WASHINGTON
Probe says ed officials violated federal ban
The Education Department violated a ban on covert propaganda when it paid a columnist to tout government policies and produced a video that seemed like a news story, congressional investigators said Friday.
The public relations efforts violated the government’s “publicity or propaganda prohibition” because the Education Department contracts did not ensure that the department’s role was clearly disclosed, the Government Accountability Office said.
The investigation had been requested by Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., after it was revealed that the department had hired Armstrong Williams, a syndicated conservative columnist and TV personality, to promote President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.
The department approved spending $240,000 to have Williams, who is black, inform minorities about Bush’s law by producing ads with then-Education Secretary Rod Paige.
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK,
Calif.
Bodies of two found in car’s wreckage
The bodies of two tourists were found in the wreckage of their rental car in a steep ravine outside the park.
Xiaodong Yuan, 34, of Atlanta, and his mother, Zhaohui Wang, 60, of Beijing, apparently died from injuries suffered when their car rolled down the embankment, according to the Mono County Sheriff-Coroner’s Department.
Foul play wasn’t suspected, but officials were investigating.
The bodies were found Thursday in Lee Vining Canyon, about 150 feet off the road that plunges from 9,945-foot Tioga Pass at the park’s east entrance to the Owens Valley.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va.
Language training to precede murder trial
A deaf, mute, illiterate Salvadoran charged with capital murder in the slaying of a teenage girl was incompetent to stand trial because he has practically no communication skills, a judge ruled.
Oswaldo Martinez, a 33-year-old illegal immigrant, was ordered Thursday to receive language training at a state mental hospital to make him competent to stand trial in the rape and murder of 16-year-old Brittany Binger.
Binger was grabbed from behind, choked and sexually assaulted in January, police said.
Martinez was indicted in May after DNA evidence linked him to the crime, officials said.
Martinez cannot communicate with his attorneys and doesn’t fully understand why he’s in court, said psychologist Carolyn Corbett, who evaluated Martinez for the defense.
Martinez looked down at the defense table for most of the hearing.
TIFTON, Ga.
Trailer-park attacks leave 5 dead, 4 critical
Five men were killed and four other people were critically wounded in a series of attacks at trailer parks in and around the city early Friday, authorities said.
It was not immediately clear how the victims were killed or why, said Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead.
The attacks appeared to be home invasions, authorities said.
Three took place in Tift County, and a fourth in neighboring Colquitt County.
“We think they’re tied together,” said Colquitt County Sheriff’s Capt. Hal Suber.
In the Colquitt County attack, a man was shot in the head and beaten with a baseball bat, and his wife was hit in the mouth, Suber said.
The man’s condition was not released; Suber said it appeared the woman would be OK.
CHICAGO
2 men, 2 women found dead in home
Police found the bodies of two men and two women in an upscale suburban Chicago home, and authorities were seeking a “person of interest” in California for questioning, officials said.
No weapons were found in the home, though homicide-suicide had not been ruled out, police Lt. Rusty Sullivan said.
Sullivan declined to say when or how the two women and two men had died, except to say some had suffered “severe” blunt-force trauma.
