Two teens get arrested in mailbox bomb case

BALTIMORE -- Two teenagers were arrested Wednesday for planting at least four crude bombs inside mailboxes in suburban Baltimore, police said. Three of the devices exploded but no one was injured.

Baltimore County police said they believed the acts were random and the motive was "thrill seeking." The suspects, ages 17 and 19, weren't immediately charged.

The devices were described as one-liter soda bottles partially filled with a liquid that eventually generates a chemical reaction and explodes.

"There's nothing that controls the detonation," police spokeswoman Vicki Warehime. "It's a chemical reaction. There's no timing device, no wires, and it depends on the ingredients as to when it goes off."

Two bombs exploded in a mailbox overnight Tuesday, and a third device exploded Monday night; the fourth was found and safely removed Wednesday. All were found within a mile of each other in the Dundalk area of Baltimore County, Warehime said.

Report: Immigration prosecutions double

WASHINGTON -- The number of people prosecuted in federal court for immigration offenses more than doubled between 1996 and 2000 -- coinciding with a big increase in the number of Border Patrol agents.

The number of prosecutions rose from 6,605 in 1996 to a record-high 15,613 in 2000, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported Tuesday.

Almost two-thirds of the prosecutions occurred in five states -- New York, Texas, California, Arizona and Florida.

Immigration and Naturalization Service officials attributed the rise in prosecutions to increased enforcement and better technology.

"I think what you're seeing is a byproduct of the increased levels of enforcement both at the ports of entry and between the ports of entry along the Southwest border," said INS spokesman Russ Bergeron.

Mountain wildfire burns east of San Diego

JULIAN, Calif. -- More than 3,000 firefighters worked Wednesday to prevent the further spread of a wildfire that has burned across more than 80 square miles of mountainous terrain east of San Diego.

Crews concentrated on protecting the rural town of Ranchita and trying to control the flames where they were most intense -- in the Los Coyotes Indian reservation and in Anza Borrego State Park, said state Department of Forestry spokeswoman Martie Perkins.

The blaze had drawn to the edge of Ranchita, home to about 340 people, but firefighters believed they could safeguard the community, Perkins said.

The wildfire began July 29 after a National Guard helicopter clipped a power line during a search for marijuana plants in the rugged, isolated area. The fire has burned through some 53,000 acres and destroyed 25 homes. It was 60 percent contained late Wednesday.

Panel not ready to give date recession ended

WASHINGTON -- The group of academic economists who designate economic cycles in the United States is not ready to pinpoint an ending for last year's recession.

The National Bureau of Economic Research said in a new memo that the latest economic data indicate "that the decline in activity that began last year may have come to an end."

However, the NBER's business cycle dating committee said in the memo, dated Tuesday, that it would wait to designate the month the recession ended in order to be sure that any subsequent decline in economic activity was a separate recession and not a continuation of last year's downturn.

--From wire reports