dangerous.

"As more and more of these (hardcore) titles become available, we're going to have sexual abuse cases coming out of the hotels," he said. "Hotels are just as dangerous as environments around strip joints and porn stores."

Burress said he was "cautiously optimistic" that Justice Department officials - whom he and other anti-porn leaders confer with periodically - would seriously consider investigating hotel-based pornography.

Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said federal authorities are committed to toughening enforcement of obscenity laws, but he declined to comment on specific targets for investigations.

LodgeNet and OnCommand together provide in-room entertainment to more than 1.8 million hotel room in North America - with customers that include Sheraton, Hilton, Holiday Inn, Ritz-Carlton, Hyatt, Marriott and Ramada.

The standard in-room packages offered by LodgeNet and OnCommand include adult movies, but they have tried to accommodate hotels preferring a no-porn alternative, according to Shannon Sedgwick Davis, executive director of an association of hotels which don't offer adult movies to guests.

One problem, she said, is that the big hotel chains often have negotiated bulk contracts with the video suppliers that include the adult movies and can be expensive to cancel.

On the Net:

http://www.ccv.org/Press-Release-Appeal-to-DOJ-re-hotel-porn.htm

Humane Society Critical of Ben & Jerry's eggs

By: - MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. was under fire Tuesday from an animal welfare group for buying eggs from a company the Humane Society of the United States says mistreats chickens.

The hens are kept in cages so small that the birds can't spread their wings, according to Humane Society spokesman Paul Shapiro.

"We feel that Ben and Jerry's, because it makes these claims of being socially responsible, has a responsibility not to support heinous factory farm practices," said Shapiro.

Founded in 1978 by entrepreneurs Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Ben & Jerry's mission includes "a continued commitment to incorporating wholesome, natural ingredients and promoting business practices that respect the Earth and the Environment," its web site says. It was bought by the Dutch conglomerate Unilever in 2000.

Shapiro said the premium ice cream and frozen yogurt maker promised several times since last year to stop using eggs from caged birds, but then notified the Humane Society last week it would not make the switch.

Ben & Jerry's said it was reviewing its egg-buying options.

"As we learn more about it, we hope we can do better with it," said company spokesman Sean Green. "We take the issue of animal welfare very seriously," he said.

The criticism follows an investigation by the Humane Society of an egg farm owned by Minnetonka, Minn.,-based Michael Foods Inc. in June that found hens dying of starvation, live hens living among dead ones and sick or injured birds caught in cage wires, the Humane Society said.

Michael Foods said in response that it planned to switch to larger cages to meet or exceed United Egg Producer guidelines for hen welfare.

The Humane Society said despite the findings, Ben & Jerry's continued to buy up to 30 million eggs a year from the company.

The group also took issue with Ben & Jerry's claim that it supports small family farms whose survival is threatened.

The Human Society also said it wanted to shed light on the dichotomy between the company's "public claims of concerns for animal welfare and opposition of factory farming and the reality that Ben & Jerry's is actually supporting cruel and inhumane treatment" of animals, Shapiro said.

Food companies such as Whole Foods Market Inc. and Wild Oats have agreed to sell only eggs from cageless hens, Shapiro said. Trader Joe's has started selling their own brand of eggs from hens that are not in cages, he said.

On the Net:

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc.: www.benjerry.com

Humane Society of the United States: www.hsus.org

Michael Foods Inc.: www.michaelfoods.com

Convicted rapist indicted in Virginia murder case that sent another man to prison for 18 years

CULPEPER, Va. (AP) - A convicted serial rapist has been indicted in a 1982 rape and slaying that another man spent 18 years in prison for, at one point coming within days of his execution.

A Culpeper County grand jury Monday indicted Kenneth Maurice Tinsley on charges of murder, rape and sodomy in the death of Rebecca Lynn Williams. The 19-year-old mother was found stabbed to death outside her Culpeper apartment.

Tinsley, 61, is serving a life term in a Virginia prison for a 1984 rape in Albemarle County and has two rape convictions in Chicago.

Earl Washington Jr. spent more than a decade on death row after being convicted of Williams' slaying and came within nine days of execution in 1985.

After DNA testing in 1993 cast doubt on Washington's guilt, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder commuted his sentence to life in prison. More sophisticated DNA tests conducted in 2000 prompted then-Gov. Jim Gilmore to pardon Washington.

In May, Washington was awarded $2.25 million by a federal court jury that ruled that the mildly retarded man falsely confessed after he was fed details of the crime by a state police investigator.

Tinsley's name emerged only during Washington's civil lawsuit. Washington's attorneys also learned that the Virginia state lab had botched earlier DNA tests.

Tinsley's DNA was identified six years ago as matching semen found on the victim. Special Prosecutor Richard E. Moore declined to say why it took six years to obtain an indictment, except to say the latest conclusion was "based in large part on test results not available to any previous prosecutors in this case."

Tinsley is scheduled to appear in Culpeper Circuit Court on Sept. 6. Tinsley was to have a lawyer appointed at that time. Prosecutors have not announced whether they will seek the death penalty.

Curtis Wilmore, the state police investigator cited in Washington's false confession, died in 1994. An attorney for his estate has asked the court to vacate the jury's verdict.

Grass, in letter to Gdansk, explains his Nazi service

WARSAW, Poland (AP) - German novelist Guenter Grass said in a letter to the mayor of his hometown of Gdansk that only in his old age has he found the "right formula" to talk about having served in the Waffen-SS during World War II.

"In the years and decades after the war, when the terrible scope of Waffen-SS crimes was revealed, I kept to myself this episode from my young years that was brief, but which weighed on me heavily," Grass wrote in the letter dated Aug. 20 and made public Tuesday. "However, I did not erase it from my memory."

"Only now, with age, I have found the right formula to talk about it in a wider perspective."

Mayor Pawel Adamowicz had the letter read out by actor Jan Kiszkis at a news conference in Gdansk.

Earlier this month, Grass, 78, made the surprising confession that he served in the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the Nazi's fanatical paramilitary organization. His new memoir, "Peeling the Onion," was then released and appeared last week in German bookstores.

Adamowicz had written to Grass asking for an explanation amid calls from some politicians to strip the author of his honorary citizenship in Gdansk.

In his letter, Grass said his book tells how in 1942, as a "blinded 15-year-old I asked to serve on the submarines, but I was refused. Instead, in September 1944, at the age of 17 - without my participation - I was made a member of the Waffen-SS."

"I would like to keep the right to say that I have understood this painful lesson that life taught me when I was a young man. My books and my political activity are the proof," Grass wrote.

"This silence may be judged as a mistake - that's exactly what's happening. It may also be condemned. I must also come to terms with the fact that the honorary citizenship of Gdansk is questioned by many residents."

But Grass did not say he was giving up his honorary citizenship, as he has been urged to do by Solidarity founder and Nobel Peace laureate Lech Walesa.

Walesa had threatened to give up his own honorary citizenship in Gdansk if Grass didn't give an explanation to the city. But he said he was satisfied by the letter and would not do so no.

"I find it a convincing letter and from now on I will no longer be in conflict with Mr. Grass. I think he has explained himself well enough," Walesa was quoted as saying by the news agency PAP.

Grass, the acclaimed author of the classic "The Tin Drum" and many other writings, served in the 10th SS Panzer Division, which fought Soviet troops in eastern Germany near the end of the war. He was wounded and then taken prisoner by U.S. forces.

Grass, who won the 1999 Nobel Prize for literature, has long been respected as a moral authority in Poland and elsewhere. Poland was subjected to a brutal invasion and occupation by the Nazis, and Poles enthusiastically welcomed the fact that Grass for decades urged his fellow Germans to confront their nation's past crimes.

Grass was born in Gdansk in 1927 when it was called Danzig. The Baltic port city, now in Poland, passed between German and Polish rule for centuries.

Brain scan shows no abnormalities in Florida teen convicted in 6-year-old's death

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - A court-ordered brain scan showed no abnormalities that might explain the problems of a teenager who was once the youngest person in modern U.S. history to be sentenced to life in prison.

An MRI scan performed earlier this month on Lionel Tate, 19, showed nothing out of the ordinary, said his attorney Jim Lewis.

Tate is now serving a 30-year sentence for violating probation for the 1999 killing of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick, a family friend who died after a severe beating. Defense lawyers initially said the girl was accidentally injured while the 12-year-old Tate imitated pro wrestling moves.

Lewis had asked for the brain scan in hopes that there might be a medical explanation for Tate's actions which he could use to argue for a reduced prison sentence.

Tate's life sentence for the girl's death was thrown out in 2004 and a plea deal gave him probation. Probation was revoked after his arrest for allegedly robbing a pizza delivery man at gunpoint in May 2005. Trial on those charges is scheduled for Oct. 23.

Fumes at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport send 19 workers to hospitals, disrupt check-ins

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - A security checkpoint was closed and 19 people were taken to hospitals Tuesday after screeners at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport complained of irritating fumes.

No one was seriously injured and no flights were believed to have been affected, authorities said.

Airport spokesman Pat Hogan said security screeners reported an odd smell that was irritating to their eyes, noses and throats about 11 a.m. Some described it as sweet and others as peppery.

The airport fire department and a hazardous materials team were called, but neither could not find the source of the smell, Hogan said.

"It is possible it was a discarded item, like pepper spray or perfume," he said.

Nineteen workers from the Transportation Security Administration or an airline were taken to hospitals; all were conscious and lucid when they left, Hogan said. One traveler was treated at the scene.

The check-in counters for American Airlines and U.S. Airways, near the checkpoint, were closed while the investigation continued Monday afternoon. A makeshift ticket counter was set up to handle their travelers, and five other security checkpoints remained open.

Hogan said neither affected airline had flights scheduled before 2 p.m. and to his knowledge no flights were delayed.

Teacher Ann Zeiss, heading to Los Angeles on a flight due to leave at 3:15 p.m., said she wasn't worried about making her flight or particularly fearful despite recent terrorism scares.

"I think it's important that people keep flying," she said

The incident happened hours before President Bush was scheduled to arrive at 2 p.m. at a National Guard base adjacent to the airport.