Nation briefs 2/7/02

Cheney going to Middle East next week

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney will visit Israel and eight other countries in the Middle East next week as the Bush administration tries to look past a cycle of violence to potential peacemaking.

The trip will coincide with one by CIA Director George Tenet, but administration officials called Tenet's effort part of his routine business and not designed to broker a new cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians.

With peacemaking at a stalemate, the Bush administration has focused its diplomacy on pressuring Yasser Arafat to curb Palestinian attacks on Israel.

Reagan's boyhood home to be historic site

WASHINGTON -- President Bush gave Ronald Reagan a birthday president on Wednesday, signing legislation making the former president's childhood home a federal historic site.

The private Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home Foundation owns the Dixon, Ill., house where Reagan lived in the early 1920s.

The new law authorizes the Interior Department to acquire the site from the foundation, which would continue managing and operating it.

Supporters say the law will protect the legacy of America's 40th president by putting the home under National Park Service jurisdiction.

Reagan, who celebrated his 91st birthday on Wednesday, lived in the home between the ages of 9 and 12. He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Nancy.

Jailed religious sect members seek appealBOSTON -- Two religious sect members are appealing a judge's order that sent them to jail for refusing to disclose the location of a missing baby.

Attorney J.W. Carney filed a motion Tuesday on behalf of Rebecca and David Corneau, citing changed circumstances in the case. No action on the motion had been scheduled as of Wednesday afternoon, said court spokesman Bruce Brock.

The Corneaus originally were held in contempt of court by Juvenile Court Judge Kenneth Nasif after they refused to surrender a newborn baby who the state claimed had been born to the couple. State child welfare officials believed the infant was endangered by its parents' fundamental Christian beliefs, which reject modern medicine, government and education.

TV crew catches airport officers skipping patrols

DENVER -- For two months, a TV station's hidden camera caught police officers spending hours behind in a break room at the Denver airport when they should have been on patrol.

KCNC captured footage of one officer entering the windowless room during an NFL playoff game and exiting hours later. And one officer was clocked spending four hours of an eight-hour shift in the break room.

With airport security ratcheted up nationwide since Sept. 11 and with the Winter Olympics days away, newspaper editorial writers, callers to radio talk shows and city leaders were outraged by the footage last week, especially since the city has been paying the officers thousands of dollars a day in overtime.

Judge orders school to allow prayerSARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. -- A federal judge has ordered school officials to let a kindergartner say grace out loud before eating lunch.

Kayla Broadus, 5, had been stopped from praying with friends on Jan. 15 at her elementary school in Wilton, 36 miles north of Albany.

The girl's lawyer argued it was her First Amendment right to say grace, but the Saratoga Springs school system said the prayer, because it was audible, violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

But U.S. District Judge David Hurd issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday, saying the school may not interfere with the girl's praying. He set a hearing for Feb. 15.

In a statement, the school system said the Constitution "sometimes puts a school in a difficult position."

--From wire reports