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ACLU
files suit for removal of religious signs in LA
NEW
ORLEANS (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal
lawsuit Tuesday demanding the removal of signs outside a southeastern
Louisiana town that proclaim: “Jesus is Lord over Franklinton.”
ACLU officials
said public money was used to put up the signs on state roads, violating
the constitutional separation of church and state.
“Can you
imagine the hostility that Jews, Muslims, members of other minority
faiths and non-believers must feel when living in or passing through
that community?” asked Linton Carney, who first saw the signs
in July while driving through Franklinton, 55 miles north of New
Orleans. He said he has no religious affiliation.
The suit names
the town, its mayor and surrounding Washington Parish as defendants.
“Public
officials in that parish know the law. Unfortunately, they decided
to engage in endorsement of religion,” said Joe Cook, executive
director of the ACLU of Louisiana.
Franklinton
Mayor Earle Brown said the town had nothing to do with the signs
and has told the ACLU so.
“We have
no knowledge of who put them up,” said Brown, adding that they
appeared a couple of years ago.
Last week, ACLU
officials threatened to sue the mayor of Inglis, Fla., unless she
removes her proclamation banning Satan within the town limits from
posts at the town’s entrances.
The mayor, a
devout Christian, wrote the proclamation on Halloween night. It
was typed on town stationary and affixed with the town seal.
National
disaster declared in Nigeria, 600 dead
LAGOS,
Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria’s president declared a national
disaster on Tuesday after a series of explosions at an army weapons
depot in Lagos left at least 600 dead, most of them women and children
who drowned in a canal while trying to run away.
In a radio broadcast,
President Olusegun Obasanjo said “over 600 bodies had been
recovered,” including many from the Oke Afa canal in the northern
Isolo neighborhood of this city of 12 million. He said the dead
were mostly women, young people and children.
“What happened
in Lagos was a monumental tragedy,” Obasanjo said, calling
the deaths a “national disaster.”
Lagos Governor
Bola Ahmed Tinubu blamed the deaths on military negligence, radio
stations said.
Hundreds of
bodies were pulled out of the canal in Nigeria’s largest city
Monday after victims drowned Sunday night while trying to flee the
explosions.
“Ikeja
mortuary is filled; they have started to use other local government
facilities,” Tinubu said in a state television broadcast. “It’s
a disaster. We did not anticipate it would rise to this level.”
Pope John Paul
II sent a condolence message to Nigerian bishops, assuring his “closeness
in prayer” for victims of the tragedy and for the rescue workers.
Army spokesman
Col. Felix Chukwumah said the explosions began when a fire spread
to the depot, which is surrounded by crowded slums and working-class
neighborhoods. The blasts propelled shrapnel and shock waves for
miles, shattering windows six miles away at the international airport
and sending residents fleeing in panic.
Many victims
apparently didn’t realize how deep the water was and drowned
when they ran and drove vehicles into the Oke Afa drainage canal,
witnesses said.
Ecuadorian
airliner crashes, 92 on board
IPIALES,
Colombia (AP) — Search teams found the wreckage of an Ecuadorian
airliner that crashed with 92 people on board near a volcano straddling
the Colombia-Ecuador border, an Ecuadorian official said.
It would take
rescue workers at least two hours to reach the remote site of the
crash near Chiles Volcano near the Ecuadorian border, Minister of
Government Marcelo Merlo told reporters in Ecuador’s capital,
Quito.
Merlo did not
say whether there were any survivors. There was no immediate confirmation
of the find from Colombian officials.
The TAME airlines
Boeing 727-100 from Quito vanished Monday morning over the Andes
as it flew through foggy weather. It looped over the Colombian town
of Ipiales on its final approach to its destination — the tiny
airport in nearby Ecuadorian border city of Tulcan.
The flight lost
radio contact at 10:23 a.m. It was carrying 83 passengers, including
seven children, and nine crew members, TAME said.
It was not clear
whether the wreckage was found on the Ecuadorian or the Colombian
side of the Chiles Volcano, whose 15,668-foot summit lies on the
border between the two nations.
Rescue teams
from both nations were focusing on the region of the Chiles and
another nearby volcano, Nevado de Cumbal.
Witnesses reported
hearing a plane flying through the clouds on Monday and then an
explosion in the area.
After stopping
in Tulcan, the flight was to have continued to Cali, Colombia’s
third-largest city. At the city’s airport, distressed relatives
awaited news of their loved ones.
Three rescue
planes and a helicopter combed the area near Ipiales until nightfall
Monday but could find no traces of a crash.
Clouds persisted
Tuesday and delayed the resumption of the search. At midmorning,
a search flight took off from Ecuador, entering Colombia as the
crew peered through breaking clouds. In Cumbal, firefighters drove
up a misty road into the mountains to try to locate the crash.
A spokeswoman
for the Colombian air force, Maj. Angela Rodriguez, said Colombian
authorities ruled out a possible guerrilla attack.
Gales
over Europe kill 16, leave many without power
LONDON
(AP) — Powerful gales battered northern Europe, killing at
least 16 people as the wind ripped roofs off houses, disrupted traffic
and shipping and left thousands of homes without power Tuesday.
Winds gusting
at up to 120 miles an hour tore through Britain and Ireland on Monday
before heading across Scandinavia, Germany, Poland and Russia overnight,
me
teorologists reported.
In Britain,
seven people died in gales that centered on northern England and
Scotland. Scottish Hydroelectric said 8,000 homes remained without
electricity Tuesday.
Engineers worked
through the night to restore electricity to tens of thousands of
homes after high winds closed bridges, caused numerous road accidents
and brought the area’s rail network to a virtual standstill.
The Scottish
Environment Protection Agency issued 12 flood warnings while the
Environment Agency had 23 flood warnings in force across Wales and
England.
In Scotland,
two people died when the wind overturned tractor-trailers, and a
man was killed and a woman injured by a falling tree
outside a hotel.
In northern
England, two drivers and a passenger were killed in three accidents
in which trucks were blown over or off the road. A woman was killed
by a piece of stone carving that fell from a church in York.
World
Trade Center survivor released from hospital
NEW
YORK (AP) — A woman who was severely burned at the World Trade
Center was released from the hospital Tuesday after four months
of treatment, saying “I want to get back to the way I was.”
Her face bandaged,
Elaine Duch, 49, told reporters at Weill Cornell Hospital’s
Burn Center that she was on the 88th floor of one of the twin towers
on Sept. 11 when she was injured. Rescuers helped guide her down.
“I thank
God that I’m here today,” said Duch, who was wearing an
FDNY baseball cap. “Because when I got hurt on 88, I said,
‘God save me,’ and he did.”
Duch’s
burns were severe enough that she was given last rites before she
was rushed to the hospital. Her glasses shattered from the heat.
“I don’t
know if I was on fire,” she said.
Paul Adams,
an emergency medical technician who helped rescue Duch, visited
her in the hospital every Sunday.
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