FBI seeks help in breaking up jewel heist crew

WASHINGTON -- Jewel thieves in hooded sweat shirts have knocked over nearly five dozen stores from New Hampshire to North Carolina in the past two-and-a-half years, eluding capture with an efficient operation that has netted $5.1 million in men's watches, chains, bracelets and rings, the FBI said Thursday. Targeting jewelers in malls and passing up high-end merchandise, the thieves cut through security gates and clean out display cases filled with men's gold jewelry and watches -- especially Movado watches, FBI officials said at a news conference in Washington intended to enlist the public's help in dismantling a group informally labeled the gate-cutters crew. The FBI has set up a telephone hot line and is offering a reward. Jewelers are offering another $25,000, said John Kennedy of the Jewelers Security Alliance, an industry association. The core group of thieves numbers four to five black or Hispanic men, although some break-ins involved up to six people, investigators said. Hennessy said the group has ties to New York City and that the FBI has recovered some fingerprints and identified possible suspects. But no arrests have been made.

South African court rules in favor of gay marriage

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa's highest court ruled in favor of gay marriage Thursday, a landmark decision that clears the way for the country to become the first to legalize same-sex unions on a continent where homosexuality remains largely taboo. The decision does not take immediate effect, however. The Constitutional Court, which decided it is unconstitutional to prohibit gays from marrying, gave Parliament a year to make the necessary legal changes. That disappointed gay rights activists, some of whom have been waiting years to wed. Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain are the only nations that now allow gay marriage nationwide. South Africa recognized the rights of gay people in the constitution adopted after apartheid ended in 1994 -- the first in the world to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But the government has opposed attempts to extend the definition of marriage in court to include same-sex couples in the mostly Christian country.

Asia observes World AIDS Day with marches, rallies

GAUHATI, India -- Thousands marched in anti-AIDS rallies Thursday in India's plagued northeast, while China rolled out a campaign targeting millions of migrant workers to mark World AIDS Day. In Indonesia, the head of UNAIDS criticized the country's leaders for not taking a more active role in combating the disease before it becomes a major epidemic. Dozens of HIV-infected women stepped out of the shadows during a rally in Golaghat, a town in India's eastern Assam state, to acknowledge they were living with the disease and should not be shunned. An estimated 5.1 million people are living with HIV in India -- the most in any single country except South Africa. India's sparsely populated northeast, where heroin traffickers cross from Myanmar, is considered a flashpoint because of its high rate of infections among intravenous drug users. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Indians must overcome traditional taboos attached to sex and discuss AIDS more openly within families and in public.

Grace period ends for Gulf Coast homeowners

OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. -- Like many homeowners around here, Janet Kisling owes a pile of debt on little more than a pile of debris. She has a $1,000-a-month mortgage on a home that is uninhabitable. For her and others along the Gulf Coast, December marks the end of an informal 90-day grace period that many lenders offered to Hurricane Katrina victims that let them put their mortgage payments on hold. That means Kisling, a self-employed wardrobe consultant, will have to start making payments again come Dec. 15. Hers is a tale of woe that stretches across the Gulf Coast, from Pascagoula on the Alabama line through this artsy village on the edge of Biloxi Bay, to New Orleans and west across Louisiana. Banks and lenders cannot forgive loans entirely without risking the stability of their institutions. Some homeowners will have to pay off debt for years, whether they rebuild or move away; others will be forced to declare bankruptcy. The scope of the problem is unclear. Bankers across the region say they will try to show some flexibility, but they have obligations to stockholders and banking regulators.

Tropical Storm Epsilon turns away from Bermuda

MIAMI -- Tropical Storm Epsilon on Thursday began to turn away from Bermuda, but could still stir up dangerous surf around the island, forecasters said. The 26th named storm of the busiest hurricane season was not expected to hit Bermuda or any other land, according to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Epsilon's top sustained winds were about 70 mph. It would become the 14th hurricane of the season if its winds reach 74 mph. The storm was centered about 810 miles east of Bermuda and about 1,425 miles west of the Azores Islands. Forecasters said Epsilon was moving northeast at about 10 mph.

Rockefeller Center Christmas tree set aglow

NEW YORK -- New York City is a lot brighter now that the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has been set aglow with 30,000 colored lights. The joyful ceremony Wednesday featured children displaced by Hurricane Katrina, singer Harry Connick Jr. and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The 9-ton, 74-foot-tall Norway spruce was topped for the second year in a row with a crystal star. It will be displayed at the plaza until Jan. 7. Formal tree lighting ceremonies have been held at the Art Deco plaza since 1933, but the first Rockefeller Christmas tree was put up two years earlier by workers helping to build the complex.

Colo. window washers rescued from dangling

DENVER -- Firefighters rescued two window washers who were clinging desperately to their scaffold as strong winds slammed the platform repeatedly into the side of a downtown high-rise. The two men, whose names weren't released, were rescued Wednesday after firefighters went up to the 12th floor of the 22-story office building and grabbed the scaffold when it blew toward them. The men, who weren't seriously hurt, bolted inside. "If we weren't there at that time and that platform didn't hit that exact window, it could have been a lot worse for us and for them," firefighter Lt. Scott Lang said Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America." Rescuers then used the window washers' safety ropes to tie the scaffold to the building. People on the ground scrambled to dodge flying shards of glass. No one was hurt.

Soda industry says school soft drink sales slump

It's not often that an industry brags when sales are down. But the American Beverage Association sounds almost proud when it declares in a report being released Thursday that the amount of non-diet soft drinks sold in the nation's schools dropped more than 24 percent between 2002 and 2004. The trade group's report is an effort to deflate threats of a lawsuit against soft drink companies, which face mounting pressure as childhood obesity concerns have led schools to remove sodas. During the same two-year period, the amount of sports drinks sold grew nearly 70 percent, bottled water 23 percent, diet soda 22 percent and fruit juice 15 percent, according to the report, which is based on data from beverage bottling companies. Regular soda is still the leader within schools, accounting for 45 percent of beverages sold there this year. But that's down from 57 percent three years earlier, the industry said, citing additional numbers based on 2002-2005 data.

Man arrested in slaying of Illinois college student

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. -- A 27-year-old man was charged with murder Thursday in the slaying of an Illinois college student whose body was found in a burned-out Mississippi chicken coop. Maurice Wallace was also charged with auto theft and concealing a homicide in the death of 21-year-old Olamide Adeyooye, an Illinois State University senior who was last seen Oct. 13 at a video store near her off-campus apartment in Normal. State's attorney Bill Yoder refused to answer questions about the case ahead of a court hearing today. But according to court papers, the woman was killed in her apartment on the day she was last seen. Wallace tried to clean blood from the floor of her apartment, then put her body in her car and left the area, the court papers said.

Fraction of rail crossing accidents investigated

WASHINGTON -- The federal government is investigating less than 1 percent of accidents at railroad crossings and imposing few fines for defective safety equipment, the Transportation Department's inspector general said Thursday. Of the 3,045 collisions at rail crossings last year, the Federal Railroad Administration investigated only nine. One-fifth of the collisions were not reported immediately, as required, to the Homeland Security Department's National Response Center, the report said. Some 368 people were killed at crossings in 2004.

Cities show gains in math, little progress in reading

WASHINGTON -- Children in major U.S. cities are getting better in math but struggling to improve in reading, a new federal snapshot shows. On the test considered to be the standard of academic progress, city students also often did as well or better in 2005 than children of the same race or ethnicity across the country. Urban educators said the new scores, released Thursday, show that urban fourth-graders and eighth-graders are moving ahead despite facing greater poverty and academic challenges.

-- From wire reports

In perspective, however, the new scores emphasize how much room for improvement remains across a range of urban districts, just as is the case for most of the nation's schools.

In both grades, for example, only one-third or less of city students were competent to handle challenging reading material -- a skill level called proficient, the goal of the test.

Overall, 11 districts volunteered this year for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, giving them data to compare themselves to peers and chart progress over time.

The districts enroll more than 1 in 10 of the nation's public school students, plus a disproportionately large share of minorities and kids with limited English ability.

The 11 are Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Cleveland; Houston; Los Angeles; New York City; San Diego; and Washington. The District of Columbia's scores were released in October with state and national results but were included again for comparison.

Some urban districts are improving faster than states and the nation, particularly in math. That trend is essential if the city districts are to catch up academically.

"These results tell us that we need to permanently abandon the belief that race and poverty determine how much students can and will learn," said Kati Haycock, director of The Education Trust, which advocates for poor and minority children. "While urban districts face big challenges, it is clear that some districts are responding more effectively than others."

In math, eight of the 10 urban districts posted improvements in fourth grade since 2003, when the test was last given. Four districts showed significant gains in eighth grade. No comparative figures were available for Austin, which joined the project this year.

"The news is the improvement, and the determination to improve," said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of urban public school systems.

Yet in fourth-grade reading, none of the urban districts showed a significant improvement in average scores compared with 2003. And just one district, Los Angeles, posted a reading gain in eighth grade that was big enough to be statistically significant.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said urban minority students are catching up, and the scores dispel "the myth that city schools can't make the grade."

Federal officials warned that comparisons of the cities should be done with caution because the urban districts differ in significant ways -- the size of the systems, their levels of poverty, the number of disabled or limited-English children excluded from testing.

Just going by raw scores, Charlotte fared the best in math and reading. Charlotte generally benefits in comparisons with other urban centers because its countywide school system encompasses both relatively wealthy suburbs and poorer inner-city neighborhoods.

In California, the state's superintendent of public instruction, Jack O'Connell, said the federal test offers no universal standards for excluding students, which affects test scores.

For example, he said, the Los Angeles Unified School District excluded far fewer limited-English learners than the Houston Independent School District. O'Connell said federal policy-makers should fix that inequity so the test will be a more useful analytical tool.

In Atlanta, where scores were mixed, schools superintendent Beverly L. Hall said, "We must now accelerate our efforts if we are to meet and exceed the performance of the nation."

The performance of the children in urban centers has national implications, said Sheila Ford, vice chairwoman of the test's governing board and a former school principal.

"We have to maintain our level of international and global status no matter where one lives," she said. "It's everybody's responsibility to make sure those youngsters are as successful as they can be."

---

Associated Press writers Doug Gross in Atlanta, Juliet Williams in Sacramento and Tim Whitmire in Charlotte, N.C., contributed to this report.

---

On the Net:

Nation's Report Card: http://www.nationsreportcard.gov