WICHITA
Two girls found starving in basement
Two girls who told police they ate only when their father wasn’t traveling on business were hospitalized after police found them in an advanced state of starvation.
The 6- and 7-year-old girls were found Friday in a home’s basement, where they were kept.
The girls’ stepmother, whose biological children were found healthy and well-fed upstairs, was taken in for questioning. Their father, traveling on business, was to be questioned when he returned, police said.
State social workers discovered the girls after receiving a tip and checking on their welfare. They then called police.
A doctor told police it appeared the girls hadn’t eaten in six days or had anything to drink in three days, despite recent temperatures above 100 degrees. He said the starvation had been going on much longer than six days.
GRAND CANYON, Ariz.
Park rangers search for missing hiker
Park rangers were searching Saturday for a 19-year-old woman who disappeared during a camping trip in the Grand Canyon a week ago.
Iryna Shylo, a Ukrainian citizen and Grand Canyon resident, had hiked down the canyon July 16 with a man and planned to spend the night before hiking back out the next day, said Maureen Oltrogge, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service.
The man reported Shylo missing the next morning. He said she had left the campsite to go to the bathroom and never returned.
On Friday, officials found a shoe matching a description of Shylo’s 9 miles downstream from where she was last seen. A second shoe was found a mile farther downriver.
PHILADELPHIA
Scouts may be evicted if gays not accepted
The city of Philadelphia said it will evict a Boy Scout council from its publicly owned headquarters or make the group pay a fair rent price unless it changes its policy on gays.
The Boy Scouts’ Cradle of Liberty Council, the country’s third-largest, has been battling with the city for more than three years over the policy, which, like the national Scouts organization, forbids gay leaders.
City Solicitor Romulo Diaz Jr. wrote to the Cradle of Liberty Council, saying that its “discriminatory policies” violate city policy and law and that city officials have not been assured the group will not discriminate.
The group has made its headquarters on a half-acre owned by the city in the Philadelphia Art Museum area since 1928, when the City Council voted to allow the Scouts to use the property rent-free “in perpetuity.” The Scouts pay for building upkeep.
MISSOULA, Mont.
Utah, Mont. wildfires mostly contained
A wildfire in western Montana destroyed a house and two outbuildings, a U.S. Forest Service official said Saturday.
The fire, which has scorched about 4 square miles, is one of five large blazes in Montana, according to the National Fire Information Center.
Firefighting crews, four helicopters and 10 fire engines fought the fire about 35 miles east of Missoula on Saturday in temperatures that approached 100 degrees.
Most of the large fires in the central and eastern part of the state had been contained.
Utah’s largest wildfire – which burned 45 square miles – was 75 percent contained Saturday, but hot spots could delay a plan for full containment by today.
BARKSDALE AFB, La.
25 illegal immigrants arrested at air base
Twenty-five illegal immigrants employed as contract workers at Barksdale Air Force Base were arrested Friday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
The construction and landscape workers were “foreign nationals,” according to a news release from the 2nd Bomb Wing that did not specify countries of origin. Most had obtained fraudulent Social Security numbers to complete forms, the release said.
VIENNA
Russian opposition hinders draft on Iran
Unexpected Russian opposition to key wording of a U.S.- backed U.N. Security Council draft resolution is straining international unity on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear defiance, U.N. diplomats said Saturday.
The apparent change of heart is the latest obstacle in the months-long attempt to pressure Iran’s hard-line Islamic government to suspend uranium enrichment, which many countries fear Tehran wants to use for a nuclear program.
Iran argues it needs enrichment to make energy and is entitled to it under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Russia’s new reluctance could seriously undermine efforts to secure a compromise from Iran, especially as the United States, Britain and France insist that the freeze be made mandatory.
MEXICO CITY
Gangsters’ shootout leaves three men dead
A shootout between suspected drug gangs left three men dead before dozens of police and soldiers stormed the scene and arrested the gunmen in the central Mexican state of Michoacán, police said Saturday.
The slayings were the latest in a wave of drug-related bloodshed that has killed more than 2,000 people across Mexico since the beginning of 2005.
The shootout erupted Friday in the community of Las Anonas, about 250 miles west of Mexico City, said Victor Baltasar, spokes man for Michoacán state police.
Some of the detainees were using a pickup with insignia from the Federal Agency of Investigation, Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI. Baltasar said the insignia was fake and the gangsters were posing as federal agents.
BEIJING
At least 19 killed in mountain quake
A magnitude-5.1 earthquake hit a mountainous area in southwestern China on Saturday, killing at least 19 people and injuring 60 as it toppled homes and set off landslides.
The earthquake struck in Yanjin county in Yunnan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Chinese television showed roads in Yanjin blocked by landslides, a car crushed under fallen rocks and several single-story homes with tiled roofs that had collapsed. Villagers were huddled under umbrellas and makeshift tents to keep out of the sun.
A Dousha official, Chen Hua, said at least five aftershocks followed the earthquake.
SRINAGAR, India
Top Kashmir militant arrested in India
A top Kashmiri militant commander blamed in dozens of attacks and tourist killings has been arrested in the Indian portion of the contested Himalayan state in a setback to the separatist rebels, police said Saturday.
Mudassir, who goes by a single name, is thought to be the chief planner of Lashkar-e- Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group. He is linked to grenade attacks and other violence, said Gopal Sharma, director-general of police in Jammu-Kashmir, where Mudassir was arrested. He did not say when the arrest was made.
Authorities believe Mudassir planned a series of grenade attacks July 11 that left nine tourists dead in Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar. He also is believed to have planned three grenade attacks June 11 in Jammu-Kashmir’s winter capital of Jammu. Those attacks killed one man and wounded 29 other people.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti
Freed missionaries prayed, ministered
Two U.S. missionaries held hostage for five days in Haiti spent their captivity in a sweltering makeshift cell praying and ministering to their kidnappers, one of the men said Friday.
Tom Barron said he and William Seastrum were treated relatively well during the ordeal.
But there were times they kept “coming in yelling and waving their pistols around,” Barron said by telephone. Barron and Seastrum, both of High Point, N.C., were released Thursday after negotiations led by the FBI.
