Allied warplanes strike sites in southern Iraq

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- U.S. and British warplanes struck two anti-aircraft artillery sites in southern Iraq Thursday, a U.S. Air Force spokesman said.

The sites had posed a threat to aircraft patrolling Iraq's southern "no-fly" zone, said Maj. Brett Morris, spokesman for the Joint Task Force Southwest Asia.

All aircraft returned to bases safely after the attacks on the two surface-to-air artillery posts, Morris said. He said the sites were in An-Nasiriyah and Shahban, about 170 miles and 225 miles south of Baghdad.

Iraq had become "very active" in challenging coalition aircraft patrolling the southern "no-fly" zone, Morris said.

Violence follows white officer's shooting acquital

CINCINNATI -- Protesters set fires and pelted cars with rocks and bottles, and the mayor imposed an overnight curfew in response to violence that broke out after a white police officer was cleared of charges that he killed an unarmed black man.

The unrest happened in the same Cincinnati neighborhood that bore the brunt of three days of rioting triggered following Officer Stephen Roach's shooting of Timothy Thomas on April 7.

Police said the Wednesday unrest wasn't nearly as bad as the initial rioting. Only scattered acts of vandalism were reported overnight, authorities said Thursday.

Roach, 27, was acquitted by a judge on negligent homicide and obstructing official business charges. About 12 hours later, the violence erupted.

Millions go to Kentucky school in woman's will

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. -- A woman who was so frugal she slept in the hallway of her boarding house so each room had a tenant has left $3.5 million to her alma mater.

Mary Hutto's shrewd stock investments allowed her to amass the fortune she donated to Western Kentucky University for scholarships, said Ron Beck, the university's former director of planned giving.

"She saved money because she never thought she'd have enough to live on," Beck told The Courier-Journal of Louisville.

"She lived in a little cubicle in the hallway with a little sheet around her so she wouldn't take up one of the bedrooms."

World's third rare artificial heart implant performed

HOUSTON -- A "desperately ill" man became the world's third recipient of a self-contained mechanical heart after a six-hour operation.

The procedure Wednesday at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston follows the success of two implants of the AbioCor device at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Ky.

"The procedure ... went as expected and the patient is resting comfortably," the hospital said in a statement Thursday.

"It couldn't have gone better," Dr. O.H. Frazier, who spent more than a decade helping develop the AbioCor replacement heart at the hospital's Texas Heart Institute, told the Houston Chronicle.

He told the newspaper the man had been "desperately ill for a long time" with heart failure and was not a candidate for a heart transplant because of complications involving his lungs.

Deadly Maryland tornado could cost $30 million

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Damage from tornadoes that killed two students on the University of Maryland campus and left more than 1,000 people homeless could exceed $30 million, according to preliminary estimates.

The total is likely to qualify the state for federal disaster assistance after all estimates have been confirmed, said Michael Morrill, a spokesman for Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening.

The university estimated $15 million in damage, said spokesman George Cathcart. Four residential buildings were badly damaged.

"We're refugees, moving from place to place," said Chris Shaw, 22, a senior from Danvers, Mass.

-- From wire reports