Mormons’ control of plaza in Salt Lake City upheld
Salt Lake City – A federal appellate court has upheld a deal between city and church leaders that gave the Mormon church control over a downtown plaza.
Judges on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said traditional public forums can be sold to private groups. The deal does “nothing to advance religion, but merely enables the LDS church to advance itself,” according to the decision, which was issued Monday.
The American Civil Liberties Union wanted the agreement overturned, arguing it was illegal to give the church police power in a public area.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bought the plaza for $8 million in 1999. Under the agreement, the city retained some public control, but church leaders set speech and behavior guidelines and occasionally blocked public access on the property.
The ACLU sued and said the church could not curtail free speech in a public area and won, so the city reached another deal in 2003 that traded guaranteed public access for $4.5 million in church- owned property. The ACLU sued again, but the court said the city rightfully disengaged itself from a constitutional entanglement with the church over control of the plaza.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.
Mom to get new trial in son’s pacifier death
An appeals court has ordered a new trial for a woman convicted of killing her 4-month-old son by giving him a pacifier coated with the powerful narcotic OxyContin.
The state Court of Criminal Appeals said Friday that the trial judge improperly allowed testimony about three days of partying and drug use by Debra Elaine Kirk and her estranged husband before the 2002 death of her baby, Lacie.
“To say that (Kirk’s) lifestyle was ‘unwholesome’ or her parenting skills questionable would be excessively charitable,” Appeals Judge Thomas Woodall wrote. “However, a jury cannot be allowed to convict a defendant for bad character.”
MOULTRIE, Ga.
2 held in string of immigrant attacks
Two men were arrested Tuesday in connection with a string of brutal attacks in south Georgia that targeted immigrant farm workers, authorities said.
The crime spree last week left six workers dead, either shot or bludgeoned with baseball bats. Four other workers were injured and a woman raped.
Stacy Bernard Sims, 19, and Jamie Underwood, 22, are accused of shooting and beating a Hispanic man at a Norman Park trailer park and then raping his wife.
MARION, Ind.
Fire at TV-tube plant triggered by cut wire
Construction workers mistakenly cut a live wire at a closed television picture-tube plant, sparking an explosion Tuesday that critically burned a worker and injured four others, police said. An electrical transformer caught fire.
The Thomson plant closed in 2004. The new owner has been getting it ready to be sold.
In August, a worker at the same plant was killed while using a cutting torch to remove a tank when it exploded.
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Bosnian Serb panel IDs massacre players
A Bosnian Serb commission said Tuesday it has identified more than 17,000 people who participated directly and indirectly in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst slaughter of civilians in Europe since World War II.
The Special Bosnian Serb Government Working Group, which has been compiling the report since 2003, said the names would not be released publicly but would be turned over to the state prosecutor’s office for review and possible charges.
The commission said it submitted the report to the office of Bosnia’s top international official, Paddy Ashdown, who requested it as part of efforts to bring to justice those responsible for the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys – one of the worst atrocities in Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.
TEHRAN
Iran repeats readiness to reopen nuke talks
Iran reiterated Tuesday that it was ready to reopen talks with Europeans over its nuclear program, which Washington says is aimed at producing a nuclear bomb.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi also suggested that the uranium gas Iran has produced is low quality and needs purification before it can be injected into centrifuges to enrich uranium. Iran says it needs to enrich uranium to produce fuel for its future nuclear power plants.
Talks between Britain, Germany and France – which negotiated on behalf of the 25-nation European Union – and Iran collapsed in early August after Iran resumed uranium-reprocessing activities at its Uranium Conversion Facility in Isfahan, in central Iran.
LONDON
70% of Londoners say Iraq war led to blasts
Seven out of 10 Londoners believe the Iraq war contributed to the July terrorist attacks in the city, and nearly as many want British troops withdrawn from Iraq, according to a poll published Tuesday.
The MORI poll for the Greater London Authority found that 72 percent believed British involvement in the U.S.-led war contributed a “great deal” or a “fair amount” to the July 7 transit attacks, in which four suicide bombers killed 52 people.
Only 8 percent thought the war was not a factor, while 15 percent thought it was “not very much” of a factor.
