SEATTLE
Tentative accord may end strike at Boeing
The Boeing Co. and its Machinists union have reached a tentative contract agreement, which, if approved, would end a 3 1/2- week strike that shut down the company’s airplane production.
Connie Kelliher, a spokeswoman for Machinists District Lodge 751 in Seattle, confirmed Sunday an agreement had been reached.
Negotiations in the 3 1/2-week- old strike had been stalled since about 18,400 Machinists walked off the job Sept. 2 over health premiums and other issues.
Workers represented in the talks receive an average of $59,000 a year. The company has said they would earn about $62,500 a year by the end of the new contract.
WASHINGTON
McCain says U.S. hurt by abuse of Iraqis
Sen. John McCain said Sunday that abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, alleged anew in a report and under investigation again by the Army, is hurting the nation’s image abroad.
“We’ve got to have it stopped,” McCain, R-Ariz., said on “This Week” on ABC. “I don’t know if these allegations are true or not, but they have to be investigated.”
Human Rights Watch issued a report Friday based on interviews with a captain and two sergeants who served in a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at a military base near Fallujah that alleged that Army soldiers systematically tortured Iraqi detainees from 2003 into 2004, hitting them with baseball bats and dousing them with chemicals.
WASHINGTON
Okla. congressman may run for governor
Rep. Ernest Istook Jr., R-Okla., plans to vacate his House seat to take on Democratic Gov. Brad Henry in 2006, according to numerous GOP sources.
The sources said a formal announcement is scheduled for early October.
“While we cannot confirm any specific date, the congressman has made it clear that he is strongly leaning toward entering the governor’s race,” said Istook spokesman Matt Lambert.
This is not the first time around the block for Istook, who was expected to run for the open seat of retiring Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., in 2004 but abruptly backed away, citing his influential position as a subcommittee chairman on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
NEW YORK
Cosmopolitan fashion
editor sues designer
A fashion editor who was knocked unconscious by a bank of lights that fell on her at a Diane von Furstenberg fashion show is suing the designer.
Karen Hanes Larrain, who works for Cosmopolitan magazine, suffered a concussion and three gashes that required 30 stitches at the Sept. 11 show.
Her lawyer, Adam Schlesinger, said the lawsuit filed Sept. 16 seeks unspecified damages for payment of medical bills plus pain and suffering.
Larrain said she still was “shaky and dizzy” and could not work.
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico
Violent border city hugs for world record
More than 14,000 people in this infamously violent city on the U.S.-Mexico border embraced and held on tight Sunday for a 15-minute “Giant Hug,” that attempted to set a Guinness World Record.
Mayor Hector Murguia led the gathering, which took place close to a bridge leading over the border and into neighboring El Paso, Texas. The embrace began with the cry “Mexico, Mexico, Mexico” around midday.
Murguia arrived with Javier Canario Nassar, who verified that 14,200 people participated in the hug, and planned to send documentation stating as such to Guinness officials in London.
