Nation briefs 4/23/06

Police: Wis. man tried to sell his daughter

APPLETON, Wis. -- A man raising his 18-month-old daughter alone tried to sell the little girl for $7,000 so he could make improvements to his house, police said Friday. The Ashwaubenon man tried to sell his daughter to a Grand Chute couple, Grand Chute police chief Ed Kopp said. Danny Vu, 37, was charged Friday with unauthorized adoption placement, a felony that carries up to six years in prison. The daughter showed no signs of physical abuse, Kopp said. Brown County officials will probably place her in temporary foster care. Vu was jailed in lieu of a $10,000 cash bond.

Spokesman denies Rice leaked defense info

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Condoleezza Rice's spokesman, Sean McCormack, on Saturday branded as "utterly false" a lawyer's claim the secretary of state leaked national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist charged with receiving and disclosing such information. The assertion came as a federal judge granted a defense request to issue subpoenas for Rice and three other government officials in the trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, the former lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee charged in the case.

Music students killed in plane crash mourned

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Garth Eppley and Georgina Joshi had planned to join about 300 other chorus members and an orchestra today to perform at Indiana University's Musical Arts Center. Instead, the concert will be dedicated to them and three other graduate students from the university's school of music who died in a plane crash late Thursday. The students killed in the crash were identified as Joshi, 24, of South Bend; Eppley, 25, of Wabash; Zachary Novak, 25, of Anderson; Robert Samels, 24, of Medina, Ohio; and Chris Carducci, 28, of Monroe, Mich.

White supremacists rally in Mich., face protests

LANSING, Mich. -- A group of white supremacists demonstrating outside Michigan's Capitol was far outnumbered by 500 protesters who were screened by metal detectors and kept separate by 6-foot-high chain-link fences. About 75 people from the Minneapolis-based National Socialist Movement were met with taunts from hundreds of protesters in what police described as a generally orderly event. State and city police reported 16 arrests of protesters.

-- From wire reports