Nation briefs 11/18/03

DNA in Peterson's boat admissible, says judge

MODESTO, Calif. -- The judge in Laci Peterson's murder case ruled that prosecutors can use a disputed form of DNA analysis on a hair found in Scott Peterson's boat to try to prove he killed his pregnant wife and dumped her body in San Francisco Bay.

While authorities have theorized the woman was killed in her Modesto home before being dumped in San Francisco Bay, the hair sample is the only evidence presented so far establishing that she may have been on her husband's boat, which he bought two weeks before she disappeared.

Ky. governor admits two ethics violations

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Gov. Paul Patton said he settled ethics charges against him not because he was guilty but because he would have been found guilty by the Executive Branch Ethics Commission.

Patton reached an agreement with the commission Sunday to avoid an administrative hearing, scheduled to start Monday. He acknowledged two instances of using his power and influence to benefit Tina Conner, a woman with whom he had an affair, and commission members dropped two other charges stemming from the relationship.

The governor agreed to accept a $5,000 fine and a public reprimand. As part of the agreement, Patton said he admitted to unknowingly violating portions of the state ethics law.

Hinckley asks court for unsupervised visits

WASHINGTON -- John Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Reagan in 1981, should be allowed to visit his parents without being accompanied by psychiatric hospital staff, his attorney told a federal judge Monday.

Hinckley wants to leave unescorted from St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington and travel three hours away to the Williamsburg, Va., area to see his parents 10 times. Five of the trips would be overnight visits.

Hinckley, 48, has been a patient at St. Elizabeths since his acquittal by reason of insanity in the shooting of Reagan and three others outside a Washington hotel in March 1981. Hinckley said he shot the president to impress actress Jodie Foster.

State attorneys general ask for EPA change block

WASHINGTON -- More than a dozen state attorneys general Monday sought to block the federal government from implementing a rule change they argued would lead to more air pollution from the nation's power plants.

Fourteen states and a number of cities are seeking a court injunction to block EPA's loosening of Clean Air Act regulations that would allow older power plants, refineries and factories to modernize without having to install expensive pollution controls. The measure goes into effect Dec. 26.

Court to rule on citizen called 'enemy combatant'

NEW YORK -- A federal appeals judge said Monday it would be "a sea change" in the Constitution to allow the Bush administration to designate a U.S. citizen suspected in an alleged dirty bomb plot as an enemy combatant.

In a critical showdown between the government and civil rights lawyers, two members of a three-judge federal panel seemed hesitant to embrace the government's reasoning for why Jose Padilla, 33, should be held indefinitely without access to a lawyer and without being charged.

Padilla, a Muslim, is accused of plotting with al-Qaida to detonate a "dirty bomb," which uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials. The former Chicago gang member was taken into custody in May 2002, and has spent most of the time since then in a naval brig in Charleston, S.C.

U.S. forces to stay in Iraq after government formed

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Monday the United States will not pull out of Iraq when a provisional government is established by July 1.

Bush made the promise in a meeting with Iraqi women who told the president of the hardships they had suffered under Saddam Hussein.

"I assured these five women that America wasn't leaving," Bush said in the Oval Office. "When they hear me say we're staying, that means we're staying."

U.S-Mexico border tested for terror readiness

NOGALES, Ariz. -- A mock suicide bomber and a quick succession of blasts were part of a terrorism drill designed to test the responsiveness of health and law enforcement officials along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Arizona Office of Homeland Security said about 1,000 people took part in the drill Sunday morning, which started when a man walked into the Mariposa Port of Entry compound, shouted the name of a mythical terrorist group and set off an explosion. The man was actually a firefighter in a protective suit.

High school drama students played injured and dead victims, complete with makeup depicting burns and other injuries, as several more explosions detonated. A mock toxic gas also was released.

-- From wire reports