Nation briefs 6/19/06

Oil co. chiefs defend high pump prices

WASHINGTON -- Americans paying $3 per gallon at the pump have it relatively cheap when compared with prices globally, say oil and gas company executives who defend their record profits as essential to maintaining supplies. In parts of Europe and elsewhere in the West, gasoline prices are more like $5 per gallon to $7 per gallon, said the chairman of ConocoPhillips Co., James J. Mulva. Mulva and two other executives who appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" said they are optimistic about keeping a lid on domestic prices, unless their fears come true about the potential for damage to U.S. energy production from the hurricane season that began June 1.

Yellowstone tourist falls to her death in canyon

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- A woman lost her footing while taking a photograph and fell 500 feet to her death in a canyon. Deb Chamberlin, 52, of Rockford, Mich., was visiting the park with her husband and two children. She stepped over a retaining wall to take a photograph. Her husband flagged down a passing motorist, who called 911 after the Saturday morning accident at an overlook along the Yellowstone River, park officials said.

Report: Motorcycle deaths soar in Florida

MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Motorcycle fatalities involving riders without helmets have soared in the nearly six years since Gov. Jeb Bush repealed the state's mandatory helmet law, a newspaper reported Sunday. A Florida Today analysis of federal motorcycle crash statistics found "unhelmeted" deaths in Florida rose from 22 in 1998 and 1999, the years before the helmet law repeal, to 250 in 2004, the most recent year of available data.

File cabinet with voter records missing

DENVER -- Moving to a new building was a good thing for the Denver Election Commission. But losing a file cabinet containing personal information of thousands of voters -- not so good. Earlier this month, the commission acknowledged that about 150,000 voter records had been missing at least since February, when it moved to a new office. Last week, the commission found about 87,000 of the records. The rest are still missing. "We still don't have any reason to believe that it was, quote unquote, stolen," commission spokesman Alton Dillard said Friday. But the commission will let voters who registered between 1989 and 1995 know that they could be susceptible to identity theft, he said.

Toxic coal spill oozes toward north China city

BEIJING -- The toxic coal spill down the Dasha River has slowed, Chinese authorities said. Officials were scrambling to clean up the sludge -- which had earlier been reported to amount to 60 tons -- before it reached the Wangkuai reservoir in Baoding, a city of 10 million in Hebei province, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The sludge was 32 miles from the reservoir Sunday. The spill occurred when a truck overloaded with 80 tons of toxic coal tar fell into the Dasha River last Monday, leaking some of its contents into the river.

Philippine volcano ejects ash, some villagers flee

MANILA, Philippines -- About 40 families living near the Bulusan volcano were going to evacuate after ash and pebbles spewed from the restive volcano. The ash explosion was the eighth since March, and Filipino scientists said they would assess the possibility of a major eruption. But they said they could not immediately obtain details about the latest blast due to clouds shrouding the volcano's summit. The farming towns of Casiguran and Juban, which have been grappling with volcanic ash and fears of a major eruption since the 5,149-foot volcano came back to life in March.

-- From wire reports